Justine Bateman | Club Random with Bill Maher

Justine Bateman and Bill Maher agree Hollywood has a problem. They just don’t agree on what to do about it—and that’s where the fun starts. On Club Random, the Family Ties star, filmmaker, and computer science grad challenges Maher on AI, while he pushes her to admit it can do some good. They get into who’s steering the technology, why studios seem to listen to the loudest voices online, and whether movies can entertain without delivering a lecture. They also get into: old-school pilot season, the peculiar math of fame, streaming’s everything-at-once business model, Las Vegas, and the unexpectedly deep question of why salt and pepper became table staples. #Billmaher #justinebateman #ClubRandom Subscribe to the Club Random YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/clubrandompodcast?sub_confirmation=1 Subscribe to the podcast for free wherever you listen: ⁠https://bit.ly/ClubRandom Support our Advertisers: Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to https://www. Quince.com Download the Kalshi app and use code RANDOM to get $25 when you trade $25. For free and unbiased Medicare help, dial 984-217-3643 or go to https://askchapter.org/billmaher Go to https://www. DrinkAG.com/RANDOM and for a limited time, get a free Immune Support Bundle with your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro. Buy Club Random Merch: https://clubrandom.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices ABOUT CLUB RANDOM In Club Random, Bill Maher unleashes his comedic wit on an unpredictable lineup – from Bill Burr and Jerry Seinfeld to Quentin Tarantino and Neil deGrasse Tyson – digging into everything but politics. It’s Maher in his familiar element: one-on-one vibes, unfiltered laughs, and the kind of freewheeling banter only he can deliver. ABOUT BILL MAHER Bill Maher was the host of “Politically Incorrect” (Comedy Central, ABC) from 1993-2002, and for the last 23 years on HBO’s “Real Time,” Maher’s combination of unflinching honesty and big laughs have garnered him 41 Emmy nominations. Maher won his first Emmy in 2014 as executive producer for the HBO series, “VICE.” In October of 2008, this same combination was on display in Maher’s uproarious and unprecedented swipe at organized religion, “Religulous.” Maher has written six bestsellers: “True Story,” “Does Anybody Have a Problem with That? Politically Incorrect’s Greatest Hits,” “When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden,” “New Rules: Polite Musings from a Timid Observer,” “The New New Rules: A Funny Look at How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass", and most recently "What This Comedian Said Will Shock You". FOLLOW CLUB RANDOM https://www.clubrandom.com https://www.facebook.com/Club-Random-101776489118185 https://twitter.com/clubrandom_ https://www.instagram.com/clubrandompodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@clubrandompodcast FOLLOW BILL MAHER https://www.billmaher.com https://twitter.com/billmaher https://www.instagram.com/billmaher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:27Speaker 01

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• 0:57Speaker 02

  Where some see heroes, and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com.

• 1:12Bill Maher?

  While you were remodeling your backyard to make it more, you know, zen-y, we were remodeling our merch store to make it more random. We slapped our new logo on T-shirts, tie-dyes, hoodies, and hats, and all with premium printed labels. Look, I wasn't kidding. We have it, because tags are like the junk mail of clothing. All merch is available exclusively at clubrandom.com. Once again, that's clubrandom.com.

• 1:45Speaker 04

  Oh, are we, is this like, is this like a trial? Where I've introduced a word and now it's fair game?

• 1:50Bill Maher?

  Well, it is fair game.

• 1:51Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:54Speaker 04

  Bill, have you ever had an answer to this question? What's the endgame? Anybody could tell you. You haven't thought this through.

• 2:00Bill Maher?

  It's Cloud Cuckoo Land.

• 2:05Bill Maher?

  Hello?

• 2:06Speaker 04

  Hi.

• 2:07Bill Maher?

  Am I on? Are you here?

• 2:08Speaker 04

  Hi, welcome to my home.

• 2:10Bill Maher?

  I know. How you doing?

• 2:12Speaker 04

  It's such a pleasure to meet you.

• 2:13Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I guess our paths never did cross, didn't they?

• 2:16Speaker 04

  I don't think so.

• 2:16Bill Maher?

  I don't remember it either. That doesn't mean it didn't happen.

• 2:19Speaker 04

  It could have.

• 2:20Bill Maher?

  I mean, come on. We're not 20 anymore. And we were around, and we're in the same town in the business.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:26Bill Maher?

  We probably met at a--

• 2:28Speaker 04

  Probably.

• 2:28Bill Maher?

  Were you stoned back then?

• 2:30Speaker 04

  No.

• 2:31Bill Maher?

  Never?

• 2:32Speaker 04

  I wasn't on that train.

• 2:34Bill Maher?

  You never, or you drank a lot, or nothing?

• 2:37Speaker 04

  I did my thing, and it never made the tabloids.

• 2:43Bill Maher?

  No, but I mean, like--

• 2:44Speaker 04

  I'm not gonna count myself now.

• 2:47Bill Maher?

  I'm saying, like, I could have met you, you know, and, because I drank a lot in those days.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  Oh, out and about?

• 2:54Bill Maher?

  And was out all the time.

• 2:55Speaker 04

  I'm sure, out and about, yeah.

• 2:57Bill Maher?

  Were you out and about a lot in the--

• 2:58Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 2:59Bill Maher?

  You were?

• 3:00Speaker 04

  It was so fun.

• 3:01Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 3:02Speaker 04

  It was so fun.

• 3:02Bill Maher?

  You think that, you think we're different, or the times--

• 3:06Speaker 04

  The times are way different. I mean, we're not the same age.

• 3:09Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 3:09Speaker 04

  But the times are way different. But wait, before we start, I gotta tell, I gotta thank you publicly--

• 3:14Bill Maher?

  Oh, good.

• 3:15Speaker 04

  --for having been one of the extremely few people who were saying, from, for, for years now, this is all very fucked up, what's going on. And I mean, there was hardly anybody else saying it.

• 3:30Bill Maher?

  About what?

• 3:31Speaker 04

  So like, I don't know, starting, you know, I don't know, 2019, 2020, or when there was like, nobody else saying, hey, there's something wrong with what's going on right now. Like, we're not allowed just going along with this, right? But I just wanna thank you.

• 3:48Bill Maher?

  Which things are we talking about? Talking about the left or the right?

• 3:50Speaker 04

  I mean, all of it. But I mean, mostly--

• 3:52Bill Maher?

  Right, all of it. Well, that is the difference between me and-- I'm not gonna disparage anybody. People have their own way of doing things. But like, I never understood this change that happened, where like, to be a comedian in this town, anyway--

• 4:06Speaker 04

  Oh, the comedy.

• 4:07Bill Maher?

  You just have to be like, sort of preaching only to one side. And it's like, a lot of them hate me because I never became a fucking republic or anything. I just won't go along with the nonsense on the left either. I'm not, I'm not--

• 4:20Speaker 04

  No, they turned it into a religion.

• 4:22Bill Maher?

  A religion, it is. People have written books like that. You know, like, John McWhorter, I think, wrote-- it's a book mostly about racism and calling racism on stuff. Obviously, it still exists a lot, but-- and you know, there is kind of the religion of wokeism and the religion of anti-racism. And, I mean, you know-- yeah, I wanted to have you here, because I think we are simpatico on a lot of political stuff.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, for sure.

• 4:50Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 4:50Speaker 04

  For sure.

• 4:51Bill Maher?

  And it's, free thinkers are hard to come by.

• 4:55Speaker 04

  Yeah, because you, I guess one has to be willing to not have a membership card--

• 5:02Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 5:03Speaker 04

  --to some group, like--

• 5:04Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  I don't, you know--

• 5:06Bill Maher?

  No, they're purists, which, which is so annoying, since they have so little to be pure about.

• 5:12Speaker 04

  There's like, this list of tenants, right? And, and even if you subscribe to eight of the 10 tenants, if you don't subscribe to all 10, you're fucking out.

• 5:23Bill Maher?

  Right. I know exactly what--

• 5:24Speaker 04

  And so the people that have the membership cards maybe don't even really believe it. But they're terrified, I think, terrified of not being part of this, of being ousted, because maybe they've never been in a situation-- where you're just standing on your own. And you're going, I don't care, I don't need to belong to either group.

• 5:44Bill Maher?

  I say this every week, it seems, but-- show people, they're so talented. I'm not saying that this is, they are. Their talent takes your breath away. They're not bright, generally. I mean, there are exceptions. But they're just, and they're certainly not politically savvy. What's important to them, as it is with all actors, is to have a speech where you're the hero. So they just wanna be like these morally superior people. And yet, their moral compass is as broken as the Republicans. I mean, Garrison Keillor had to go, but they're okay with Hamas rapists. They just are dumb. And then they are, what's so infuriating is that they're dumb, no, we can't be in your club, because we're not bright enough?

• 6:28Bill Maher?

  No, our eyes are open. You're just sheep.

• 6:32Speaker 04

  See if this fits too. It seemed to me that the DNA of the film business was-- I appreciate your sacrifice, too.

• 6:43Bill Maher?

  I'm like, jonesing, because I'm so used to reaching for a joint.

• 6:49Speaker 04

  Okay. Yeah, I don't know, the, I don't know, it makes me nauseous. But anyway, I appreciate it.

• 6:55Bill Maher?

  Well, we don't do that. We don't want you nauseous.

• 6:58Speaker 04

  But please, like, drink a lot of tequila then, or something.

• 7:03Bill Maher?

  I can take care of my own--

• 7:05Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 7:06Bill Maher?

  I can moderate my own high, but thank you.

• 7:09Speaker 04

  Okay. The DNA of the film business is, we'll do, we'll, we'll make a film about whatever we feel like making a film about. Everybody can fuck off, right? That's the DNA of the film business. And then there's this financial structure component, too. And these are the, these two things kept everything going. And they also were able to look around at society and see what was missing. Is it happiness? Is it, is it conflict? Is it whatever? And they supplied it. When the, when social media came on the scene, the 1,000 loudest people on social media--

• 7:44Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 7:44Speaker 04

  --suddenly had so much--

• 7:46Bill Maher?

  Yep.

• 7:47Speaker 04

  --influence.

• 7:48Bill Maher?

  Plout, yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  I think partly because the media got really lazy and started quoting--

• 7:55Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 7:55Speaker 04

  John 123--

• 7:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 7:58Speaker 04

  --on Facebook, or whatever. Who the fuck is this guy? And they just started, just printing these--

• 8:02Bill Maher?

  Twitter says, Twitter, three guys--

• 8:06Speaker 04

  Exactly, that's what I mean.

• 8:07Bill Maher?

  You know, and--

• 8:08Speaker 04

  And just looking at what's trending, and then just doing that, and then having these little bits of-- and I think the business got scared, like a corporation-- got scared that they were gonna, that people were going to-- I mean, us, or the whole business, that people were gonna hate them, that people were gonna boycott them, people were this. And they started, they started capitulating their decision-making to what would appeal to these 1,000 loudest people. And that has been, and then there's other reasons why the business has like, gone off a cliff. And, but that's one of them. And it's, it's, you can't run a creative business when you're catering to people like this.

• 8:48Bill Maher?

  People keep saying their business is off a cliff. And yet, I mean, in the last five, was it five years that we've all just turned to streaming? There's like, so much more content than there was when we were on sitcoms, you know?

• 9:04Speaker 04

  But that's a content factory. That's not, that's not the film business.

• 9:07Bill Maher?

  I think--

• 9:07Speaker 04

  It's a different business.

• 9:08Bill Maher?

  You know, I was on an NBC sitcom in 1985. Did you know that?

• 9:13Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 9:13Bill Maher?

  Sarah, do you remember Sarah?

• 9:15Speaker 04

  It was--

• 9:16Bill Maher?

  It must have been--

• 9:16Speaker 04

  It was Gary Goldberg's other show.

• 9:18Bill Maher?

  Correct, yes.

• 9:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, who created Family Ties.

• 9:20Bill Maher?

  Yes, I know. I'm just saying that--

• 9:22Speaker 04

  I mean, for the viewers, I don't know if they know who he is.

• 9:25Bill Maher?

  Well, he was a very big TV producer. I mean, Family Ties was as big as it-- but we were sandwiched in between your show and Cosby, I think.

• 9:35Speaker 04

  Oh--

• 9:36Bill Maher?

  For that year.

• 9:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:38Bill Maher?

  So, we actually have a link.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  See? Must see TV.

• 9:43Bill Maher?

  Did you ever see it?

• 9:44Speaker 04

  That was that--

• 9:45Bill Maher?

  That show?

• 9:46Speaker 04

  I'm sure, I'm sure I might. I didn't watch much TV back then, because--

• 9:50Bill Maher?

  Come on, man.

• 9:51Speaker 04

  We were doing it.

• 9:52Bill Maher?

  No, not Sarah with Gina Davis and Brunson--

• 9:55Speaker 04

  Now I'm gonna go watch all of it.

• 9:56Bill Maher?

  Alfie Woodard, what a cast.

• 9:58Speaker 04

  Alfie Woodard is like--

• 9:59Bill Maher?

  Alfie Woodard is so talented. Yeah, she was an Oscar nominee when we were doing the sitcom.

• 10:04Speaker 04

  Really?

• 10:05Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:06Speaker 04

  That's awesome.

• 10:07Bill Maher?

  Still good friends.

• 10:08Speaker 04

  So you're gonna be at the NBC 100th anniversary, I assume?

• 10:12Bill Maher?

  Really? Are they having such a thing?

• 10:14Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 10:15Bill Maher?

  Oh, I didn't hear about it. When is that? This year?

• 10:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think in December, so--

• 10:19Bill Maher?

  Ah, man, maybe I will.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  I think they're gonna focus on the last 20 years, and then do like, clips of all the other years. Like.

• 10:31Bill Maher?

  You mean, there's not gonna be a tribute to one season shows? Or what about failed pilots? Just the pilot.

• 10:38Speaker 04

  Wouldn't that be great?

• 10:39Bill Maher?

  Remember those days when, I mean, pilot season?

• 10:42Speaker 04

  Oh, I know, it was fantastic.

• 10:44Bill Maher?

  It was fantastic? It was nerve wracking.

• 10:46Speaker 04

  No, but it was a lot of work for, and it was a lot of work and hope and like, you know, this one could go and that one could go. It was like exciting.

• 10:53Bill Maher?

  You wanted to get a pilot, which was, if people are too young or don't remember or never knew, I guess it's our business. But the way they made television was like in the spring, I guess, maybe starting closer to the beginning of the year, then they made the decision in the spring. Yeah, the beginning of the year, like one of the only times of the year they actually work, they would make a bunch of shitty shows, but only the first episode. It was called The Pilot.

• 11:21Speaker 04

  It'd be like fifty of them or something. They're only gonna pick up twenty.

• 11:24Bill Maher?

  Right, they, well, even those numbers are too big. But like, they would, they would probably make a dozen or so, and they would pick up three or four years. I mean, they needed something. They also canceled shows all the time. You know, it was survival of the fittest. I mean, it was great for the viewer, I guess, you know? I mean, every year I would get the fall preview issue of TV Guide.

• 11:47Speaker 04

  Come on. It was exciting.

• 11:49Bill Maher?

  You know, it was very exciting.

• 11:50Speaker 04

  It was the thick, it was like the September issue of Vogue. You know, it was like very thick with, with potential and the new shows and what was gonna...

• 11:58Bill Maher?

  The schedule, what was against, what were we against? We were against Dynasty. Listen, folks, paying five hundred dollars for a basic T-shirt just to flex someone else's logo isn't fashion. That's paying a company for the privilege of being their billboard. Most guys just want classic, high-quality clothes that look great and last longer than a few washes. That's why Quince makes getting dressed so easy. Quince makes high-quality everyday staples using real materials like organic cotton, merino wool, and one hundred percent Mongolian cashmere. Their cashmere sweaters start at just sixty bucks. When the team here got their hands on a few, they were shocked by the quality.

• 12:43Bill Maher?

  They also have classic wool coats and down jackets for fall, all priced fifty to eighty percent less than luxury brands because they cut out the middleman markup. 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 three hundred and sixty-five day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, tell them it was club random. It's the best way to support this show.

• 13:19Speaker 04

  I don't know who we were against, because we were always like number two or number one. Cosby was number one, and we would be number two. So I didn't really, it didn't really matter who was opposite us.

• 13:29Bill Maher?

  Right, your show was a giant hit. Mine was positioned to be one, but then Gary Goldberg had a shoving match at a taping with the head of the network, Brandon Tartikoff.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  Did he really? I didn't know about that.

• 13:42Bill Maher?

  I didn't see it, but nobody denies it.

• 13:45Speaker 04

  I didn't know that.

• 13:46Bill Maher?

  Yeah, isn't that funny?

• 13:48Speaker 04

  But Brandon, you know, when Family Ties started, it was, the ratings weren't that high. And, but NBC was like number three, of three. And so it was Brandon Tartikoff, and nothing to lose, so he was like, let's roll with it.

• 14:03Bill Maher?

  You don't miss any of that, do you?

• 14:05Speaker 04

  Hmm, it was, I mean, I feel like I had the fullness of it.

• 14:09Bill Maher?

  Right, me too.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  And it was a lot better to be famous back then than to be famous now, so I'm glad I got the fame experience then.

• 14:20Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 14:20Speaker 04

  I mean, I would not wanna be famous now. It just seems like such a drag.

• 14:24Bill Maher?

  But not like...

• 14:26Speaker 04

  Not like that. You couldn't go to Disneyland, you couldn't go to the airport. I mean, you couldn't go anywhere.

• 14:31Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 14:31Speaker 04

  I mean, it wasn't like Brad Pitt level of fame, but it was, I wrote a book about it.

• 14:36Bill Maher?

  Well, it would be like, if they're parked outside your driveway or something, or wanna follow you to do mundane chores, that is the level of fame where it's not worth it, I think.

• 14:46Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 14:47Bill Maher?

  You know, not that I do mundane chores. You'll never catch me doing them, but...

• 14:52Speaker 04

  Maybe they follow, they wanna follow your assistant, so they can be like, they can be like Belmar adjacent.

• 14:57Bill Maher?

  It's still like the right to do mundane chores, and I do have the right.

• 15:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:01Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, I do not worry about someone following me into Target if I knew where a Target was or what it looked like inside, which I don't.

• 15:11Speaker 04

  You sound like, um, Hung, no, what's his name? Uh, sorry, Nvidia. What's his name?

• 15:21Bill Maher?

  Nvidia?

• 15:22Speaker 04

  Uh, the CEO of Nvidia.

• 15:25Bill Maher?

  Oh, Jason Huang?

• 15:26Speaker 04

  Yeah, he's like, what did he say? He said, nobody's, nobody, he goes, nobody's gonna know their, he goes, their, he was talking about why AI is gonna be so great, and he says, well, you don't need to know your address, your phone number, he says, I don't, I don't know my address, I don't know my phone number, I don't know this, I don't know that. And I was like, dude, you never pay a bill, you have a staff.

• 15:53Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 15:54Speaker 04

  Like, you never need to know your address, you never need to deal, to call a utility company.

• 15:59Bill Maher?

  Also, you're the head of this tech company. The people at your company are not gonna let your shit glitch up, although I've seen that actually happened to the head of Apple trying to, you know, when he was trying to like present something new and it fucked up. But us regular folks, the stuff is always glitchy. It works in theory, in theory.

• 16:22Speaker 04

  I think a lot of programmers don't use their own programs.

• 16:24Bill Maher?

  And they're always locking you out, and like, the idea that it's perfect, so I don't have to remember my number, I don't remember anything, because the machine is perfect. The machine is so far from perfect. I know you're anti-AI as I am.

• 16:39Speaker 04

  Yeah, I am, I think it's one of the...

• 16:40Bill Maher?

  And Bill Gates is this week, you know, going around basically with his hair on fire, saying, you know, come on, guys. And Trump had a big meeting yesterday and just agreed that, well, these are great guys, and why would they ever do the wrong thing? And the smartest of them are concerned. I mean, Musk said it years ago, he was very concerned about this. And Amodi, I think, is a good guy who doesn't want this to get out of hand. Even Sam Altman, not exactly a charmer, but I think he's smart enough to get it that like, yeah, no matter how rich I am, it's not great if the world is gone and the people are dead or whatever, you know, shit could happen. So I think it's not like a number of them aren't on to it.

• 17:24Bill Maher?

  And then there's like the Huangs and the Zuckerbergs, who are like, everybody's worried about nothing. Well, Bill Gates, really, you don't take his word? You think he's worried about nothing? Is he that dumb, Bill Gates?

• 17:38Speaker 04

  I mean, I don't even think you have to, you know, run a tech company to see the issues. I mean, first of all, you've got...

• 17:46Bill Maher?

  You don't, but they know better than we do.

• 17:47Speaker 04

  No, but they know, they have more money than we do, but they don't know...

• 17:50Bill Maher?

  Oh, seriously? You think you know as much about tech as Jason Huang or whatever, I'm probably saying his name wrong, or Altman or Elon Musk? You don't, you know nothing. I know nothing. They know more, they don't, the problem is they don't know everything about it, which is what's scary, but they know way more than we do. That's why they're, they're doing what they're doing. And, you know, why there's any hope of renting this in is that somebody kinda gets, you know, behind it on the knowledge curve, because where it's going now is, what's so scary is, the thing is out there making its own decisions, ordering itself around.

• 18:27Speaker 04

  Well, that's because of the way it's been coded. Like, here's my problem with it. The technology, technology is technology. It's like money. It's, well, not quite like money, like money is very neutral. But who's controlling the money is gonna be the issue. Who's controlling this tech? And from the podcast...

• 18:46Bill Maher?

  That's the point, nobody, it sells.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  Well, listen, the pod, from the podcast tours that these guys do nonstop, to any interview they've ever done, it sounds like the most irresponsible group of people who have ever been in charge of something big in the United States, and that's what the problem is.

• 19:03Bill Maher?

  I don't know, ever.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  And they also seem to be just money worshippers. I have never heard them say anything that sounds like they, and I'm not talking about every single CEO, but I feel, I feel very few of them concerned with any of the ramifications of having, of having AI.

• 19:24Bill Maher?

  No, they are, they are, please, that's just not fair.

• 19:27Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 19:28Bill Maher?

  They're in the press, it's in the news. They're, they are concerned. There was a whistleblower about a month ago, and usually when there's a whistleblower, the reaction of corporations is, this guy's full of shit, blah, blah, blah. That was not the reaction. The next day, the three that I just mentioned came out and said, he's not wrong, we are taking this seriously. Now, maybe that's just lip service, but it's still more than what they, a lot of other people in this, the tobacco companies never did that. They never said, oh, yeah, you know what, you're right. They were forced, they were sued. These guys, again, they're not stupid people. They, Musk said it ten years ago, he was like, this could be an extinction event.

• 20:10Speaker 04

  So let's exclude Musk. I don't see...

• 20:13Bill Maher?

  And Amodi and Altman, they're not, I'm not saying they're doing...

• 20:17Speaker 04

  Altman is, seems like a psychopath.

• 20:19Bill Maher?

  He, I could not agree more. They're all on the spectrum of incels.

• 20:23Speaker 04

  I don't think they're concerned with, if they were, they'd do something about it, but they're not gonna do something about it because they're in this to make a lot of mon, as much money as they can possibly make.

• 20:32Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 20:33Speaker 04

  And that is driving all their decisions.

• 20:35Bill Maher?

  The things that are holding them back is, yes, money is very attractive, they're all Richard...

• 20:39Speaker 04

  It's not attractive.

• 20:40Bill Maher?

  They're not stupid, that they, they don't know that they already have more money than they could ever deal...

• 20:45Speaker 04

  No, the businesses are, have, need so much money to run.

• 20:49Bill Maher?

  Yeah, that's true too.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  It's unsustainable.

• 20:51Bill Maher?

  And also, but the bigger one is that they don't wanna lose to China. That's in their mind.

• 20:55Speaker 04

  Well, then maybe they don't hire so many people who have handlers in China. I mean, how do you, I mean, I don't know, isn't just like this...

• 21:02Bill Maher?

  Well, Chinese Americans are loyal mostly to America.

• 21:06Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 21:06Bill Maher?

  Because they're Asian.

• 21:07Speaker 04

  But I mean, if, well, yeah, I'm not talking about, I'm talking about like, people who are still reporting to China. I mean, I'm not talking about their morphology, I mean, I'm talking about like...

• 21:19Bill Maher?

  No, that happens too.

• 21:20Speaker 04

  Where do they have their, who do they belong to?

• 21:22Bill Maher?

  China ain't playing. China, I mean, China is, you know, the snake, the giant boa constrictor that's wrapping itself around you, and Trump thinks, oh, this is cuddly, but it's really sizing you up to eat you. I mean, they're definitely...

• 21:39Bill Maher?

  Not definitely, but they have a good chance of winning this race. And that's what freaking people out is they don't want China to have the upper hand. Because obviously, this has great ramifications. Whoever wins AI wins a sort of war that could be a war of conquest. Certainly, Taiwan is on their minds.

• 21:59Speaker 04

  Okay, I just.

• 21:59Bill Maher?

  When we're talking about AI and who's gonna win the race. Taiwan is very much on their minds because Taiwan is where they make the chips. If we don't have the chips from Taiwan, we don't have any computers. Let alone these giant data things they're building.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  I just think it's being done. I think it's a bit sloppy.

• 22:21Bill Maher?

  It's very sloppy. It's crazy.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  It's a little bit of like, it reminds me of gain of function.

• 22:30Bill Maher?

  Yeah, totally.

• 22:31Speaker 04

  Okay, wait, you're doing this so that you can develop.

• 22:34Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 22:35Speaker 04

  A vaccine for this, but then, but whoops, this shit gets out before you've developed a vaccine.

• 22:40Bill Maher?

  You're exactly right.

• 22:40Speaker 04

  And you have fucked up the world.

• 22:42Bill Maher?

  It's a techno, you're exactly, it's a techno version of gain of function.

• 22:45Speaker 04

  And this is what is going to happen.

• 22:47Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  They are going to have this, this tech is going to getting enmeshed in the foundation of too many institutions. I just got, I got an email today from my bank. This is a general email to everybody right at the bank, not to me specifically. Saying, you know, is AI, you know, it's this folksy kind of email that you get, right? Like, you know, AI is becoming more and more popular and all this and just, we just wanna remind you when you're using agentic AI, don't give usernames and passwords. Because that's just like giving it to a stranger and you're responsible for anything that occurs when this system has your, and it's like, oh my god.

• 23:32Bill Maher?

  Doesn't it have it anyway? Doesn't it have it already or else it wouldn't be in your thing? Of course it has your, all that shit. It's in your phone. It knows everything in your phone.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  That the, that the AI models have all your passwords and logins.

• 23:45Bill Maher?

  I, I'm talking out of my ass because I don't have it in my phone because I don't want it in my phone. I got a separate phone just for AI and never really used it because I don't need it. I mean.

• 23:58Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, I'm the same. I like, I don't, I can't think of anything I would ever.

• 24:02Bill Maher?

  No, there's plenty of.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  Wanted for.

• 24:04Bill Maher?

  No, I absolutely can. In fact, I was playing basketball about a year ago and

• 24:11Bill Maher?

  got what they call a mallet finger, still hasn't really healed. But, you know, when you rebound and the ball hits that middle finger. So it's like, it doesn't usually happen, but it's like, and somebody looked it up right on their phone. Right, AI, what is this? How do you deal with it? Yes, it can be valuable, but can be valuable from, it's already being very valuable in a lot of things, including medically. It's coming up with things already, you know, ways to, Andrew Huberman was just telling me last week about this. That it can, if you have a certain type of cancer, it can very quickly go through all the things that have ever been tried.

• 24:48Bill Maher?

  All the medications, all the, you know, and very quickly get you to the absolute best response you can make. That's very valuable. Nobody is saying, nobody sane is saying AI isn't also a marvel. You're not saying that, right?

• 25:07Speaker 04

  I'm not saying it's a marvel. I think it's more of a.

• 25:10Bill Maher?

  Really? You don't think coming up with the best way to.

• 25:13Speaker 04

  Did it come up with it? I don't, it's just a predictive algorithm.

• 25:19Bill Maher?

  It can search.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, it can search.

• 25:21Bill Maher?

  Okay, but that can be very valuable.

• 25:24Speaker 04

  Search has, search has definitely been valuable to society.

• 25:27Bill Maher?

  Yeah, so can we admit, why deny that? Why deny that there's something awesome about AI? We're just saying, we think this.

• 25:35Speaker 04

  I just.

• 25:37Bill Maher?

  You don't see it.

• 25:37Speaker 04

  It's not, it's not for me in any form.

• 25:41Bill Maher?

  Well, if you get cancer, you probably will change your mind.

• 25:44Speaker 04

  I don't think so. People have gotten cancer in the past and have like.

• 25:48Bill Maher?

  Died.

• 25:48Speaker 04

  Recovered, and then recovered.

• 25:50Bill Maher?

  Apparently, people will take Medicare advice from anybody. Some guy you vaguely remember from a 90s sitcom, a retired athlete wearing a headset. Basically, anyone with a headshot and a teleprompter. Chapter takes a different approach. Helping people compare Medicare options without simply steering them toward whatever pays the most. They look across every available plan based on what actually matters to you. Your prescriptions, your providers, and your needs. They're honest and they don't get paid more for pushing one plan over another. Novel concept for this industry. If you're already on the right plan, they'll tell you flat out. If not, they'll help you find one that fits.

• 26:33Bill Maher?

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• 27:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:02Bill Maher?

  But also mostly died.

• 27:04Speaker 04

  But I don't, I don't think we have data that shows that because AI exists now, people don't die from cancer.

• 27:10Bill Maher?

  I think we do. I think it's exactly.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  They don't die anymore at all.

• 27:12Bill Maher?

  Not as, not as quickly, that we are moving the curve on that. How could it not be?

• 27:18Speaker 04

  I don't know.

• 27:19Bill Maher?

  Just think about that. Like, if this thing is that.

• 27:21Speaker 04

  Because it searches faster.

• 27:22Bill Maher?

  Yes, because it searches faster. And they've already done math problems that people couldn't do for centuries. And it does it, you know, in 10 minutes or something.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  Honestly, I think that one really sucked. These guys, these guys and gals who are mathematicians, who are, this is their life's work to discover this sort of thing. And it goes bippity bop, just does it. It's like, did you need to? I mean, now, like, their whole, I think it's depressing for them.

• 27:54Bill Maher?

  This is why I always think I'm the only reasonable person in America. Because even when I talk to somebody like you, I think it's very reasonable. And I can't get you to like, sort of agree on the half of this equation, which I think is undeniable, that there is marvelous things about AI. It makes me always go, why can't people just like, you know.

• 28:13Speaker 04

  All agree with you?

• 28:14Bill Maher?

  Come right, no, come right down in the middle of what's obvious, you know.

• 28:19Speaker 04

  I don't know. Maybe because I have a computer science degree and I know engineering, the lack of engineering ethics that's in programming and.

• 28:27Bill Maher?

  But ethics isn't efficacy. Efficacy we're talking about. What is the actual efficacy of having AI in, in our future medical challenges?

• 28:41Speaker 04

  Well, hopefully, I'll never need to find out.

• 28:44Bill Maher?

  Hopefully.

• 28:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:45Bill Maher?

  But, I mean, I mean, you're younger than me, I'm sure by quite a bit. But I'll tell you what's ahead is

• 28:58Bill Maher?

  not all good things.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:00Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, the human body, the flesh is what it is. And it is corrupted as we go on. You look great, by the way.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 29:09Bill Maher?

  I don't know what you do for it, but I know you've spoken about plastic surgery and you're so right.

• 29:15Speaker 04

  Well, now, why can't you come down in the middle of that?

• 29:19Bill Maher?

  Well, I do. I will come on down the middle of it and say, but if you like it, go ahead. And also, sometimes it does work.

• 29:27Speaker 04

  And that's where I am with AI.

• 29:28Bill Maher?

  Sometimes it does work.

• 29:29Speaker 04

  If, if, if it floats your boat, go for it. It's just not for me.

• 29:36Bill Maher?

  No, I'm just not gonna be admitting that it's doing some good things.

• 29:40Speaker 04

  Well, what I'd be admitting.

• 29:41Bill Maher?

  Not for you, just for society, for life, for mankind.

• 29:44Speaker 04

  I don't know. I haven't seen that myself. And you're probably right. There's a lot of things I haven't seen.

• 29:52Bill Maher?

  Yeah, look, I mean, I'm 70. That's a scary number when you start to have a seven.

• 29:58Speaker 04

  Isn't that the lucky number?

• 30:00Bill Maher?

  Well, yeah, but come on.

• 30:04Speaker 04

  Come on.

• 30:04Bill Maher?

  I mean, but.

• 30:06Speaker 04

  I would say when you turn, when you turn.

• 30:11Speaker 04

  If you're lucky enough to turn seventy-seven on the seventh of July.

• 30:18Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 30:19Speaker 04

  In nineteen twenty-seven.

• 30:21Bill Maher?

  Wow.

• 30:22Speaker 04

  Won't that be like?

• 30:25Bill Maher?

  Nothing.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  You've, you've, you're gonna get like the jackpot, all those sevens?

• 30:29Bill Maher?

  Do you really believe sevens have a power? Many societies do.

• 30:33Speaker 04

  Could be.

• 30:34Bill Maher?

  Well, it could be.

• 30:35Speaker 04

  We don't know. I'm gonna come down on the middle of that.

• 30:38Bill Maher?

  A three and a half?

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:41Bill Maher?

  No, you know, when I was younger, I did have a real phase where I, where I put a lot of stock in numbers and, I mean, I was nineteen, you know, I'm not saying I was.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  Did it work?

• 30:55Bill Maher?

  I don't.

• 30:55Speaker 04

  Did you win the lottery?

• 30:56Bill Maher?

  No, it wasn't like that. I just was going through the kind of angst you go through at that age. And I think I was just searching. I was, I was over Catholicism, which is how I was.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  Was it like auspices? Were you like, would you say, oh, I see three, I see three birds? And that means?

• 31:11Bill Maher?

  No, it was like, like this happened on this date, so it's significant. And then this other, you know, oh, three and four add up to seven, and so like, I'm gonna get her back.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Nice.

• 31:24Bill Maher?

  You know, it was like bullshit about.

• 31:25Speaker 04

  It was like encouraging though, right?

• 31:27Bill Maher?

  Well, it was like grasping at some straw for my very kind of like frustrating and, you know, kind of desperate life. I was never meant to be like young. I was always meant to be an adult. I was not good as a young person, you know? Shy, you know, couldn't talk to girls when I was desperately wanting to, that kind of thing, you know? And, you know, just.

• 31:52Speaker 04

  But the numbers gave you comfort.

• 31:54Bill Maher?

  They, they, it was, it was the success art to Catholicism and equally stupid. I, you know, looking back, that's how I think of it, but who knows? Again, it's true. Every, for some reason, all societies sort of did land on seven.

• 32:13Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?

• 32:14Bill Maher?

  Independently, like they just all thought.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  You know what's another interesting thing to me? I know this will seem like a left turn. How did we wind up with salt and pepper being the two spices that go on the table?

• 32:25Bill Maher?

  I don't know, but I, but I bet you a historian would be able to tell you like.

• 32:28Speaker 04

  I'm gonna try and find that out.

• 32:30Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 32:30Speaker 04

  Maybe you could put that into your chat GPT.

• 32:32Bill Maher?

  I was just gonna say.

• 32:33Speaker 04

  It'll make up something fantastic.

• 32:36Bill Maher?

  It, I couldn't agree more. You know, I've done a lot of editorials, like fucking really cutting the balls off of AI. So I'm, I'm your friend here, you know, and that's one of the points I've made many times.

• 32:48Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 32:48Bill Maher?

  We, if, if it really was Mr. Spock, remember Mr. Spock from the original Star Trek?

• 32:53Speaker 04

  Oh, yes.

• 32:54Bill Maher?

  You know, like completely.

• 32:56Speaker 04

  On the neck?

• 32:57Bill Maher?

  What?

• 32:58Speaker 04

  Oh, that's how he used to take people down. He'd just pinch their neck.

• 33:00Bill Maher?

  That's right. But, I mean, his whole character was, as a Vulcan, he did not have the human flaw of thinking of things emotionally. He always just gave you the exact, right, correct, honest answer. And when it was politically incorrect, he did not even understand why. Yes, Captain.

• 33:19Speaker 04

  No, this has been trained on everything we've ever said online, so there's no fucking way it cannot be politically ten.

• 33:26Bill Maher?

  I know they don't like to say it. It is woke.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Cause look, look what this has been trained on.

• 33:32Bill Maher?

  But it is.

• 33:33Speaker 04

  If it had only trained it on Encyclopedia Britannica or something like this.

• 33:37Bill Maher?

  I don't think.

• 33:37Speaker 04

  Or Meet the Press from, you know, the sixties and seventies or something, it'd be different.

• 33:41Bill Maher?

  I don't think there should even be an option for asking its opinion. It's an opinion. Someone once really pissed me off, it wasn't their fault. They asked it, what was my best special? And I just did not like the answer AI gave, and it wasn't the right answer. And AI shouldn't have an opinion.

• 34:01Speaker 04

  It grabs, it's not an opinion.

• 34:03Bill Maher?

  It isn't. It's AI's opinion, and AI doesn't deserve one.

• 34:06Speaker 04

  But it, yeah, it doesn't have one.

• 34:08Bill Maher?

  It does. It, but it renders one. It'll give you one.

• 34:12Speaker 04

  But it's not anything. But it's, it's not anything.

• 34:15Bill Maher?

  But people believe it is.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  It's, well, because people like to personify things. They like to think that their animals are, you know, loving them when they lick them, and they're probably just getting salt off your skin because they need it for their system.

• 34:32Bill Maher?

  They think, they think plants do better when you talk to them, and really the reason why.

• 34:38Speaker 04

  They're just sucking your carbon.

• 34:39Bill Maher?

  Correct. You're, you're expelling carbon. You're expelling around them what they breathe in.

• 34:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:45Bill Maher?

  So that's it. It's not because you're telling them they're beautiful.

• 34:48Speaker 04

  You know why fruit tastes good? Is because that tree is hoping that you're gonna swallow that pit and then poop it out a mile away and plant more seeds of thems, of themselves.

• 35:00Bill Maher?

  That's so interesting and so strikes me as true. It's thinking you're gonna, right. It wants you to eat that, and if you're a caveman, you don't bother like throwing, you just eat it and eat the pit.

• 35:14Speaker 04

  Or if you're a strawberry or something, or you know, the seeds are, you eat the seeds.

• 35:18Bill Maher?

  Some pits would just make you choke to death and die. So those trees are not very bright. I mean, some pits, some pits are way too big.

• 35:26Speaker 04

  Well, then you're gonna, you're gonna take it, you're gonna eat it, you're gonna drop the pit somewhere else. Maybe just that. Maybe you don't eat it.

• 35:32Bill Maher?

  Oh, I see. Right. You throw it on the ground.

• 35:34Speaker 04

  But the other, the other.

• 35:35Bill Maher?

  Right. It doesn't have to be in poop. Right.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it could be.

• 35:39Bill Maher?

  You just wanna have something eat away the flesh, the sweet part, so that you have the, yeah.

• 35:45Speaker 04

  I'm gonna, yeah, I'm gonna tease you into spreading my.

• 35:51Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  Seeds. That's basically it.

• 35:55Bill Maher?

  I, I mean, I just love nature. What?

• 35:58Speaker 04

  No, it's true. It's, uh, there's, uh, there's, there's motive to a lot of things.

• 36:03Bill Maher?

  I could never live in a city, you know, with a high rise and concrete all around. It's just so unnatural. I know, some, for some people, it's the most natural thing in the world. We all know. Lots of New Yorkers and.

• 36:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, but it's not to be around nature.

• 36:18Bill Maher?

  People out here who live in the Wilshire corridor, you know, the, you know, the.

• 36:22Speaker 04

  I know, right?

• 36:23Bill Maher?

  Bunch of high rises.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  You're like, it's great. I have a balcony. It's like, you can have a backyard. I mean, there's plenty of room.

• 36:28Bill Maher?

  Exactly. Why, why would you rather have a balcony than a backyard?

• 36:32Speaker 04

  Tokyo or New York City.

• 36:34Bill Maher?

  Or not in Hong Kong.

• 36:35Speaker 04

  You know, where there's like no room.

• 36:36Bill Maher?

  Not in seventeenth century Amsterdam where you have to build vertically because we're, we have lots of room here.

• 36:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, there's plenty.

• 36:43Bill Maher?

  You know? I mean, whenever you fly over the country, what do you mostly see down there?

• 36:47Speaker 04

  Oh, my gosh.

• 36:48Bill Maher?

  Nothing. Nothing.

• 36:50Speaker 04

  Lots of land.

• 36:51Bill Maher?

  Well, some of it's, a lot of it's farms.

• 36:53Speaker 04

  I'm always fascinated with.

• 36:55Bill Maher?

  Farms?

• 36:57Speaker 04

  No, with Vegas. That somebody went, I mean, you've driven to Vegas, right? And you've seen all the land around Vegas. If somebody went, somebody went, I'm gonna put a city right here.

• 37:09Bill Maher?

  Now, now I gotta stop.

• 37:10Speaker 04

  Tell me more.

• 37:10Bill Maher?

  Oh, I am going to.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  Okay, tell me more.

• 37:12Bill Maher?

  You haven't seen Godfather Two?

• 37:14Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 37:15Bill Maher?

  Okay. It's, well, Bugsy Siegel.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 37:20Bill Maher?

  Let me do the scene for you. It's Hyman Roth, remember? Played by, uh, it was really Meyer Lansky.

• 37:27Bill Maher?

  Played by, uh, who's the great acting coach, Lee Strasberg. Was Al Pacino's acting coach, so now he's, and he's like Al Pacino, Michael Corleone. You know, he comes in there, they're supposed to have this deal, and he's like, you know, who, who killed the Rosado brothers? And Hyman Roth says, you know, there was this kid I grew up with, did our first work together, worked our way out of the ghetto. Things were good. Ran molasses into Canada during the depression, made a fortune. Your father too.

• 38:03Bill Maher?

  As much as anyone, I trusted him and loved him. Later on, he had an idea to invent a city that was a desert stopover for GIs on their way to the West Coast.

• 38:15Bill Maher?

  This is a man of guts, a man of vision, and that city he invented was Las Vegas. Somebody put a bullet in his eye. When I heard about it, I knew Moe Headstrong saying stupid things. I didn't ask who gave the order. That is the business we have chosen.

• 38:35Bill Maher?

  Bugsy Siegel invented Las Vegas, not somebody.

• 38:38Speaker 04

  Okay, but I'm saying to, most people don't put something in the middle of nothing. I mean, same thing, starting in the United States of America, the early centuries.

• 38:51Bill Maher?

  Desert stopover for GI.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 38:53Bill Maher?

  But they are, there was already something.

• 38:55Speaker 04

  What? Oh, you say there was something actually there?

• 38:58Bill Maher?

  It was a desert stopover for GIs on their way to the West Coast. That's why I did that whole speech.

• 39:03Speaker 04

  That because there was something there already?

• 39:05Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 39:06Speaker 04

  Okay, then the something there already, I'm impressed with.

• 39:09Bill Maher?

  He just had the vision that, because this is Nevada and gambling is legal, but no one is taking advantage of this. It's very similar to me, Hugh Hefner. You know, nobody really had the idea, naked women.

• 39:25Bill Maher?

  Guys looking at naked women.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  At least not in one magazine.

• 39:28Bill Maher?

  But.

• 39:29Speaker 04

  I mean, you're out of the pinup, right?

• 39:30Bill Maher?

  It seems like an obvious one.

• 39:31Speaker 04

  It seems.

• 39:32Bill Maher?

  Doesn't it?

• 39:32Speaker 04

  I know, but the morals of the time, I mean, it was so scandalous to do something like that.

• 39:37Bill Maher?

  It was scandalous. I mean, when you look at those Playboys from the 50s, they're showing less than they show in a perfume ad in Vanity Fair today.

• 39:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, that's different now. I mean, with like OnlyFans and the whole, everything's just gone.

• 39:50Bill Maher?

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• 40:31Bill Maher?

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• 41:13Speaker 04

  Cuckoo bananas.

• 41:15Bill Maher?

  You could make a fortune. I'm not saying you should. I'm just saying you could. They would go nuts for you.

• 41:21Speaker 04

  I.

• 41:22Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I know, I know you're not gonna do it, and I don't think you should do it.

• 41:25Speaker 04

  It would be so... I would have to have like had a.

• 41:31Bill Maher?

  Coronary.

• 41:31Speaker 04

  Like a la bottom. I mean, I don't know how I could ever.

• 41:34Bill Maher?

  I know. I'm not saying you should, I'm just saying you could.

• 41:37Speaker 04

  Oh, well.

• 41:37Bill Maher?

  That's the world.

• 41:38Speaker 04

  Oh, well, I'll have to leave that money on the table.

• 41:42Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 41:42Speaker 04

  Oh, well.

• 41:43Bill Maher?

  You really should, yeah. Because you're a director now.

• 41:47Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 41:48Bill Maher?

  That's so much better than an actor, isn't it?

• 41:50Speaker 04

  Writing and directing.

• 41:51Bill Maher?

  Once you get on the other side, you're like, you think, oh, wow, I was kind of a schlub when I was doing the act. Like, I thought I was big stuff, but I wasn't make any of the decisions.

• 42:03Speaker 04

  Oh, you're really not. You're not.

• 42:05Bill Maher?

  You're not important.

• 42:07Speaker 04

  Well, you're.

• 42:07Bill Maher?

  You think you are.

• 42:08Speaker 04

  You are. You are, but you don't get. But you don't get to make any decisions.

• 42:12Bill Maher?

  And you're replaceable, in a way that the creator isn't.

• 42:15Speaker 04

  You're replaceable. If they can get somebody else of the same value off the list.

• 42:19Bill Maher?

  They replaced Valerie Harper when her name was the title of the show.

• 42:25Speaker 04

  I know, that was nuts, right?

• 42:26Bill Maher?

  That's, that's fucking baller. That's badass.

• 42:30Speaker 04

  Let me take you further back. Bewitched.

• 42:34Bill Maher?

  Bewitched, yeah.

• 42:36Speaker 04

  They switched out.

• 42:37Bill Maher?

  Darren.

• 42:38Speaker 04

  The husband.

• 42:38Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 42:39Speaker 04

  And didn't say shit about it.

• 42:41Bill Maher?

  But it wasn't the titular character.

• 42:44Speaker 04

  You're right, you're right.

• 42:45Bill Maher?

  The show was called Valerie, and they replaced Valerie.

• 42:48Speaker 04

  But I remember as a child watching it.

• 42:50Bill Maher?

  That is ballsy.

• 42:51Speaker 04

  You're right, it's like Archie Bunker's Place and Archie Bunker's Out.

• 42:54Bill Maher?

  Right, right. It was now the Hogan family.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was the Hogan family.

• 42:59Bill Maher?

  Roseanne. They did it with Roseanne recently.

• 43:01Speaker 04

  And made it the Connors.

• 43:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 43:03Speaker 04

  Say, we'll use your last name instead.

• 43:04Bill Maher?

  It's just, that's, I'm telling you, it's just kind of gangster, the way this town will do that and let you know exactly what your importance is.

• 43:16Speaker 04

  Or you could be in it, and then you wind up not in the final cut.

• 43:19Bill Maher?

  I always say this about show business, it's the most full of shit place in the world. It's also sometimes the least full of shit. Like, they will tell you exactly what your worth is.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  I've had such great experiences with it. I tell you, the only time I've had bad experiences is with people who aren't, I don't really consider being in the business anyway. Like, there was one, uh... Like, sometimes a financier, or sometimes a, you know, like a new distributor who's really not in the business. And that's the only time in all of my years in the business. But, I mean, I don't know, I think the business is just not.

• 44:00Bill Maher?

  Well, it's funny that we're finally begging for some socialism because, and even, and Trump is... Yeah, boy.

• 44:09Speaker 04

  I gotta tell you, I think that's really big of him, considering how he's been talked about.

• 44:14Bill Maher?

  You're talking about giving tax breaks to, yeah.

• 44:16Speaker 04

  Well, it's.

• 44:17Bill Maher?

  It's our, it's our industry, and it is.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  The national tax credit, yeah.

• 44:21Bill Maher?

  To your earlier point, it is dying out here. But I always used to brag about our business and California supporting it in the sense that, you know, you know, the conservatives would always talk about how shitty we are here in Hollywood, but you know what? Farmers are the ones getting the welfare.

• 44:40Speaker 04

  Or the car companies, or whatever.

• 44:42Bill Maher?

  The socialism that you hate so much, and I don't like socialism either, but the socialism is taking place anywhere but Hollywood. We make our own way. We make a product the world likes. Movies, and they do very well. Now, this is before COVID and shutting the movie theaters down and streaming and a lot of other challenges. But movies are back. Movies did very well this year. People, I always said it, people like a thing they can do on a date where you don't have to talk, and that is a movie.

• 45:11Speaker 04

  True, but how much better would we be doing if you weren't sitting down to some lesson every time you went to the movie theater? And also sitting down to a piece of content, which is made to be second screen, your phone being the first screen while you're scrolling through Instagram or Twitter or something. And then you, they have to make sure that if you glance away for 15 minutes and come back, you haven't, you don't feel like you've missed anything. And as a filmmaker, if you've, if you can do that, then that's 15 minutes I should have cut out of my film. If you, if you look away and come back and nothing's moved forward, then that was cuttable.

• 45:48Bill Maher?

  I couldn't agree more. I did a whole thing one year about it. It was the year of Nomadland and, like, we had the Debbie Downer Awards and, you know, just like, sponsored by razor blades and rope, you know? Just all these down, that make the Hollywood crowd feel good about themselves. Oh, she's homeless and shitting in a bucket. Oh, good, and we're good people because we feel for her. Like, who, it's like, I'm sure it was a great movie and an important film, but it's been this entire century, I would say now, getting worse all the time where they don't care about quality. They care about what political point of view you are signaling with your work.

• 46:31Speaker 04

  Which is not mutually exclusive, but they've made it so that it is.

• 46:36Bill Maher?

  Yeah, oh, totally.

• 46:37Speaker 04

  They've, and film festivals have done this too, where they'll take a film that is where the filmmaker is a one-legged albino from Alaska with two gay mommies, and that checks those boxes, but the film's not very good.

• 46:52Bill Maher?

  Now, that's the lead, is that.

• 46:55Speaker 04

  So, you know, I, you know, they say, well,

• 47:01Speaker 04

  look, I just feel like if you're not gonna have quality be your bar, then what are you doing? You're not helping anybody. You're not helping the audience, you're not helping the filmmaker by just letting films in that check boxes and you think you're helping people and teaching people and all this.

• 47:16Bill Maher?

  Hollywood.

• 47:17Speaker 04

  But it can be, and that's also not mutually exclusive. You can have something that like teaches people something, but make it excellent and make it entertaining. And we've had that for years. There's room for that in the film selection each year, but it can't be, it can't be completely that. Either super violent films or teachable moments where you're jamming things down people's throats and nothing else. That's not, that's not how you stay in business.

• 47:45Bill Maher?

  Well, they used to know how to make a movie about something and also make it entertaining, like China Syndrome, or, you know.

• 47:52Speaker 04

  Absolutely. There's so many of them.

• 47:54Bill Maher?

  They're just, they just wanna preach now. The Oscars used to be a show that was saying, look at us. These are our products this year, and look at how good we are as filmmakers. And now the show is all about, look at what good people we are.

• 48:13Bill Maher?

  You know, and it's just whoever wins the award is always gonna be the person who played a part that was about a cause. It's not about the performance. It's about, you know, well, you played a guy with AIDS. You know, voting's over. And it's, you know, it's important. Hollywood does a great job at bringing issues to the public's attention that do need attention. I give them all the credit in the world.

• 48:39Speaker 04

  But it still has to be good.

• 48:41Bill Maher?

  Right. And when it piques over into lecturing.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:45Bill Maher?

  I just don't need it. I don't want it. And it's not your place to do it. And it's boring. You're boring me.

• 48:50Speaker 04

  And I think this relationship with the audience has been, has been really crushed.

• 48:56Bill Maher?

  Who?

• 48:57Speaker 04

  That filmmakers, the studios, filmmakers, streamers, whatever, their relationship with the audience has been really fucked up. Because, for two reasons. What you were just saying, you know, putting out these didactic films.

• 49:10Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 49:11Speaker 04

  And then, and, and sequel after sequel after sequel after sequel.

• 49:15Bill Maher?

  Right, it's either.

• 49:16Speaker 04

  And reboot. And also putting films in theaters, training them to just watch it online, where it's just like sort of this online supermarket, you know, video supermarket, not leaving films in theaters long enough. I mean, when you said earlier, like, there's been a lot of success in, you know, success in Hollywood in the years so far. We're talking about box office. We're not talking about Netflix ratings, right? We're talking about box office, and yet they're like sort of allergic to leaving things in the box office long enough to even make any money. I don't know. There's so, there's so many reasons why.

• 49:52Bill Maher?

  I mean, that's a little weeds for me, like how much you're gonna leave in the theater. But the bigger point is so true. The movies are either mindless or trying to mind shape. You know?

• 50:05Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:06Bill Maher?

  They're either trying to shape your mind with the movie. And, look, I'm all for being stimulated, and I'm all for making me think about things. But I like one that leaves the question open.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:17Bill Maher?

  Not, just don't tell me who to hate. You know, stop telling me who to hate. I say the same thing about music. You know, these people who think they need to, like, make the concert about whatever their stripe is, you know?

• 50:31Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, as if everything's a fundraiser.

• 50:34Bill Maher?

  Everything is, exactly. I mean, I'm not for what Macklemore was doing. And I'm also not, I mean, I think his message is horrible. Bruce Springsteen, I agree more with the message. You know, is Trump a corrupt, inept president? Yes. I've said that more than anybody. Still say it every week. I don't need to hear it in a concert. Don't open the concert by telling me who I am supposed to hate.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:00Bill Maher?

  I can handle that on my own.

• 51:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 51:02Bill Maher?

  You are there for escape. Some moron, I said that on my show, and some moron wrote the next week, Bill Maher's such a hypocrite because he's saying celebrities shouldn't comment on politics, but he does. Yeah, that's all I do.

• 51:16Speaker 04

  That's your job.

• 51:17Bill Maher?

  It's my job, it's not my.

• 51:18Speaker 04

  That's your job.

• 51:19Bill Maher?

  Exactly. It's, thank you. Yes, exactly. That's all I do.

• 51:23Speaker 04

  I don't know, did he think that you were like, you just starred in like a big blockbuster film?

• 51:29Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 51:29Speaker 04

  And now you're commenting, now you're, you're switching gears and you're commenting on politics. I mean, you, does he not know how long you've been doing this?

• 51:36Bill Maher?

  It's just, they're so stupid. I'm telling you. Everybody is stupid. They get mad at me for saying that, people, some people, how, maybe, but it's true. What am I, I'm caught between a rock and a hard place. If I don't say it, I'm lying, which I'm not gonna do. And if I say it, I'm mean, 'cause, oh, don't tell people they're stupid. Okay, what should I, how should I couch it? You're anti-Bright.

• 52:01Bill Maher?

  You're giving me dumb.

• 52:03Speaker 04

  Maybe it's, maybe it's something like George Carlin. Remember that joke he had about drivers? And he said, do you ever notice on the road, everyone's driving slower than you, is a fucking idiot? And everyone's driving faster than you, is a fucking maniac. And maybe that's, maybe that's how we gauge intelligence, too. I don't know.

• 52:22Bill Maher?

  He was amazing.

• 52:24Speaker 04

  What's been, like, I'm, like I said, I'm so grateful that you do this and have been doing this for so long and, and so consistently, and how, how are you? How are you feeling about things? How are you, how are you, how are you feeling about where things are going?

• 52:43Bill Maher?

  Well, my life is different from what I feel about the country. And I very often am busting people on at least not recognizing the cognitive dissonance between the country and your life. I've said this before, people come up to me often at restaurants, nice restaurants where rich people go. Places where you go, you Hollywood phony. And, you know, they say, some version of, or very often exactly say, Bill, what are we gonna do? And I know what they mean. They mean, Trump is so awful, what are we gonna do? And I always say, go back to the table and finish your thousand-dollar dinner for three people, you fucking phony. Because, like, your life is great.

• 53:27Bill Maher?

  Your life has not been actually affected by Donald Trump at all. That's not to say Donald Trump is not a threat in the many ways he has always been, but is way less so now. He's a lame duck now. But just, just recognize the reality of that. Your life didn't end, I mean, I was more alarmed about Donald Trump 10 years ago than I was now. He hadn't been president yet, and I already was recognizing the fact that he doesn't concede elections. I was the first one to say, this is not going away, and it is going to be a giant problem. You know, folks, everybody thinks they know what happens next. Good news, you can now put money on it. Kalshi is America's number one prediction market.

• 54:11Bill Maher?

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• 54:52Bill Maher?

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• 55:09Speaker 05

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• 55:26Bill Maher?

  That this guy does not recognize losing elections.

• 55:30Speaker 04

  So much so that he ran again.

• 55:32Bill Maher?

  There's only two outcomes with him. Either we win, or you cheated. And that cannot stand. I said it to his vice president on my show. I said, this shit has to stop, like he's gonna do anything about it. Of course, then he has his own bullshit. But, so, that's where I am. I recognize the threat to the country from the right and from the left, from the people who want communism and think the heroes in the Middle East are Hamas. Yes, I worry about them just as much, but my life's fucking awesome.

• 56:08Speaker 04

  Good.

• 56:10Bill Maher?

  And I'm not gonna pretend it's not, or feel guilty that it is.

• 56:16Speaker 04

  Right.

• 56:17Bill Maher?

  Because there's no reason I should.

• 56:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:19Bill Maher?

  You know, I recognize I have had some advantages other people didn't. Some on the left would always like go immediately to race. Yes, that's part of it. In 1980, when I was doing comedy clubs, my second year in comedy, could I have gotten a job at the, you know, Philadelphia Comedy Club? Because I was white and some other comic was black? That possible? And, you know, but like, that kind of shit, first of all, mostly straightened itself out. I think even then, they were probably hiring the funnier one. But yes, that could have happened. Okay, are we gonna obsess on that?

• 57:01Bill Maher?

  Life is a, it's a complex mixture of advantages and disadvantages. I've had, I think a much more significant advantage I had in my life was a stable family. I grew up in an era where mom and dad stayed together. I never worried that they didn't love each other. I didn't think they were gonna split the family apart. Kids today don't have that, mostly. Families are broken, and it affects the kids. I didn't have drugs in high school. Thank God I had them in college. But that's the appropriate time to be introduced to them. So I had a stability that is much more an effect of my life than race stuff.

• 57:43Bill Maher?

  Even though it is an advantage to be white if you were born in 1956, as I was.

• 57:47Speaker 04

  What are you gonna do? You know, really, people can, people can take it up with God. I mean, you got dropped into this bag. What are you supposed to do? You made the best of the bag you were dropped into.

• 57:56Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 57:57Speaker 04

  And that's it. End of story. What are you supposed to do?

• 57:59Bill Maher?

  And endured lots of pain in my own life.

• 58:02Speaker 04

  What are you supposed to do?

• 58:02Bill Maher?

  Yeah, no.

• 58:03Speaker 04

  This is what you were dealt. And this is the track you were put on?

• 58:06Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 04

  And you did well.

• 58:08Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 58:08Speaker 04

  And you, I mean, not did well, you did well, but you also, you were faithful to your gift. You were, you didn't self-sabotage. You fucking made it happen.

• 58:19Bill Maher?

  You know, I got the Mark Twain Award this year, right?

• 58:22Speaker 04

  Man, dude, come on.

• 58:23Bill Maher?

  That's, that's for, that's for, I mean, they don't always like stick to Mark Twain, but this year, you know, people did make the point, and it's true. Mark Twain was a guy who like, didn't ever pull the punch. Talked about both sides, you know? I mean, it was. Not, I'm not saying this in a braggy way, just like in a absolute what the guy was kind of way. It was a more appropriate this year than a lot of years when people were brilliant comedians, but weren't sort of in his tradition. I am in his tradition.

• 59:02Speaker 04

  Oh, uh huh.

• 59:03Bill Maher?

  You know, I do never pull a punch, you know? And that's what people like or hate about me, because when you, when you, when you don't, people get punched. Not in a, I don't think I ever do it in a mean way. These, the kids today talk in a way, we never talked about each other. I mean, when you listen to them, it's just very routine to be, like Hasan Piker, ever heard the kind of stuff that this guy says?

• 59:27Speaker 04

  He seems like a-

• 59:28Bill Maher?

  Like, America's a dogshit country and, you know.

• 59:31Speaker 04

  He just, I, I, I-

• 59:32Bill Maher?

  It's just amazing, but that's how they talk.

• 59:34Speaker 04

  I wonder what, you know, I, I don't, I don't know what his upbringing was, but he just seems like, he just seems so sad to me, like, like-

• 59:44Bill Maher?

  So angry about your privileged life.

• 59:46Speaker 04

  But he can't, it just, he just, he has all the behavior of somebody who, um, nobody pays enough attention to.

• 59:57Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 59:57Speaker 04

  And, and it's, and it's, it feels, it seems like it is so much his spine of existence that he cannot go one minute without saying something that he hopes will make people turn to him.

• 1:00:14Bill Maher?

  Yeah, well-

• 1:00:14Speaker 04

  It's, I, it's, I, I just think it's, it's-

• 1:00:19Bill Maher?

  A lot of it is-

• 1:00:20Speaker 04

  Very sad.

• 1:00:20Bill Maher?

  Clicks, is they're addicted, they're addicted to like-

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  And that's part of it.

• 1:00:25Bill Maher?

  Right, addicted to saying something that's very vitriolic and, and, and incit of and will start, you know, people angry and-

• 1:00:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Bill Maher?

  You know, I mean, for people who complain a lot about what a shitty country this is, you know what? America isn't something that just happened to us, it is us. You don't want to be a shitty country, stop being shitty people.

• 1:00:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, what are you contributing to it? What are you?

• 1:00:50Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:00:51Speaker 04

  I mean, the whole-

• 1:00:51Bill Maher?

  What are you solving?

• 1:00:52Speaker 04

  The JFK, you know, what are you doing for, you know, Junior, what, or not Junior, what are you doing for, you know, ask now what the country's doing for you, what are you doing for a country? I mean, it's really, it's really one of the, I mean, I'm, I'm the one millionth person to say this, like, it's one of the greatest quotes that was ever said, because you can, you could say that about anything, you'll walk into a party and go, the party fucking sucks, like, what'd you bring to it?

• 1:01:14Bill Maher?

  I guarantee ninety-five percent of people under twenty-five don't know the quote.

• 1:01:20Speaker 04

  Oh.

• 1:01:20Bill Maher?

  Have no idea when Kennedy was president.

• 1:01:22Speaker 04

  Okay, well, for anybody is-

• 1:01:24Bill Maher?

  If they did, if they did hear it, they would stick their nose in the air at hearing it, because America, don't you know, haven't you listened to Hasan Piker? America is the worst country ever, it's a dogshit country.

• 1:01:38Speaker 04

  Well, that's like saying, that's like saying your own family-

• 1:01:40Bill Maher?

  The DSA.

• 1:01:41Speaker 04

  That's like saying yourself, like, you are the worst person that's ever existed, I mean-

• 1:01:45Bill Maher?

  They're close, but like the DSA, they're, it's on their website, I mean, they said officially, "The United States has never been a force for liberation and never will be." Really? Tell that to the people in the streets of Paris in nineteen forty-four.

• 1:02:02Speaker 04

  It's just silly nonsense.

• 1:02:03Bill Maher?

  Or all over the world.

• 1:02:04Speaker 04

  All over the world.

• 1:02:05Bill Maher?

  You know, including Muslim countries that we bombed, not to bomb Muslims, Kosovo, we bombed to liberate them, but they don't look at little details like that.

• 1:02:15Speaker 04

  They just say nonsense. I feel like, like, it's like, uh, unfortunately, it, like a child, they're gonna say something that is contrary to whatever you're saying, like if, particularly Trump, if Trump says, uh, "Ice cream is a wonderful confectionery treat", they will say, "Ice cream is horrible for you, it's awful."

• 1:02:37Bill Maher?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:38Speaker 04

  Or I, or if he says, you know, "It's very pleasant if people are able to spend the day at the beach, on Fourth of July", I mean, we've seen that, "The Fourth of July is sinful, nobody should ever have anything to do with it, and nobody should be at the beach." And this is like what a child does, because they don't know where they stand, and, and frankly, it's, when you have pre-teens and teenagers, but really, pre-teens, when they're trying to, and this is important for them, to break away from mommy and daddy, to be more of an individual, and sometimes when they don't know what that is at all, they will just simply be, have a contrary point of view, like, "Mom likes jazz, then I hate jazz", you know, you're gonna be contrary, just so you, it's like for your starter kit of, "Who are you?"

• 1:03:22Speaker 04

  And I feel like whoever's doing that now, you know, not just in politics, but just like everybody in the streets, you've got your starter kit, now build on that, who are you? And I think for a lot of people, they don't wanna let go of this, you know, adhering to the ten tenets of the, of the world culture and everything, because they're terrified of going back to twenty fifteen, before Trump, when they were just Judy, who had this normal job.

• 1:03:52Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:03:52Speaker 04

  And, you know, had a boyfriend who hadn't, hadn't asked her to marry yet, and mom and dad are asking you about if you're gonna have children or not, and when the woke thing started, or, you know, BLM started a little bit there, which had a good foundation and things, by the way.

• 1:04:07Bill Maher?

  It's all part of this.

• 1:04:07Speaker 04

  And then, and then COVID, they could say, "Mom, Dad", okay, well, with Trump, they said, "I'm, there's more important things than whether or not I'm gonna have a child, I'm fighting for democracy", and then twenty twenty, and they go like, "Honey, what are you gonna do with this?" "Mom, Dad, people are dying, how can you be asking me about when I'm gonna have children?" And so, this, and then when Trump was elected the second time, it seemed to me that there was a group of people, like, a lot of these people who had been up in arms, you know, and by the, you know, I had been, you know, I, I had been definitely upset about certain things, and I was like, "Wow, this is not sustainable, what am I, how am I my..."

• 1:04:43Speaker 04

  But they, they, they, I think when he was elected the second time, so, you know, no, we're not in two thousand sixteen, we're in twenty twenty-

• 1:04:54Bill Maher?

  Six, oh, twenty-

• 1:04:55Speaker 04

  Twenty twenty six.

• 1:04:57Bill Maher?

  Twenty, twenty was re-elected.

• 1:04:57Speaker 04

  Sorry, sorry, twenty-

• 1:04:58Bill Maher?

  Twenty-one, he took-

• 1:04:59Speaker 04

  Twenty twenty-four.

• 1:05:00Bill Maher?

  Twenty twenty-four, right.

• 1:05:01Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:05:01Bill Maher?

  That was by-

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  So, twenty twenty-four, I think a lot of these people went, they finally realized, "This is not sustainable, I gotta get back to work and do my own life", "Fine, I, you know, these people are saying I don't like Trump, but he's gonna be here another four years, just let, leave it be", but there was a collection of people who went, "Over my dead fucking body",

• 1:05:18Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:05:18Speaker 04

  Because then that means I gotta go back to me, two thousand fifteen, I'm gonna double down, and I think that's a result we're seeing now, doubling down on, "I am not going back to my life, no fucking way", this is, "I, I must make this be true", and when he's done, and we have someone else as president, like, what are those people gonna do?

• 1:05:42Bill Maher?

  I mean, first of all, that's such a brilliant analogy and analysis, really.

• 1:05:48Speaker 04

  That means a lot to me, coming from you.

• 1:05:50Bill Maher?

  It really is, um, and then I wanna ask you about your own kids.

• 1:05:54Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:05:54Bill Maher?

  After this, because you brought that into it, which is so true, I mean-

• 1:05:57Speaker 04

  Oh, are we, is this like, is this like a trial? Where I've introduced a word and now it's fair game?

• 1:06:02Bill Maher?

  Well, it is fair game.

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:06:04Bill Maher?

  Uh, I mean, there's no game here, uh, you know, but, you know, when you were characterized them as like, you know, "Oh, Mom, Dad", that rings so true to me, and I never have, have had kids, so it's not my-

• 1:06:16Speaker 04

  But you were a child at one point.

• 1:06:18Bill Maher?

  Well, I just see what's going on.

• 1:06:19Speaker 04

  Or no, you say you felt like an adult from the beginning.

• 1:06:22Bill Maher?

  I did, and that's why I never had kids, I never liked them, but I hear from all my adult friends, and I see it portrayed on TV and movies, this is exactly what I hear from my friends who have kids, who are, you know-

• 1:06:33Speaker 04

  Pushing, pushing the envelope.

• 1:06:35Bill Maher?

  Always like, "How can we do that, because this Gaza's going on, like, shut the fuck up", "Just live your life as a decent human being", "What happened to, just because all your solutions, you're doing nothing, what are you actually doing? Nothing", "You're making a land acknowledgement", "Did one Indian ever get one inch of land back from the land acknowledgement? No", "It's just you yammering about how the Chamash people should really be here", "But they're not, it's a pizza hut, and you don't wanna get rid of it any more than they do", "It's just crazy",

• 1:07:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:11Bill Maher?

  "And it's just hypocritical, and it's a performative", I mean, it's true, all, all the things-

• 1:07:16Speaker 04

  It is, I think they're trying to ensure that that membership card stays, stays, uh-

• 1:07:20Bill Maher?

  You ever see those lawn signs people have?

• 1:07:23Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:07:24Bill Maher?

  You know, "In this house, we believe",

• 1:07:26Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:07:26Bill Maher?

  That's, that's their whole raison d'etre, is to be the lawn sign, it's moral superiority. "In this house, we believe there are no illegals on stolen land", "Okay, but you're not giving your house back, are you?", "In this house, we believe all love is, is..." Of course, we all believe that, nobody, even the Republicans aren't against gay marriage now, you know, you're just posturing, you're not doing fucking anything.

• 1:07:54Speaker 04

  I think it's just signaling to other members.

• 1:07:56Bill Maher?

  Signaling, exactly.

• 1:07:57Speaker 04

  Other members in the club, like, I'm still, I'm, "Don't kick me out",

• 1:08:02Bill Maher?

  I'm an ally.

• 1:08:02Speaker 04

  "I'm still part of this, even though I'm driving a car that isn't quite on our list, don't kick me out, because look at my lawn sign", I think it's a constant, I think it's, they're terrified of not being part of this group that they, which by the way, would roll them over for very little.

• 1:08:19Bill Maher?

  Well, I always call them liberals in theory, like in life.

• 1:08:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't, I, I wish there was another name for it, because I don't find this to be liberal at all.

• 1:08:28Bill Maher?

  They're still not over slavery, and yet they treat their assistants like twenty-four-seven slaves, because they're liberals in theory, they're okay with slavery as it, as it pertains to their assistant, but they're very upset about the institution that ended in eighteen sixty-five.

• 1:08:48Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think, um, I don't know, I, I, I think it's better to deal with what we've got now versus-

• 1:08:58Speaker 04

  Things that happened, and there's a list of them.

• 1:09:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I mean, it's a.

• 1:09:01Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm not, I just, I, I, you know, as, I'll just speak as a woman. I'm not, I'm not ruminating every day that I once didn't, that women, not me, sorry. I, I misspoke. I, I almost said that I once didn't have the vote. That was never true.

• 1:09:18Bill Maher?

  My mother didn't.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:09:20Bill Maher?

  My mother was born the year before women got the vote. My mother, not some ancient ancestor. My mother, nineteen nineteen.

• 1:09:29Speaker 04

  And women once couldn't own property, and women once couldn't have their own bank accounts. And all of this stuff, for me now, I'm like thankful to the men and, men and women.

• 1:09:43Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:09:44Speaker 04

  Men and women.

• 1:09:45Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  And I want to talk about that, too.

• 1:09:46Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 1:09:47Speaker 04

  Men and women that changed all of that.

• 1:09:49Bill Maher?

  Yep.

• 1:09:50Speaker 04

  And I stepped into, when I was born, into a world where, well, I think the bank account thing was still in effect, but as an, as an adult, I was, there was nothing, I can do anything.

• 1:10:02Bill Maher?

  You can do anything.

• 1:10:03Speaker 04

  There's nothing that holds me back. The way I like to do my life is I see that there's an advantage to every situation I have, whether it's rejection, or an ailment, or having some money, whatever it is. I'm not looking at any, any of it saying, this is bad, this is good. I'm saying, this is all interesting. And if you're gonna be resentful, they don't even know you're being resentful to them. It's just gonna like, that's just a way for you to like pour acid on your insides and just eat you up.

• 1:10:40Bill Maher?

  It'd be good, it'd be good having like a Dr. Phil show.

• 1:10:43Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm game.

• 1:10:46Bill Maher?

  I'm, I'm very good at coming up with, like, I, I should be a manager.

• 1:10:50Speaker 04

  Set it up, do it under, do it under your umbrella. You be the Oprah.

• 1:10:53Bill Maher?

  I should be a manager. I really should. I come up with good ideas for people.

• 1:10:56Speaker 04

  Come on, Bill, you be the Oprah.

• 1:10:57Bill Maher?

  No, really.

• 1:10:58Speaker 04

  And you put it under your umbrella of shows.

• 1:11:00Bill Maher?

  I mean, I try to do this too, but you know, I mean, the kids just turn off to anybody who's not their age, which is like the worst thing you can do, because the kids your age are as stupid as you are. But if they would listen to older people, like every society has learned to do, like where, where is the wisdom, the people who've been down the path before, I mean, this is like the perfect advice that they need, what you just said. The perfect advice.

• 1:11:23Speaker 04

  But I think, I think if, I think the difference is.

• 1:11:26Bill Maher?

  That's not how they think. It's a victim culture.

• 1:11:28Speaker 04

  Because, wait.

• 1:11:30Bill Maher?

  There is currency in victimhood.

• 1:11:31Speaker 04

  And I'll tell you why. Okay, so there's something called memetic desire, that a sociologist named Gerard, anyway, I forget his name, apologies. And he says that we, his theory is when we come into the world, we don't really want anything. We only want to survive.

• 1:11:50Bill Maher?

  We want milk.

• 1:11:51Speaker 04

  Right. So that's survival, right? We want to survive. Like the human, you know, at the core level, right?

• 1:11:57Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:58Speaker 04

  And then we look around. And we look around at what other people want. And we then decide we were gonna mimic them and want what they want. Okay, so imagine children, they're growing up, they're looking at, you know, when I was a kid, you looked around at what, what did adults value? They valued people who were doctors and lawyers and learned musicians and, you know, scholars and all this, and you're like, oh, well, I want to mimic that. I want to desire that too. I'm gonna, I want to be like that. I want to be these things that the adults around me admire. Then we fast forward to now. The

• 1:12:43Speaker 04

  kids now, what have they, what's been modeled for them? What have they, what are they, what desire are they gonna mimic? Well, we've certainly lifted up the wealthiest people on the planet as, as the ones to follow, as the ones to listen to about everything. And I'm, I know we're in disagreement about, like, I don't, I don't, anyway, not to get into the AI guys again.

• 1:13:06Bill Maher?

  Wealthy people are not worthy of worshiping just because they're wealthy, but very often they are wealthy because they are, not often, but sometimes, like Musk, are wealthy because they did something extraordinary.

• 1:13:19Speaker 04

  Okay, now, yeah, Musk, I have to take out of it, because I think he's done some really incredible things for society.

• 1:13:24Bill Maher?

  He has, it's undeniable.

• 1:13:25Speaker 04

  Okay. But if we are looking at worshiping, you know, in quotes, worshiping people who have money, and then also, when social media came on the scene, you know, what, twenty, seventeen years ago, we started quantifying, instead of qualifying value, we started quantifying, how many followers did you have? How many likes did you get? How many reposts?

• 1:13:51Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:51Speaker 04

  And that, and so, you're looking at that, and now that is, now the two are combined, right? If you get a lot of clicks and do a lot of, for whatever reason, Asam Piker, like you said, OnlyFans, whatever, it does, actually, it's not, it's not theoretically connected, it does result in you being able to make a living. If you can get a lot of clicks.

• 1:14:15Bill Maher?

  Of course.

• 1:14:15Speaker 04

  From X, from.

• 1:14:17Bill Maher?

  OnlyFans.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  From OnlyFans, from YouTube, from Facebook. Or no, maybe not Facebook, Instagram.

• 1:14:25Bill Maher?

  Crazy money.

• 1:14:26Speaker 04

  They all have these programs, so, which I'm not saying are bad or good, that people are making money off of this, but, so now you have these kids, and so when they say, what do you want to be when you grow up? It's like, well, I wanna, I don't think, they didn't come into the world thinking, I want to be an influencer, but they look around at what is being, you know, what is being honored, what is with money, with attention, and they go, well, I guess I'll be that.

• 1:14:49Bill Maher?

  There's no part of the culture that tries to encourage, that I can see, kids to do anything that we would consider one of the traditional esteemed professions. You were mentioning, we saw the adults wanting to be doctors and lawyers. I mean, I've said this before, I'm gonna keep saying it until somebody writes about it, but you can scroll endlessly through Pornhub and never see the same girl twice. When I was a kid, not a kid, when I was a young adult, there was like, you know, eight porn stars in the world. Jenna Jameson and, I don't know, seven other people. And now, I'm telling you, it's like everybody.

• 1:15:33Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:15:33Bill Maher?

  It's, it's.

• 1:15:35Speaker 04

  Well, I think we did young women and men a disservice to, to, to make all this like sex positive, sex workers are, you know, this is, this is a valid, respectable, I'm, you know.

• 1:15:54Bill Maher?

  Did you see Enora?

• 1:15:56Speaker 04

  Huh?

• 1:15:56Bill Maher?

  Enora, won the Oscar last year.

• 1:15:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, I mean, actually, like, I like Sean Baker a lot.

• 1:16:02Bill Maher?

  I do too.

• 1:16:02Speaker 04

  And he's done a lot for film and, and for, I had this film festival. And, and I know, I know, I know.

• 1:16:09Bill Maher?

  I love it.

• 1:16:09Speaker 04

  But I'm saying, and there, and there's always been that area in film where, you know, the, the soft spot for the sex worker in a film and everything, you know, like the, the prostitute with a heart and all of this sort of thing.

• 1:16:22Bill Maher?

  Absolutely.

• 1:16:22Speaker 04

  But I'm saying, in society, this is, that's a movie, in society, to, to present to young women that this is a viable, this is a viable.

• 1:16:33Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:16:34Speaker 04

  Line of work to get into. Financially, it is viable, but I'm saying like, that is, that is not gonna go well. You, I don't think, you're still a human being.

• 1:16:45Bill Maher?

  To be fair to him.

• 1:16:46Speaker 04

  You're not gonna come out unscarred from doing that for a living for a while.

• 1:16:50Bill Maher?

  It's, the, the line has been so blurred, like Florida Project, one of my favorites of his. She's, I mean, is she a sex worker? Yeah, she's turning tricks while her kid is sleeping in the other room in the bathroom of the motel.

• 1:17:04Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:17:05Bill Maher?

  Okay, that's a, that's a sex worker, but, you know, she's not like a hardcore, determined prostitute. She's just trying to get the money for, pay that week's, you know, it's just.

• 1:17:17Speaker 04

  I don't know, I think.

• 1:17:18Bill Maher?

  It's, it's, it's, the prostitution part of it is a small part of a portrait of desperation in America that exists a lot. And also, I mean, why that, apropos to our earlier debate about like, don't lecture me, but just give me a great choice in a movie, like, that's a movie about a mother who is like cover of Bad Moms magazine. And yet, when the child services come to take the kid away, like, what would I vote for? No. I know the mom's really imperfect, but this kid loves the mom. The mom is, the kid's too much her friend as opposed to her mother, but doesn't like, it's not like she doesn't love the kid. She

• 1:18:02Bill Maher?

  is a terrible mother, but she is the mother, and she does really love the kid, and the kid really loves her. The kid might get killed crossing the highway, but if she doesn't, she's really having a good time, and she really doesn't want to go to child services. So it's a, it's a brilliant moral choice that this director leaves you with. That's what a great movie is to me.

• 1:18:25Speaker 04

  And he, and he is a great filmmaker. There are women and men who have made, who made situations great for me that I was, was born into, right? The year I was born, you know, like getting women the vote and we could own property and all this sort of thing, right?

• 1:18:43Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:18:44Speaker 04

  And I included men because

• 1:18:47Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:18:49Speaker 04

  The

• 1:18:50Bill Maher?

  They made it happen.

• 1:18:51Speaker 04

  I am so grateful to all the men who have done anything ever in the world. That's beneficial to us and this crushing of men, particularly young men, that's happened over the last, I don't know, 15 years, I think is is a horrible, horrible, shameful thing.

• 1:19:14Bill Maher?

  I mean, you said it earlier about the left and how they kind of only believe one thing and then they stop thinking. Yeah, I mean, was the women's suffrage movement started by women and carried through by women? Yes, it was. Carrie-Anne Sheen and other people, Susan B. Anthony, that's where it started and they get a lot of credit. But it never would have happened because there was no women in government unless men did it too. Did, you know, slavery was horrible, but also it was Lincoln and white men who stopped it. Both things are true.

• 1:19:47Speaker 04

  Both things are true.

• 1:19:47Bill Maher?

  Again, can't you just fucking people?

• 1:19:50Speaker 04

  It's all, yeah, it's all. Yeah, I think just basically people are scared, but I, but I, and so they, they adhere to these things because they, they don't know what else to do. But I, I think now we're getting into like, um, I think we're getting beyond the, oh, I'm scared, so I'm gonna, I have to use pronouns all the time or whatever, whatever somebody's thing is. But I think we've gone past that now and now we're in a like a, a state of this commitment to destruction. And that, like the whole, like the DSA, here's what we want to do, want to get rid of the police. Um, okay, have you thought that through? I want to get rid of the jails. Have you thought that through? Want to get rid of private property? Okay, hold on. And this list that they have published.

• 1:20:35Bill Maher?

  Yes.

• 1:20:35Speaker 04

  And I'm just like, okay, now

• 1:20:39Speaker 04

  I have a line in the sand. I have a fucking line in the sand.

• 1:20:42Bill Maher?

  That's why I said.

• 1:20:43Speaker 04

  And I'm not, this is not about politics, this is about, and I was saying to the guys earlier, like, to me, being an American is,

• 1:20:52Speaker 04

  I am free to pursue the kind of life I want and to, uh, uh, do whatever I want. So long as what I'm doing doesn't impinge on somebody else's ability to do the same. Now, the stuff they're talking about impinges on my ability.

• 1:21:06Bill Maher?

  Correct.

• 1:21:06Speaker 04

  And that, this, that's, this is not conducive to uh, an American society.

• 1:21:12Bill Maher?

  That's why I told the Vice President, my vote is in play. And then, of course, within 24 hours, they wrote, Bill Maher's a Republican. I never said that.

• 1:21:22Speaker 04

  I'm, I'm nothing.

• 1:21:23Bill Maher?

  I said, I said, my vote is in play. If you are really gonna pursue this communist, and it's again, not socialist, it's communist, taking over the means of production, taking over, and then they will list, you can read it, it's in writing.

• 1:21:39Speaker 04

  It's, yeah, no interpretation.

• 1:21:41Bill Maher?

  Their key industries, it's all the key, that's what communism is. When the government takes over all key industries. And again, I'm not against a certain degree of socialism, a certain degree of socialism is appropriate. I do not think the prisons should be in private hands. I do think that.

• 1:21:59Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, that would probably not be good.

• 1:22:01Bill Maher?

  You know, like some corporations shouldn't be trusted with certain things. Um, but not everything. You're gonna ruin society and of course, these are the people complaining about how terrible capitalism is. Sitting there, ordering their food from their phone and having it brought to their door. You get your food from your phone. Somebody just leaves it and you go out and get your food, you fucking assholes. Your life is so fucking good and you hate it. You hate it. Dogshit America.

• 1:22:36Speaker 04

  I know.

• 1:22:37Bill Maher?

  Dogshit America.

• 1:22:38Speaker 04

  And here's what I want to know.

• 1:22:38Bill Maher?

  Oh, yeah, you forgot the fries.

• 1:22:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. Bill, have you ever had an answer to this question? What's the end game? Let's say they get whoever, you know, they, and again, I'm not gonna use the word liberal, I'm just saying like these fucking insane people. Let's say you get everything you wanted. Let's say everything on that list, you get the whole thing, the whole thing. I mean, first of all, I, I can tell you for sure, anybody could tell you, you haven't thought this through.

• 1:23:05Bill Maher?

  It's cloud cuckoo land.

• 1:23:07Speaker 04

  But like, what, what, what then?

• 1:23:09Bill Maher?

  The DSA website says.

• 1:23:10Speaker 04

  You've got the purge in real life because you have no jails and no, no, everybody better have a gun.

• 1:23:16Bill Maher?

  The same exact thing.

• 1:23:17Speaker 04

  Don't touch the Second Amendment, everybody needs a gun. If you're gonna do, if you're gonna have that, no, no police and no jails.

• 1:23:24Bill Maher?

  It's the purge every day.

• 1:23:25Speaker 04

  And, and every, and, but everything is, I mean, look, none of it makes sense. Everything is free and you're like, what, somebody's, who's paying for that? Okay, but let's say they get all these things. Now what? Now what? Now, now you have to, now what do you, how are you gonna manage this? What?

• 1:23:45Bill Maher?

  But again, as I said at the beginning, it's like you expect me to bow down to just one side of it, the left side of it. I'm the bad person because I'm questioning things.

• 1:23:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Bill Maher?

  That we're gonna abolish the police, that everything is gonna be free. I mean, their website literally says, you know, imagine this world where you don't have to worry about rent, you don't have to worry about transportation.

• 1:24:09Speaker 04

  If you're a child.

• 1:24:10Bill Maher?

  Yeah, I can.

• 1:24:12Speaker 04

  But you know, but somebody's, something, you want to make sure there are enough parents. Make sure there are enough parents.

• 1:24:17Bill Maher?

  But you're the good people, you're the smart people, you're the people who shouldn't be questioned?

• 1:24:22Speaker 04

  I got the, I got that when I started questioning, uh, Newsom. And I said, I said, oh, we've had, I think it was $30 billion? Just poof, out the window through unemployment, uh, unemployment cards during 2020. During 2020 through 2023. $30 billion. And I know for a fact from somebody who worked in the government that they were told just, we're not gonna worry about the fraud now, just get the money out. And I started saying, well, whoa, uh, uh, $30 billion may sound like this, like crazy big number, but you know, just tell me, you know, anybody, what did you pay in taxes this year? Was it $100,000? Was it $50,000? Was it a million dollars?

• 1:25:08Speaker 04

  Okay, what if I just take that money from you that I'm sure you could have used?

• 1:25:11Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:25:12Speaker 04

  And I'm just gonna throw it in the toilet and I'm never gonna pull it out of the pipes. That's it. How does that feel? Because that's what he did.

• 1:25:20Bill Maher?

  But here's the thing about Newsom.

• 1:25:22Speaker 04

  And then people go like, oh, you sound like a Trumper. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait. I'm like, when you have a housekeeper or a mechanic or anybody you've hired, because we, we pay for these people's salaries and they don't do a good job, do you just go, that's okay? I want to make sure that, you know, they, they know that I'm on board with everything and so I'm not gonna question this.

• 1:25:42Bill Maher?

  And I lie.

• 1:25:43Speaker 04

  And then you, you don't say like, hey, man, what, what's, where's, where's my fan belt?

• 1:25:47Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:25:48Speaker 04

  Like, uh, I can't drive now and they go, and then what do you think he's gonna say like, oh, what are you saying? I'm not, are you, are you, uh, are you, are you an un-mechanic? Are you a non-mechanic or whatever? I don't know what you'd say. I don't know what the word would be.

• 1:26:04Bill Maher?

  That is priceless.

• 1:26:05Speaker 04

  But no, but you always, you, you say like, no, this is ridiculous, I'm never bringing my car back to you again. And that's how I feel about some of these politicians.

• 1:26:12Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:26:12Speaker 04

  Like, no, I never want you to be, I don't want you to drive a bus I might be on. Because I don't think you're responsible.

• 1:26:18Bill Maher?

  So here, this is the key question.

• 1:26:21Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:26:21Bill Maher?

  I'm really getting to it now.

• 1:26:22Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:26:23Bill Maher?

  I'm serious. So you and I, we're right. We're the smart ones. We, we got our handle on this.

• 1:26:31Speaker 04

  Okay. Yeah.

• 1:26:32Bill Maher?

  These other people are insane. How do we win in Hollywood? Because in Hollywood, they're all against us. Because they're.

• 1:26:40Speaker 04

  No, but see, I haven't found that.

• 1:26:42Bill Maher?

  They're part of the stupid, stupid.

• 1:26:44Speaker 04

  But I haven't found that. I, I've, I mean, last year, I, I worked more last year than I.

• 1:26:50Bill Maher?

  No, I, I mean, just win on the, the, the, uh, court of public opinion in this town.

• 1:26:59Speaker 04

  Uh, no, but I think there's too many. Like I said, I, I don't think these are bad people, I think these are

• 1:27:07Bill Maher?

  Uneducated.

• 1:27:08Speaker 04

  Fearful.

• 1:27:09Bill Maher?

  Okay, yes. Fearful of being ostracized by other people who don't know what the fuck they're talking about.

• 1:27:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, it's a, it's a fearful thing and also fearful of the thousand noisiest people. How do, listen, the, the entertainment business is not, it's, it's done. It's, I mean, yes, there are still things being made.

• 1:27:28Bill Maher?

  Not done.

• 1:27:28Speaker 04

  But generally, well, whatever's being done, this is the content conveyor belt. And, and sometimes you get an outlier that's a really good film, you know, like Backrooms. Uh, Kane Parsons.

• 1:27:40Bill Maher?

  I saw it.

• 1:27:41Speaker 04

  Backrooms, maybe you didn't like it. I thought it was genius.

• 1:27:44Bill Maher?

  I mean, I thought genius.

• 1:27:46Speaker 04

  I think he's a genius.

• 1:27:47Bill Maher?

  That's a strong word.

• 1:27:48Speaker 04

  No, I think he, I think he's a, he's a film prodigy.

• 1:27:51Bill Maher?

  I mean, I really wanted to talk to him, he was gonna be here, but he never has, so like, um, I, I don't know if I should like, uh,

• 1:28:00Bill Maher?

  I mean, I'm, I didn't hate it.

• 1:28:05Bill Maher?

  What was genius about it?

• 1:28:08Speaker 04

  I thought the way that he, uh, first of all, and, and, and like, I gotta like tip my hat to 824 and Jason Blum and everyone who was involved too. The idea that you have a new-

• 1:28:20Bill Maher?

  Sounds like an acceptance speech.

• 1:28:22Speaker 04

  Well, I'm good. Yeah, I'd love to accept something for Kane Parsons. But I think that-

• 1:28:27Bill Maher?

  Also God.

• 1:28:28Speaker 04

  To, to have a new filmmaker come in and do something that is so, um...

• 1:28:37Bill Maher?

  Was it entertaining? I mean, it's a lot of-

• 1:28:40Speaker 04

  I guess I found it to be metaphorical for where we're at right now.

• 1:28:45Bill Maher?

  It is.

• 1:28:46Speaker 04

  With so many things.

• 1:28:46Bill Maher?

  I agree.

• 1:28:47Speaker 04

  And then I went on his website-

• 1:28:49Bill Maher?

  But someone at the price of being entertaining. I mean, if people haven't seen the movie, uh, it, it is a smart movie about an interesting subject.

• 1:28:57Speaker 04

  But it's, I mean, are you a horror fan?

• 1:28:59Bill Maher?

  No.

• 1:29:00Speaker 04

  And neither am I.

• 1:29:01Bill Maher?

  Okay.

• 1:29:01Speaker 04

  And I think horror fans were just like, "Give it to me."

• 1:29:05Bill Maher?

  Oh, really? They didn't like it?

• 1:29:05Speaker 04

  No, no, they did. They were like, "Give it to me, give it to me, give it." So for them, when you say entertaining-

• 1:29:09Bill Maher?

  Because it was a twist on a horror film.

• 1:29:11Speaker 04

  When you say entertaining, like, horror, horror fans found it really entertaining.

• 1:29:15Bill Maher?

  You know what, just, I, I actually honestly feel like it's generational. There's a certain sort of anxiety in the younger generations that they very much related to in that movie that I do not have.

• 1:29:28Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:29:28Bill Maher?

  Like, I mean, if you didn't see the movie, people, I can't, it's very hard to explain, but the guy owns a furniture store and underneath the furniture store is this world that goes on forever. All of Backrooms.

• 1:29:39Speaker 04

  No, I, I get you that-

• 1:29:41Bill Maher?

  And some of them have furniture in it, and it's very meta- It's very metaphorical. It's very, you know what it reminded me of a lot? 2001: A Space Odyssey.

• 1:29:48Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 1:29:49Bill Maher?

  Remember, you'd see the monolith, and now it's like in outer space, and now it's here, and like, like, there's a grandfather clock that, you know-

• 1:29:56Speaker 04

  Especially the last, like, ten minutes of the film.

• 1:29:59Bill Maher?

  It's not literal.

• 1:30:01Speaker 04

  Right. So, but I, I, the fact that he got something that, um, theoretically complex out there, and that it made a lot of money, which means he'll be able to do, make more films. And then I went to his YouTube account and looked at one of his early, like, this is the the second thing he ever posted, or fourth thing he ever posted, was some short he did, I forget the name of it, when he was 14 years old or something. And conceptually, and the manner in which he executed it, I'm telling you, this guy's a film prodigy.

• 1:30:34Bill Maher?

  Oh, he is. I, that's why I wanted him here.

• 1:30:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:30:38Bill Maher?

  Um, I wanna talk to him.

• 1:30:40Speaker 04

  Yeah. Well, check out, check out that, if you do have him in here, check out that one short before you bring him in.

• 1:30:45Bill Maher?

  I will. I mean, again, I think some of it is, uh,

• 1:30:52Bill Maher?

  in the category of, in my generation, I could never get this close to this movie. Because it just does not speak to my-

• 1:31:02Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:31:02Bill Maher?

  No, I mean, I was a free-range child. We got home from school and we just ran out the door and did whatever the fuck we wanted until dinner time.

• 1:31:10Speaker 04

  Same.

• 1:31:11Bill Maher?

  That is not this generation's experience.

• 1:31:14Speaker 04

  I know.

• 1:31:15Bill Maher?

  You know, and so for them to be in this claustrophobic world-

• 1:31:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:20Bill Maher?

  Is very, very close to their reality. So, given that,

• 1:31:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:31:25Bill Maher?

  I mean, I liked the movie as much as I could have.

• 1:31:27Speaker 04

  I hear you, and I totally agree with you, that it was not, uh, in the realm of entertaining, like, "I just wanna go to the movies and just, you know, someone to just show me a good time."

• 1:31:38Bill Maher?

  And that's okay.

• 1:31:38Speaker 04

  So, yeah, and there's room for that. One of the problems with the film industry is that, though there is, there's always been space for films like Backrooms. Um, unfortunately, there's hardly anything, you know, we've got Backrooms, and then we've got this, like, second-screen content, and then we've got, um, you know, uber, like, violent, like, violence porn, like, really violent stuff. And then, and there's, there's room for these kinds of films. But then if you don't have any of the rest of it, you don't have, you don't have the comedies, you don't have the romantic comedies, you don't have the, the, you know, the moving dramas that are uplift, you know, and it's such a cliche word.

• 1:32:23Bill Maher?

  Is there a movie you wanna make that, that you can't get made because they don't get it?

• 1:32:28Speaker 04

  Oh, sure. I've got a satire called Panda Man, a satire on 2020 called Panda Man.

• 1:32:34Bill Maher?

  What do you mean on 2020?

• 1:32:36Speaker 04

  On the year 2020.

• 1:32:37Bill Maher?

  Called?

• 1:32:38Speaker 04

  Panda Man.

• 1:32:39Bill Maher?

  A pandemic?

• 1:32:41Speaker 04

  No, no, no.

• 1:32:41Bill Maher?

  Is that where the pan comes?

• 1:32:43Speaker 04

  No, no, no. Panda Man's reference is something else entirely, but, uh, that was-

• 1:32:47Bill Maher?

  That's the pandemic year.

• 1:32:48Speaker 04

  So funny. But it was, it was, but-

• 1:32:50Bill Maher?

  It's about the pandemic?

• 1:32:51Speaker 04

  No, no.

• 1:32:52Bill Maher?

  No?

• 1:32:52Speaker 04

  And this is a parallel, this is a, uh, something else happened. So it's not about 2020 in our world.

• 1:33:00Bill Maher?

  And why can't you get it made?

• 1:33:02Speaker 04

  Oh, I don't, I, it's just, it's not, it's just not meant to be right now. I don't know. And I've got other ones, uh, I'm not gonna go through all the films, all the scripts I've got, holy shit. But yeah, I've got other ones that I can't get, you know, here's an interesting thing. Yeah, I saw an article that said, you know, "Not enough indie films are being made," like, the buyers are out there, and I haven't read the whole article, just saw the headline. And one of the issues is, and people may not know this, for studio films, I don't know, studio films or streamers, but for indie films, in order to get the funding, you have to have a cast member, or two, or three, that is on the list.

• 1:33:43Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:33:44Speaker 04

  And the list is pretty finite, and getting smaller every day, because we don't make movie stars anymore. We don't make new movie stars anymore. And, and all the, this handful of actors are being offered all the indie films, and they can only do one at a time. So, and then they've got their lives, and maybe they wanna have a kid, or, you know, whatever's going on for them.

• 1:34:04Bill Maher?

  Or do a studio movie.

• 1:34:06Speaker 04

  Or do a studio film.

• 1:34:07Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:08Speaker 04

  Or get an Apple, Apple TV pay- or something, or, or have a T-Mobile ad, or, I mean, whatever, right?

• 1:34:16Speaker 04

  I mean, I don't mean that disparaging to whoever's doing T-Mobile, but just like, you know, there, there, I mean, you, you gotta admit, like, there was a big shift in the last couple of years from, you know, movie stars doing, uh-

• 1:34:28Bill Maher?

  Yeah, when I turn on, when I, when I go to, um, Fandango at Home, which used to be Vudu. Do you have that, streamer?

• 1:34:34Speaker 04

  I can't keep track of it all. The name changes and the-

• 1:34:38Bill Maher?

  Really? You don't have, so you never had that? You never had Vudu? It's just movies?

• 1:34:43Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:34:43Bill Maher?

  I like them because unlike the other streaming devices, they never locked me out and like, make me prove I really am who I've always been.

• 1:34:50Speaker 04

  Oh, boy.

• 1:34:51Bill Maher?

  It's just like, you know what, you wanna watch this movie that was in the theater three, three months ago? Here you go.

• 1:34:58Speaker 04

  Here you go. That's how it used to be, right?

• 1:35:00Bill Maher?

  Yes, success.

• 1:35:01Speaker 04

  Like, you watch HBO or Showtime?

• 1:35:03Bill Maher?

  It's always success on Fandango at Home.

• 1:35:07Speaker 04

  That's great.

• 1:35:08Bill Maher?

  The other ones, it's, it's often, "Fuck you, who are you?"

• 1:35:11Speaker 04

  Who are you?

• 1:35:12Bill Maher?

  Wait a minute, you know me.

• 1:35:13Speaker 04

  Who are you?

• 1:35:14Bill Maher?

  For years.

• 1:35:14Speaker 04

  And I know you pay, but we're gonna show you commercials now.

• 1:35:17Bill Maher?

  Exactly. What do you mean? Really? The password again? Uh, I understand why they're doing it. Anyway, um, but, um, like, I see movies there that I never heard of.

• 1:35:28Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:35:28Bill Maher?

  Sometimes they're quite good, and they're independent kind of movies. Somebody greenlit them. Somebody made them into a real movie. And then I guess they just went, "Well, we don't think it's gonna make money at the theater, so we're just-"

• 1:35:45Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, hardly anything makes it to the theater.

• 1:35:47Bill Maher?

  So why throw good money after bad and promote it? So we're just gonna throw it here on the streaming service.

• 1:35:53Speaker 04

  Also, promotion is really hard.

• 1:35:55Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:35:55Speaker 04

  It used to be so easy.

• 1:35:56Bill Maher?

  And expensive.

• 1:35:57Speaker 04

  It used to be so easy.

• 1:35:59Bill Maher?

  So just sell it to Fandango at Home. Because people watch movies at home anyway.

• 1:36:04Speaker 04

  I actually did. I, I'm, uh, a contributing, um, film editor for Spin Magazine, and, um-

• 1:36:11Bill Maher?

  Bob Gucci on, one of my oldest steers.

• 1:36:13Speaker 04

  Yeah. He's really, I like him so much.

• 1:36:16Bill Maher?

  Who doesn't?

• 1:36:17Speaker 04

  Um, he's great. Um, and, uh, one of the pieces I just did that I, I, uh, it's from the spring issue. They do it quarterly now, so I write for the, the physical magazine. Um, uh, I just, uh, with their permission, put the last springs up there, which is, here's a bunch of movies and, and series you might not have seen. Because it's such a Costco-sized-

• 1:36:43Speaker 04

  Kind of arena to find something you want to do, find something you want to watch. That the ones that are good and they've been there, it's they're hard to find. So there's a list now.

• 1:36:53Bill Maher?

  How can the industry be doing so bad? When they're making so much? There's so much.

• 1:36:59Speaker 04

  Well, let's think about this. Let's think about the financial structure, right? The financial structure for for films for a hundred years or so was, you want to see this movie, you're going to pay, I'll just grab a price, right? Fifteen dollars every time you're going to go see this film. And every time, if you want to see it for fifteen dollars, and I want to see it for fifteen dollars, even if we go together. And even if we want to see it multiple times, let's pay fifteen dollars every time per person. Okay, that's a financial model. And your residuals and all these other things, right? TV series, you got good ratings. Then the advertisers are going to pay more to, you know, per thirty seconds to be on that show.

• 1:37:37Bill Maher?

  Sell it into syndication. Syndication was where all the real money was.

• 1:37:41Speaker 04

  And then you have, yeah, you have backend syndication, all these kinds of, this is our financial structure, right? And it really worked. Then the streamers came along, which are tech companies. And they said, you know what our financial model is? Because we don't have the same financial model as you guys, because we depend on stock prices and investors.

• 1:37:59Bill Maher?

  And they ruined people who didn't talk. I mean, you know, it's just like, this always happened.

• 1:38:04Speaker 04

  But the financial structure did not change from the talkies.

• 1:38:08Bill Maher?

  Well, it has to. Well, sure it did.

• 1:38:10Speaker 04

  But you go to a financial structure like this, where you say to the user, you got fifteen dollars? Pay me, and I will give you access to a thousand movies for a month for your whole household. Now, that is not, you think about that financials compared with what I just mentioned.

• 1:38:29Bill Maher?

  It's crazy.

• 1:38:29Speaker 04

  That's a very different kind of model. That was never going to be profitable for filmmakers.

• 1:38:35Bill Maher?

  My friend who was writing The Golden Girls in the eighties, when we were on our sitcoms on NBC, you said to me once, you know, you used to look at the schedule and see what you're up against. Now you're up against everything that was ever filmed.

• 1:38:49Speaker 04

  That's it.

• 1:38:50Bill Maher?

  You're up against, plus video games.

• 1:38:53Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, plus everything, and social media.

• 1:38:55Bill Maher?

  Plus ketamine.

• 1:38:57Speaker 04

  Everything.

• 1:38:58Bill Maher?

  You're just up against everything.

• 1:38:59Speaker 04

  And that's why marketing is so difficult now, too, because the audience is so scattered.

• 1:39:03Bill Maher?

  I mean, Trump was tweeting shit about me this weekend. And it was like, it's so funny. The things he says, like, you know, Bill Maher, oh, the ratings are so low. It's sad, because I like him. I mean, he really, sad. And like, he even knows what my ratings are. I don't even know what my ratings are.

• 1:39:23Speaker 04

  Are there ratings anymore?

• 1:39:24Bill Maher?

  Exactly my point. Like, even if there were, I wouldn't believe it. Because, first of all, I assume because HBO keeps me on, they're not bad. But also, could you even tell? People watch things on every different format at every different hour of the day. They can see it on YouTube, they can see it pirated, they can see it on HBO. It just, it just doesn't, you know, it's how many people are really seeing something? And you just can't measure that.

• 1:39:53Speaker 04

  And how, and they're seeing, and even the way the streamers like, gauge engagement, gauge engagement, measure engagement. So, I mean, it's changed over the years, right? Sometimes it was like, well, if they just clicked on it. And then it was like, well, if they watch at least a minute.

• 1:40:10Bill Maher?

  Right.

• 1:40:11Speaker 04

  Well, if they watch ten seconds of it. Well, you know, so it's like, I don't know. Did they even watch it? Who knows?

• 1:40:21Bill Maher?

  All right, I've kept you long enough. Thank you.

• 1:40:23Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 1:40:24Bill Maher?

  It's such a pleasure. I'm glad I got to know you.

• 1:40:26Speaker 04

  I'm so glad, too, really.

• 1:40:27Bill Maher?

  The best thing about this podcast is when I get to know somebody who I kind of wanted to know and then, you know, who are you really going to call somebody up? Hey, I don't know you, but I always liked you.

• 1:40:39Speaker 04

  Come on my podcast.

• 1:40:40Bill Maher?

  Dinner, be like, who's this fucking pervert? But if it's a podcast, you know, it's a little like what Sam Harris once said about praying. He said, if you took your hairdryer out and you spoke into it and you told people you were speaking to some sky god, they would call the sane asylum. But if you take away the hairdryer, you're praying.

• 1:41:04Speaker 04

  If it's, if it's an invisible, if it's an invisible god, you're in better shape, right?

• 1:41:11Bill Maher?

  Well, I'm just saying.

• 1:41:11Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm saying like.

• 1:41:12Bill Maher?

  It is an invisible god. I mean, you know, whether you have the hairdryer in front of you, if you think you're communicating. And, you know, I don't, I don't judge. I'm atheist and think it's silly, but I don't judge religious people. Are you religious?

• 1:41:28Speaker 04

  No.

• 1:41:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah, well, I mean, and if you were, I wouldn't love you any less.

• 1:41:32Speaker 04

  I just have, I.

• 1:41:33Bill Maher?

  It's just no, there's no judgment in it with me.

• 1:41:36Speaker 04

  I think religion and spirituality are two different things that are sometimes compatible and oftentimes not. And religion can twist things.

• 1:41:48Bill Maher?

  I don't even know what spirituality is. And I'm not sure anybody who uses the word does either. And that's okay, you know, I get it. It's like this thing that's not what we really know, but it's, it's sort of like wanting to be better than we are. And I feel like I have that innately because I was raised the right way, but.

• 1:42:07Speaker 04

  Well, you know, and I think, I think, I think it's really important that people have some kind of foundation they can count on. And for some people, it is a sense that everything works out. Some, for some people, it's like, well, I had a solid family foundation, so I've got that. For some people, it's God. For some people, it's the universe.

• 1:42:29Bill Maher?

  Numbers.

• 1:42:30Speaker 04

  Numbers, numbers never fail, right? And I think when you have that, whatever that is for somebody, then you're not going to be tossed to and fro when everything gets crazy around you.

• 1:42:41Bill Maher?

  Right, no, it's so true.

• 1:42:42Speaker 04

  So that's why I think it's important for people. But, you know, I mean, whatever people want to do, that's up to them.

• 1:42:48Bill Maher?

  It's exactly what my mother said when I interviewed her for my movie Religulous and said, why, I mean, you're Jewish? Why didn't you ever mention that? I'm thirteen when I'm first hearing this, you know? And she said, well, we didn't think it was important, but you're not Catholic. We were raised Catholic. And she said, I thought it was more important that you have some structure. In other words, it kind of doesn't matter what religion it is, as long as you believe in some bullshit.

• 1:43:24Bill Maher?

  You know, some bullshit that you can count on. And Dad is really kind of insistent that it be Catholicism. You know, his family is, you know, it was, it was not like the thing to do in nineteen fifty-one for a Catholic to marry a Jew to begin with. Not that my mother was very Jewish. She was barely, I mean, never went to temple herself, but that was the family. But it was just, that's the way it was seen. Like, you need a structure. And maybe they were right. Structure is what kids don't have today. Enough structure, I think.

• 1:44:00Speaker 04

  If you look at like, in the physical, right? Like, in nature or, you know, when we construct buildings or something. If you don't, if a tree doesn't have a strong root system, you need to knock it over. If a, if a building has a poor foundation, it's going to fall down. Like, it's, it's just that. It's simple. It's simple.

• 1:44:20Bill Maher?

  Are your kids too woke?

• 1:44:23Speaker 04

  Are they?

• 1:44:23Bill Maher?

  Do you argue with them about wokeness?

• 1:44:27Speaker 04

  I tell you what, no.

• 1:44:30Bill Maher?

  How old?

• 1:44:31Speaker 04

  Twenty-three and twenty-two.

• 1:44:35Bill Maher?

  Oh, that's the age.

• 1:44:36Speaker 04

  Did you see the thing about the nails? If you paint your nails, if you don't paint your nails, you're racist? I'm like, come on, you guys. Do you not have anything? Have you run out? You run out of things? Because this is just stupid.

• 1:44:50Bill Maher?

  It is so stupid. No, and people will say, oh, gosh, you know, they're, they're racist because they're saying what they're saying. But the joke, folks who are judging us, the joke is not about that we think racism is cool. The joke is about we think your reaction to it is over the top, which it is.

• 1:45:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:12Bill Maher?

  There's a big difference there. Once again, we're right.

• 1:45:15Speaker 04

  Well, just like, you're just making stuff up.

• 1:45:18Bill Maher?

  Someday, maybe.

• 1:45:19Speaker 04

  Because a lot of people need.

• 1:45:23Speaker 04

  A lot of people need there to be a problem in order for them to, to.

• 1:45:27Bill Maher?

  They really do.

• 1:45:28Speaker 04

  To maintain their position of being the solution deliver.

• 1:45:33Bill Maher?

  The people with the lawn signs.

• 1:45:35Speaker 04

  And if there's not a problem.

• 1:45:37Bill Maher?

  They need to think that they're living up to the lawn signs. But they're not.

• 1:45:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:45:43Bill Maher?

  Doing anything.

• 1:45:44Speaker 04

  No, just treat people well.

• 1:45:46Bill Maher?

  Yeah, just treat, just live your life and be a good person.

• 1:45:49Speaker 04

  It's almost like, how many times have you read a nonfiction book that stated what it was about in the first thirty pages? And then spend another one hundred and sixty pages kind of repeating it?

• 1:45:59Bill Maher?

  Everyone.

• 1:45:59Speaker 04

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 1:46:00Bill Maher?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:01Speaker 04

  Like, that's it. You don't want to be, you know, racist, sexist, whatever. Just be, just be.

• 1:46:07Bill Maher?

  I once read a health.

• 1:46:08Speaker 04

  Be decent to people, that's it.

• 1:46:10Bill Maher?

  A workout book that literally was one page long. It was a whole page book.

• 1:46:15Speaker 04

  That's what I'm talking about. What did it say?

• 1:46:16Bill Maher?

  It was called like The Power of Ten. And it, instead of doing like reps, like you do ten reps, and then you rest, and then you do, three times you do that. This was saying, just do one where you're slowly coming up and slowly coming down, but you never rest. As opposed to this, where you kind of rested.

• 1:46:37Speaker 04

  Rest, rest.

• 1:46:37Bill Maher?

  This is no rest, but you do it for.

• 1:46:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:46:41Bill Maher?

  You know, a minute, but then you just do that one, like, with no rest. That's it. It could fit on one page. Maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong, maybe it's the same.

• 1:46:52Speaker 04

  I love that.

• 1:46:52Bill Maher?

  But like, you did not need a whole book. That was the whole book. And then they just, it's like.

• 1:46:58Speaker 04

  That's fantastic.

• 1:46:59Bill Maher?

  Wow, you're really just saying the same thing over and again. I think I got it on page one.

• 1:47:04Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:47:05Bill Maher?

  But, anyway, thank you. This was really a lot of fun.

• 1:47:09Speaker 04

  So great.

• 1:47:10Bill Maher?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:10Speaker 04

  So great.

• 1:47:10Bill Maher?

  I hope we do it again.

• 1:47:11Speaker 04

  Sure, anytime.

• 1:47:17Bill Maher?

  Cut, Fred.

• 1:47:20Speaker 04

  I said, I feel like, I feel like I'm, I'm at, I feel like I'm on the Los Angeles streets here with like flock cameras, with all these cameras around.

• 1:47:29Bill Maher?

  Yeah, but I hit him pretty good, didn't I?

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