Pod Insights Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard James L. Brooks (director and producer) About this episode James L. Brooks (Ella McCay, The Simpsons, Taxi) is an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter, director, and producer. James joins the Armchair Expert to discuss being an industrious high school reporter interviewing Louis Armstrong and Anne Bancroft, his lucky break as a studio page bringing Edward R. Murrow coffee, and co-creating the Mary Tyler Moore Show with Alan Burns. James and Dax talk about why there’s no better job in the world than on a television show that’s working, seeing Andy Kaufman perform as the vile Tony Clifton for the first time, and that he thinks you go legally insane when directing. James explains what it was like giving notes to Jack Nicholson, starting The Simpsons which is still the longest-running scripted show in history, and what makes a contemporary female heroine in his new screwball comedy Ella McCay.
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Transcript 21,420 words · 6 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Dax Shepard? Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, experts on expert. I'm Jan Shepherd.
0:05 Speaker 01 Hello.
0:06 Dax Shepard? And I'm joined by Monica Padman. We have an absolute titan of show business today. James L. Brooks. He is an Academy Award winning director, producer and screenwriter. He wrote and directed As Good As It Gets, Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Simpsons.
0:25 Speaker 01 Wow.
0:26 Dax Shepard? One of the creators of The Simpsons.
0:28 Speaker 01 And he helped Bottle Rocket.
0:30 Dax Shepard? He produced Bottle Rocket, which was a mess when he first heard it, as we'll learn. He has a new movie in theaters December 12th, Ella McKay. This was a delight. Barry Norman Lear-esque, created like a real genre of TV that persists today.
0:46 Speaker 01 He broke a lot of barriers.
0:47 Dax Shepard? He did, he did.
0:49 Speaker 01 Barriers. He broke through a lot of barriers.
0:51 Dax Shepard? He broke things. Please enjoy James L. Brooks. We get support from Quince.
0:58 Speaker 01 I have to say, I am so ready for fall. I want sweaters. I've been craving a true crisp morning where I actually need a jacket. I can't wait.
1:07 Dax Shepard? I'm fully there. The second it dips below 70, I'm like, this is my season. Give me the layers, give me the boots, give me a reason to wear something other than a T-shirt. And honestly, that's why I love Quince, because fall is when your wardrobe actually has to show up. And everything at Quince is 50 to 80% less than similar brands. We're talking 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters, starting at $60.
1:29 Speaker 01 $60, $60 for cashmere that you'd expect from a luxury brand without the luxury price tag. It's amazing. Gets me every time. It really shouldn't be real, but it is because they go straight to the factories. They skip the middlemen and they just hand you the savings. The stuff isn't trendy. It's the kind of pieces you grab over and over because they work every time.
1:47 Dax Shepard? The 100% Mongolian cashmere sweaters for me are it. When I look at Steve McQueen, this man owned a couple of sweaters he wore all the time and he looks iconic.
1:56 Speaker 01 It's a uniform. And Quince isn't just about the clothes. They have hotel quality bedding, cookware, bath essentials, thoughtfully designed furniture. You can really go there and outfit your entire apartment or house. So if you're in need of any kind of fall refresh at home, too, same quality, same attention to detail for every corner of your life.
2:16 Dax Shepard? Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Armchair Expert. It's the best way to support the show. We get support from AG1. Fall is that time when your body and mind are getting ready for the winter. You're settling in, bracing for the cold. Your body's already running a deficit from the shorter days and broken sleep patterns. You don't want a nutrient deficit stacked on top of that, too.
2:52 Speaker 01 That's where your AG1 routine earns its spot. It's not fixing your sleep or your alarm time. It's giving your body what it needs so the dark mornings don't tank you before you even start. One scoop, cold water every morning before anything else.
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3:18 Speaker 01 That's the part people miss. It's not a one day fix. It's what happens when you stay consistent.
3:22 Dax Shepard? It's an easy, everyday thing. I've added it to my morning routine and I'm going to tell you, I actually love the taste of it. It's like Pavlovian. I drink it and I know, mm, I'm going to get that little vitamin buzz.
3:33 Speaker 01 Well, that's also the thing. When you do it first thing in the morning, you already feel kind of self-esteem because you're like, I already did something good for myself.
3:40 Dax Shepard? Yes. Go to drinkag1.com/dax and for a limited time, get a free immunity bundle, including a bottle of omega three fish oil and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. That's drinkag1.com/dax. And after checkout, be sure to let them know that Armchair Expert sent you.
4:22 Speaker 02 How you doing?
4:22 Dax Shepard? So good, how are you?
4:24 Speaker 02 Pleasure.
4:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, great to meet you, Dad. Am I free to call you Jim?
4:27 Speaker 02 Yes.
4:27 Dax Shepard? Okay, great. Are you someone who's perpetually early?
4:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, I try and be on time. I used to be the reverse, and then changed my act.
4:34 Dax Shepard? Because someone forced you to, or you just did some soul searching?
4:37 Speaker 02 I was working with an actor who I have to remain nameless, who was always late.
4:41 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure.
4:42 Speaker 02 Always late. I flew and he said he'd pick me up. "No, don't pick me up, I'll get there." "Don't pick me up, don't..." Two hours late waiting there. Oh.
4:49 Dax Shepard? Oh.
4:50 Speaker 02 This is a big star where I'm really... I think I finally figured out that it was a sort of social distancing thing, because every interaction would begin with him apologizing for 20 minutes. Oh, interesting.
5:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah, what a time suck. It's like, "You're late and you gotta apologize for so long. The day's gone, let's try this again tomorrow." So you were born in Brooklyn in 1940, but how quickly do we move to New Jersey?
5:14 Speaker 02 I was two, I think. So that's my only memory, really.
5:18 Dax Shepard? How far from the city were you in New Jersey?
5:21 Speaker 02 We were up a hill that was directly across from 72nd Street in New York City, where I ended up getting an apartment one day. And as a kid, I was looking across, down the hill, at that all the time.
5:33 Dax Shepard? And then at one point, you were looking back at home.
5:36 Speaker 02 It was almost, if you drew a straight line.
5:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
5:38 Speaker 02 And that hit me one day.
5:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, did it fill you with satisfaction?
5:42 Speaker 02 It was emotional, because I was not in a great environment and I was not a happy kid.
5:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I get to talk to people with a lot of childhood stuff, myself included, but yours is really up there.
5:52 Speaker 02 Publicly so.
5:53 Dax Shepard? Dad leaves mom the second she's pregnant with you?
5:56 Speaker 02 Yes.
5:57 Dax Shepard? I think it explains your career in a big way. And maybe you'll agree with me or not agree with me, but I was raised by a single mother, who was a gangster, who was working nonstop and building a career. And I was in the shadow of a very impressive woman. And I think it helped me throughout my life have an appropriate amount of respect for women. And I'm just wondering if you think being raised by just your mom, watching her kill herself and all that, played a role ultimately?
6:25 Speaker 02 Well, it was my mom and my sister was eight years older than I.
6:29 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
6:30 Speaker 02 So she was saddled with me quite a bit. It's ever the regret of my life. That my mom couldn't see some good things happen to me.
6:38 Dax Shepard? She was 22 when she died?
6:40 Speaker 02 No, no, no, no.
6:41 Dax Shepard? I mean, I'm sorry, you were 22 when she died?
6:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
6:43 Dax Shepard? Obviously, she's gonna add both of you with an eight-year gap.
6:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, my sister had become divorced, so she moved home. I had a job as an usher in New York that I commuted to after high school. And between the three of us, life became a little easier economically.
6:58 Dax Shepard? Would the both of them contribute?
7:00 Speaker 02 She worked six days a week, two nights a week.
7:02 Speaker 01 What was she doing?
7:03 Speaker 02 She sold children's clothes.
7:05 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
7:06 Dax Shepard? And your dad was a furniture salesman?
7:08 Speaker 02 Furniture salesman.
7:09 Dax Shepard? Do you think you were imbued with that sense of like, go get them? Walk into a room, win them over? Was that stuff trickling down to you?
7:16 Speaker 02 Maybe the opposite, but my father was more than a salesman. He was a T.O. man, takeover. That means if somebody was walking out of the store without buying, he'd stop them at the door and try and get them back. So that's the kind of salesman he was.
7:28 Dax Shepard? That's hardcore. They've already declared they don't want this.
7:33 Speaker 01 So he was in your life still?
7:35 Speaker 02 At that point, yes. He left when I was maybe 13.
7:38 Dax Shepard? Now, did you have any contact with him? Did he get to observe any of this stuff? Or did he observe from afar?
7:44 Speaker 02 He was a bad guy.
7:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you described kind of being lonely in that period. You were by yourself quite a bit, I imagine?
7:51 Speaker 02 Yes.
7:54 Dax Shepard? All right, let's break this down. Is this stuff uncomfortable for you? Yeah, tell me, tell me, is this uncomfortable?
7:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
8:00 Dax Shepard? It is, yeah, okay.
8:01 Speaker 02 No, I like, this is my rap, I'm right at home.
8:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:05 Speaker 02 No, no.
8:05 Dax Shepard? I just think all these seeds are there. In my loneliness, I decided to write. Writing was a world in which I had total control and power and say over what everyone did. That was a relief, I love that. Different things bring different people to writing for different reasons, and I'm just curious, how much of that do you think is in the soup?
8:22 Speaker 02 I was in high school, and I was the bullied kid.
8:26 Dax Shepard? Okay.
8:28 Speaker 02 As a matter of fact, at a certain point, a long time ago, but I got into thinking about the guy who bullied me so much when I was in high school, and I made an effort to find out what happened to him. Federal judge.
8:38 Dax Shepard? Oh, really? I was expecting worse for him.
8:42 Speaker 01 I know, that's what you want.
8:43 Dax Shepard? Some bullies are kind of industrious, I guess.
8:48 Speaker 01 I mean, I guess in some ways, he's still a bully.
8:50 Speaker 02 No, I was looking for much worse.
8:51 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes, perhaps the turnaround salesman that gets people at the door. T O, what did you call it?
8:57 Speaker 02 Takeover.
8:58 Dax Shepard? Takeover, takeover. You were pursuing writing and you were writing comedy stuff when you were young and you were submitting?
9:05 Speaker 02 I wrote for the school newspaper. We were a high school of 300 and I was very resourceful in getting exclusive interviews with very big celebrities.
9:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah, Louis Armstrong?
9:13 Speaker 01 Oh.
9:14 Speaker 02 And that's what I always say, blessed moment in my life. And I was alone with him backstage as a kid reporter. I asked him a question that he hadn't been asked. How do you take care of your lips?
9:26 Dax Shepard? Oh, really?
9:28 Speaker 02 And he lit up and he brought out drawers of stuff. Turned out to be a major part of his prep for performing.
9:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah, right, trumpeters are neurotic about their mouth, right? It's everything.
9:39 Speaker 02 There's a drawer full of.
9:40 Dax Shepard? Like ointments and topicals?
9:42 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:43 Dax Shepard? Oh my God, was he applying any of them in front of you?
9:45 Speaker 02 He was delighted to show his kid.
9:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah. How did you get in touch with him?
9:50 Speaker 02 I don't know how I did it. I did letters. I somehow got myself backstage as a high school kid with Ann Bancroft, who was then just crazy, the gorgeous toaster Broadway. I was trying to flirt with her. I think she was in her twenties at the time, I'm a high school kid or something like that. She was very nice. I saw her standing in a circle. I second acted, you know what second acting is?
10:11 Dax Shepard? No.
10:12 Speaker 02 I worked as an usher and as I walked home, this is my after school job. I walked through the theater district in New York. And I walked in at precisely the time that they had the break between first and second act. You look for a stub and you sneak into the theater and you go to the worst seats. You don't go to a hit. So I saw the second act of everything.
10:31 Dax Shepard? Okay, you got to sneak in and get in a free second act.
10:34 Speaker 01 Were you very enamored by celebrities?
10:36 Speaker 02 Specific ones, I mean, when I saw Bancroft, she was talking to, I think, Mike Nichols and I was shaking.
10:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:44 Speaker 02 And I went over to her and I'm seventeen years old or sixteen, seventeen years old. Miss Bancroft, I have this play. Oh, wow. She said, send it to me. So I, of course, dropped it off and I got a note from her. I guess it was a letter. I don't understand your play. I'm sorry. Oh, my God. I don't understand. I'm sorry, I don't know why. Oh, wow. But if you're ever in the neighborhood of such and such theater and want to talk to me, I'm there. So it was this amazing thing.
11:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
11:13 Speaker 02 So it was explosive for me.
11:15 Dax Shepard? When you came to know Cameron Crowe many years later, did you find that shared history endearing to you? That he had had that similar, well, super young, working at Rolling?
11:24 Speaker 02 He was a vunderkin. He was a hit reporter for Rolling Stone when he was fifteen years old.
11:28 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm sure you were the hit of your high school, if you're a security.
11:33 Speaker 02 No, everybody resented it because there'd always be a picture of the high school kid with the celebrity.
11:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
11:39 Speaker 02 So my picture was in the paper all the time.
11:41 Dax Shepard? Sure, sure.
11:41 Speaker 02 The athletes hated it and their picture wasn't in the paper all the time.
11:44 Dax Shepard? You and that federal judge.
11:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, really.
11:45 Dax Shepard? This son of a bitch did it again. He's a Louis Armstrong. So you do end up going to NYU after high school, but then you leave because you have a job at CBS News?
11:56 Speaker 02 No, because I screwed up because it was the first time where I was happy. High school had been awful and somehow I started to have a normal kid's life in college. And it was because there was a fraternity that had a townhouse and was on campus and I got in there. And then it was better than anything I'd known. I had a lot of friends and girlfriend, so I just didn't go to class.
12:19 Dax Shepard? Okay.
12:20 Speaker 02 You know, it was awful. That's what happened.
12:21 Dax Shepard? You were having too much fun to go to class.
12:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, I was having my first fun.
12:25 Dax Shepard? I'm glad you prioritize that.
12:27 Speaker 02 My sister got me a job as an usher. It was my first lucky break and usually you had to be a college graduate at that time to be anything because that was the first foot in the door and then they started to theoretically promote you. Yeah. And then I got another great lucky break because they use, they call them pages. And we filled in for notches above us jobs when the notches above us job went on vacation. And I got a notches above me fill-in job. As a copy boy at CBS News.
12:57 Dax Shepard? Through the news.
12:57 Speaker 02 Yeah, and the guy never came back. That was a big break, so I got that job I could never have gotten any other way.
13:04 Dax Shepard? And then you are a full-time employed copywriter for CBS News?
13:08 Speaker 02 I'm just cleaning out the machines. You're looking at somebody who brought Edward R. Murrow coffee, so.
13:12 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow, wow, wow, wow.
13:15 Dax Shepard? You're like a magnet to celebrities. I know. When did you start writing there?
13:19 Speaker 02 I was promoted to a news writer. I had gotten over my fears, gotten over the hump. For some reason, I was afraid I'd end up selling women's shoes. I mean, I had an active fear of, you know, like you have a fear of insects or something like that.
13:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Was there a popular play where the protagonist sold women? That's like a trope. I mean, obviously, Al Bundy ended up doing it, and that was a trope.
13:40 Speaker 02 Wow, maybe, I don't know.
13:41 Dax Shepard? I think there's a trope about selling women's shoes. It is very specific. We have a friend who sold women's shoes. Yeah, but he loved it because he has a foot fetish.
13:50 Speaker 02 Why?
13:51 Dax Shepard? Because he had a foot fetish, or still has a foot fetish. We don't know if it started, it might have started. It started. Yeah, he worked for his dad's shoe place in downtown LA, and lo and behold, now he has a foot fetish.
14:02 Speaker 02 Tough job, honestly. It's a very tough job.
14:05 Dax Shepard? How on earth do you decide to leave the security of that job to come to LA in, what, 1965?
14:15 Speaker 02 I was in love with a woman, and she and her roommate decided that they were going to move to California. And they did, and I quit.
14:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, scary.
14:25 Speaker 02 Somebody I had known at CBS News had left and gone to do documentaries in California, and he gave me a job. Then I got laid off from that job after six months. My wife was supporting me for a while, and I was out of work for about six months, and then I got my first writing job.
14:40 Dax Shepard? You met Alan Burns at a party, is that a part of the truth?
14:44 Speaker 02 Yeah, he had five shows on the air, The Monsters was his, some shows.
14:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
14:48 Speaker 02 And I met him at a party where we were grubby documentarians, and it was New Year's Eve, and he came in from some fancy thing, and he was wearing a tuxedo, and he's a great-looking guy.
14:58 Dax Shepard? Looked wealthy.
14:58 Speaker 02 A beautiful human. Somehow, I ended up saying, "I want to write," and he got me a chance to write a show. It was My Mother, the Car.
15:07 Dax Shepard? Right, right, right, right, your first writing job.
15:09 Speaker 02 Yeah.
15:09 Dax Shepard? But that turned into you wrote episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons.
15:14 Speaker 02 We won.
15:15 Dax Shepard? Yes.
15:15 Speaker 02 Yes.
15:16 Dax Shepard? And then that slowly snowballs into you creating Room 211?
15:21 Speaker 02 Room 222.
15:22 Dax Shepard? Okay, and that's? 1970, 1969.
15:26 Speaker 02 68, 69, somewhere in there.
15:28 Dax Shepard? Now, this show's kinda shockingly out of its time in a lot of ways. It had only the second black lead character on a TV show ever.
15:36 Speaker 02 And the first to have more than one.
15:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and they tried to talk you out of that at some point?
15:40 Speaker 02 It was a tough sale. There's this guy, Gene Reynolds, who was a very big director, producer, and a ferociously ethical guy. So they tried to say, the pilot episode I wrote after so much research, because he was a big research guy.
15:53 Dax Shepard? He's the guy who taught you this technique?
15:55 Speaker 02 Which had stuck with me, insisted on it. Hey, I did it, I did it, I did it. I went to the high school, I hung with the teacher. Go back, go back, go back, go back, go back, go back. A lot, so that what I thought would be a week of my life became months of my life. And I'm glad it stuck.
16:08 Dax Shepard? Yeah, what specifically was revealed in that process that you found so useful?
16:13 Speaker 02 Authenticity. You've unconsciously dug deeper by showing up again and again and again. It starts to be, oh, that's interesting to you. Take it in. You get it just by going back.
16:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you carried that forward through all your projects. When you're thinking of approaching something, time is such a valuable commodity. How much time are you building in for that research? And is that ever cumbersome?
16:40 Speaker 02 It's great. You enjoy it. You step out of your life, you know?
16:43 Dax Shepard? But you did 112 episodes of that show, I think?
16:46 Speaker 02 And it won an Emmy for Best New Show. And because of this Gene Reynolds, it was the real deal. He wanted to get it right. He put the whip on us to get it right. So it was just a break getting mentored by somebody like that.
16:59 Dax Shepard? And then next you go on in 1970 to create Mary Tyler Moore Show.
17:05 Speaker 02 Co-create with Alan Burns.
17:07 Dax Shepard? The nice gentleman from the New Year's Eve. The dapper man. The dapper, successful man. This show really deserves an examination. I guess I don't even think I realized, because I'm still five years from being born. So I didn't grow up watching it.
17:21 Speaker 02 Or excuse.
17:22 Dax Shepard? Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you. That was the first ever female lead that wasn't dependent on a man. That was like an independent, employed.
17:31 Speaker 02 I think so.
17:31 Dax Shepard? Again, back to mom or where this comes from, her older sister. This is kind of some pioneering stuff you're doing.
17:38 Speaker 02 Before this, the great comedy on the air, the thing where you say, oh, there can be that kind of quality was the Dick Van Dyke Show.
17:44 Dax Shepard? Okay.
17:45 Speaker 02 Which won the Emmy, all the Emmys every year for ever and ever. It was Carl Reiner and it was Sheldon Leonard and it was really everybody's bible. I mean, you just were in awe.
17:55 Dax Shepard? A lot of famous writers on that show, too.
17:56 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You were just in awe of the show. And then she had an on the air commitment from CBS and strangely, they gave us the shot.
18:05 Dax Shepard? And was that embraced immediately by Mary Tyler Moore?
18:09 Speaker 02 Yes, the network didn't want us.
18:11 Dax Shepard? Okay.
18:12 Speaker 02 It was sort of amazing because it's an infamous story, but when we went to pitch and we pitched through a semi-circle of executives, we had come in with the idea that Mary be divorced and she had to build a new life. One of these eight guys, the guy, the programming guy, said, there are three things that the public doesn't like: divorce, Jews, and men with mustaches.
18:34 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
18:34 Dax Shepard? What a list.
18:35 Speaker 01 Wow.
18:36 Speaker 02 Looking at me, who had a mustache and is a Jew.
18:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:39 Speaker 02 As he said it, it just sounds surreal. It's happened.
18:42 Dax Shepard? Were you divorced yet? Maybe you were three out of three. I was gonna say you were two out of three, but maybe you were three out of three.
18:47 Speaker 01 He came from divorce, so he experienced it.
18:50 Dax Shepard? Wow, that feels very specific to you.
18:52 Speaker 01 It does.
18:54 Speaker 02 Yes, and we were asked to leave the room and Grant stayed and he came out and he looked pretty angry and he said, let's go. And two or three years later, we found out they had ordered him to fire us and he said, no.
19:04 Speaker 01 Wow.
19:05 Dax Shepard? So, Mary Tyler Moore Show has this epic seven-year run. You guys get nominated for Emmys. Do you win a Peabody for this show? Is this the first?
19:15 Speaker 02 I'm not sure.
19:16 Dax Shepard? We're obsessed with the Peabody.
19:17 Speaker 02 I do.
19:18 Dax Shepard? You've got a couple of them, I think.
19:19 Speaker 01 I'm sure you won for that, if it exists. I don't know how long it's been around, the Peabody.
19:23 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he racked up some Peabodies. I just feel like this is maybe the first one.
19:29 Dax Shepard? Did you have any awareness that what you were doing was unique as far as writing a female-driven show? Did you have a sense of that? Or did it just feel like, this is any other show and I'm not even really thinking of it as anything unique?
19:40 Speaker 02 You know, I came from a newsroom.
19:42 Dax Shepard? And you said it in a newsroom.
19:43 Speaker 02 The character of her boss was pretty much based on somebody who was sort of a legendary editor. So there was some personal writing in it for me.
19:50 Speaker 01 It's scary to take on, I think, writing for a woman at that time and a very strong character we didn't normally see. Was it scary or no? You guys were just like, no, this is normal.
20:01 Speaker 02 It was a ball.
20:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, I bet.
20:03 Speaker 02 It was thrilling. And Grant at that time was the vice president of a studio, so he could not knowingly participate in it. He couldn't really talk to us because he'd be crossing some line someplace to really do it. So we didn't have a boss. We didn't have anybody to answer to for that moment. We need somebody's approval finally. But not even that, because she had an on-the-air commitment. It was amazing. And we were innocent, so it was even better.
20:28 Dax Shepard? It's fun to work on a hit show as well that's getting recognized too, right?
20:32 Speaker 02 There's no better job in the world than working on a television show that's working, you know, because you get community. You can't quite get into movies. The movie I just finished, it was fantastic relationship with everybody. It really was great. But when you have a series, babies get born, people get married, you're all growing up together.
20:49 Dax Shepard? I did six years on a show and it's like the happiest work experience of my life.
20:53 Speaker 02 Best job.
20:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah, watching people get married and have kids, all those things, really being a part of their life. And it has the illusion of security like the rest of it doesn't. So you at least know you're going there 22 times this year. And then hopefully next time, it's a coveted role to have. And then you have some spinoffs from that. You do Rhoda and then you do Lou Grant. That's the one that won a Peabody. Now I have my notes. You got your first Peabody for Lou Grant. I want to add, so Mayor Taylor Moore is doing this thing where you guys are tackling kind of popular...
21:25 Dax Shepard? Important issues within the framework of a sitcom. Norman Lear becomes ultimately very recognized as doing that as well. But you are doing that with The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
21:37 Speaker 02 As the whole notion of women is changing. The timing was exquisite.
21:42 Dax Shepard? Women are hitting the workforce and record numbers and divorce is high.
21:46 Speaker 02 I have deja vu because the movie that I just finished also has this central character. Also, her name is in the title, Alan McKay. It's so crazy that I hadn't quite gotten that.
21:56 Dax Shepard? The connective tissue between those.
21:58 Speaker 02 Yeah.
21:59 Dax Shepard? Yeah, full circle. We're inventing a paradigm right now, which is like, we're gonna talk about some serious stuff in a comedy. That's just rare and unique. Were you aware of, oh, this is new? Or it was just happening and in retrospect, you're like, oh, I guess we did create something.
22:15 Speaker 02 We followed All in the Family, which was breaking down every door and everything that was revolutionizing. So we got to be the show after the show breaking down every door.
22:23 Dax Shepard? Okay, okay.
22:24 Speaker 02 We walked in the door.
22:25 Dax Shepard? Okay, the vanguard had come through. Now, this one, I gotta say, just because now this is the first show I'm old enough to consume and love. I would have thought this show is on for 10 years, which is Taxi. Do you think Taxi is a little bit like Shawshank Redemption where people think it was bigger or more successful than it was?
22:44 Speaker 02 We followed a formulaic comedy that was the number one show. So we got seen. Emmys came our way. We still have Zoom reunions. It was that championship season. People looked in the rearview mirror and said, that was the time of my life. We knew it was the time of our life then.
23:02 Dax Shepard? That's lucky. We didn't wait for a rearview mirror. We relished it, man. It was great. Yeah, I want to know the things that made it great. On the outside, it looks like the most obvious thing to me is you took all this cultural capital you had acquired and you used it to assemble really the craziest cast maybe ever on TV at that point, or definitely of your shows, right?
23:24 Speaker 02 I wanted to do men, seven years. I wanted to do men.
23:27 Dax Shepard? And blue collar was a goal as well.
23:28 Speaker 02 Yeah. And then there was a magazine article in New York Magazine about a small taxi company in New York. And the article. Pointed out that they all had Johnny Tomorrow dreams. They wanted to be this, they wanted to be an actor. And there was something, you know, Eugene O'Neill about it.
23:44 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
23:45 Speaker 02 We went to the research thing. So I'm in a cab company and I'm there for a day. I was just there for 14 hours. They knew I was there for research. And the guy who ran it, the manager, who was in the cage dispatching taxis.
23:57 Dax Shepard? Danny DeVito?
23:58 Speaker 02 The real guy, a cab driver, was slipping him money to get a clean cab, a cab in good condition. The whole character came from that.
24:05 Dax Shepard? Sure, he's like, yeah, he's sleazy on the grift.
24:08 Speaker 02 So that was just, God bless it, you know, just, just landing in your lap. And then some of them, when they got off work, they were still hanging around. I didn't know why they were hanging around. And then this guy came in and all the others, the article had been about they all wanted to be something else. And when I asked him, and he was charismatic, you could see the buzz when he came in. And he says, me, I want to be a cab driver. That became what made our hero a hero.
24:33 Dax Shepard? Ah, he wanted to be there. Danny DeVito, had he been in stuff, is that a discovery?
24:40 Speaker 02 It's a famous audition.
24:41 Dax Shepard? Oh, it is?
24:42 Speaker 02 Because we were looking and looking and looking. If you know the show, you know the character. For his audition, he came in and the first thing he did was throw the script on the floor and say, who wrote this shit?
24:51 Dax Shepard? Oh, great.
24:53 Speaker 02 And we fell on the floor and he was the guy.
24:55 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Danny DeVito, before you've seen Danny DeVito. Oh. And what about, I mean, Andy Kaufman, maybe the craziest comedian of all time, having to show up on set at a certain time and be this thing predictably. How did you come to get him?
25:10 Speaker 02 It's hard to explain a unique guy for people to imagine what he was. But I went to a club where he was performing and I'm waiting to see him. And there's this awful comic who's on stage, not only unfunny, but vile and insulting people in the audience.
25:25 Dax Shepard? Is his name Tony?
25:26 Speaker 02 Tony Clifton.
25:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
25:28 Speaker 01 Oh my gosh, you knew that? How'd you know that?
25:31 Dax Shepard? You'll hear one.
25:32 Speaker 01 Oh, okay, okay, okay.
25:34 Dax Shepard? Incredible, so you got to see Tony Clifton perform.
25:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, and just offending and people hooting.
25:40 Dax Shepard? He's lucky if he doesn't get beat up onstage.
25:42 Speaker 02 And his manager comes up and whispers and says, "That's Andy." And Andy was in all this thing, and it's just mind-blowingly brilliant.
25:51 Speaker 01 No.
25:52 Speaker 02 Goes, and never gives it away. And then comes out as Andy and does Foreign Man and is hysterical.
25:57 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
25:58 Speaker 02 And does the things that if you Google it, you'll see what he did then.
26:01 Dax Shepard? His tolerance to be hated. I just can't comprehend doing these Tony Clifton sets. And he would go occasionally on talk shows as Tony Clifton.
26:09 Speaker 01 But maybe that's a way to do it, because it's not him. He's putting on this disguise.
26:15 Speaker 02 He did Tony Clifton, and in order to be on the show, on Taxi, he said, "You have to hire Tony Clifton as well."
26:21 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
26:23 Speaker 02 You have to give him his own dressing room. So there are two dressing rooms.
26:27 Speaker 01 Oh my god.
26:27 Dax Shepard? Why were you elected to play ball? I love that you were.
26:30 Speaker 02 He's Andy Kaufman, man.
26:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah.
26:36 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
26:42 Dax Shepard? We get support from our sponsor, Lilly. For adults with obesity or with excess weight and weight-related medical problems, it's time to find out about Foundo or for Glee Pro. Foundo is a once-daily-prescription GLP-1 medicine used with a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.
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28:05 Dax Shepard? We get support from Instagram teen accounts. So, we talk a lot on this show about how the world is different now than when we were growing up, and one of the biggest differences is obviously social media. And I think a lot of people wonder, okay, what's actually being done to make it safer for teenagers?
28:21 Speaker 01 Which is a fair question.
28:23 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so Instagram has got something called teen accounts, and they come with automatic protections built in by default. So, anyone between 13 and 17 is automatically placed into this experience. They get age-appropriate content settings, contact limits, so that by default, only people they're already connected to can message them. And time management tools, daily time limit reminders, and also sleep mode that mutes notifications from 10:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.
28:49 Speaker 01 Sleep mode is genius.
28:50 Dax Shepard? Right? And here's the thing, for anyone under 16, a parent has to give permission to change any of those settings to be less strict. The guardrails are on, and Instagram keeps building new safety features to create age-appropriate experiences for teens.
29:05 Speaker 01 I am really glad Instagram's helping to give parents peace of mind with teen accounts.
29:09 Dax Shepard? Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to protect teens online at instagram.com/teenaccounts. We get support from Skims. So, Monica just informed me that she's a girl's girl, and I nodded like I knew exactly what that meant.
29:27 Speaker 01 Yeah, but the girls who get it, they get it.
29:29 Dax Shepard? Okay, but for those of us who are clearly not girls, walk me through it.
29:33 Speaker 01 Well, you know how much I love my Skims fleece joggers? Because the plush fleece is so soft, it's cozy, it's really comfortable without feeling too heavy. Well, I went to friend them, and she would not stop talking about how comfy they were. She almost didn't give them back to me, which was upsetting, but I'm a girl's girl, so I let her have it.
29:50 Dax Shepard? Great, great, great.
29:51 Speaker 01 So the sleep sets are awesome because they are very soft and comfortable, but they're cute. If I'm in my sleep set, I feel fine about going down the street to pick up my food. I'm still looking cute, but I'm comfy and I'm cozy.
30:05 Dax Shepard? Roger.
30:06 Speaker 01 A really fun thing to do is if you're going on vacation with your girlfriends, to get matching Skims pajamas. I've done this with Callie and it is so fun. First of all, the pics are so cute, but also it's just fun and friendship.
30:18 Dax Shepard? So a girl's girl is looking out for your friends with better loungewear. I get it. Am I one of your girls now?
30:24 Speaker 01 You are. You and the other girlies can shop my favorite loungewear and pajamas at skims.com. After you place your order, be sure to let them know we sent you. Select podcasts in the survey and be sure to select our show in the drop down menu that follows.
30:43 Dax Shepard? So when he had his own dressing room?
30:45 Speaker 02 Yeah. Andy's seminal. He started Performance Art, I think. There was a time when he was wrestling. He wrestled women, he insulted women and then said, wrestle me, I can beat any women. Then they would really wrestle.
30:56 Speaker 01 Oh, no.
30:57 Speaker 02 And then he went in a real wrestling ring and got hurt. And it was a front page story because he was known at that point.
31:04 Dax Shepard? Yes, he hurt his neck and he came out in a neck brace. He went on a tour bashing the guy who hurt him.
31:09 Speaker 02 And then I found out it was fake. And it was on front pages.
31:14 Dax Shepard? He was gonna sue the guy.
31:15 Speaker 01 What a live wire.
31:16 Dax Shepard? And he wanted a rematch.
31:17 Speaker 02 If you watch the thing, it's a body slam where he's upside down and a guy holding him goes like that so that you're wincing, but when you really slow it down, you see that it was set up. You see that he stopped just short of the slam and they made the noise.
31:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
31:32 Speaker 01 But yeah, are you on set, like who's gonna show up today?
31:36 Speaker 02 Yeah, sort of. And Tony showed up with two prostitutes one day.
31:40 Speaker 01 Sure, yeah.
31:45 Dax Shepard? Did you shoot that here or in New York?
31:47 Speaker 02 We shot it here. My partner at Weinberger, who Andy had told this was gonna happen. And he said, Ed, I need you to really punish me, but punish Tony when he comes in.
31:59 Speaker 02 And he comes in with the two prostitutes. Ed goes crazy, calls the security guards. Oh my god. Who are not in on it. Oh no. The security guards, like, almost in a cartoon, drag him and throw him out of the gate. Yeah. Where he calls Ed and said, "Thanks, that was one of the greatest."
32:14 Dax Shepard? And what I just love is, like, it's for nobody but him.
32:17 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:18 Dax Shepard? What purity. Did you feel like you got to know Andy? Were there moments of sincerity?
32:24 Speaker 02 No, it was sort of great, because you'd go over and give him a note, and he'd do it exactly. But as you gave it to him, he'd be like, "Andy," wondering who you were and stuff like that. But then he did the note solidly.
32:34 Dax Shepard? Because he stayed in lockup?
32:35 Speaker 02 Yeah, he did amazing work on the show.
32:38 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah.
32:38 Speaker 02 I mean, like, crazy.
32:40 Dax Shepard? If you're a kid and you don't know about Andy Kaufman, you're watching that guy, you think that guy's real. It's a very good character.
32:45 Speaker 02 Yeah.
32:45 Dax Shepard? How exciting that you cast him.
32:48 Speaker 02 He came from a country that he invented a language, you know, so he talked a foreign language.
32:52 Dax Shepard? He was vaguely Eastern European-ish.
32:54 Speaker 02 Language on the show, and so that we can make up the customs of this mythical country. Yeah. And got episodes out of it. Wow, what a gift.
33:03 Dax Shepard? Okay, and then Christopher Lloyd, was he a known commodity?
33:07 Speaker 02 He and Danny had both been in Cuckoo's Nest.
33:10 Dax Shepard? Oh, right.
33:11 Speaker 02 As part of that group.
33:12 Dax Shepard? The most memorable scene of all the Taxi episodes that made me laugh the hardest is Jim, Christopher Lloyd's character, is having to pass the driver's license exam.
33:23 Speaker 02 It's the record-setting laugh. I don't know if we can render it, but basically you have to know the character who was burnt out from drugs. That was basically it.
33:31 Dax Shepard? He's the dumbest guy imaginable, he shouldn't be driving a cab.
33:34 Speaker 02 Everything's missing, but with everything missing, he has sort of a blissful humanity and insight.
33:40 Dax Shepard? Kind of a Chauncey Gardner.
33:41 Speaker 02 Yes, and he's a cab driver, and they find out he doesn't have a driver's license.
33:46 Dax Shepard? So he has to take them to help him cheat.
33:48 Speaker 02 He can't, and the whole company comes and pretends they're filling out forms while he's in the desk taking the test. He says, "What does a flashing yellow light mean?" They coach him and they say, "Slow down." He says, "What does..." Oh.
34:01 Dax Shepard? What?
34:02 Speaker 02 Okay.
34:02 Dax Shepard? Does?
34:03 Speaker 02 This is the permutations. We went eight times, ten times. Each time, the laugh bigger than the time before. Because as you'd imagine, he's going. Going slower each time. And milking it.
34:14 Dax Shepard? The last "what" is like, "Woooooah."
34:18 Speaker 02 The last one, and the audience, it's going like this. Yeah. And the editor says, "Cut." And I went crazy. Yeah. Because it was just, when are they gonna stop increasing their laughter? Let's find out. Let's blow it up. Yeah, I could get upset now. Yeah, exactly. I am a little upset.
34:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah, what a thing to witness, to witness the greatest laugh in live audience ever. Oh, you must go watch it. Everyone should take five minutes and watch that. It's so delightful. And then I'll throw Tony Danza in there, too. When he walks in, he's so Tony Danza. Are you immediately like, "Oh, this is ideal."
34:54 Speaker 02 I don't think he'd ever acted, and he was a fighter, and I went to see him fight.
34:58 Dax Shepard? No kidding?
34:59 Speaker 02 There was a very rough sort of boxing world guy, and he says, "Can't win, but he has a great punch. If he lands, he knocks you out." He was a middleweight.
35:08 Dax Shepard? I was even in contention to act in this thing if he hadn't acted and he was boxing.
35:12 Speaker 02 I really believe we were looking for a boxer, because everybody had a dream in the cab company, and his was...
35:18 Dax Shepard? I don't know if anyone's looked better in a wife beater than our friend Tony Danza. Boy, can you wear that tank top?
35:25 Dax Shepard? Okay, now, you've had all this crazy success in television up to Taxi. What is the pull to movies? Is it a more expansive creative space? Or is it ego? Or is it both?
35:38 Speaker 02 I can truly say it's not ego.
35:41 Dax Shepard? But for people that were not born in the 90s and have watched television have as much cachet as films, people need to understand that back then, film and television...
35:49 Speaker 02 At the time I got there, if you were in television, you were un-hireable in films.
35:53 Dax Shepard? Right.
35:53 Speaker 02 There was a wall up. They were contemptuous of us.
35:57 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
35:57 Speaker 02 From TV. It's so crazy how radically that has changed.
36:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
36:01 Speaker 02 I mean, you can't make an inch without somebody offering you a movie. It's almost impossible for you to conceive. An absolute wall. Get out of here if you're from television. And I think Ron Howard was the first one over the fence, and then I got there.
36:13 Dax Shepard? So the first movie, Starting Over, Candace Bergen and Jill Kleber both get nominated for Academy Awards.
36:20 Speaker 02 I didn't direct that. I wrote the producer.
36:22 Dax Shepard? You just wrote it?
36:22 Speaker 02 Yeah. Not just. I wrote it.
36:26 Dax Shepard? So you really had nothing to do with that?
36:29 Dax Shepard? Okay, so you write that one and that gets you into the film world and the film is successful and critically adored. This kind of shocks me. The next movie's Terms of Endearment. Iconic. Again, what an insane cast. This shocks me. It took you four years to get financing for this movie? Did you have the cast already?
36:48 Speaker 02 No.
36:49 Dax Shepard? It was a book you adapted, yeah?
36:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
36:51 Dax Shepard? What's saying to you about that? Why was that like, oh, I'll spend four years trying to get this made?
36:56 Speaker 02 When I read the book, it was the second time in my life that I cried when I got to the ending. I've since.
37:02 Dax Shepard? Had a couple more tears.
37:04 Speaker 02 Improved, improved on that.
37:05 Dax Shepard? Kids will do that to you.
37:07 Speaker 02 The second time in my life, I cried. You're not gonna walk away. I had to do it. And it was a very tricky road because there was a movie star of decades earlier who had the rights and wanted to play the Shirley MacLaine part. She was wrong for the part.
37:21 Dax Shepard? Right.
37:21 Speaker 02 That she wanted to do.
37:22 Dax Shepard? That was tricky, her hurdle.
37:24 Speaker 02 Well, it was just being patient. I had the most amazing time because it was actresses in their 50s. It was the part that comes along when all that shit is happening about age and all that.
37:36 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
37:37 Speaker 02 So I just had this time of sitting down with great women who had done great work.
37:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
37:43 Speaker 02 Almost all of them at that time. And I hadn't come to Shirley yet for some reason. And she had a super agent, I don't remember the name, but she was the reigning agent at the time, Sue Mengers. She called me and she said, you know, Potts, you haven't seen Shirley yet.
37:57 Dax Shepard? When you coming?
37:58 Speaker 02 And then I went to see her and that was it.
38:00 Dax Shepard? Wow. How did you get Nicholson?
38:01 Speaker 02 Deborah Winger got me Nicholson.
38:03 Dax Shepard? She did.
38:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, because I couldn't get a script to him, you know?
38:06 Dax Shepard? Right. I mean, DeVito's a shoo-in, right? You're gonna get DeVito. He's gotta pick up the phone and be in this. That makes sense. But Nicholson, she got him in. And what was your working relationship with him?
38:17 Speaker 02 Actor of his time. The talent was so great. But that kind of talent with all the charisma in the world, were you kidding me?
38:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
38:24 Speaker 02 And you know, we did a picture as good as it gets where if he didn't do it, nobody could do it because he had permission from people to play this wretched. Core character is the star of a movie. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, I wouldn't have made it. It was the only one you could get away with it. Yeah.
38:40 Dax Shepard? He's the only one that could have pulled that off.
38:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah.
38:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
38:43 Speaker 02 And he's everything.
38:44 Dax Shepard? Was it easy for you to give him notes, or was it intimidating?
38:47 Speaker 02 You go legally insane when you direct, I think.
38:49 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you're in such a bubble.
38:51 Speaker 02 That's it. You don't know the difference between right and wrong anymore. You're obsessed with one thought, everything else slips away. Yeah. You're being paid to be obsessed. Past reason.
38:59 Dax Shepard? Wake up, think of nothing else till you go to bed for months.
39:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
39:02 Dax Shepard? So it wasn't hard for you?
39:04 Speaker 02 No, you lose yourself in it. You go away and you're trying to serve the thing. I mean, you have to get out of your own way.
39:10 Dax Shepard? Now, I've never met him, I haven't worked with him, but I have a hunch, if he wanted, he could charm you out of anything you wanted. I guess is my hunch, because he's so charismatic.
39:21 Speaker 02 I'm fumbling because you can't convey it, but he'd come up to me and say, "You want to know the worst direction you gave today?"
39:28 Speaker 02 And then he'd also say, "You want to know the best direction you gave today?" Yeah. He worked. We worked. You know, it wasn't like, "Is he okay today?" He did the work.
39:36 Dax Shepard? This is just to geek out for one second on Jack Nicholson. One of my favorite things is The Departed, simply because we've got every single one of the actors. Like, let's bring them all in and let's put them in a wide shot, and let's just see who you stare at. And I just kept thinking the whole movie, oh yeah, man, there could be two bears fighting, and if Nicholson's in frame, I'm just on him. That's just a once-in-a-lifetime kind of impossible charisma.
40:03 Speaker 02 Historically fantastic.
40:05 Dax Shepard? What a dude. Okay, so that movie is just wildly successful. I'm wondering how you took that in. You win Best Adapted Screenplay, you win Best Picture, you win Best Director, Nicholson wins Best Supporting, you sweep the Oscars.
40:23 Dax Shepard? A, had you written multiple speeches in anticipation of going up over and over again? Or what was the experience like on the night where you caught with your pants down?
40:34 Speaker 02 The first one was, I think, for writing and it was everything it should be. It was joyous. It was great.
40:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
40:40 Speaker 02 I was good, man. I sat down. I had Oscars there.
40:43 Dax Shepard? Can I argue really quick too? If of any of those categories that you might have felt worthy of, it'd be the writing. You've been writing forever. It's not gonna queue up any impostor send them, but perhaps some of the others could not be as embraced so easily.
40:59 Speaker 02 You're absolutely right.
41:00 Dax Shepard? So what's going on when you go up the second time?
41:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, keep getting more.
41:03 Speaker 02 You went for directing. The actors got you there. I don't think there's any question about that. The third one, just my mind was blown. So I was just sort of staggering. And Deborah did this amazing thing because she was great in the film. And everybody else is winning these Oscars and we're all posing for pictures afterwards. And Deborah, we're holding ours. She holds an imaginary Oscar. So she was, she was great. Yeah.
41:25 Dax Shepard? Well, I happen to know I've read some of your feedback afterwards. And you framed it as like, it adds a heightened self-consciousness. That's really something you have to contend with. So there's that and I want to hear your opinion on that. But then I'm curious, just with your childhood, because I have this. Did you also have this enormous sense of the other shoe must drop soon? This is all too good. Did you have that suspicion that it's just all too good?
41:50 Speaker 02 I mean, I think the great thing is you get to make your next picture. It's currencies.
41:54 Dax Shepard? Yes.
41:54 Speaker 02 So that was really what I thought. I get to make another movie.
41:58 Dax Shepard? And it goes without saying, you loved making Terms of Endearment, I'm imagining.
42:02 Speaker 02 Loved is not the word I do, but I guess it's true.
42:05 Dax Shepard? You wanted to do it again. Minimal, yeah?
42:08 Speaker 02 I'd like to do it again.
42:09 Dax Shepard? Yes, whatever we can infer from that. Then the next movie's broadcast news. Again, what a fucking sensational movie and your taste is so good. Holly Hunter for me is like, my God.
42:19 Speaker 02 It was such an accident that I got her. I got her at the last minute. I still pay homage to the casting director. She had put up with me for six months that I couldn't find anybody and we auditioned people. And I had somebody that I didn't feel great about, but that was what I was gonna have to go with. And she says, there's this girl who's leaving town today, but you can see her. And it was Holly Hunter and it was just God.
42:40 Dax Shepard? Dropped her in your lap.
42:41 Speaker 02 Yeah.
42:42 Dax Shepard? Oh, and she's just going toe to toe with William Hurt and it is riveting.
42:45 Speaker 02 Wow. Yeah.
42:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah. This is your first time working with Albert Brooks?
42:50 Speaker 02 Yes.
42:51 Dax Shepard? And this then starts the confusion, obviously. You've experienced this, right? People insist you must be related to this man. Your last name is Brooks and his last name is Brooks. Does it start then?
43:02 Speaker 02 He's an Einstein, Brooks.
43:03 Dax Shepard? What does that mean, an Einstein?
43:05 Speaker 02 His father's real name was Einstein.
43:06 Dax Shepard? Oh.
43:07 Speaker 02 And they called him Albert, and he did not want to be Albert Einstein.
43:10 Dax Shepard? Right, okay.
43:11 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
43:12 Dax Shepard? And your dad changed the name to Brooks to appear to be Irish?
43:15 Speaker 02 He changed from Bernstein. He was the last man trying to pass the change of his being Jewish.
43:20 Dax Shepard? And he chose Irish, interesting.
43:22 Speaker 02 Yes, yes. I was 12 years old. I thought I was Irish.
43:26 Dax Shepard? Oh, no kidding?
43:27 Speaker 02 Younger than that. I was nine, and then suddenly I saw my paternal grandfather's name was Bernstein. And I slowly managed to put two and two together.
43:37 Dax Shepard? Was he celebrating St. Patrick's Day with extra flourish?
43:40 Speaker 02 I think most nights a week, he was celebrating St. Patrick's Day.
43:44 Dax Shepard? Good for him. So then you're nominated for that film again for Best Picture and Screenplay, which is incredible. And now, I want this to be how it is. It makes a good story. Maybe it's not true, but you had left television, for all intents and purposes, and you get kind of dragged back into television that year of broadcast news, presumably to help a friend, Tracy Allman?
44:07 Speaker 02 Not dragged back.
44:08 Dax Shepard? Okay.
44:08 Speaker 02 Somebody gave me a tape of who she was, and I'd never seen anybody, an absolutely original talent. I dove back in. I love television. Nobody has to talk me into it.
44:17 Dax Shepard? That's fair.
44:18 Speaker 02 Yeah.
44:18 Dax Shepard? I guess what I want and what I like from this is, you were already busy doing this thing, but you saw this way that you could help with someone that was really talented.
44:27 Speaker 02 Not help, no.
44:28 Dax Shepard? No, okay, okay.
44:30 Speaker 02 Work with, exploit.
44:32 Dax Shepard? Okay. Exploit. Okay, great. Then it's not a great story. You were rewarded regardless. Because if people who don't remember this whole trajectory, I do. I loved The Tracy Allman Show. I was 12 years old when this show came out.
44:46 Speaker 02 On a network that nobody watched at the time.
44:48 Speaker 01 Which was what?
44:49 Dax Shepard? Fox. All you had was Married with Children, and this must have followed it, because I saw it at some point. Maybe it launched off of that. At any rate, I saw- And I was already a huge fan staring at live and I'm like, oh, this is wonderful. This is kind of like you're just with one character evolving. And then they would show these little kind of interstitial cartoons. And there was this character Bart Simpson. And then this becomes the Simpsons.
45:14 Speaker 01 It's insane.
45:15 Speaker 02 Crudely drawn, Matt Groening, having drawn him while waiting to see me. He had a comic strip, Life and Hell. In Life and Hell, he did the 12 ways to die in Hollywood. And it was road rage and being shot and failure and then success.
45:28 Speaker 01 That's right. I love that.
45:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, so that was, so it was amazing. That's how we met off that.
45:35 Speaker 01 Do you have the original Bart?
45:36 Speaker 02 I think I do.
45:37 Speaker 01 That's worth some mention.
45:38 Dax Shepard? When this becomes its own show, The Simpsons, I guess two years after Tracy Allman launches. You have some interesting provision in your contract with Fox where you kind of, I don't know what the verbiage is.
45:51 Speaker 02 Mileage?
45:52 Dax Shepard? Mileage. Well, now it has mileage, but then you had some kind of creative control that was unique.
45:59 Speaker 02 Yeah.
45:59 Dax Shepard? It opened up a lot of episodes that otherwise wouldn't have happened.
46:03 Speaker 02 That's true, and it was a young network. And so I don't think he would have gotten it out of one that was established.
46:08 Dax Shepard? OK, so we are at the 36 year marker. This is the 36 year of The Simpsons. It's won two Peabodys, 37 Emmys. I'm going to ask you a very tacky question. You're going to hate, but I have to know.
46:23 Speaker 02 Well, maybe you don't have to.
46:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you don't have to answer, but I have to ask.
46:27 Speaker 02 You're a free man.
46:29 Dax Shepard? No, I want to know because I'm such a nosy pig. Is there a running tally of what this thing has generated over the last 36 years? Like, can you look and see the exact amount of money this thing has generated?
46:44 Speaker 02 No, thank heavens.
46:45 Dax Shepard? It has to be the most successful, though, Hollywood property of all time.
46:48 Speaker 02 It's the longest running scripted show in history. That he, uncontrollably.
46:53 Dax Shepard? The movie alone made $500 million. I mean, we're in the many, many, many, many billions. I just think that's astounding.
46:59 Speaker 02 It was five and a quarter.
47:02 Dax Shepard? That doesn't mean a thing. You earned 25 million. I'm gonna ask ChatGPT if it can tell me what the total in billions is. I love that. I think it's so rad when art can create what an automaker. I just think that's fucking cool.
47:18 Speaker 02 The great thing is the energy on the show. Matt Groening and I are always around, but there's always a show in running it that's defining it. And now it's Matt Selman. The amazing thing is the energy, the freshness, particularly right now, is just filled with energy and change.
47:32 Dax Shepard? That's the impossible accomplishment. And you share it probably only with Saturday Night Live, which is to keep it fresh and on fire for that long. What a rare thing.
47:41 Speaker 02 It's great because nobody second guesses you at this point. It's just a great atmosphere and that thing about community again.
47:48 Dax Shepard? That's really excellent.
47:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, that is.
47:50 Speaker 02 All about the writers, yeah.
47:51 Dax Shepard? Okay, you have your first setback with I'll Do Anything. I mean, you're in such a meteoric rise between TV and film. Yeah, here it is. How did you take that?
48:02 Speaker 02 Ow.
48:03 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:03 Dax Shepard? Ow, right? It is hard.
48:05 Speaker 02 Ow for about a year, yeah.
48:07 Speaker 01 Well, it just didn't make what it needed to make.
48:09 Speaker 02 I did it as a musical. I don't think anybody had to be a real singer. And actually, at the core, there are things that I still am so glad got expressed. Because there's a father-daughter relationship in there.
48:20 Dax Shepard? That's adorable and works.
48:21 Speaker 02 That really mattered to me. And there was a six-year-old girl who just gave an extraordinary performance, like crazy, unallowed to happen, like against the laws of physics, you know?
48:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
48:33 Speaker 02 It was a big failure. And it was worse than that because we previewed and we had a preview where there were walkouts.
48:39 Dax Shepard? Oh, what an experience that is, isn't it?
48:41 Speaker 02 I went from that. I apologized to everybody I'd worked with to lead them into that. The Los Angeles Times found out about the preview and started to do a series of things. So it just became, you're spending a few months of your life blushing.
48:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, it's a unique experience.
48:56 Speaker 02 I got a weird feeling it's my legs now. Can we talk about my new move?
49:00 Dax Shepard? Tell me that. I've gone through it. And there's this sense when you're walking around that every human you see knows you've failed. I have had that at least.
49:10 Speaker 01 Which is probably not true.
49:11 Dax Shepard? It's not true at all. But you feel like... No, it's a little true.
49:16 Speaker 01 No.
49:22 Dax Shepard? One thing I just want to thank you for because it goes in my top three comedies of all time, which is in 1996, somehow you become involved with Bottle Rocket with Wes and Owen.
49:32 Speaker 02 Oh, so great that you bring that up.
49:35 Dax Shepard? That's the fucking movie. Yeah. How on earth, you must have seen their short they made.
49:39 Speaker 02 I saw the short that got honorable mention, you know, someplace. And I went to see them because I loved it. I went to see them in Texas, flew to Dallas. They had a script and the three guys turned out to be the cast and the writer and the director were all living on the same floor, you know, but I mean, the floor of one apartment with just refuse every place. You couldn't walk a straight line in one step without, you know. It was Owen, I'm trying to remember who the third person was.
50:05 Dax Shepard? Maybe Luke?
50:06 Speaker 02 I think that's right. And I said, have you ever read it out loud? They hadn't.
50:11 Speaker 01 Oh, wow.
50:12 Speaker 02 Three and a half hour later, I mean, it was the longest damn script in the world.
50:16 Dax Shepard? Yes.
50:17 Speaker 02 And I said, it's all going to be about length. And I remember Wes looking at me and he weighed like 80 pounds. He lived in his car. Flash forward, I'm in Paris and this gorgeous guy who owns the world in a white suit. This is a few years ago.
50:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. No, his life is an art installation now.
50:33 Speaker 02 Oh, my God. He has, he has a unique career. He was living in his car and like, say, three and a half hours, he said, are you going to make the movie? And I said, I don't know, man.
50:43 Dax Shepard? Not at three and a half hours.
50:45 Speaker 02 I said, why don't you come? And then I think there was six months of work that went in.
50:48 Speaker 01 Wow.
50:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:49 Dax Shepard? And then they went away and made it.
50:51 Speaker 02 Yeah.
50:51 Dax Shepard? Owen is on record as saying, I think you felt bad for us when you bought it. And then the reading was the worst reading ever.
50:59 Speaker 01 Sleeping bags on the floor and stuff.
51:02 Dax Shepard? I think you felt bad for us.
51:05 Speaker 01 That's so cool that you got to be a part of the beginning of all of them because they all turned out to be so amazing.
51:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you've gotten to do that a bunch of times.
51:15 Speaker 01 Yeah.
51:15 Dax Shepard? That must be one of the more rewarding aspects of all this, like the people you cast on taxis, the meeting Owen and Wes, all that stuff.
51:22 Speaker 02 That's great.
51:23 Dax Shepard? Because you can only be so happy with your own accomplishments, but when you help other people accomplish stuff, it really feels good, no?
51:29 Speaker 02 It's not about that. It's when the work is good, you feel good. And then things happen. But I think the cart and horse is very clear to me.
51:35 Speaker 01 I think you're too humble to say you've helped people.
51:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that might be the case.
51:39 Speaker 02 No, but it's not true.
51:41 Dax Shepard? Listen, he launched a bunch of careers and Simpsons is worth a hundred and fifty billion dollars.
51:45 Speaker 02 I was an active part. Everybody came through for everybody.
51:48 Speaker 01 Yeah, I know. What you're saying is correct.
51:50 Dax Shepard? Okay, the last one I want to talk about, and then Al McKay. As good as it gets, of course. Obviously, just a brilliant fucking movie. Seven Academy Award nominations, incredible performances. But I have specific questions. One is Trudeau the dog, the Brussels Griffon. Were you a fan of Brussels, or was this a happy accident?
52:09 Speaker 02 I've never heard a breed pronounced better than you just did. That was the Griffon. I happen to fall in love with an ex-girlfriend's Brussels. Yeah.
52:16 Dax Shepard? How did Trudeau come to be a character?
52:18 Speaker 02 Somebody had written a script that was not a comedy, but it had the characters, a lot of the story. And then I started working on it, and I feel that it was two people who were partners in screenwriting, but they worked a year apart and separately, the way it works. And it never could have happened without him. And then it was right to change form into a comedy. So the dog was in his.
52:42 Dax Shepard? And then you gotta cast the dog, and it's gonna be an important part.
52:45 Speaker 02 Figuring out how to piss on Q, which we had.
52:47 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
52:47 Speaker 02 Which we ended up, the prop guy took care of that. The way it has to be is that you don't treat the dog as an afterthought, the dog and his trainer. That you give them what you give to every actor. That was very important, to give them the time, to give them the stage, to give them the respect.
53:04 Dax Shepard? What would you say was the thing that was working on that movie that you isolated and figured out and kind of doubled down on? You know how you have these moments where you're like, oh, this is the thing that's really working?
53:14 Speaker 02 The hardest part to cast was Greg Kinnear in that. That took months and months. Two auditions that some people resent and some people really like, because instead of an audition, I get involved, I make it a work session, we go over it again. And some actors... resent it and some actors really appreciate it. It's the right way to work or else it's sort of bullshit. Let's try working together, you know.
53:34 Dax Shepard? Yes, because the odds that they're going to come in and do it exactly as you want it. And then they're going to replicate that exact thing on the day are very slim.
53:40 Speaker 02 No, but you're just seeing the mesh. And I mean, you lose yourself. So you're not sitting there saying, show me.
53:45 Dax Shepard? And you're trying to figure it out with them.
53:46 Speaker 02 Yes, he was the toughest. A colleague told me about him and I went to see him because that was impossible. I've never read so many actors for a part.
53:53 Dax Shepard? Really?
53:54 Speaker 02 Yes.
53:54 Dax Shepard? What were the essential ingredients?
53:56 Speaker 02 You don't know. That's why you can't, you know, you don't know.
53:59 Dax Shepard? You want vulnerability, but you don't want pathetic. It's a thin. Yeah.
54:02 Speaker 02 It's just an aura.
54:03 Dax Shepard? Well, what a fucking movie. Okay, how does Emma McKay come about? And the fact that Emma Mackey is the star is very fucking confusing. And is that accidental or intentional? Did you write it with her in mind?
54:16 Speaker 02 I wrote Emma McKay and then when it was her, I just didn't want to change Emma McKay's name.
54:21 Dax Shepard? Oh, you're doesn't love. Oh, that's great.
54:23 Speaker 02 I just lived with it for so long like that.
54:26 Dax Shepard? What was it called before she was in it?
54:28 Speaker 02 Emma McKay.
54:29 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay.
54:30 Speaker 02 It was always called that. And then Emma Mackey comes along after I spent, again, it was one of those stories like the Greg Kinnear story. Went overseas, went to London. The hope that when you try and write this female character and catch something. And it's like, if you build it, will she come? Yeah. And this was a real process. Miraculously, she showed up and this is her first American starring role. She had one word in Barbie, but made an impact. Oh, wow.
54:56 Dax Shepard? She's in Sex Education.
54:58 Speaker 02 Yes, and the Katherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn movies of the 50s, I adored. And this was me just tribute, whatever it is. But that spirit, that screwball comedy. And then how do you do screwball comedy and clock the laughs and put meat on the bone? So that you're really dealing with some of the crap that we go through. And that can do us in if we're not careful.
55:20 Dax Shepard? Yes.
55:20 Speaker 02 And try and combine those two things, which is what the picture is. Because you're not telling the truth unless you show that part of life is a little tough. And I love screwball comedy.
55:31 Speaker 03 Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert if you dare.
55:44 Dax Shepard? So yeah, the movie starts out and we meet Ella and we find out that at 16, her father, Woody Harrelson, your access to cast is a little enviable.
55:55 Speaker 02 But you earned it.
55:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
55:57 Speaker 02 Woody's an old friend too. We go back to before he did anything.
56:00 Dax Shepard? Oh, you do? He's being fired because he has slept with several coworkers.
56:06 Speaker 02 And is being confronted by his 16-year-old daughter.
56:08 Dax Shepard? Yes, the rest of the family, or the mother in particular, seems to be going along with this quietly. And she's not having that. She's like, let's be honest about why you've been let go.
56:17 Speaker 02 Her first line is, wait, because everybody's packing up, moving on, pretending it doesn't happen.
56:21 Dax Shepard? We're gonna acknowledge the reality of this. So not only has the father had many, many extramarital affairs and the family's in flux because of it.
56:30 Speaker 02 And as he points out, all three women sent letters of support.
56:33 Dax Shepard? Yes, yes. He said that's one valid perspective. So he has to now take a job in another state and she's in her junior year of high school. And so she decides to stay with her aunt, who is Jamie Lee Curtis.
56:46 Speaker 02 Yes, and it's a little messier than that because her mother, who still loves him despite all, knows that her daughter and him will never get along and it will always be that kind of chaos. And still loves the guy, so sort of urges so that Emma's character is abandoned and made to feel abandoning almost. It's weird.
57:08 Dax Shepard? And you feel very much the mom's shame at sticking with the dad. She knows the daughter's in great judgment.
57:15 Speaker 02 Correct, and will do it again. Yeah, I get it.
57:18 Dax Shepard? Which is heartbreaking because she's already taken on the chin from the husband and now the daughter's disappointed in her. And then while they're gone, the mom dies unexpectedly. So I'm just gonna throw out there from what we've learned about you, there's a lot of stuff here that sounds vaguely familiar to your childhood. We've got a questionable father in the mix and we've got a mom who dies prematurely. Are you aware of that when you're writing it?
57:40 Speaker 02 I called him Eddie, my father's name.
57:42 Dax Shepard? Okay, so yeah.
57:43 Speaker 02 So you're aware. I'm blushing now. So many Hollywood pictures end with forgiveness being the answer. And if forgiveness is always the answer, forgiveness is meaningless.
57:53 Speaker 02 Something has to be unforgivable.
57:54 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
57:55 Speaker 02 There's gotta be an unforgivable forgiveness to mean anything.
57:58 Dax Shepard? Oh, that's a good point.
57:58 Speaker 02 And it's really the question.
57:59 Dax Shepard? It needs to be relative to something.
58:01 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I'm sort of reactionary to every movie ending with forgive you and that's the answer in life.
58:06 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
58:06 Speaker 02 Especially since I don't know that I forgive, my father did unforgivable things.
58:10 Speaker 01 Yeah.
58:11 Speaker 02 Unforgivable has to exist.
58:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, right, right, right.
58:14 Speaker 02 But they have to be forgivable.
58:15 Dax Shepard? It's also interesting, we could get very philosophical here, it's like, there is some risk of healing all things from the childhood because they are the fodder for creativity. Like if you had had some really dreamy peaceful resolution with your father in the past, this movie doesn't exist.
58:32 Speaker 02 Absolutely, and I had aunts that were very giving to me, and there's an aunt in this picture played by Jamie Lee, and Jamie Lee, her humanity to just be around, and I think she kicks it out of the park.
58:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, in some weird way, she's the emotional hub of the movie. She's the most dependable source for Ella to check in, get a reality check.
58:54 Speaker 02 Two women who've been through everything together, who love the ass off each other.
58:57 Dax Shepard? And as Ella then is a kind of a wunderkind herself, she finds herself as the deputy governor, or whatever that role's called.
59:04 Speaker 02 Lieutenant Governor, yeah.
59:05 Dax Shepard? Lieutenant Governor under, again, ding ding ding, Albert Brooks, no relation to you.
59:10 Speaker 02 Einstein.
59:10 Dax Shepard? Cause you're Irish and he's Jewish. Easy mistake. He's the governor, he steps down with 18 months left of his term to go join the cabinet in the White House. So now she finds herself as a 29-year-old governor.
59:24 Speaker 02 34, her real age was that.
59:25 Dax Shepard? Oh, okay, sorry, sorry. But still, she's checking in with her aunt regularly, whether there's a scandal brewing about her.
59:32 Speaker 02 Her aunt who raised her, yeah.
59:33 Dax Shepard? She's kind of her reality check.
59:37 Speaker 02 I think it was true in my family that the significant love in a woman's life can be another woman, family member. That's the key to our journey, but the choice is also armor, and that's sort of the great thing, it's the great thing about the gender.
59:51 Dax Shepard? So the dad resurfaces, and he's just a love and sex addict, that's very obvious. And he now has a new girlfriend, the new girlfriend's urging him to make amends, but it's not really an amends.
1:00:02 Speaker 02 Until you get things right with your kids, I'm not gonna be your woman.
1:00:06 Dax Shepard? Yes, I guess my question is, since there's so much similarity, why do a female protagonist and not a male protagonist? Like, it's almost your story, but you chose to tell it through the lens of a female protagonist. Wow, that never occurred to me.
1:00:23 Speaker 02 I did it wrong.
1:00:25 Dax Shepard? No, I just.
1:00:26 Speaker 01 No, not wrong.
1:00:27 Dax Shepard? I think there's something really quite interesting there that you're kind of telling your story. But you would rather have a woman portray your role in some sense.
1:00:37 Speaker 02 I have never thought about it that way. I plan to have this surgically removed from my head after I leave.
1:00:42 Speaker 01 Maybe it was a protective thing, like if it's exactly you, that's a little harder to write and to sit with. So maybe there's like a little bit of a distance when you're writing for a female character.
1:00:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that. God bless you.
1:00:56 Speaker 01 That's it.
1:00:56 Dax Shepard? I'll make another argument, which is your story in 1958, when you turn 18, having had really no dad present and a mother that was working nonstop. You were starting with a real deficit that I don't think we could extend to any man in 2025 as a male lead. I don't know that it would represent really what you were starting out with, how much the odds were stacked against you and your own personal story in 1968. That would ring untrue today.
1:01:25 Speaker 02 And I think there were parts that were consciously based on times of my life. And I think there must be stuff that was unconsciously based on that, too.
1:01:34 Dax Shepard? Having done the Mary Tyler Moore Show and having explored this topic now for 55 years, how is Ella different and similar?
1:01:46 Speaker 02 The topics change, women change. That's always the question. It's always what makes a contemporary female a heroine. And this is a no nonsense, she's a public servant we pray for. She's just really genuine.
1:01:58 Dax Shepard? You know, principled and has integrity.
1:02:00 Speaker 02 She gets accidentally loaded for the first time in her life in the movie. And it's weed, not like you've seen weed before. Weed where you love weed, weed where, oh, this is the real me. I gotta remember what I'm saying now. Oh, God, this is it, this is it. And what comes out of her is, I can make people's lives better. That's her dirty secret, you know, that she doesn't even get out of her mouth until she does that monologue. Great, I think she kills the monologue.
1:02:24 Dax Shepard? And then there's obviously the reoccurring issue that women still deal with, which is like she kind of inadvertently does end up marrying kind of a version of her dad.
1:02:33 Speaker 02 That's what everybody says, unintended, but everybody says that. Yeah, and maybe common consent of mankind or something.
1:02:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, so explain the husband that she's kind of just woken up.
1:02:42 Speaker 02 Hardest thing in the script, because through some versions, what is she doing with him?
1:02:47 Dax Shepard? Right.
1:02:48 Speaker 02 He's based on this. That it was, one of the things that a woman can consider about a guy is what impact he'll have on her life, sort of in a traditional sense. He's a successful guy, it's attractive. This man is gonna take me places I never heard of. This is the reverse.
1:03:06 Speaker 01 Right.
1:03:07 Speaker 02 She's that.
1:03:08 Dax Shepard? He noticed it in high school.
1:03:09 Speaker 02 And I don't know if it's bad to fall in love with that, but you're going places and you don't even know it. You're going on a journey and I'd be stuck here. I love you.
1:03:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah, persistence, persistence, persistence. So yeah, he is enamored with the obviousness that she is gonna be going places. He's ambitious, but she's not, in the wrong way. He likes that she's governor.
1:03:32 Speaker 02 He likes the kook months and stuff like that.
1:03:33 Dax Shepard? Yes, he wants to be on TV with her, he wants the title.
1:03:36 Speaker 01 Like he's using her.
1:03:38 Dax Shepard? Even if he doesn't know he is.
1:03:40 Speaker 02 What's been sort of a thing traditionally, my way out. Oh, this guy takes me to a whole new place. Prince Charming takes me to a new life.
1:03:47 Speaker 01 Yes, if it's reversed, we don't say she's using him, I guess is the thing.
1:03:51 Dax Shepard? The trope you've seen a million times in movies is like the wife of a man and she's quite ambitious and helps him achieve his goals, but it's really unique and interesting and a bit icky when you see the reverse of it.
1:04:03 Speaker 01 Right, like why should it be?
1:04:05 Dax Shepard? Why should it be, but it's, I don't like it.
1:04:07 Speaker 01 That is a very contemporary woman right now. There's a lot of that going on right now that's hard.
1:04:13 Speaker 02 They write their marriage vows and his is, except for you and me, baby, everything's a joke. And that's an outlook, you know?
1:04:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:04:20 Dax Shepard? Well, it's delightful. I love Kamal too. Kamal Nanjiani is just one of my all-time favorites.
1:04:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, the big six.
1:04:26 Dax Shepard? It's like the good guys cast. It's like everyone that's in it is sincerely a good guy.
1:04:31 Speaker 01 Oh, I have one more question.
1:04:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:04:33 Speaker 01 When's the first time you cried? You told us the second time.
1:04:36 Dax Shepard? My mother's death.
1:04:37 Speaker 01 I guess we could have assumed that.
1:04:39 Dax Shepard? I made an ass of you and me.
1:04:41 Speaker 01 You did, you did.
1:04:42 Dax Shepard? He said second, I was like, okay, I'm guessing 22 was the first time.
1:04:46 Speaker 01 And how much time in between was those two?
1:04:48 Dax Shepard? Long time. I can tell you. Long time. I have it. Eighty-three, twenty-two, sixty-six to eighty-three, so that's That's a long time. A big gap. Yeah. I think I had about a similar gap.
1:05:03 Speaker 02 I cheer up easily now.
1:05:05 Dax Shepard? You have a bunch of girls, right?
1:05:07 Speaker 02 I have two daughters and two sons.
1:05:08 Dax Shepard? Do you cry as much for the sons or the girls? I have two girls. I just know I cry non-stop and I'm assuming it's happily because they're girls.
1:05:14 Speaker 02 My last cry was with my granddaughter on the phone.
1:05:17 Dax Shepard? Oh. Ah, yeah, yeah.
1:05:18 Speaker 02 Yeah, because something wonderful had happened to her and she didn't see it coming. So it was a happy cry.
1:05:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. My kids are embarrassed for me, I think. I mean, I'm just letting it rip all the time.
1:05:31 Speaker 02 Wow. Yeah, men don't bring Kleenex with them, yes.
1:05:34 Dax Shepard? No, I never see it coming. The boy's getting more and more regular. It's nice, though, isn't it?
1:05:40 Speaker 02 It feels like you're genuine.
1:05:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it feels nice.
1:05:45 Speaker 02 By the way, I think it was one of your podcasts where you were talking about men's groups, and I can't tell you what it brought back to me and how much I miss it when I was part of a group. In your case, it was AA, but just palpably missed it so much.
1:05:59 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:06:00 Speaker 02 Hearing you talk about it.
1:06:01 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I was there last night with my idol who just got twenty-three years. He also had a seventy-sixth birthday. And I was sitting with him and I was like, oh, my God, man. I have had twenty-three years of getting to see someone who has exactly what I want and is exactly who I want to be, and I've got to just ape him. And what an insane gift. How the hell do you find that without something like that?
1:06:28 Speaker 02 It resonated.
1:06:28 Dax Shepard? Thank you. Well, man, this is a real honor, Jim, honestly.
1:06:32 Speaker 02 I mean, you guys are great. Thank you. I appreciate it.
1:06:34 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, just the work's so special and lasting. You did a bang'em-up job. And you'll call me and tell me what Simpsons is worth, right? Between us, and I won't tell anyone.
1:06:48 Speaker 02 Get me accounting.
1:06:50 Dax Shepard? All right, thank you so much, Jim.
1:06:51 Speaker 02 Pleasure.
1:06:54 Dax Shepard? Hi there, this is Hermium Hermium. If you like that, you're gonna love the fact check with Miss Monica.
1:07:01 Speaker 01 Anyway, I want his wine.
1:07:03 Dax Shepard? His wine and his cake.
1:07:04 Speaker 01 His wine and his cake that he doesn't eat or drink. I would eat all his stuff and drink all his stuff.
1:07:09 Dax Shepard? You wanna fuck him, that's so exciting.
1:07:11 Speaker 01 Well, it's curious. I'm curious.
1:07:14 Dax Shepard? Yeah, let's just, let's bring everyone up to speed. We're talking about Tom Cruise and you did say.
1:07:17 Speaker 01 He's not gonna come on if we do this.
1:07:19 Dax Shepard? If he knows you wanna fuck him, he'll be here in two seconds. What are you talking about? You, you don't understand one thing about how the world works. It's crazy. The eight years of me trying to explain to you how the world works.
1:07:30 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:07:31 Dax Shepard? And you just won't pick it up.
1:07:32 Speaker 01 I'm just, I have some curiosity.
1:07:34 Dax Shepard? Fuck him.
1:07:35 Speaker 01 I wanna know what it, what he's like.
1:07:37 Dax Shepard? What it feels like to fuck him? Get into it. Let's hear what this is about.
1:07:42 Speaker 01 No. I'm like, what are you like in an intimate setting? Because you're so, he's so intense and everything has to be so, um.
1:07:52 Dax Shepard? Regimented?
1:07:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, there's probably no room for improv. Unless that's the space that he improvised. So that's my curiosity.
1:08:00 Dax Shepard? Yes, that's what I'm saying is like, he is a perfectionist at all things. He just delivers and there's no reason to think he wouldn't just blow your mind in the sack. Also, if you watch those early Tom Cruise movies, he is so playful with his eyes. He has total command of his charm with his eyes.
1:08:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, he does.
1:08:19 Dax Shepard? If he locked into your eyes, I think he could give you a real experience.
1:08:23 Speaker 01 I'm just, you know.
1:08:24 Dax Shepard? Your, your curiosity's peaked.
1:08:26 Speaker 01 My curiosity's peaked.
1:08:28 Dax Shepard? But it's just interesting because you don't randomly, that's not what you offer randomly. Like, we, with a cute young baseball player you thought was hot and.
1:08:38 Speaker 01 Oh, on the screen we had him on.
1:08:40 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:08:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:08:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, we haven't had him as a guest. When I threw out the notion, you're like, he's too young. I'm like, yeah, but just for a night, like a roll around fun picture over.
1:08:50 Speaker 01 Right.
1:08:51 Dax Shepard? And you were like, no. And then yesterday you shocked me because you're coming out of the studio and you're talking to a guest and you basically said like, I would fuck Tom Cruise. And I was like, this is interesting.
1:09:01 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:09:02 Dax Shepard? You did agree that it's inconsistent.
1:09:04 Speaker 01 I agree, but it's not, to me, it makes total sense.
1:09:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and that's, and I'm hoping you can convey that to me.
1:09:10 Speaker 01 Okay. The hot baseball player.
1:09:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:09:13 Speaker 01 I'm intimidated by. Now, see, this is weird. This is gonna seem.
1:09:17 Dax Shepard? Disrespectful?
1:09:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, or cocky or something. And I don't mean that to be the case.
1:09:23 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:09:23 Speaker 01 But that hot, young baseball player.
1:09:27 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:09:27 Speaker 01 I think I would feel like, oh my gosh. Yeah, I hope I'm hot enough.
1:09:32 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:09:33 Speaker 01 And if Tom and I are.
1:09:37 Dax Shepard? Getting intimate, yeah.
1:09:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, we're rolling around.
1:09:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we're all around.
1:09:40 Speaker 01 Um.
1:09:42 Dax Shepard? You think he's gonna be pretty grateful for what's going on?
1:09:45 Speaker 01 No, cuz I know he has, he has access to everyone and has dated insanely hot people.
1:09:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:09:53 Speaker 01 But for some reason.
1:09:56 Dax Shepard? Part of it sees older?
1:09:57 Speaker 01 Maybe.
1:09:58 Dax Shepard? You know us older people would be grateful for anything, right? Is that part of what's going on?
1:10:03 Speaker 01 I hate to say it might have to do with age, but I think it does.
1:10:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah. And guess what? You're kinda right. I heard this said to me a long, long time ago, and it didn't make sense cuz I was younger at the time. But I did a movie, a student movie, 24 years ago at Mentor, Ohio. And one of the cast members was a much older dude. Who had been a lawyer and quit being a lawyer to do stand-up. And I was in this movie. I loved him. He was so interesting and funny.
1:10:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:10:29 Dax Shepard? But he was, again, he was older. He was at least 10 years older than me. And I remember him saying like, there's no unattractive girls in their twenties. Like, I knew when I was in my twenties who was hot and who's not.
1:10:43 Speaker 01 Right.
1:10:43 Dax Shepard? And they're all just very attractive to me now.
1:10:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:10:46 Dax Shepard? And so I heard that and I was like, man, I don't buy that. Like, you can still clearly see. And then now that I'm older, I'm like, yeah, everyone just is attractive. Like, usefulness is attractive.
1:10:56 Speaker 01 Youthfulness, yeah.
1:10:57 Dax Shepard? And you don't, you're not like picking apart these.
1:11:00 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:11:01 Dax Shepard? When everyone was youthful in your, your, your pool.
1:11:03 Speaker 01 I know.
1:11:04 Dax Shepard? You got a little spoiled and you'd fine pick about eyebrows or this or that. And that's not what you think at 50.
1:11:11 Speaker 01 Right, and I.
1:11:14 Speaker 01 I'm not in my twenties, but I still feel confident in my body.
1:11:19 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
1:11:19 Speaker 01 That it loo- it looks youthful.
1:11:22 Dax Shepard? He would be, he would be very happy.
1:11:23 Speaker 01 I think he would be happy to see it.
1:11:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I'm sure he would.
1:11:26 Speaker 01 Now.
1:11:26 Dax Shepard? What if you laid on your back?
1:11:28 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:11:29 Dax Shepard? Legs spread.
1:11:30 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:11:31 Dax Shepard? And he dropped down like on like Mission Impossible and entered you. Wouldn't that be so exciting?
1:11:37 Speaker 01 I'm.
1:11:38 Dax Shepard? Oh my, and then he went way up, and he's like 12 feet in the air.
1:11:41 Speaker 01 So he's on like a harness?
1:11:42 Dax Shepard? Yeah, but he's got total control of it. So when he drops, he can land right in you. You're like, whoa! And then you want more because he's gone for a while. You're like, Tom, you're up there way too long.
1:11:51 Speaker 01 Oh my god, this is the kind of fears, like I, that's embar- that's so embarrassing.
1:11:57 Dax Shepard? He puts pads, like stunt pads, all around the room before you guys get started.
1:12:03 Speaker 01 Monica, you lay here.
1:12:05 Dax Shepard? You cannot leave this area, you'll get hurt.
1:12:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:12:08 Dax Shepard? I'm gonna be doing all the stuff with the pyrotechnics and the swords.
1:12:10 Speaker 01 You just lay there.
1:12:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:12:11 Speaker 01 Okay. I'm having a realization.
1:12:14 Dax Shepard? What?
1:12:15 Speaker 01 So I, I am attracted, and I have always been attracted to older men.
1:12:22 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:12:22 Speaker 01 Older than me, like at, at whatever stage I'm at, a fair amount older than me.
1:12:27 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:12:28 Speaker 01 And now I'm wondering if it is because that's a, that's a self-protection.
1:12:33 Dax Shepard? I would have never suggested it, but I, I do think that. In the same way, I have my suspicions, and no one likes this, this is too taboo to say.
1:12:43 Speaker 01 Okay, what?
1:12:44 Dax Shepard? I have my suspicions about guys who date only one specific thing. Like they only, I only date Asian girls. Or they date really young girls.
1:12:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, this just came up.
1:12:59 Dax Shepard? I think they have some sexual insecurities that they think either a young person won't know the difference of, or they're playing on some dumb stereotype.
1:13:07 Speaker 01 People do have types.
1:13:09 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:13:09 Speaker 01 And is it okay? And why?
1:13:11 Dax Shepard? Why do they have types?
1:13:12 Speaker 01 But you often say it's okay to have types.
1:13:14 Dax Shepard? I do think it's okay to have types if it's not covering up an insecurity of yours.
1:13:19 Speaker 01 But how do we?
1:13:20 Dax Shepard? But I guess who cares if it's covering up an insecurity?
1:13:22 Speaker 01 Yeah, like what's the difference? Everything's related to our fears and insecurities and our strengths and our.
1:13:28 Dax Shepard? I think if you are. What I would say, kind of using someone to deal with your insecurities, I just think that's not fair. I think you should deal with your insecurities.
1:13:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:13:43 Dax Shepard? And that someone shouldn't be the unwitting participant in this weird thing, that something deeper is going on that we're not acknowledging.
1:13:51 Speaker 01 Right, but isn't that everyone?
1:13:53 Dax Shepard? I don't think so. I mean, I see a difference between using someone.
1:13:58 Speaker 01 It's not using on purpose though, it's subconscious. So it's, to me, it's the same.
1:14:03 Dax Shepard? What if they're conscious though?
1:14:04 Speaker 01 Well, that's bad, yeah.
1:14:06 Dax Shepard? Like, I only want to be with a virgin because I'm so terrible in bed. Like, that, I don't like that.
1:14:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's bad.
1:14:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's gross. That's not good.
1:14:13 Speaker 01 No, I agree, but if it's just a subconscious attraction.
1:14:18 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:14:19 Speaker 01 It's not like, I'm picking this because of this. It's like, oh, I'm attracted to that.
1:14:24 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:14:25 Speaker 01 And then you dig deeper, like, oh, I'm attracted to that because of this, but that's who you're attracted to.
1:14:29 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:14:30 Speaker 01 What, is that bad?
1:14:31 Dax Shepard? Well, that's interesting. That then bleeds into a more complex scenario, which is like, what if these dudes who really desire subservient women? Like, you can make the argument, okay, well, there are subservient women, and that's what they've chosen as their role, and there's a guy who wants that, and they're together and they're happy.
1:14:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, you've made that, you've said that's okay.
1:14:56 Dax Shepard? I mean, I just, for me personally, it's terrible.
1:14:59 Speaker 01 For you personally, but you're, we're talking about general, like, is it okay? And I think, I kind of think, yes. Like, if everyone is fine with it, with the arrangement.
1:15:11 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah. I just think it's a shitty personality type, someone who's like, I don't want to compromise or be questioned. I want to do whatever I want to do, and I need a partner that'll just shut the fuck up and go along with it.
1:15:21 Speaker 01 Well, of course, that's disgusting to me.
1:15:22 Dax Shepard? I just hate that personality.
1:15:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:15:24 Dax Shepard? Right?
1:15:24 Speaker 01 Of course. I mean, yeah, we do. So this just came up on Nobody's Listening, right? Elizabeth and Andy's show. This is funny, that they just talked about this because I guess Andy was kind of saying, like,
1:15:37 Speaker 01 What if, because I guess they're watching British Bake Off and someone maybe has alopecia on that show.
1:15:42 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:15:43 Speaker 01 And then Andy was like, what if you were dating someone who had alopecia? And then you find, found out their last three girlfriends had alopecia. Is that okay? Like, is it okay?
1:15:58 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:15:58 Speaker 01 To be attracted to that?
1:16:00 Dax Shepard? I think that's great.
1:16:01 Speaker 01 I think it's fine.
1:16:03 Dax Shepard? That's, that's great.
1:16:04 Speaker 01 Okay, but it's, to me in theory, it's like, that's fine. That's what you find physically attractive. When I put myself in the position of like, okay, so if I find out that my boyfriend, Tom.
1:16:22 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:16:23 Speaker 01 No, I'm kidding. Find out, if I find out that my boyfriend's last three girlfriends, in fact, this kind of happened to me on one, on a date.
1:16:32 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:16:32 Speaker 01 Last three girlfriends were Indian.
1:16:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:16:35 Speaker 01 I don't like that. And so I understand in theory, like, oh, that is an aesthetic you find attractive.
1:16:43 Dax Shepard? Yeah. If anything, you should feel.
1:16:46 Speaker 01 Don't tell me how I should feel.
1:16:47 Dax Shepard? This is how you should feel, and you're wrong if you don't feel this way. It should quiet any voice in your head that you have, is he really attracted to me? Like, it would confirm, no, I'm exactly what he's attracted to.
1:17:01 Speaker 01 No, but it's like, you're attracted to a thing that I happen to be. You're not attracted to me. That is not good.
1:17:10 Dax Shepard? Okay, see, yes, and, and this is great, because this is how these always go.
1:17:14 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:17:15 Dax Shepard? Which is you reduce whatever the one element that they're attracted to you about is being the total reason. So it's like, your issue with a fan wanting, initially being interested in you because they're a fan, great. But your personality has to then take over. And yes, you may, this gentleman may love your color of brown skin and find it to be the most aesthetically pleasing.
1:17:42 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
1:17:42 Dax Shepard? And so that opened the door. But you have to, he has to like you for you. You can't like someone for the color of their skin. That's only gonna last for a few weeks.
1:17:51 Speaker 01 Well, for some people, that's not true. They just like a physical aesthetic and then they're like, it's their kink.
1:17:59 Dax Shepard? But I don't, I, I have never been able to be with somebody simply because how they look physically.
1:18:05 Speaker 01 I know you, but we're not talking about you specifically. We're talking about people who have kinks and are like, you know, I have a Indian woman kink and so I'm on the prowl for one and you're one.
1:18:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and I'm attracted to a lot of Indian women, but then I need to talk to them and find out, do we like the same movies and have we a sense of humor?
1:18:26 Speaker 01 They might not care. And then after a while, then it's like, I'm sick of her, so I'm onto the next Indian woman. Like, that's maybe the fear.
1:18:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah, I think that's the fear, but, uh, and I don't, I just don't think I'm terribly unique. Everyone I know who's with a partner, they like the person, their personality. They did for a while.
1:18:44 Speaker 01 I guess I'm saying, there are definitely people who are with people not for their personalities.
1:18:49 Dax Shepard? Sure, but what I'm saying is, there are no, there's no pair of boobs that are so perfect, that those pair of boobs are gonna get you through a relationship. You might come for the boobs, but they're gonna wear out. People can't stay with someone because they like someone's boobs. There has to be a lot more going on than just, I like her boobs.
1:19:04 Speaker 01 I mean, I hope that's true, but I, I don't know if I believe that for certain men.
1:19:11 Dax Shepard? Excluding narcissists who like, you're literally just a bit of branding for their
1:19:18 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:19:18 Dax Shepard? identity?
1:19:19 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:19:20 Dax Shepard? Sure. I think everyone in their life's a pawn that doesn't really, they just validate them in whatever category in that moment, they need them to.
1:19:27 Speaker 01 Exactly.
1:19:28 Dax Shepard? But excluding those people, talking about people in relationships that wanna call you and talk to you on the phone?
1:19:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:19:33 Dax Shepard? And go out to dinner with you and eat, and go to movies?
1:19:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:19:36 Dax Shepard? They have to like you.
1:19:38 Speaker 01 Yeah, I hope.
1:19:39 Dax Shepard? And I think sometimes you reduce why someone likes you to like a singular thing, and then evaluate that one single thing, when I think it's like hundreds of data input that make us like each other.
1:19:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, that's, I, I, I hear, that's right.
1:19:54 Dax Shepard? And it'd be okay if someone came for one reason and stayed for another.
1:19:57 Speaker 01 I, I know, I know. I, I-
1:20:00 Dax Shepard? Like, plenty of girls have been with me, I'm sure, because like, they like tall guys.
1:20:04 Speaker 01 Yeah, everyone likes tall guys.
1:20:07 Dax Shepard? Well, I don't know. That's true.
1:20:08 Speaker 01 Yeah, they do. I mean, people like short guys too, but people also, everyone likes tall guys.
1:20:13 Dax Shepard? And maybe everyone likes tall guys, but for some people, they have to be with a tall guy. I've met girls that are like, I've never had a boyfriend under 6'2". Like, that's what they love. They have to have that.
1:20:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:20:24 Dax Shepard? And so, that's fine. You came, I got your attention because I was 6'2". You saw me across the room and like, I fit the thing.
1:20:33 Speaker 01 I know. I don't know why, to me, it's different. Like, that's kind of to me, like, saying, like, okay.
1:20:39 Dax Shepard? I liked.
1:20:40 Speaker 01 Pretty. I like pretty people. Like, it's like, that's like, duh. You know, everyone likes tall guys, everyone likes pretty faces. Like, being Indian is not the same thing as that. It's, it's, it's a niche. It's very specific and it's like, I don't know.
1:21:02 Dax Shepard? You could also.
1:21:03 Speaker 01 It's like a fetish.
1:21:06 Speaker 01 I mean, it's not always. Like, I'm not saying, I'm not saying Indian people in relationships, that person has a fetish. It's just if you see that it's a pattern.
1:21:15 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:21:15 Speaker 01 That to me.
1:21:17 Dax Shepard? Well, it makes you, it would make me curious.
1:21:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:21:20 Dax Shepard? Like, what is it that you like? Because it could be the culture.
1:21:26 Speaker 01 Right. And that.
1:21:27 Dax Shepard? And you're not that. So I already understand why you'd be like, if your thing is Indian chicks, I'm not that. I'm not like, I'm not cooking.
1:21:36 Speaker 01 Don't put me in a box like that.
1:21:38 Dax Shepard? And you were trying to not be Indian a little bit.
1:21:41 Speaker 01 Right. But now, yeah, I think it would just get complicated with that person. Because I'm like, I already have enough complicated feelings around this.
1:21:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah. I, I just, you're not gonna get the culture. If you're coming to me for like, the Indian experience, you're not gonna get it. But I don't know the stereotype. That's what I'm, that's why I'm more, I'm more concerned for guys that only date young Asian girls. I just don't, I don't, that one, because it has a lot of built-in stereotypes. There aren't those built-in stereotypes about Indian women. It's not that there's this subservient stereotype. It's not that there's a stereotype that the men have small penises. There's none of, none of that weird psychological baggage can I see why that would be your fetish. As opposed to. Other groups.
1:22:25 Speaker 01 I don't know.
1:22:26 Dax Shepard? What do you think of a girl, a white girl who only dates black guys?
1:22:29 Speaker 01 Um, I think that's in, I, I also think that's interesting.
1:22:35 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:22:36 Speaker 01 Um, I would wanna know why, if I was the man, I would also wanna know why.
1:22:43 Dax Shepard? Right. There's, cause again, there's, there's three like likely s- explanations.
1:22:50 Speaker 01 Well, there's, there's a hundred explanations.
1:22:52 Dax Shepard? One is just aesthetically, that's your pick.
1:22:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, gorgeous.
1:22:56 Dax Shepard? A, that's your aesthetic. B, you're trying to rebel against your dad.
1:23:00 Speaker 01 Oh, see, this gets so, this is so complicated so fast.
1:23:05 Dax Shepard? I know, but I think these are likely buckets that one would have to consider.
1:23:09 Speaker 01 Ah.
1:23:10 Dax Shepard? Or you two are playing up on a stereotype and you're a size queen. These are like the three things I'm thinking.
1:23:16 Speaker 01 No, it could also be like, I imagine that you have a view of the world that I find interesting or different.
1:23:25 Dax Shepard? Great, that's a fourth one, yeah.
1:23:27 Speaker 01 I mean, to me, that is what would be attractive.
1:23:32 Dax Shepard? That you're attracted to the culture.
1:23:34 Speaker 01 No, not the culture, the like.
1:23:37 Dax Shepard? Different set of glasses.
1:23:38 Speaker 01 Different set of glasses, that this person is seeing the world in a way that I, I can't. Yeah, and I think that's a beautiful thing to, to mix that, to understand other people.
1:23:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:23:52 Speaker 01 That's the only way to do it.
1:23:53 Dax Shepard? But yeah, those are four really likely, I think, assumptions you could make.
1:23:57 Speaker 01 I think I am attracted to that. I think I'm attracted to things that are quite different than me.
1:24:04 Dax Shepard? Novel and unique. I like it, it's fascinating.
1:24:07 Speaker 01 It is fascinating.
1:24:08 Dax Shepard? It's a juicy.
1:24:09 Speaker 01 It is fascinating.
1:24:25 Dax Shepard? I had a great trip to Texas.
1:24:27 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
1:24:28 Dax Shepard? It was very brief, but I just love it. I love Austin, Texas.
1:24:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, and you got two steaks.
1:24:35 Dax Shepard? I went down to Lambert's and got a pair of ribeyes, ribbies. Fuck, Monty.
1:24:41 Speaker 01 So good.
1:24:42 Dax Shepard? They were, they really delivered.
1:24:45 Speaker 01 They're like candied.
1:24:47 Dax Shepard? They're so candied. There's so much stuff in them. I took a picture. I may have sent it to you. It's just oozing with all these different color fats and.
1:24:55 Speaker 01 Juices.
1:24:56 Dax Shepard? Yeah, sweet stuff and, oh, fuck. What a ribeye.
1:25:01 Speaker 01 Really good.
1:25:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah. Did that.
1:25:03 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:25:04 Dax Shepard? Shot all day.
1:25:05 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25:05 Dax Shepard? Long 12 hour day. I've already said it 12 times. I haven't worked 12 hours in a long time. And had a blast on set, met a lot of fun actors, some I had seen in things and never met. That was fun. I forgot about that.
1:25:18 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25:18 Dax Shepard? Getting to bump into people that you've seen and like in things.
1:25:21 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
1:25:21 Dax Shepard? And then Saturday, I wasn't in the mood. But it is my commitment. I had to go to Barton Springs before I got an airplane.
1:25:31 Speaker 01 Yourself.
1:25:31 Dax Shepard? So I checked out of, it was a chilly day.
1:25:33 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:25:34 Dax Shepard? I checked out of my hotel room and I went and I put my swimsuit on in the car and I did some, some treading of water.
1:25:40 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
1:25:41 Dax Shepard? And I felt like I had worshipped at my church.
1:25:44 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:25:44 Dax Shepard? I felt like, you know, elevated, you don't want to go to church.
1:25:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:25:48 Dax Shepard? But when you leave, you're like, good, I went to church.
1:25:50 Speaker 01 I went.
1:25:50 Dax Shepard? Yeah, that's exactly how I felt.
1:25:52 Speaker 01 That's great. I'm glad you had a good time.
1:25:54 Dax Shepard? I did.
1:25:55 Speaker 01 Um, one more thing before we go. I tried multiple times to get in to a new diner.
1:26:03 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:26:04 Speaker 01 It's called Max and Helen's. I shouldn't even say it.
1:26:07 Dax Shepard? No.
1:26:07 Speaker 01 But I am, I said it.
1:26:08 Dax Shepard? You said it.
1:26:09 Speaker 01 I, Kristen, Anna, and I was like, let's do lunch at the new diner. So naive.
1:26:16 Dax Shepard? This place out. Everyone's saying it's great.
1:26:18 Speaker 01 Yeah. They did some like, they did a bunch of friends and family previews, so I had already been seeing all these pictures. People were saying it's so good. It's amazing. I can't wait.
1:26:31 Dax Shepard? Life changing.
1:26:33 Speaker 01 And I was like, hell, yeah. So on Friday, I told Kristen and Anna, let's do lunch. Let's go to the new diner. Great. What time should we go? 12, 12:30, 12:45?
1:26:44 Dax Shepard? Sure. Sky's the limit.
1:26:45 Speaker 01 Get there. Three hour wait.
1:26:48 Dax Shepard? Three hour.
1:26:49 Speaker 01 I was, I knew something was wrong as soon as I, I started to walk up. Cause a, a guy I know, someone who works at the Row.
1:27:00 Dax Shepard? Oh, wow. You're.
1:27:01 Speaker 01 Shout out Max.
1:27:02 Dax Shepard? Oh, God.
1:27:03 Speaker 01 Max and Max and Helen. So this is confusing.
1:27:05 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:27:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I saw him there and I, and we were chatting and he said, oh my God. He was like, you know, I came, I put my name down at, at 10. And went home and got, and now I'm back. And I was like, oh. And he was like, have you put your name down? And I was like, no.
1:27:25 Speaker 01 So that was red flag, you know?
1:27:28 Dax Shepard? Do you send Kristen up front to see if they would?
1:27:30 Speaker 01 She wasn't there yet, but I of course thought it.
1:27:33 Dax Shepard? Yeah, we gotta get her up front.
1:27:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:27:35 Dax Shepard? See if they can make some moves.
1:27:37 Speaker 01 And I, I went up there and I did use her name.
1:27:41 Dax Shepard? Gray.
1:27:41 Speaker 01 It did not matter.
1:27:43 Dax Shepard? Didn't, they didn't even bat an eyelash?
1:27:45 Speaker 01 Didn't do a thing.
1:27:46 Dax Shepard? Yeah, good for them.
1:27:47 Speaker 01 So I, basically there were like three hours and just come back in three hours. And I was like, oh my God.
1:27:53 Dax Shepard? At four?
1:27:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. So we pivoted.
1:27:57 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:27:58 Speaker 01 And then new plan, right? New plan on Sunday. Jess has therapy over, right in that neighborhood. So new plan before therapy, Jess is gonna put our name in and then we'll come three hours later.
1:28:14 Dax Shepard? Smart.
1:28:15 Speaker 01 He texts me at like 11 and he said, no go. It's seven hours.
1:28:21 Dax Shepard? Guys. That's not even real.
1:28:24 Speaker 01 I know. So it isn't.
1:28:25 Dax Shepard? You can't even make that prediction.
1:28:26 Speaker 01 It isn't real. It's like.
1:28:27 Dax Shepard? AI couldn't make that prediction.
1:28:28 Speaker 01 They basically just said like, no more.
1:28:30 Dax Shepard? Don't go, don't come here.
1:28:31 Speaker 01 They did.
1:28:32 Dax Shepard? We're closed. What if they closed? Like, we can't, we gotta close.
1:28:37 Speaker 01 No, yeah, so people get in line, I guess it opens at eight, people get in line at seven. And they kinda get like.
1:28:44 Dax Shepard? Is there two tables inside this place?
1:28:46 Speaker 01 I don't know. But they go in, like whoever's there first obviously goes in and then they're like, come back in a half hour, come back in an hour. I mean, they're gonna have to figure out a better system than this because.
1:28:56 Dax Shepard? Can they do the phone, text you?
1:28:58 Speaker 01 I know, I was like, you, do you text? And they basically said, no. And I was like, how are you doing this?
1:29:02 Dax Shepard? Yeah, even like small towns in America have this system. You think LA is the most popular restaurant?
1:29:07 Speaker 01 Cause they also are open, I do think until like late, not late, but like later.
1:29:13 Dax Shepard? Accommodating all the people with their name in at 4pm.
1:29:15 Speaker 01 Well, no, but you can't even put your name, that's what I'm confused about.
1:29:19 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:29:19 Speaker 01 So, I don't know, but I, I almost unfollowed them on Instagram because they were teasing, it was, it's such a tease. I saw this turkey with gravy and a pie. And I was like, oh, I want that.
1:29:32 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:29:32 Speaker 01 So, I haven't been in yet.
1:29:34 Dax Shepard? And it's probably eating you up pretty good.
1:29:36 Speaker 01 It's eating me, it's getting to me.
1:29:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah, if I saw the first time, three, I would never think of the place again.
1:29:42 Speaker 01 I know you wouldn't.
1:29:43 Dax Shepard? I'm never gonna go there.
1:29:44 Speaker 01 I know.
1:29:45 Dax Shepard? Until they get shitty and people stop going, I'm gonna go try it.
1:29:47 Speaker 01 I've already been thinking like, God, when? Like, eight months from now will it die down? Like, when?
1:29:53 Dax Shepard? Maybe Tom Cruise will take you there.
1:29:56 Speaker 01 I don't even think Tom could cut the line.
1:29:57 Dax Shepard? Don't say that.
1:29:58 Speaker 01 No, I'm serious.
1:29:59 Dax Shepard? He would come right through the ceiling. He wouldn't fucking put his name in. Ethan Hon will eat when he wants to eat. He can break into the Louvre and stuff. He could definitely eat at this restaurant whenever he wants.
1:30:10 Speaker 01 Oh my God, it looks so good.
1:30:12 Dax Shepard? What if he wanna pick you up on a motorcycle? You gotta do it.
1:30:15 Speaker 01 Do you think I'm safe doing that?
1:30:17 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he's pretty good.
1:30:18 Speaker 01 Really?
1:30:19 Dax Shepard? Mm-hmm.
1:30:20 Speaker 01 Okay, then sure.
1:30:21 Dax Shepard? You should get a leather jacket. God, this is great.
1:30:25 Speaker 01 No, I'm not gonna change.
1:30:26 Dax Shepard? This is gonna be a hot night.
1:30:27 Speaker 01 I'm not gonna change my personality.
1:30:30 Dax Shepard? Why not have some fun?
1:30:31 Speaker 01 I have fun.
1:30:33 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:30:34 Speaker 01 I, he, he, he like, he'll like me.
1:30:37 Dax Shepard? Of course he will.
1:30:38 Speaker 01 He doesn't need to meet in a leather jacket.
1:30:40 Dax Shepard? Also, it's fun to, to try out fun personas and go along and have different experiences than you've previously have. So maybe you, you have a cool motorcycle jacket, you hop on back like you're always on back. And you just, you buy into the whole thing.
1:30:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:30:59 Dax Shepard? Doesn't sound fun to you?
1:31:00 Speaker 01 Not the motorcycle jacket.
1:31:01 Dax Shepard? You're really afraid to lose yourself or something.
1:31:03 Speaker 01 I'm not afraid.
1:31:04 Dax Shepard? Like if you act differently, you'll, or you'll forget who you are?
1:31:08 Speaker 01 No, I think it looks stupid.
1:31:10 Dax Shepard? Oh, I think it looks adventurous.
1:31:12 Speaker 01 If you are doing something that's inauthentic to you, I, I, I think it's very, um, clear.
1:31:19 Dax Shepard? But Monica, how do you know something's authentic to you if you haven't tried it? That's unknowable until you try it.
1:31:27 Speaker 01 Okay. You sound like a cult leader.
1:31:30 Dax Shepard? Let's get a motorcycle jacket.
1:31:31 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:31:32 Dax Shepard? For this date with Tom Cruise to Max and Emma's.
1:31:35 Speaker 01 No, Max and Helen's.
1:31:37 Dax Shepard? The Helens.
1:31:37 Speaker 01 I'll probably wear the row.
1:31:41 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:31:41 Speaker 01 And.
1:31:42 Dax Shepard? Not great motorcycle gear, I don't think. A lot of silks and thin. Like, why do Halloween? You know, why even do it? No one's any of the things that they get to pretend they are that day, but it's quite fun.
1:31:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, but we've already discussed me walking from the car to the house. It's like.
1:32:01 Dax Shepard? You lose your confidence.
1:32:02 Speaker 01 I hate this.
1:32:04 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:32:05 Speaker 01 I, I.
1:32:06 Dax Shepard? Okay. And I, yeah, and I like it.
1:32:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:32:09 Dax Shepard? Like, oh, I'm this other creature now. People are seeing, but you get so used to how everyone sees you. The reaction's standard.
1:32:16 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:32:17 Dax Shepard? You know what it's like to be you moving through the world, but all of a sudden you're wearing like six inch platform boots and a super tall mohawk and blah, blah. You get to try on for that day. Oh, look how people are looking at me. This is so interesting.
1:32:31 Speaker 01 That's what's fun about acting.
1:32:32 Dax Shepard? Uh-huh.
1:32:33 Speaker 01 Is putting on personas and personalities and trying and, and doing that. That's fun.
1:32:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and it could be in real, in real life too.
1:32:42 Speaker 01 I feel like that's, um.
1:32:45 Dax Shepard? You feel like a poser?
1:32:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, I do.
1:32:48 Dax Shepard? Understood. And I think that's a common hurdle for people.
1:32:53 Dax Shepard? But what's the difference between someone who's a poser and they're not? Someone just, they were just like, I don't, I'm, I'm not, I'm gonna do this. Like, no one's born authentically punk rock or not punk rock, or this or that.
1:33:04 Speaker 01 But you're, but you're drawn, you're, you're drawn to it. You're like, I like this. I like this aesthetic. I, this makes me feel. But I don't have that. So I would just be doing it, trying to work from the outside in to feel. I feel, but I feel unique.
1:33:22 Dax Shepard? No, no, there's unique as a person. Yes, you're a unique person.
1:33:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:33:25 Dax Shepard? And then there's your day to day life. If you could have a very unique day.
1:33:29 Speaker 01 Oh, I see.
1:33:30 Dax Shepard? That's what I'm saying. Like.
1:33:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:33:33 Dax Shepard? I.
1:33:33 Speaker 01 You just want me to dress the part.
1:33:35 Dax Shepard? I love unique, feeling unique, having a unique experience.
1:33:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:33:41 Dax Shepard? Like, I don't like wearing a tuxedo.
1:33:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, I know.
1:33:45 Dax Shepard? That's not for me. But I like that I wear a tuxedo sometimes and go to these award shows and I get to experience the whole thing.
1:33:51 Speaker 01 Do you? Because you're always like, you hate it. You hate that.
1:33:55 Dax Shepard? I'm not looking forward to it. I don't like the inconvenience of having to have a suit, having to have it tailored, having to have hair and makeup. Like, all that stuff I'm not looking forward to. But being at the event dressed in the appropriate gear that you're supposed to be in, looking the part and pretending you're, um, in a highfaluting scenario, I find fun.
1:34:13 Speaker 01 Hmm, interesting.
1:34:15 Dax Shepard? Oh yeah, this isn't my norm. I don't wear tuxes out to fancy black tie things.
1:34:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:34:20 Dax Shepard? So what I'm doing, I'm like, oh yeah, this is out of the ordinary and unique and I appreciate it for that.
1:34:24 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:34:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:34:25 Speaker 01 I feel that that's maybe new for you.
1:34:28 Dax Shepard? Oh.
1:34:29 Speaker 01 Cause I feel like you used to be very attached to your authenticity.
1:34:41 Speaker 01 And.
1:34:42 Dax Shepard? I think I'm still very attached to my authenticity, for sure.
1:34:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, I.
1:34:46 Dax Shepard? But I've learned to incorporate like, oh yeah, that's authentically me. I'm someone who has to do that.
1:34:51 Speaker 01 Exactly. That's why that's a little different. I don't think me putting on a leather jacket and shaving my side. That's not authentically me. I think riding on a motorcycle could be, is, I've done that.
1:35:06 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:35:06 Speaker 01 But, but putting on like, a character.
1:35:11 Dax Shepard? He's probably gonna pick you up in a Porsche, I think.
1:35:15 Speaker 01 How will we get in the restaurant then?
1:35:18 Dax Shepard? He'll figure that out.
1:35:19 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:35:20 Dax Shepard? Yeah, alright.
1:35:21 Speaker 01 Alright, let's do facts.
1:35:22 Dax Shepard? Let's do some facts. Is this the vintage item you were talking about?
1:35:27 Speaker 01 Yes, I got this vintage.
1:35:28 Dax Shepard? How old is it? Do you know?
1:35:30 Speaker 01 I don't know.
1:35:33 Dax Shepard? Circa 80s, 90s?
1:35:35 Speaker 01 I feel like it looks 80s.
1:35:38 Dax Shepard? This is my new shirt from my tour that I went to. Sabrina Carpenter.
1:35:45 Speaker 01 Oh, cute.
1:35:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it says man's best friend.
1:35:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, it does.
1:35:51 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:35:51 Speaker 01 Because that's the name of the album.
1:35:53 Dax Shepard? The new album.
1:35:53 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:35:54 Dax Shepard? Didn't hear any of those tracks because it's the Short and Sweet tour, but...
1:35:56 Speaker 01 Oh, she didn't give you any?
1:35:58 Dax Shepard? I don't think so.
1:36:01 Dax Shepard? I'm finally relating to Swifties.
1:36:04 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:36:05 Dax Shepard? Because I have found myself... All I'm listening to is Short and Sweet, okay? All day long.
1:36:10 Speaker 01 Sure.
1:36:11 Dax Shepard? Every day. I'm starting to really be an armchair detective.
1:36:14 Speaker 01 Hmm.
1:36:14 Dax Shepard? For what boy she's talking about.
1:36:16 Speaker 01 Oh.
1:36:17 Dax Shepard? I really get it now.
1:36:18 Speaker 01 Are you gonna vocally apologize?
1:36:21 Dax Shepard? Nope, I'm not gonna apologize because I'll own that it's bad of me too. So I'm not gonna say, you know...
1:36:28 Speaker 01 But you need to apologize to Taylor because you think it's weird that she... You don't love that she does that, but now you're a fan of Sabrina who does that.
1:36:38 Dax Shepard? Yes, and I'm still not a fan of it, but I like it.
1:36:42 Speaker 01 It feels like we're really parsing out deeds.
1:36:45 Dax Shepard? No, like if I start stealing tomorrow...
1:36:47 Speaker 01 Please don't.
1:36:48 Dax Shepard? If I start stealing tomorrow, I'll say, "Oh, I'm stealing." That doesn't mean I think stealing's right. It doesn't mean I need to go back and say like everyone who I said stole was wrong. No, I'm just... What I'm saying is I'm engaged in that juicy thing.
1:37:03 Speaker 01 Got it.
1:37:03 Dax Shepard? And it's fun, I get it. It's still not great. It's still not good, but I do have theories.
1:37:12 Speaker 01 Oh, really?
1:37:13 Dax Shepard? Yes.
1:37:13 Speaker 01 I mean, some, it's, it's, we all know.
1:37:17 Dax Shepard? Do you know these ones? You already know about Sabrina's?
1:37:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:37:20 Dax Shepard? You know so much.
1:37:21 Speaker 01 Everyone knows.
1:37:22 Dax Shepard? No, no, I don't think everyone knows. I had to just go look it up.
1:37:26 Speaker 01 I know, but.
1:37:27 Dax Shepard? But guess what? My hunch was confirmed by People Magazine.
1:37:30 Speaker 01 I know. Ew, see?
1:37:31 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yes.
1:37:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, bad.
1:37:33 Dax Shepard? Yes, bad.
1:37:34 Speaker 01 But also, I don't want you to be offended by this. I love you deeply.
1:37:38 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah.
1:37:38 Speaker 01 But you're behind the times.
1:37:40 Dax Shepard? Yes, of course, yeah.
1:37:41 Speaker 01 So everyone does know.
1:37:43 Dax Shepard? Okay, then who is, um?
1:37:45 Speaker 01 I don't want to say it. I don't want to participate in the thing, right?
1:37:50 Dax Shepard? Well, don't. I don't want to talk about that. Don't you do it with Taylor songs?
1:37:53 Speaker 01 Well, do I?
1:37:54 Dax Shepard? Yeah, you go like, oh, that song's about S E X. Charlie. Charlie X.
1:37:58 Speaker 01 Oh, Charlie.
1:37:59 Dax Shepard? What is it? Charlie S E X?
1:38:01 Speaker 01 Oh, my God.
1:38:05 Dax Shepard? Come on now, help me out. You know what I'm saying.
1:38:07 Speaker 01 Charlie X C X. I didn't at first. I thought you were spelling out sex and I didn't understand it.
1:38:11 Dax Shepard? Isn't that what her name spells out?
1:38:12 Speaker 01 No, X C X.
1:38:16 Dax Shepard? Oh, there's no E.
1:38:16 Speaker 01 Charlie X C X.
1:38:18 Dax Shepard? C sounds like E.
1:38:19 Speaker 01 Even Barack Obama had Charlie X C X on his, like, top 10, like, four years ago.
1:38:25 Dax Shepard? But that's no shocker. Uh, Barry's always ahead of the curve.
1:38:28 Speaker 01 He is. He's on top of it.
1:38:29 Dax Shepard? Than I am.
1:38:30 Speaker 01 I know.
1:38:31 Dax Shepard? And I'm always looking at his book list of the year and going like, oh, I should read some of those. It's not like.
1:38:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:38:35 Dax Shepard? Okay, so I was listening and it, one was about like having read every self-help book and doing a mushroom trip. And I'm like, this sounds like, this sounds like, um, Shawn Mendes.
1:38:47 Speaker 01 Oh, no, I don't want to.
1:38:48 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:38:49 Speaker 01 We can't do this.
1:38:51 Dax Shepard? Why?
1:38:52 Speaker 01 I don't know. I don't. It doesn't feel right.
1:38:53 Dax Shepard? It doesn't?
1:38:54 Speaker 01 He's a friend of the pod.
1:38:55 Dax Shepard? I know. There's nothing, I'm not saying he's a bad boy. I'm just saying I think I figured out what the song's about. And I was so excited and I understand the detective work people feel like they're doing is very gratifying. So then I searched. Well, first I asked Chat.
1:39:10 Speaker 01 Oh, God.
1:39:11 Dax Shepard? Who are the songs about?
1:39:13 Speaker 01 Sure.
1:39:13 Dax Shepard? Chat's very ethical. Chat won't tell me.
1:39:15 Speaker 01 Chat is not very ethical.
1:39:17 Dax Shepard? Mine, mine is very ethical. It wouldn't tell me.
1:39:19 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:39:20 Dax Shepard? It just would say, oh, here's the themes. I don't think it wants to be liable.
1:39:25 Speaker 01 It lied to me.
1:39:27 Dax Shepard? Liable, not lie.
1:39:28 Speaker 01 I think it's all the same. Yeah, it's, I don't know, anyway.
1:39:31 Dax Shepard? Whatever the case, it did take me to a link where this People Magazine article.
1:39:38 Speaker 01 Oh, no.
1:39:38 Dax Shepard? But they were, they were pretty much trying to credit every lyric on the album to Shawn Mendes. Which, there's been other lovers. I looked up her lovers. There's been a handful.
1:39:49 Speaker 01 Well, we know some of them are about.
1:39:51 Dax Shepard? Barry Cogan is one of them.
1:39:52 Speaker 01 Kyogan, yes. Okay, I don't want to do this. This feels unethical to me for some reason. I don't know why.
1:39:58 Dax Shepard? Interesting.
1:39:58 Speaker 01 But most of them are about Barry Cogan.
1:40:00 Dax Shepard? So, let's not do it, but can we explore why it feels unethical?
1:40:03 Speaker 01 Um, yeah.
1:40:05 Dax Shepard? We also just did Lily Jameson.
1:40:07 Speaker 01 Lily Al, but that's, that's so explicit.
1:40:10 Dax Shepard? And David.
1:40:11 Speaker 01 That's my point. Like, I kind of like that Taylor and Sabrina and other artists.
1:40:19 Dax Shepard? I need a nickname for her, maybe Sabrina's.
1:40:20 Speaker 01 Oh, you know, when we had, we had Joey King on some years ago. And she is very good friends with Sabrina Carpenter. And she said that on her ride over, I'll never forget this, she said on her ride, maybe she was lying, like chat.
1:40:34 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:40:34 Speaker 01 On her ride over, she was talking to Sabrina, and I think she called her Sabrina's or Sabrina or something.
1:40:41 Dax Shepard? Like I'm doing.
1:40:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, and said, um, I'm going on Armchair Expert, and she said, I love that show.
1:40:47 Dax Shepard? Oh, my god. We're getting sidetracked.
1:40:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:40:50 Dax Shepard? So, you don't, you don't like to theorize on who these songs are.
1:40:56 Speaker 01 No, I do. I mean, I already, again, I already know. We all know.
1:40:59 Dax Shepard? You already knew Shawn Mendes?
1:41:01 Speaker 01 People talk about this. It's also obvious because when you know someone's dating someone publicly.
1:41:07 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:41:08 Speaker 01 Then they break up and then these songs come out. It's like, duh.
1:41:12 Dax Shepard? Yeah, it is interesting though, because, like, I think about this a lot.
1:41:16 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:41:17 Dax Shepard? This is what brought Truman Capote down.
1:41:19 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:41:20 Dax Shepard? Is that he used everyone in his life as archetypes for his books. And then it was very, very thinly veiled.
1:41:26 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:41:27 Dax Shepard? To the point where people felt quite betrayed and violated by him.
1:41:31 Speaker 01 I assume so, yeah.
1:41:32 Dax Shepard? And he, people did not want to hang out with him at the end. And he, all he wanted was to be a socialite, you know?
1:41:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:41:37 Dax Shepard? But when I think about, like, doing an ensemble show as a writer.
1:41:43 Dax Shepard? I have these incredible archetypes in my life.
1:41:46 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:41:47 Dax Shepard? And so I would want to use key essence of them. But then I need to build on and deviate from that. Cause I've established their engine. Now, now everything else is arbitrary, but I can see if you're on the outside, you're like, you would be inclined to think everything that came after the archetype was, was actually fact or reporting, but it's not.
1:42:09 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:42:09 Dax Shepard? Anyways, Sabrina Carpenter.
1:42:11 Speaker 01 Please, please, please is definitely about Barry Keoghan.
1:42:15 Dax Shepard? Oh, really? See, you're telling me something.
1:42:19 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:42:19 Dax Shepard? Please, please, please.
1:42:21 Speaker 01 Which is my favorite song.
1:42:22 Dax Shepard? Okay, let me look because all I do is listen to this album and I should know exactly what it is. It's, you're saying, um, please, please, please. Oh, that's the second song on the track. Oh. Don't embarrass me, motherfucker.
1:42:38 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:42:39 Dax Shepard? It can't be about him if he's in the video.
1:42:41 Speaker 01 It was.
1:42:42 Dax Shepard? She would have written the song long before a video gets made. And don't we think the timeline is they met on this video?
1:42:49 Speaker 01 No, no, no, they were together.
1:42:51 Dax Shepard? For a hundred years.
1:42:52 Speaker 01 They were together before the video. Okay.
1:42:54 Dax Shepard? Okay, I, I'm gonna, I need to do a little more research on that. I don't know how he would be in the video that's.
1:43:00 Speaker 01 I mean, it's, it's also like, it's not, this one is just like, this is an, you're kind of an embarrassment, but I, I like you and you're gonna break my heart, but I like you. Like, it's not like you already did it.
1:43:11 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:43:12 Speaker 01 You know?
1:43:13 Dax Shepard? Okay. Please, please.
1:43:15 Speaker 01 She's pleading.
1:43:18 Speaker 01 Anyway.
1:43:19 Dax Shepard? That's not my jam. I mean, I like that song. Every song on the album's great.
1:43:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:43:23 Dax Shepard? It's a great album. Monica.
1:43:27 Speaker 01 Hey, I know. Again, I know because this was like two summers ago.
1:43:32 Dax Shepard? Well, hold on. I don't know if that's the right dates. I have the album right up on my phone. I can look. I don't know about two summers.
1:43:39 Speaker 01 I think it was.
1:43:40 Dax Shepard? I mean, she's on tour right now. It was 2024 release.
1:43:44 Speaker 01 Yep, that's what I said.
1:43:46 Dax Shepard? Twenty-third.
1:43:48 Speaker 01 Twenty twenty-four.
1:43:50 Dax Shepard? Summer's kinda over.
1:43:51 Speaker 01 No, Please, Please, Please in Espresso had already come out.
1:43:54 Dax Shepard? Okay.
1:43:55 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:43:55 Dax Shepard? Okay, let's do some facts.
1:43:57 Speaker 01 People can't come here for current news. I guess that's, that's.
1:44:00 Dax Shepard? Well, I gotta imagine there's a lot of dorks like me in the audience, though, that might. Well, certainly now the whole world isn't listening to the album. It's a very big album.
1:44:08 Speaker 01 It's a huge album.
1:44:09 Dax Shepard? It's not thriller, so I'm trying to push it to thriller numbers.
1:44:13 Speaker 01 That's like the reference, like, it's, it's.
1:44:16 Dax Shepard? That's the biggest album of all time.
1:44:17 Speaker 01 Okay, but it's huge.
1:44:19 Dax Shepard? It's a huge album.
1:44:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:44:21 Dax Shepard? Huge.
1:44:22 Speaker 01 Huge album.
1:44:22 Dax Shepard? No, it's a, it's a great success.
1:44:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:44:25 Dax Shepard? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it could be bigger. And a lot, not everyone is already, not everyone's sick of it yet, Monica. Some people are just going.
1:44:31 Speaker 01 I'm not sick of it.
1:44:31 Dax Shepard? People are, some people are going, wow, I've heard of her, but I didn't know.
1:44:38 Speaker 01 I can't.
1:44:39 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:44:39 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:44:40 Dax Shepard? But my song, I just wanna recommend my song.
1:44:42 Speaker 01 Okay, you already did, but let's do it again.
1:44:46 Speaker 01 Let's do it every day. It's your favorite song. You love it. You do.
1:44:51 Dax Shepard? I love it more than anything.
1:44:52 Speaker 01 I, well, no, you don't love it more than anything. That's a crazy thing to say.
1:44:57 Dax Shepard? I love it more than air.
1:44:59 Speaker 01 Okay.
1:44:59 Dax Shepard? Okay, my favorite song is called Don't Smile.
1:45:04 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:45:11 Dax Shepard? I didn't really have to look it up, but I did look it up, cuz I know it's Don't Smile, cuz it happened, Cry Because It's Over.
1:45:19 Speaker 01 I love that, I love that line, cuz it's a blippy.
1:45:23 Dax Shepard? Very validated, cuz I sent the song to a very, very accomplished songwriter and producer.
1:45:29 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
1:45:29 Dax Shepard? And I said, do you like this song? I can't stop listening to it. And he wrote back immediately, oh my God, that's my favorite song on that album, exclamation point. And I felt so validated.
1:45:40 Speaker 01 That's great.
1:45:41 Dax Shepard? Yeah, and expert said it was the best song on the album.
1:45:45 Speaker 01 His favorite, not the best.
1:45:47 Dax Shepard? He, his favorite would be the best.
1:45:49 Speaker 01 Oh, let's, we're not doing that. He can't do this. He might say the best is this, but that's my favorite.
1:45:57 Dax Shepard? He can't, no way. Whatever song he likes the most, he is the one he'd say is best.
1:46:02 Speaker 01 No, there are podcasts that I, are my favorite that aren't the best.
1:46:07 Dax Shepard? Okay. All right, I'm gonna, listen, I'm, we're in the middle of a fact check and Monica's making me very angry right now because I said I reached out to a very successful and brilliant songwriter to say that, um, what's my favorite song?
1:46:25 Speaker 01 Oh, don't smile.
1:46:26 Dax Shepard? Don't smile, and that this person responded, oh, that's my favorite on the album. And then Monica, exclamation point, and then Monica's suggesting that you didn't say it was the best. And I said, well, your favorite would definitely be the one you think is best.
1:46:44 Speaker 01 Musically, musically.
1:46:45 Dax Shepard? And she said, no, that's not true. You could think that another song's the best, but that your favorite is, um, Don't Smile. Who's right? Pinnies.
1:47:01 Speaker 01 Okay. Facts. Okay, now I have someone to call for something important.
1:47:08 Dax Shepard? Cone Jim Brooks?
1:47:09 Speaker 01 Almost.
1:47:12 Speaker 05 Hey, Ma.
1:47:13 Speaker 01 You're on air, because you didn't send it to me, so now you have to do it live.
1:47:20 Speaker 05 Oh, okay.
1:47:23 Speaker 05 Um, my, uh, the Shoe Maniac?
1:47:25 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:47:26 Speaker 05 Come on down and check me out. I'm the Shoe Maniac and I sell thousands and thousands of pair of women's all leather shoes. I sell them cheap, folks, that's how I do it, that's why I sell more shoes than anybody downtown. Now, if you like plastic shoes, keep on looking, because I hate plastic shoes, I can't stand plastic shoes, I sell nothing but all leather shoes, that's why I sell more shoes than anybody downtown.
1:47:47 Speaker 01 Thank you, Aaron.
1:47:48 Dax Shepard? So good. Now, is your, is your character specifically Cajun, or that's just a coincidence? Or did you go like, I'm going Cajun with this?
1:47:59 Speaker 05 Yeah, well, you know, yeah, I guess I'm kinda talking like this, you know?
1:48:03 Dax Shepard? Sure.
1:48:05 Speaker 05 Plus, I'm missing a front tooth, so I'm, so I think it makes me, I got a little bit of a lisp, a lisp.
1:48:11 Speaker 01 Yeah, but you always make him Cajun, and that's part of the sell, it works.
1:48:16 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, a little bit like, uh, yeah, yeah, a little, little more like flirtatious, outgoingish, you know?
1:48:24 Dax Shepard? I had rubber shoes.
1:48:25 Speaker 01 Gregarious, no plastic.
1:48:27 Speaker 05 And we gave out, and we gave out free popcorn at the store, free popcorn, free drinks, I'm gonna give you a, free popcorn, and I'd have to pick out a lady, you know, from the crowd and tell her to come in.
1:48:38 Dax Shepard? Would you pick a, would you always pick a lady that you thought looked hungry for popcorn? Or just the prettiest, what was, who did you invite?
1:48:46 Speaker 05 Yeah, I mean you find somebody, usually it was a lady with some kids who looked like she was miserable out there in the sun. And, you know, get her in for a, a cold drink and some, uh, free popcorn. The free popcorn was that, was that, you know, that gets all kinds of people in the store.
1:48:59 Dax Shepard? Sure, hungry.
1:49:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, and then they bring their kids and then they have to buy four pairs of shoes. That's a good hack.
1:49:05 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, and popcorn costs nothing to make, so, you know.
1:49:10 Speaker 01 That's true.
1:49:11 Speaker 05 Sometimes I see these stores and they're just, you know, you gotta think of things outside of the box to get people in your store. You can't just have a store and expect people to come in.
1:49:18 Dax Shepard? You gotta break through the clutter.
1:49:20 Speaker 05 Gotta break through the crowd, man. Gotta break through the crowd, slide some, there's always something.
1:49:24 Speaker 01 There's always something. Um, all right, Eric, well, we love you and, and I wanted the world to hear that.
1:49:31 Speaker 05 I love you to death, you guys. Talk later, bye.
1:49:35 Speaker 01 So that, that came up because we talked about selling women's shoes. He had a fear of selling women, having to sell women's shoes for a living.
1:49:43 Dax Shepard? Oh, sure.
1:49:44 Speaker 01 And our friend Eric, who we brought up in the episode, he's sell, he sold women's shoes very well.
1:49:49 Dax Shepard? As a child.
1:49:50 Speaker 01 As a, as a kid, yeah. His dad's business.
1:49:52 Dax Shepard? Yeah.
1:49:53 Speaker 01 And as you can hear, he was great at it.
1:49:56 Dax Shepard? He definitely, probably even cuter when it's coming out of a 10-year-old.
1:49:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, definitely.
1:50:00 Dax Shepard? Yeah, he's got a speech memorized.
1:50:02 Speaker 01 Okay, what was the first TV show to have a black lead character, sitcom? It was called Julia, 1968 to 71, and then Room to 22, which was his, which was 1969 to 74. And then, The Cosby Show.
1:50:19 Dax Shepard? Uh, full of black leads.
1:50:21 Speaker 01 Okey dokey. Was Mary Tyler Moore's show the first female lead that didn't depend on a man? It says it, Honey West was the first network TV series of a female lead whose story was not dependent on a man. Premiered in 1965, starred Anne Francis as a private detective. While earlier shows featured female leads, Honey West was specifically designed to center on a female character in a non-traditional role, a private eye. Okay. What show did Taxi follow MASH? He didn't say that. He just said a popular show.
1:50:54 Dax Shepard? Well, also, that's an interesting ding ding ding, because those both have the most beautiful theme songs that don't match at all their comedic genre.
1:51:05 Speaker 01 Hmm. Well, okay, so it followed MASH from the seventy-eight to seventy-nine season and then followed Happy Days during seventy-nine to eighty.
1:51:16 Dax Shepard? Which does not have a super beautiful jazz song.
1:51:19 Speaker 01 Isn't it? Monday, Tuesday, Happy Days.
1:51:23 Dax Shepard? Tuesday, Friday, Happy Days. The weekends go.
1:51:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, catchy.
1:51:34 Dax Shepard? I used to know all the lyrics. Ugh.
1:51:36 Speaker 01 It's hard.
1:51:36 Dax Shepard? That's a bad sign.
1:51:38 Speaker 01 Well, you had to push it aside to have Sabrina in there.
1:51:41 Dax Shepard? I gotta make room. There's a new queen in town.
1:51:45 Speaker 01 Um, how much money did The Simpsons generate?
1:51:48 Dax Shepard? Oh, yeah, he won in Tama.
1:51:50 Speaker 01 Yeah. He says he didn't know, but um, it's estimated to be well over fourteen billion.
1:51:56 Dax Shepard? Fourteen billion?
1:51:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:52:00 Dax Shepard? Dude.
1:52:00 Speaker 01 That's awesome.
1:52:01 Dax Shepard? From jokes.
1:52:03 Speaker 01 I know, how cool.
1:52:04 Dax Shepard? Fourteen billion.
1:52:05 Speaker 01 Yeah. Did the Mary Tyler Moore Show win a Peabody? Yes, in seventy-seven. So that's cool. Um, it also won twenty-nine Emmys.
1:52:17 Dax Shepard? Mary Tyler Moore? I've never watched Mary Tyler Moore, have you?
1:52:21 Speaker 01 Yeah, because I used to watch when I was at my grandparents' house when I was little. They had a Nickelodeon block party summer.
1:52:27 Dax Shepard? Uh huh.
1:52:28 Speaker 01 And Monday through Friday, there was a show and then they would just play that show all night. And it was like Bewitched was one night, I Dream of Jeannie was one night, Mary Tyler Moore Show was one night. I am some others.
1:52:40 Dax Shepard? And they'd show a whole season in one night?
1:52:42 Speaker 01 Well, no, they just showed like some episodes and then for the summer, they would do that.
1:52:47 Dax Shepard? Well, that's fun.
1:52:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:52:49 Dax Shepard? It was an education. And did you like it?
1:52:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:52:52 Dax Shepard? I need to watch it.
1:52:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, I'm sure it holds up.
1:52:56 Dax Shepard? CBD?
1:52:56 Speaker 01 I don't know. I mean, I'm sure it's still like, oh, wow, that's awesome.
1:53:00 Dax Shepard? For the time. I just wonder if you'd go for the time.
1:53:03 Speaker 01 You'd have, I think you might have to say for the time.
1:53:05 Dax Shepard? For the time, yeah.
1:53:06 Speaker 01 That's it.
1:53:07 Dax Shepard? That's everything.
1:53:08 Speaker 01 That's it for Jim Brooks.
1:53:10 Dax Shepard? Jim Brooks.
1:53:12 Speaker 01 All right.
1:53:12 Dax Shepard? All right, love you.
1:53:13 Speaker 01 Love you.
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