Introducing Earsay hosted by Ed Helms and Kal Penn

Earsay: The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club is the ultimate book club for audiobook lovers. This week on Earsay, we're turning it up to 11 with national treasures Rob Reiner and Michael McKean for a deep dive into A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap. They explore the making of the landmark 1984 mockumentary This is Spinal Tap and its long-awaited sequel, Spinal Tap Two: The End Continues. Together, they unpack the art of “schnadling” (their term for improvisational riffing), and Ed compares notes from another influential mockumentary — The Office. Rob and Michael reflect on why maintaining affection for these magnificently oblivious characters has made all the difference in the process of building a 40-year mythology around a completely fictional band. Listen to Earsay: The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio app, or wherever you get your podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Hi there, earsay listeners. Ed Helms here. I wanted to add this short prologue to the episode because I want to acknowledge a difficult situation. Since recording this conversation with Rob Reiner and Michael McKean just a couple of weeks ago, Rob and his wife Michelle have passed away under very sudden and very tragic circumstances. I want to extend my deepest heartfelt condolences to their family and to all of those who loved them or were lucky enough to be loved by them. Rob meant so much to so many people, and I count myself among them. He was a hero of mine, and I don't mean that in an abstract

• 0:44Speaker 00

  way, but in a very real and literal way, in the way that certain artists shape you, and sometimes even before you realize it's happening. Many of his classic movies emerged just as I was coming of age through the 80s. This is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, and perhaps most of all, Stand By Me. These movies, they didn't just entertain me. They helped form my storytelling and comedy identity, my sense of flow and tone, my love of difficult but redeemable characters. Rob Reiner taught

• 1:23Speaker 00

  me that hard laughs and deep humanity can sit right next to one another, and they very often should. But he wasn't just a creative inspiration. He was also a human inspiration. He was the kind of person you both wanted to be and wanted to be around. He was warm and generous, gregarious and curious, a legendary conversationalist, and also deeply engaged in social issues. He cared about making the world a better place, about cultural values, democracy, and political integrity. Rob had a conscience, and he put it to work.

• 2:05Speaker 00

  Listening back to this conversation now, what really jumps out at me is how much fun he's having. He's engaged, playful, generous with his insights, and clearly still delighted by the work, even after a lifetime of extraordinary achievement.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  I'm incredibly grateful that I had this time with him and I'm honored to share this conversation with you now. This episode is, in our own small way, a celebration of Rob Reiner. He will be profoundly missed, but his voice, his humor, and his spirit will always be with us, and that is quite a gift. I hope you enjoy the episode.

• 2:47Speaker 00

  Welcome to Ear Say, the iHeart and Audible audiobook club. I'm Ed Helms and I am the host of another podcast called Snafu. And with me is the host of yet another podcast, here we go again, my dear buddy, Cal Penn.

• 3:03Speaker 01

  Hello, sir.

• 3:05Speaker 00

  How are you, sir?

• 3:06Speaker 01

  I'm great. I'm great.

• 3:08Speaker 00

  You are great. Can I just say, Cal Penn is great, everybody.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  Come on. What a nice thing to say.

• 3:15Speaker 00

  I mean, you're frickin' funny and delightful and incredibly smart and insightful, and that's, that's a killer combination of traits.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  I'm glad I don't have these traits at age 11, again. They were not helpful as an 11-year-old, but I do enjoy them as an adult.

• 3:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that's not uncommon, that a precocious child is actually a very charming adult. But man, are, man, are they annoying. I'm sorry to have dug up that trauma.

• 4:28Speaker 00

  All right, I'm gonna name some names here. I want you to tell me what these names have in common. Are you ready?

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:35Speaker 00

  Eric Stumpy Joe Childs, Peter James Bond, Mick Shrimpton, Richard Rick Shrimpton, Joe Mama Besser, and Scott Skippy Scuffleton.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  More than half sound familiar and I honestly cannot place it.

• 4:55Speaker 00

  Okay, these are all drummers from the band Spinal Tap.

• 5:01Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 5:02Speaker 00

  Who all met their very untimely demise.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 5:06Speaker 00

  In the Spinal Tap lore. There was a bizarre gardening accident. There was, I believe, some, one of them spontaneously combusted. It was rather dramatic. This is Spinal Tap is of course the pioneering 1984 mockumentary created by Rob Reiner and starring Reiner along with Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean. It spoofs the over the top world of rock and roll and heavy metal in the 70s and 80s. And it also spoofs the documentaries that venerate these rock stars. Cal, do you remember watching Spinal Tap?

• 5:44Speaker 01

  A very, very long time ago, and I should also note it was like one of those 2 a.m. in college kind of things.

• 5:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Kind of viewerships. Of course, huge Chris Guest, Rob Reiner fan, but it has been a while. I need to revisit.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have to say, Rob Reiner and Christopher Guest and all these guys, they live in a very special comedy universe. And it's so fun to learn about all of their history together and how their lives kind of interweave and overlap. And then, of course, Spinal Tap is its own ecosystem. Like, they've created an entire mythology around this totally fake band, and it is just beyond hilarious. And I have to say, it's very much a part of my own comedy development. Listeners, if you haven't seen the original 1984 movie, you should definitely just stop right now and go see it. It is so damn special and hilarious. But as a refresher.

• 6:42Speaker 00

  Rob Reiner plays Marty DiBergi, a documentary filmmaker who follows the fictional band Spinal Tap portrayed by Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer. Marty follows Spinal Tap in what I would call a series of escalating mishaps. It's definitely a cult movie, but one that has left a huge mark on pop culture, not the least of which is the Christopher Guest line, "These go to 11," a version of which made it into the shorter Oxford English Dictionary in 2002.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  That's an accomplishment right there.

• 7:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know, it's pretty cool if you can like affect the codified language. I also have to say, this movie is widely considered the original mainstream mockumentary. And that, of course, spawned a vast ecosystem of great movies and television, including all of Christopher Guest's subsequent movies like Best in Show and Waiting for Guffman and so many other great ones. And then, of course, the show I worked on, The Office, that was a mockumentary.

• 7:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  And I feel like The Office and Parks and Rec and all these great mockumentary shows are descendants of Spinal Tap in a way.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  That must have been awesome then to have loved Spinal Tap so much and then get to work on The Office in, I don't know if saying "in the style of" is even correct, but like, that's so cool.

• 8:06Speaker 00

  It was. The Office was a dream in so many, so many ways, which is a whole conversation for another day. But today, we're talking about the new audiobook, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever: The Story of Spinal Tap. It's written by Rob Reiner with Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Michael McKean, and voiced by Rob Reiner, although they all appear in the audiobook as well. It's a history of how the movie and the band came together. The film's unexpected afterlife and how 40 years later, everyone got the band back together for the sequel, which is out now. It's called Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues.

• 8:50Speaker 00

  I mean, come on, is that not the best title ever?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 8:53Speaker 00

  The audiobook also includes an in-universe oral history featuring all the actors as their respective characters. It's called Smell the Book. For the uninitiated, that's a bit of wordplay on one of Spinal Tap's albums from within the movie called Smell the Glove. And what that means, God only knows. But this is an absolutely ridiculous and delightful and wonderful component of the audiobook, and it features all of the main players just doing their over the top shtick. Cal, I'm super excited for this one. I get to talk to not one, but two of the core people who made Spinal Tap and this audiobook happen.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Incredible. I, uh, I am jealous, so I'm just gonna get out of here and we'll talk again after the interview's over.

• 9:41Speaker 00

  All right, I'll see you later. Now here to get into a fine line between stupid and clever, the story of Spinal Tap is the audiobook's author and voice, Spinal Tap creator and director and co-star, director of Stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride, and so many more great movies, Rob Reiner. Also joining the show, one of the great comedic actors of all time. He is, of course, in the movie Spinal Tap, as well as Spinal Tap: The End Continues. He's incredible in the great show Better Call Saul.

• 10:21Speaker 00

  He's in other movies like Best in Show, and just an overwhelming resume of tremendous comedy over so many decades. Rob Reiner and Michael McKean, welcome to Earsay.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  It is truly such a pleasure to have you join our audiobook club today.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  It's a pleasure to be here, Ed. Nice to be joined, yes.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Well, of course, you are part of the incredible team behind Spinal Tap. Rob, you directed that legendary movie. Michael, you are part of the band. This is such a thrill for me because that movie means so much to me. I remember, it came out in 1984, I was 10 years old. I was not aware of it then, but very soon after, when it landed at Blockbuster Video...

• 11:12Speaker 00

  I was like, I'd been hearing about this from the older kids at school and like, this is a thing I had to, and I got it. I forced my dad to rent it for me and he was like, what the hell is this? He was looking at the hard rock picture on the front. He's like, what, what, okay, fine. And we get home, we start watching it. And I'll be honest, as like a 12 year old at that time, I don't think I got half of it. I got half of it.

• 11:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, you got exactly half of it. And we know which half.

• 11:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. But my dad was howling.

• 11:45Speaker 03

  Oh, he was.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  Yeah. And I realized like, this is important. This is something I have to latch on to. And so, of course, I just rewatched it over the years and it's become very much a part of my comedy DNA, truly. And I want to thank you for that.

• 11:59Speaker 03

  Danata, our pleasure.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  You're totally welcome.

• 12:03Speaker 00

  Do either of you have a favorite scene from the movie? I mean, that's an impossible question, but do you? Does something jump out?

• 12:10Speaker 03

  I used to say that my favorite thing, because I had nothing to do with it, and it's brilliant. It's about a minute and a half, maybe two minutes. Rob could probably tell me of Chris just soloing on the stage with, you know, with all the feedback and then the violin and the.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  My favorite moment in that moment is he picks up the violin and uses it again. But then, at one moment, he just tunes a little bit of the, a little, the peg.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  He just tunes a peg a little bit just to get it just right.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  It's a, it's great pantomime. Noisy pantomime, I guess you'd call it.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  It's fabulous.

• 12:44Speaker 02

  Well, my, my favorite, my, my favorite scene, and it's become the title of the book that we, that we put out called A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever. And my favorite line in the movie is the fine line between stupid and clever. And it's a scene where Spinal Tap is, their gig has just been canceled. And they were sitting in the hotel in the lobby there and all of a sudden this very big famous rock musician Duke Fame walks in and they say hello and he's a big shot and he's got a manager played by Howard Hessman and Howard says, listen, I wish I could talk to you guys, but I have to go in the lobby and wait for the limo. I don't have time

• 13:25Speaker 02

  to talk. I love that. And then he leaves and then everybody says, what a wanker that Duke Fame is a wanker there. We used to, he used to open for us. He, people booed with, he was terrible. And then the manager comes back and says, I don't understand. Duke Fame's got a, because they had an album that they couldn't release called Smell the Glove, which had a sexist cover and they couldn't release it. And he says, well, I don't understand. Duke Fame, he has a, an album cover where he's naked and there's all these women that are whipping him and that stuff. And then Tony Hendry, who plays the manager, says, no, well, you don't understand. The difference is, he's the victim. See, in your album, she's the victim because she's on all fours and she's being made to sniff a glove. And then

• 14:10Speaker 02

  the guys are like, they're puzzled. He's, oh, I see what they did. There's a twist. They turn it around and one guy said, yeah, there's a fine line between stupid. And then Harry says, and clever. And I just love that. And to me, that's the essence of Spinal Top. Fine line between stupid and clever.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  I think you're right. And it's also something that happened on the moment. It happened conversational. I mean, the entire film is improvised, but it was one of those things, we were all kind of thinking on the same track and it just kind of spilled out right.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's interesting because we shot the film with one camera. We shot maybe a scene two or three times and it, because like Michael says, it's improvised. You don't know what's going to come out and what's, you know, it's not going to be matched. It's not going to be like a script where you say the same things. So different things would come out. And in that case, the punchline, which is Harry saying, and clever is off camera. Now you normally would, uh, you know, you'd focus on that.

• 15:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, you'd pick it up.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  But we found this in the cutting room and I said, well, that works in the tracks and so, and it works. The joke works even though the punchline's not on camera.

• 15:17Speaker 00

  It's the title of this book and audiobook. And I think you're right. It captures not only what's so fun about the spirit of the movie, but also to me,

• 15:29Speaker 02

  What you have done as the creators of Spinal Tap is to create these characters that are so beautifully stupid.

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Thank you.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  They're right. They're right at this sort of like nexus of confidence, obliviousness, and stupidity. But to execute that and to improvise that with such precision and consistency takes a profound cleverness.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  Well, we had our work cut out for us because the people we were doing, the people we were embodying, take themselves very, very seriously.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 16:12Speaker 00

  And if you do that, if you're on the level, that's where the funny comes from. Because there's something about the audacity of someone who's got a very dim bulb up here, telling everyone else what's what.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  And also their philosophies of life and how deep and profound they are.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 16:31Speaker 02

  What's wonderful is we have, you know, these great albums where, you know, Rock and Roll Creation and all these very highfalutin ideas about these guys thinking about how they really got a grasp of the way the world works and the way the universe works. And to be honest, you know, there were a lot of heavy metal rock musicians that were very upset with us because they did take themselves seriously and they're making fun of us. You know, that's not right. You know, we really do make great music and all this stuff. And they do make great music, but it's not as highfalutin as they think it is.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  Isn't that the sort of highest compliment, though? Doesn't that mean that you've really punched the button? If they're feeling a little agitated at the parody of self-importance?

• 17:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. And a lot of them, over time, got to really dig it.

• 17:19Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  I mean, they accepted it and they said, oh, this is really cool. And they loved the fact that we were making fun, you know, sincere form of flattery and all that.

• 17:27Speaker 00

  So I had heard that. I've read about some of the blowback at the time from people like Ozzy Osbourne and Steven Tyler. How real was that? I mean, did they hold grudges for years? Was this something that affected your lives?

• 17:42Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing. Blowback used to be a different sized animal than it is now.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  We encountered Steve and Tyler and this was his thing. It was like, too close, too close. And he would smile a little bit, but mainly it was like, this hurts, it's so close.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  And we heard that Ozzy didn't like it, but it was the same thing. It was like, I felt uncomfortable.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  Because I felt spied on. But that came down as they didn't like it.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 18:07Speaker 03

  And it's like nonsense. I met Ozzy years later and he was, he adored the movie and he was great about it. But now, it's like, somebody says anything and you'll get 30,000 people say, did you hear that?

• 18:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 03

  So it's a different world.

• 18:22Speaker 02

  I mean, the same thing happened with Axl Rose and then Slash basically said to him, no, no, it's funny, they're making, and then Axl Rose, oh yeah, I see, I get what they're doing. And same thing, when I first met Sting, he was just, you know, hitting with the police and everything. And he said, ah, listen, I watched this movie over and over. I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

• 18:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:42Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, so that was like, you know, great compliment.

• 18:45Speaker 00

  The movie is affectionate. And this is what I think elevates certain comedy from other comedy. You're not really punching down. There's genuine affection for these characters, as oblivious as they are and as self-important as they are, and you're sort of having fun with their hubris. But I never felt like there was ridicule baked in there.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  No, we, we're the first generation that grew up on rock and roll.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  In the 50s and we love rock and roll.

• 19:12Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  We all grew up with that. So, you know, it was a love of the music and also could find what's funny about it, too.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  So, you know, you try to mix those things.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  So, when you're 16, your favorite band is printed on your forehead. And it's like, it's who you are.

• 19:30Speaker 00

  And every article of clothing that you wear.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  That's right, that's right. And it's all about that. And it's like, you look at yourself, what a stupid kid I was. And, boy, I was happy.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:40Speaker 03

  I love the music. So I was, I've been listening to The Kinks a lot lately. That's kind of my, my, my pet third band, you know? Everybody loved The Beatles, everybody loved The Who and The Stones and all that. But The Kinks were always like so on the money to me. And I knew I wasn't an English guy, you know, from, from Moswell Hill. I was this American kid. But there's something about those days, which, when you're 16, that's what you do. You take on that, that coloration, you know? And it stays with you or it stays with me. I show no signs of growing up.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Amen.

• 20:12Speaker 03

  But I just bought a Kinks album about a week ago, so.

• 20:15Speaker 02

  You know, there you go.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  Fabulous.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  You know, one time, I was at this party once for Nick Pileggi. It was his birthday, 90th birthday party. And his stepson, Max, is a musician. He's a guitarist. Now he plays with Taylor Swift, but he was with Kesha. He's played with a lot of different bands. Nick says to me, you know, he's got a Spinal Tap tattoo on his back.

• 20:35Speaker 00

  No.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Really? Get out of here. So I go over to him and I said, Max, Nick told me that you have a Spinal Tap tattoo. He takes down his shirt and in the back, he has the cover of Shark Sandwich tattooed to his back, which is this sandwich with a little fin coming out of the.

• 20:54Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, yeah. You talk about having your favorite band tattooed to your forehead. He had, he literally had it tattooed.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  All right, I want to talk a little bit about the creative process. The audiobook details schnaddling. Uh, tell us what exactly that is and the role it plays in the sort of writing and execution, or even in the origin of the movie.

• 21:21Speaker 02

  That's a term that Chris Guest first threw out a long time ago. He referred to the back and forth of improvisation as you're schnaddling with each other. You're just kind of riffing, riffing with each other.

• 21:33Speaker 00

  Do you know where that, where that, what that word means exactly?

• 21:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 21:36Speaker 00

  Or where it came from?

• 21:37Speaker 02

  It's a made up word.

• 21:38Speaker 00

  Just a made up word, okay.

• 21:39Speaker 02

  Here's a great story. You gotta, you'll like this. So we've been trying, there's a guy in prison in, in, that's not the funny part.

• 21:46Speaker 00

  Not so far.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  Not so far. But there's a guy in prison in Texas. His name is Nanan Williams and this guy has been in prison. We've been trying to get out for a long time. He's a great guy. He's in there for a crime he didn't commit. He's got three master's degrees. He's written books. He teaches all these young inmates. And he asked me, he said, you know, send me a book, send me one of the books, you know, fine line between stupid. So I sent him the book. We talked about it and he read some, you know, these kids, they don't know Spinal Tap is, they don't know who I am, they don't know any of it. But they're listening to it and they picked up on schnaddling. He says, hey, what's that? We start, and they start, we're gonna start. Schnaddling with each other. So you got these prisoners down in, down in Houston schnaddling.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  I love it.

• 22:33Speaker 03

  That's awesome.

• 22:34Speaker 00

  It's therapeutic, for sure.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  Oh, man, that's fantastic.

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:38Speaker 00

  So schnaddling is, is essentially improvisation. There's an anecdote in the audiobook about a video shoot that you guys are doing. And the schnaddling sort of starts during a like an overhead shot, they're all, everybody's lying on the floor.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were doing a, a takeoff of

• 22:56Speaker 03

  This is our debut.

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, this was a takeoff of Midnight Special was part of a TV show that had a satire of all kinds of different things on television. You know, we had sitcoms and telethons and commercials. And one of the things we did was this Midnight Special, I came out as Wolfman Jack and I introduced for the first time Spinal Tap, England's loudest band. And they came out and they played a song called Rock and Roll, or part of it was live. And part of it was kind of an MTV video, like cheesy video.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Really cheap.

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, really cheap. And, uh, there was one part where they had this, I guess, a fogger or a smoke, a bee smoker or something, and it kept leaking hot oil on them.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:39Speaker 02

  And we, we had them on the floor and we were trying to do like a, a Busby Berkeley kind of thing with the legs going, you know.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Right, but you're getting like a medieval torture.

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Torture, yeah.

• 23:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:51Speaker 00

  Of some sort.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  But they started, you know, they started making fun and they started, you know, schnaddling. They started doing shtick in those characters and then we said, Jesus, these guys, we should find something else for them to do. Not just lie on the floor and get hot oil poured on them. Although, although that's all.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  Another conversation, another conversation.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  That's fabulous. Now, when you guys are schnaddling, especially while the camera is rolling, are you breaking a lot? Are, is, are there any bad laughers in your group?

• 24:21Speaker 03

  Well, there were a few scenes that ended slightly early.

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 03

  Paul Benedict, who was one of the great guys ever, who plays the hotel clerk. He gets into a contritor with, with Tony, who's making cracks about his sexuality and everything. And it's like Paul comes in for a day and just lays all of us out. He's so brilliant, so funny. Tony Hendra's, the manager is always carrying around this cricket bat. So he puts the cricket bat up on the counter while he's talking to the guy. Get these rooms straightened out. And Paul, the hotel clerk, just points to the bat and he goes, "Well, you can't take that to your room." And Tony, Tony goes innocently enough, "Why not?" And Paul said, "Well, it's enormous."

• 25:09Speaker 03

  And that's all there was to it.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  It makes no sense.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  No, but the little story that we told ourselves in our heads at that moment, started laughing before he even got the rest of the word out. And there's no reason why that's so brilliantly funny, but it was.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  And Fred Willard also had a way. Had a way. He was one of the best improvisers. And you can see in this one scene, where he's telling them about the gig they're gonna play on the army base. And you can see Chris Guest kind of ducking behind somebody because he's starting to go. He just wanted to ruin the take. And there was one that I actually went. And that was, Chris totally surprised me. He's playing a piano, very quiet, kind of classical piece. And I go, "That's interesting, you know, that's something very different from what you normally play." He says, "Well, it's, you know, it's a classic to accommodate." Mozart and Bach is called Machbe, it's in D, D minor, which I think is the saddest of all keys.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  And it's just simple lines intertwined. And I said, "Well, what do you call this?" He says, "Lick my love pump." And I went, I went. I, I, I, we had to do that often.

• 26:19Speaker 03

  Scene over.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  And scene.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. I was notorious on The Office for ruining takes, for laughing. And there were, like you described, Chris, there's a scene in a Christmas episode where Steve Carell is being so funny that I have to duck behind a plant.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  And I'm, I'm behind the plant for the majority of the scene. But it's part of what's so fun and frustrating about improvisation, right? Is that the best stuff can get ruined so easily.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Uh, yeah, yeah. But I mean, that's how things happen in a good improvisational. Company and there are a few and there have been many over the years. The mistake you can make is to look for that punchline.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  Instead of living in the scene.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 27:01Speaker 03

  Because that's.

• 27:02Speaker 00

  Amen.

• 27:03Speaker 03

  The some of the Peter Bonner's is one of the best improvisers I ever saw. And I'd never saw him crack a joke. Or anything like it. He just existed in the scene.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 27:13Speaker 03

  Every anything he was doing was completely absurd. But he took it dead seriously. And he was hilarious. And he would never break in a million years.

• 27:22Speaker 00

  That is the secret. Yeah, just to take, take it all dead seriously.

• 27:26Speaker 03

  Take it all bitch.

• 27:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. And not chase the, uh, not chase the punchlines. Um, there are a lot of scenes that feel in the movie completely improvised like.

• 27:36Speaker 02

  They're all improvised. Every, every di- all the dialogue is improvised completely.

• 27:41Speaker 00

  I guess that's my question. Like there's the. Talking about the drummers that have died and Chris breaks in that, by the way. On the vomit line.

• 27:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  Which I think, which he says, and he starts to chuckle, but he, he saves it.

• 27:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, and he keeps it in character more or less.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 27:57Speaker 03

  Just enough.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Uh, but I love it. It's just a little glimpse under the veil. Um, but then there are scenes like. The legendary amp that goes to 11, which clearly was.

• 28:08Speaker 03

  Right. Oh, yeah.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, we had the, we had the prop. We knew that we're going to have an amp that went to 11. But we didn't know how we were going to. Get to it or.

• 28:18Speaker 00

  Right, right.

• 28:19Speaker 02

  How it was going to be revealed or what we were.

• 28:21Speaker 03

  How you feature something this big.

• 28:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:24Speaker 03

  In a movie that's a documentary.

• 28:25Speaker 02

  Or what we were going to say about it. And my, my favorite moment in there. Is Chris is showing me around all the different guitars. And then he shows me this amp that goes up to 11. And I said, well, I don't, why do you have it to go to? He said, well, it's one louder, isn't it? And I said, well, yeah, but I mean, couldn't you make? The top number be 10 and just make that a little louder? And he had no answer for that.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  I hit him with something that I basically painted him into a corner.

• 28:53Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  You made him think.

• 28:54Speaker 02

  It was a long, long pause and he goes. Well, this goes to 11. It was, it was, he had no answer for it.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  The honesty of his performance in that moment is so perfect.

• 29:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:07Speaker 03

  There's another little tiny moment that Chris does. It's when we're in the airport and Janine has taken over the management of the band. And she's laying out all this shit about, you know, astrology is telling us to go to this city and not this one. She's rearranging everything. And Chris, who is wearing a cowboy hat for the only moment in the film, he's wearing that. She says, have you got this? And he just, without even really looking at her, he kind of tilts his head and holds up the same thing she's reading from and then puts it down. And there's something about that moment that just says everything, how about you go to hell? But without actually saying it, and don't worry about me, I'm out of here anyway. It's great. Laiden.

• 29:49Speaker 00

  That's fabulous. There's one moment I have to know if it was improvised, and it's the fabulous scene with Bruno Kirby as the limo driver. And I know that what you shot was actually much longer than what made the movie, but the bit where he starts to go off on Frank Sinatra and the window between the limo driver cab and the passenger section just slowly rises.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that was. One of you guys just did that or something.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  Uh, no, I think going into the scene, we said, when he starts going on about stuff, just shut him out of the world.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  But we didn't know where.

• 30:29Speaker 00

  So funny. It's just so funny. And Bruno Kirby's reaction was perfect.

• 30:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. There's an outtake of scene where we get his character really high and he winds up singing "My Way" into a chunk of pizza and.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  In his underwear.

• 30:46Speaker 03

  In his underwear. And then he passes out. Nearly killed him, so missed a desk by like this much in the hotel room.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 30:55Speaker 03

  But it was awfully funny, but it was just, oh, if we go there, we'll be there for 10 minutes.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, we had some great stuff that wound up, as they say on the cutting room floor. My favorite thing was, and it's, it was a great joke, great stuff, but it just took too long to unfold. There was a band that opened for Spinal Tap at one point called. The Dose, which was kind of a punk band. And the lead singer was Sherry Currie from, from The Runaways. And you see then Nigel and her are kind of canoodling a little bit. And the next scene Nigel has a herpes sore on his lip. And we don't make much of it. The next thing you see David, you know, played by Michael, and he's also making out with her. And the next.

• 31:40Speaker 03

  And Viv.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  And yeah, next scene herpes sore.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:44Speaker 02

  He makes a way all the way around. And then there's a band meeting where five of them are sitting around deciding they're gonna vote whether or not they're gonna keep The Dose on the tour. And the four, there's four guys with herpes sores, they're saying, I think we should draw, I think so. And the drummer is the only guy without a herpes sore, he's just, I think they're good, I think we should keep them. But it just took so long. And the only remnant, the only thing left is, there's this, the scene where you see Nigel and David, they both have herpes sores, we never explain it.

• 32:12Speaker 03

  No.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  And, and it gets a laugh for some reason. I don't know, I never know to this day why I got that laugh.

• 32:18Speaker 03

  For one reason, there's this little undercurrent about how close Nigel and David really are.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 03

  And always have been, you know, and it's, um, God.

• 32:28Speaker 02

  So you're saying it's a gay thing, that's what you're saying?

• 32:32Speaker 03

  I'm saying it's, it's a gray area.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a gay area.

• 32:37Speaker 03

  But Richard Curtis, the wonderful screenwriter and director, I've met him and he said, you know, Spinal Tap's my favorite romantic comedy. He says it's got, it's got the same structure, it's you guys belong together, and, you know, everything else in the world is kind of a distraction. Because you're looking for that moment when you were two little assholes on the street corner playing skiffle music. You know, and so it was like, okay, if you say so.

• 33:05Speaker 02

  Ricky Gervais said the same exact thing.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 02

  When I interviewed him.

• 33:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  He said, it's a romantic comedy.

• 33:10Speaker 00

  I love that. I hadn't thought of that. So Spinal Tap is obviously a parody band. The songs are insanely funny, but they're not exactly a joke themselves. Let's, let's listen to a clip.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  Okay, so the songs are hilarious, but they're also objectively great songs.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  That was the goal. The goal was the humor would come out in the lyrics, never in the music. They're all great musicians. They all take it seriously and the music is good, like you say. So, we never wanted the music to be the thing that got the laughs. It was always the lyrics.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  I'm just curious how you arrived at that. I remember a debate we had on The Office. My character was in a production of Sweeney Todd in the world of The Office. And there was a debate in pre-production, it's Scranton Community Theater, do we want these actors to be bad and for it to sort of be silly? And I felt very passionately that even community theater actors are oftentimes extremely talented and they're extremely committed, and that that isn't what's funny about the scene.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  It's a very tricky line to walk because they can't be sensational actors.

• 34:48Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 34:49Speaker 02

  But they can be adequate, proficient. I mean, Chris.

• 34:51Speaker 00

  But you're not finding humor in how bad they are.

• 34:54Speaker 02

  No, but Chris Guest made this thing about community theater called Waiting for Guffman.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  And it's kind of perfect because they're, you know, they're doing their thing, but it's just like the line that we have to tread with Spinal Tap. We love what they do, but we also can make fun of it.

• 35:11Speaker 00

  Yeah. I have the book and the audiobook, and obviously this podcast is about the audiobook. Both the book and the audiobook contain this fabulous kind of little surprise at the end, Smell the Book, which is the oral history of Spinal Tap, where you guys basically just live inside the mythology and make up new memories as you go. And it's wild, after all these years, it just, it feels like. All these fake stories have just taken on the weight of actual rock and roll canon.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  Before we started the first film, we had a Bible. I mean, we knew who these characters were. Because when you're improvising, especially David and Nigel, if they were kids together from Squatney, they have to have shared experiences. And so we improvised, but we also have the background of knowing who left the band, who joined the band. We knew all those things.

• 36:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  So we could, we could riff off of that rather than just have to make all that up.

• 36:16Speaker 00

  Right. We did do a little cramming right before we did the interviews for the book. Where we said, let's go over this again.

• 36:23Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 00

  Are we gonna get to Les and Mary Chizik or whatever? You know, there are three dozen names we can pick up. You know, we can throw in.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  And, and that we all shared this history. We weren't gonna get to it all, but it's nice to have it there.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  Like a Gideon Bible, pretty much.

• 36:41Speaker 02

  Sure. When you're in those sort of schnaddling moments, do you find yourself in a flow state ever? Do you ever find that it just, you feel like, oh, this is definitely gonna make the final cut? This is the... I never know. I never know what's gonna make the final cut. All I know is just stay in the moment.

• 36:59Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Stay in the moment because I'm working with brilliant minds and brilliant comedians and brilliant improvisers. And something's gonna come out, and I don't know what it's gonna be. I never know.

• 37:12Speaker 00

  So it's been 40 years since the original Spinal Tap.

• 37:16Speaker 02

  Forty, forty-one, actually.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  Forty, we're at forty-one now.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. Or, or as the Spinal Tap people would call, the golden anniversary.

• 37:26Speaker 00

  So finally, with the film sequel out now, Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues, which is just one of the greatest comedy movie titles of all time. I'm wondering, after such a definitive first film, talk about some of the challenges and opportunities that presented themselves in revisiting these characters. Was it truly effortless, kind of slipping back into this?

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Well, the...

• 37:52Speaker 00

  Or did it take a lot of...

• 37:53Speaker 02

  The effortless part was the way we interacted with each other. That always was there. We always had fun with that. But the idea of doing a sequel to something that we had all said, no, we've done it, let it be. The high, it's a high bar, you know, it's a really high bar and we're old. But as we talked, something came out of it that was very real, which is, first of all, the guys hadn't played together in 15 years. So we said, well, what's that about? Is there bad blood? Are they not talking? What's going on? And then the idea of older people still touring or still performing, that was out there. Paul McCartney was in the movie, he's still performing. You see the Stones, you see.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  The Who?

• 38:38Speaker 02

  The Who is out there doing it and, and, and the Eagles and Oasis back together. So that's a real thing. And then we had to think, well, what's the reason why weren't they talking? And what's the reason that throws them back together? Once we had that, we said, okay, it's a story that could stand on its own. You don't have to have seen the first one. Obviously better if you have, you'll get some of the references. But if you haven't, and we had screenings where half the people had never seen the first one. And they, they went with this. They thought this was great.

• 39:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, huge congrats on just the universe that you've created and now expanded on even further with Spinal Tap 2. It's, it is a hell of a treat and I hope you make maybe at least three or four more. Do you have it in you?

• 39:27Speaker 02

  Here's the thing, and we can tell you because it's not a secret. No, well, it's been released to the press that after we finished Spinal Tap 2, The End Continues, we were approached by the Heritage Foundation in England to do a concert.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  At Stonehenge, at the actual Stonehenge. Oh, my God. And so it was an impossible thing not to say yes to. And we got together, we went over to England and did a concert in front of, in front of this Stonehenge. And, you know, this Eric Clapton came on and performed and Shania Twain came on. And my favorite thing though was Josh Groban sings Bitch School. And it's worth the price of admission.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty amazing. Yeah.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Will that be? That'll come out next year. That'll be visible next year. Oh, fantastic. Yeah. And that one's called, it's called Spinal Tap at Stonehenge, The Final Finale.

• 40:35Speaker 03

  But don't give away the ending, Rob.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  No, I'm not gonna do, I won't do that. Isn't redundancy always funny?

• 40:43Speaker 03

  Listen, we, we wrote a song called Tonight, I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight. So how do you, how do you think we feel about that?

• 40:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, there it is.

• 40:51Speaker 03

  Okay, we're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back.

• 41:01Speaker 04

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• 41:43Speaker 04

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• 42:00Speaker 00

  All right, we're gonna jump into a section of the interview called Plot Twist, where I'm just gonna just fire at you some questions. All right, Spinal Tap's infamous custom amps famously went one louder to 11. What in your lives have you turned up to 11?

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Hmm, that's a good question.

• 42:21Speaker 03

  My leisure time.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  It's approaching 100% and I'm delighted.

• 42:27Speaker 00

  You've turned it down to 11.

• 42:30Speaker 03

  No, no, no, I just, listen, Rob and I are the same age. We've all been doing a lot of things for a long time. And it's like, really appreciating, it sounds very corny, very Hallmark. But I really do think that me not doing much of anything on a really nice day is better than anything.

• 42:50Speaker 00

  That's fabulous.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Listen, I'm probably of the four of us, I would say, the most driven. I'm crazy driven. And in my mind, I haven't gotten the 11 yet. I mean, as close as I ever got with, you know, it's a cliche, but you're the birth of your children. I mean, that is like, ooh, that can't get, doesn't get any better. But in terms of my work and stuff, I still feel like there's an 11 out there somewhere.

• 43:14Speaker 00

  Amazing. Oh, I love that. Two very different answers.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  All right, the band had numerous Spinal Tap moments, like getting lost backstage or the monumental Stonehenge prop being extremely tiny. Have you experienced a moment in your professional or personal life that felt like a true Spinal Tap moment?

• 43:35Speaker 03

  In 1984, when the film came out, we played a handful of cities. And some of them, New York, LA, Chicago, and Boston were really well attended. Boston was huge, but the film played for a year in Boston. It became like, this is what we, when we go to the movies, this is what we do. So we were really kinda hot and we played at a place called The Channel Club. And I've had this corroborated by people who were there. Said, man, I was there the night you played and it, did it really rain on the stage? And yeah, it did. It was this terrible storm outside and the stage was drenched. And we're there with electric instruments and I'm wearing boxing shoes.

• 44:18Speaker 03

  I'm wearing boxing shoes which have this little kind of, you know, just the thickness of Barbara Walters' skin, yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  And it was like, well, if we go here, at least we're hitting this town. You know, but it really was. It was like, and Chris and I are looking at each other going, goodbye, maybe.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  Wait, so this is your spinal tap moment in your life is also an actual spinal tap.

• 44:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 44:44Speaker 03

  We've, I've had little things, uh, you know, when we did all the way with this play that I did in New York, but we did in, in Cambridge first.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  You were great in that, by the way. I love that play.

• 44:54Speaker 03

  Oh, thank you. Thank you.

• 44:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was great.

• 44:56Speaker 03

  And Bryan Cranston played LBJ. The first scene is he's having this vision about what, what am I? Now I'm the president all of a sudden. JFK's been killed. I'm the president. What am I going to do? How am I going to do this? And then his desk rises out of the floor and he goes behind his desk and begins the scene proper with other people. Well, opening night, it got halfway up.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  It's stonin'.

• 45:21Speaker 03

  And so they, they said, well, maybe we're going to reboot. So everybody's standing on the stage and they lower it again and they bring it up again and then it just breaks and it goes, gaga.

• 45:31Speaker 02

  No.

• 45:33Speaker 03

  Yeah. And so then it's like dealing with that. But those are, there's, in the moments they're happening, it's horrible stuff. But you know what? Tomorrow night we'll come back and try it again, you know? That's all you can do.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Amen. Well, for me, I mean, I've had a million of those kinds of things on stage where stuff goes wrong. But one that just popped in my head, I was in the summer theater in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Albert Brooks was in the company with me. We were doing a production of Mary Mary, you know, which is a comedy and we're 18 years old, we're playing people in their 40s with the cornstarch in the hair and all this stuff. And, you know, they had shows once a week, you know, they turn the show over every week. So you do a show for a week, you take the set down, put the other set back up and, and they didn't get the set quite ready for the first performance of Mary Mary. And Albert and I are on stage and we're doing, you know, back and forth, back and forth.

• 46:30Speaker 02

  And then he goes to make an exit and there were supposed to be some escape stairs. And he just, he just went off the edge and gone. In other words, I opened the door, he walked out the door and just disappeared.

• 46:45Speaker 00

  Oh, no.

• 46:46Speaker 02

  And then he comes back, he comes back and his head was just on the floor above the thing. And he, and he goes bye bye like this and he went away. So, yeah, those, those kind of things happen. I love the best.

• 47:01Speaker 00

  Yeah. All right. One of my favorite little tidbits in the audio book describes how the creative team used Grimsby cards.

• 47:10Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Which were cards with the, the Stern News anchor Roger Grimsby's headshot on one side.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Yes. Harry Shearer was going with a woman who worked at ABC News at the time. And Roger Grimsby was a broadcaster. He was on camera. And they had a whole stack of like promotional cards where they had a picture of Roger Grimsby on the front and was empty on the back. We used these cards. We had a big bulletin board and anytime we had a scene that we thought, oh, this could work. We pinned it up on the bulletin board and it got to be where if we had an idea and we thought maybe it was good or should it be in the movie or not, uh, we would say, does this merit a Grimsby? In other words, should we commit this to a Grimsby? And so if it did, if it got on the board, it was a Grimsby.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  When we did the sequel, Michael goes, I, where did you get those pictures, Michael? You got?

• 48:03Speaker 00

  I just grabbed it off the internet.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  He got off the internet. It was a picture of Roger Grimsby and he had a whole stack of Grimsby's made up. So we could, we could, you know, keep the tradition alive.

• 48:14Speaker 00

  Oh, that's fabulous. I, I feel like somebody needs to sell Grimsby cards to screenwriters.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. The money will come rolling in.

• 48:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. I mean, what a.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  Million dollar idea. Yeah, it's a gold mine.

• 48:26Speaker 00

  Guys, this is our next venture. This is our next step. Here we go. All right. Well, it, you know, it's, it is such a fun, clever, um, creative technique. Do you have, do either of you have an unexpected or unusual method in your own creative process?

• 48:43Speaker 02

  God, I don't know. I wouldn't even know how to begin to describe where things come from.

• 48:48Speaker 00

  I just have to keep remembering to breathe. You know, cause sometimes if you're kind of waiting for something to happen, you kind of lose the reality. Cause a real person is going to be breathing. I've just found sometimes I gotta remind myself.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  Okay, and it's just helps you stay with them. I don't know. I don't have any other style.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  That's a hell of a good answer.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  I've always liked making these guys laugh and and they they know I'm a soft touch when it comes.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  And he does all the time. I mean, that's the thing about Michael and his brain work. You know, all three of them, their brains work in different ways, but very fast. And they come at comedy in different ways. And you just never know how it's gonna work. I'm, you know, I'm George Burns. I'm, you know, I'm my dad to Mel Brooks. I tried to, you know, I'm the straight guy to hopefully get the best out of them. And it's pretty easy when you're working with them. I'm telling you, it's pretty easy. They come prepared to to get good wood on the ball every time.

• 49:45Speaker 00

  Amen. You guys have incredible chemistry and it is so fun to see it still, just to see those sparks flying 40 years later. It's just it's just as alive as it ever was. It's it's so, so great.

• 50:02Speaker 00

  Now, last question. What are you listening to or reading right now? And and or what's next on your list?

• 50:10Speaker 03

  I'm reading the new Mark Twain autobiography, which is this thick and amazing. Not autobiography.

• 50:15Speaker 00

  I'm sorry, the new? He just put out a new one?

• 50:17Speaker 03

  No, no, not the new. It's not an autobiography. It's Ron Chernow's biography.

• 50:23Speaker 00

  Oh, fabulous.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  And it is. It's it's amazing. And what am I listening to? I'm listening to a couple of things. I got a book called Consciousness. What is Consciousness? This is fascinating. And so I listened to it at night. It puts me right to sleep. I can tell it's a really good book, but I lose consciousness.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  It should be called Unconsciousness.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  Unconsciousness, yes.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  But it's a it's a cool book. And yeah, I listened to I listened to a lot of different kinds of things. I'll tell you my favorite guy. There's a guy named Bill Homewood, like home, H O M E, Wood, Homewood. Uh, British guy and he, he did a 52 hour unabridged reading of The Count of Monte Cristo.

• 51:09Speaker 00

  Whoa.

• 51:10Speaker 03

  It's one of the greatest things I've ever heard. It was, it's like, I can't wait to get in the car and just drive nowhere, just so I can listen to this. And do nothing but this.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  He's brilliant. He also did The Three Musketeers and Tom Jones and a couple of other things like that.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  Wait, how long did that take you to listen to?

• 51:27Speaker 03

  Fifty two hours.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  Michael, do you listen to books more than you read them or do you read more than you listen?

• 51:34Speaker 03

  I'm starting to listen more than I read, but I still love to just park myself with a book. But at night, you know, if I'm kind of trying to chill out, I'll plug into something like that. And there's a woman named Sinead Dixon, who does most of Dickens and it's amazing.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Sinead Dickens, she should call herself.

• 51:52Speaker 00

  Amazing.

• 51:53Speaker 03

  And Maria, Maria Margulies also does a great, uh, does a lot of great Dixon stuff though.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  You know, I love blues music. I love country music. I love bluegrass. I like to watch Instagram and what I like about it, because I'm old, they, you know, in Tik Tok, they'll give you two seconds. They'll give you a full performance.

• 52:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:15Speaker 02

  Of somebody. So if like Billy Strings comes on, I'm like, ooh, good. I can hear a whole Billy Strings number. Or if it's Linda Ronstadt harmonizing with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. You know, I, I'll listen to all that or Chris Stapleton, whoever it is. And I love, I, I will just listen to those kinds of things. That's what I, I love listening to. And any, and any blues guitarist will go from one to the other.

• 52:42Speaker 00

  Amazing. Yeah, we're, we're in the same sort of musical loops there. I love it. Any audio books or books?

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Well, books, right now, you see, I'm in the midst of. Finishing up a book based on this podcast that I did last year about the JFK assassinations called Who Killed JFK? We did it on iHeartRadio.

• 53:07Speaker 00

  With, uh, Solidad?

• 53:08Speaker 02

  With Solidad O'Brien, yeah.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:10Speaker 02

  And it got like 10 million downloads and people liked it. So Simon and Schuster asked us if we would write a book. So we, we started working on it, the two guys that I work with on the podcast. So I've been writing on that. So I still, I'm reading, there's a book that came out about what happened to Dorothy Colgallan. And so I'm just keep reading more and more stuff about that right now. I'm kind of still immersed in that world.

• 53:35Speaker 00

  Wow. That's a, that's a good one. That's a juicy one. Well, Rob Reiner, Michael McKean, it was truly excellent having you on. Earsay, thank you so much for coming on.

• 53:48Speaker 02

  Thanks for having us, yeah.

• 53:49Speaker 03

  Thank you, Ed. Thanks for having us on.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. Anytime.

• 53:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. I wish we could, uh, wish we'd just be hanging out, having a beer right now.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  We're allowed to. You're, we're allowed.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  I'm gonna continue hanging out. Uh, you just might not be there.

• 54:04Speaker 00

  You'll just keep talking into your microphone for the next 45 minutes. Well, truly a pleasure, guys.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Thanks a lot, Ed.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Thanks a lot.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Well, that was awesome.

• 54:18Speaker 00

  This was like such a dream for me to, to just pick their brains and hear so many of the stories. As a person that works in comedy, I just love to hear how other people's brains work.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:31Speaker 00

  And like, and how their process works and especially material that I've appreciated so deeply for so many years, just to get under the hood and just see how that sausage is made. It's really a, a privilege.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Especially when it makes you laugh.

• 54:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 01

  I just find such joy in being able to go into the brains of other weirdos.

• 54:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:53Speaker 01

  In the best way possible.

• 54:54Speaker 00

  As a weirdo.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 54:56Speaker 00

  It's fun to, to learn about other weirdos.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Totally.

• 54:59Speaker 00

  And you and I are very proud to be weirdos.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Yes, of course.

• 55:03Speaker 00

  It's a badge of honor. All right. Well, you can find the new audiobook, A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, The Story of Spinal Tap, at Audible.

• 55:13Speaker 00

  Thank you for tuning into this episode of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audio Book Club.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  On the next episode, we're diving into a supernatural romance co-authored by Nicholas Sparks and M. Night Shyamalan. There's a haunted house, a ghost love story, a mystery that must be solved. You don't want to miss this.

• 55:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, that sounds quite saucy.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, extremely.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, we'll see you then. And if you had fun with us today, consider following the show wherever you listen. Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audio Book Club, is a production of iHeart's Ruby Studio. We're your hosts, Ed Helms

• 55:54Speaker 01

  and Kal Penn. Our executive producer is Matt Schultz, with theme music and post-production by Marcus Begala.

• 56:01Speaker 00

  For Ruby Studio, our managing EP is Matt Romano. Our EP of post-production is Matt Stillo. Our production coordinator is Abby Aguilar.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  And of course, a big thank you to our friends at Audible. Don't forget, you can listen to what we're listening to on the Audible app or at audible.com. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.com/earsay.

• 56:27Speaker 00

  Until next time, thanks for listening.

• 56:41Speaker 04

  Boring is out. Explore what fascinates you on Audible. Saucy romanticy series, edge-your-seat adventures, eerie horror, exclusive comedy podcasts, or maybe you want to hear the book before it hits the screen. Whatever you're into, Audible has you covered. New to Audible? Start listening with a 30-day free trial. Whether you're commuting, cooking, or just escaping the noise of everyday life, Audible keeps you fascinated, so you can be just as fascinating. To start your free trial, head to audible.com/earsay. That's audible.com/earsay.

• 57:14Speaker 05

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.