DANNY MCBRIDE Talks First Novel, Ghostly Encounters, North Carolina

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

• 0:00Adam Friedland?

  This episode is brought to you by Major League Baseball. There is nowhere left to go. Two teams, one championship. Watch the World Series. Yeah, the World Series presented by Capital One on Fox and Fox One. No time like October. Visit MLB.com/Postseason to learn more.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  Observe the North American dad. 50s, great polo collection. He enters his vehicle information on Carvana. An offer appears in minutes. Remarkable. He squints, reads it again, smiles and says, dang, that's a good offer. The highest form of approval. No haggling, no hassle. No one called him boss. He's still on the couch. Astonishing. Sell your car today on Carvana.com. Pickup fees may apply.

• 0:54Adam Friedland?

  Michael Keaton really was the coolest guy.

• 0:56Speaker 02

  He was.

• 0:56Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  Still is the coolest guy.

• 0:58Adam Friedland?

  You said I reminded you.

• 1:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, no, you actually said that you reminded yourself of that.

• 1:02Adam Friedland?

  You said that when you walked in, you said I had Michael Keaton.

• 1:04Speaker 02

  You had some leather slips on.

• 1:05Adam Friedland?

  You're like, wow, is that Batman?

• 1:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07Adam Friedland?

  And I was like, which one, dude? And you're like, Michael Keaton. And I was like, oh, wow. I wouldn't say that myself.

• 1:11Speaker 02

  You probably get that all the time, I bet.

• 1:12Adam Friedland?

  No, you get it probably all the time, too. You remind me of Michael Keaton more.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  No, you, you remind me more.

• 1:16Adam Friedland?

  You remind me the most of Michael Keaton.

• 1:18Speaker 02

  You remind me of Michael Keaton right now.

• 1:20Adam Friedland?

  I thought I was sitting next to Multiplicity.

• 1:21Speaker 02

  I bet you, Michael, whatever he's doing right now is what, I bet you, he looks just like you.

• 1:25Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 1:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, right now.

• 1:27Adam Friedland?

  Chill out the fuck out, dude.

• 1:29Speaker 02

  Take it, just take it. You can have that.

• 1:31Adam Friedland?

  I'll take it. I'll take it.

• 2:03Adam Friedland?

  My guest this week is actor and writer Danny McBride. Danny is, of course, known for his legendary work in film, television, and now in the world of literature. His new book, Thrilling Tales of Modern Men, is out now and has a cool cover. It's got a tiger. Tigers are, of course, my favorite animals. They have cool fur. I'll be in Denver, October 22nd to 24th at Comedy Works, New York, New York, New York Comedy Festival, Town Hall, November 13th, 2026. Welcome to the Adam Friedland Show. I'm Adam Friedland. My girlfriend's calling me right now. Fuck. What did I do? Ladies and gentlemen, legend Danny McBride. Give it up for him.

• 2:50Adam Friedland?

  Wow. My man. Thanks for coming in.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  Yes, of course. Thank you for having me.

• 2:56Adam Friedland?

  So you're, you're number one right now in this book.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Sold more copies than the Bible. So it's kind of a lot to process, but it's a day to day thing.

• 3:06Adam Friedland?

  Who is this King James? How'd he get his name on it?

• 3:08Speaker 02

  Good question, you know? Yeah, I've never run into those, him in any of the literary circles I run around in, so I'm not sure.

• 3:15Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, what's your literary circle? Kind of, it's you.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Me.

• 3:20Adam Friedland?

  Tucker Max.

• 3:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, Tucker Max, sure. Yeah, yep, he's in there. Richard Simmons, he, he wrote a book of his life, so got a lot of tips about how to navigate the book world through him.

• 3:31Adam Friedland?

  Were you a Stern guy at any point in your life?

• 3:34Speaker 02

  You know, I worked at a enterprise car rental joint for a little bit where I vacuumed cars and I would listen to Stern in the morning. That's when he was still on regular radio, not on satellite radio.

• 3:45Adam Friedland?

  I, my alarm clock radio was Stern growing up before school and I remember.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  Where'd you grow up?

• 3:51Adam Friedland?

  Las Vegas, Nevada.

• 3:52Speaker 02

  Oh, nice. That's why the Vegas number. You just still haven't changed that number, even though you live in New York, huh?

• 3:56Adam Friedland?

  You want to tell everyone?

• 3:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:58Adam Friedland?

  It's 702.

• 3:59Speaker 02

  Yes, that's, that's what I called.

• 4:02Adam Friedland?

  If anyone was like, no, yeah, I, I used to be embarrassed of coming from a shit place and living here, but now I'm kind of proud of it.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  I think it's a great place to come from. That's a pretty unique upbringing, I'm sure.

• 4:14Adam Friedland?

  It was weird.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Playing blackjack all the time?

• 4:16Adam Friedland?

  Uh, no, they, they didn't, they didn't let me because I had a system. Yeah, yeah.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  Gotcha, that makes sense.

• 4:21Adam Friedland?

  I was one of those math genius kids, yeah.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:24Adam Friedland?

  You grew up in Fredericksburg, is that right?

• 4:26Speaker 02

  I did. I grew up mainly, I lived in Fredericksburg and before that I lived in a really small town in California called Lompoc. My dad was a guard in the prison there and we lived on the prison reservation.

• 4:36Adam Friedland?

  Uh huh.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  It's pretty exciting.

• 4:37Adam Friedland?

  Do you know if your dad was dirty?

• 4:40Speaker 02

  He was, he probably was, I'm sure he was. I think he staged pit fights with the prisoners and stuff. I would imagine, that's what I would think would happen at a place like that.

• 4:48Adam Friedland?

  In Vegas, I was staging bum fights, in fact. Do you remember that website bumfights.com? That was, that was one of the cultural.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  That was you.

• 4:55Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, I staged it. Yeah, yeah, of course, I was like.

• 4:58Speaker 02

  Well, cool, it gave a lot of people a lot of opportunities to show their talents.

• 5:01Adam Friedland?

  Kimbo Slice, for instance.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  Kimbo Slice was no joke.

• 5:04Adam Friedland?

  He was, I miss, he died.

• 5:06Speaker 02

  Oh, did he die?

• 5:07Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I think he's dead.

• 5:08Speaker 02

  Oh, that's too bad.

• 5:09Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, he was a.

• 5:10Speaker 02

  He seemed unbeatable.

• 5:11Adam Friedland?

  The man was a.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  What got him?

• 5:13Adam Friedland?

  Uh, I think it was the.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Lyme's disease, probably.

• 5:16Adam Friedland?

  Oh, sorry, okay, yeah, yeah, Lyme's disease, yeah, yeah. Wait, you don't live in LA anymore. You've tried a bunch of times, right?

• 5:22Speaker 02

  I lived in LA for a while. I lived there for almost 20 years and then I moved out about, almost 10 years ago now.

• 5:28Adam Friedland?

  Oh, congratulations.

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:29Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, last trip I had there, I was like, I, I don't like this place at all.

• 5:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fun to visit, but when you have to start living your day to day there, I just found it to be a lot.

• 5:38Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. What made you want to write a book? Let's get that.

• 5:43Speaker 02

  You know what? I read books and so then I was like, why don't you try to write one? Let's see what happens. And my life hasn't been exciting enough for me to write an autobiography just yet, so I figured I needed to invent some stories to tell.

• 5:53Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Uh, and then you're, my favorite story here was Danny McBride, the man with the biggest penis of all time.

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. The publishing company fought hard to take that out, but I kept it in, yeah.

• 6:05Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:06Adam Friedland?

  You said it's, you're taking liberties. Yeah, creative license.

• 6:09Speaker 02

  That story, you know, was honestly one of the shortest stories in the book, you know? It was very small, yeah.

• 6:14Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. Short story, big piece.

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 6:18Adam Friedland?

  That's the subtitle.

• 6:19Speaker 02

  That is, that's it.

• 6:21Adam Friedland?

  In fact, it's mostly a title of a story and then.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  And then, yes, it probably was two or three sentences after each title.

• 6:26Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I've been a fan. It's, it's really cool that you're on the show. I've been a fan for a long time. In college, the pilot for Eastbound leaked and we, we loved Foot Fist Way.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Oh, nice.

• 6:38Adam Friedland?

  And do you remember it leaked like about, like a year and a half before like the show ever aired?

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Oh, you know, I never realized because I had, I had a copy myself, so I never, I didn't, yeah.

• 6:48Adam Friedland?

  You leaked it, you said.

• 6:49Speaker 02

  I leaked it myself, yeah. But when we shot that, we had no clue whether that show would get picked up. So we kind of like, we approached it, we're like, well, we got to shoot a pilot.

• 6:58Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it's, it's my favorite show of all time.

• 7:00Speaker 02

  Oh, I appreciate that.

• 7:01Adam Friedland?

  The script for the pilot also is.

• 7:03Speaker 02

  It's pretty, pretty crazy.

• 7:04Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. How, how did you, what did, did you just put too much in there so you could get some past the rabbis?

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Yes, we, we, we didn't really, at that point, we were very new to our careers, very new. And so we, we just always saw the executives as the enemy. So we were sort of always trying to outmaneuver them. Like, let's just like go really hard and then the idea that maybe we'll somehow end up just slightly back from that. But weirdly, they kind of stopped pushing back. And so then we're like, whoa, we're pretty far out over our skis here. We, we didn't think they would let us do this.

• 7:39Adam Friedland?

  Did you see your life going in this direction or did you just like say like, whatever, like maybe?

• 7:44Speaker 02

  I didn't really, I mean, I went to film school. I wanted to make movies and, and do that, but I didn't, I definitely didn't see acting and, and things. That was definitely not something I was like trying to do or looking to do.

• 7:54Adam Friedland?

  Uh huh. I suppose like, do you, do you feel like most normal in the South? Is that why you went back? Like.

• 7:59Speaker 02

  I don't know if I feel most normal in the South, but I just, honestly, I just like the, I like the pace of it. I feel like I did love being in a city, like in my twenties, but then once you have kids and you live in a city, you're like a teen mom who's just like watching everyone else have fun.

• 8:15Adam Friedland?

  So you, when you were a teenager, you became a mother.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  I became a mother, yeah. It was sick. You would have loved it.

• 8:21Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I guess like when, when you're young, like, how did you know you wanted to be making like, did you want to make films? Is that like?

• 8:29Speaker 02

  I did, I, you know, I, I loved movies. I was like, you know, I'm just like talking like an old timer, but when I was a kid, it was like the birth of video stores. So like, that was like such a crazy concept that what you're seeing in the movie theater, you could like take home and watch it for two days in your house. And I think that that came around when I was at an impressionable age, so I just was obsessed with, with just movies.

• 8:50Adam Friedland?

  How did like the guys in the seventies like become cinephiles?

• 8:53Speaker 02

  I have no clue. Like they, they had to wait the three years until it came on NBC and had commercials in it. I don't know.

• 8:59Adam Friedland?

  We saw Star Wars like 57 times.

• 9:01Speaker 02

  I know.

• 9:01Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, like when we were kids, because we had like the VHS.

• 9:04Speaker 02

  Well, that's the thing is I feel like with, we, it's fairly new that people have that kind of relationship with movies, that you can watch your favorite movie over and over again. Like it was something that you would see once, maybe twice.

• 9:16Adam Friedland?

  It's bizarre to me.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  It is, it is, yeah.

• 9:18Adam Friedland?

  Did they have better memories or something?

• 9:20Speaker 02

  I guess there was less of it, so maybe they were just like really living it.

• 9:24Adam Friedland?

  We could watch it so many times, we could literally blaze and do it.

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, and just quote every line, yeah.

• 9:29Adam Friedland?

  I remember when the, when the DVDs like delivery from Netflix started, I like, I was like, my life is about to change completely. I could watch any movie.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  And I, yeah, and I don't have to worry about a late fee. I don't have to pay a hundred bucks because I forgot to return this.

• 9:45Adam Friedland?

  Do you think there's like, do you think they suck now? Like, cause like, and maybe it's the over availability has made it suck? Like, I think music probably, kids can listen to any song ever, right? Like, I would get a CD and listen for a month and then like, get obsessed with one album.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it would really make an impression on you. Yeah, I mean, obviously, it's like, I got kids and what I've noticed is when they go on vacation and they only have like, one or two toys, they play with those fucking toys all the time. But then when they get around their house with all their toys, they're constantly bored. So I think when you have access to all of it, weirdly, none of it kind of resonates. You kind of don't care about any of it.

• 10:22Adam Friedland?

  The art suffers.

• 10:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  And there is so much now, and it is, I mean, it used to be, you know, if there was a movie you liked, you, you know, you really kind of, you had a hope that it was in the video store, that somebody else in your town wasn't wanting to watch the same movie that you were wanting to watch that night.

• 10:38Adam Friedland?

  Exactly, yeah.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  And I think there's something that probably made all of it seem more magic. It felt like you were getting something special when it landed at your house.

• 10:46Adam Friedland?

  I guess the only thing that's really changed in the world is we just have iPhones and you can watch any shit you want at any time ever.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:54Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Which always feels like so weird, like when you see those like, AT&T commercials and stuff, where it literally just people-

• 10:59Adam Friedland?

  That chick?

• 11:00Speaker 02

  That, that one's great, but-

• 11:01Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, oh, sorry.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  It's literally commercials where people are just like, walking around the city, just like, watching TV shows on their phone, and they're like, selling it like, "Look how awesome this is, you can watch even more things now, it seems broken, right?"

• 11:13Adam Friedland?

  It's fucked up, yeah, yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 02

  Even calling it binging feels like-

• 11:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, you're a drug addict?

• 11:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, it seems like a weird thing to call consuming media.

• 11:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it's the thing that someone that dies from having too much food-

• 11:27Speaker 02

  From doing too much, yeah. The name says it all, this isn't good for you.

• 11:32Adam Friedland?

  I guess like, yeah, so, I'm in a bad mood right now, cause our researcher said you're obsessed with Diet Dr. Pepper.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  You know, I like to put out falsehoods and just test the good researchers.

• 11:42Adam Friedland?

  You're like Bob Dylan when he was like, in his twenties, he said, "I'm coming from the circus."

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:46Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  But it wasn't Diet Dr. Pepper, so he really fucked it all up.

• 11:50Adam Friedland?

  You wanna try one, or some-

• 11:52Speaker 02

  You know what, maybe, probably not, you know?

• 11:54Adam Friedland?

  We have a fucking fridge full of Diet Dr. Pe-

• 11:56Speaker 02

  You know what, it's gonna be the diet soda that keeps giving.

• 11:59Adam Friedland?

  This is gonna be in my head the rest of the episode. All right, can the camera operators have, drink all of them by the end of the episode?

• 12:05Speaker 02

  I think that's a great challenge.

• 12:07Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, okay, just get them to, yeah, James, I want you, I wanna see you chug. When you were a kid, did you record the audio of movies on tape?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  I would, yes, I didn't, uh, we didn't have any of the pay channels at my house, so when the movies would come on HBO, you could tune to the channel. But it was, yeah, you would tune and you could jack off in front of your parents to the channels. And the signal would be scrambled, so you couldn't see it, but you could hear it. So I would just like, record on a cassette tape, the audio of the movies.

• 12:38Adam Friedland?

  What movies did you listen to as a kid?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  This is the dumbest one, I listened to Mr. Mom for some reason, that was the first one I tried it with.

• 12:46Adam Friedland?

  Well, that's why in high school, you became a mother.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  That was exactly why, I became a teen mom. But I, for some reason, I was watching Mr., was listening to Mr. Mom, and I was like, "I should record this." And then, I did it, I sat there and I screamed at my sister every time she came in the room and talked. I'm like, "I'm trying to get this recording of Mr. Mom on this tape deck, what are you doing?"

• 13:04Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, and how did you, so then you had a-

• 13:06Speaker 02

  And I just like, kind of walk around the neighborhood with a walkman, just like, listening to Michael Keaton, like, not know how to change a diaper.

• 13:12Adam Friedland?

  You hadn't have been cool.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:13Adam Friedland?

  You couldn't have been cool.

• 13:14Speaker 02

  Fucking coolest kid in town.

• 13:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, you got pussy off of that?

• 13:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was like, second grade, tons of pussy.

• 13:21Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 13:22Adam Friedland?

  Oh, I got, yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  But you wanna, you wanna hear my, uh, my Mr. Mom tapes, come back to the clubhouse.

• 13:27Adam Friedland?

  He really was the, Michael Keaton really was the coolest guy.

• 13:31Speaker 02

  He was.

• 13:31Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:32Speaker 02

  Still is the coolest guy.

• 13:33Adam Friedland?

  You said I reminded you.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, no, you actually said that you reminded yourself of that.

• 13:37Adam Friedland?

  You said that, when you walked in, you said I had Michael Keaton on.

• 13:39Speaker 02

  You had some leather slips on.

• 13:40Adam Friedland?

  You're like, "Wow, is that Batman?" And I was like, "Which one, dude?" And you're like, "Michael Keaton," and I was like, "Oh, wow," I wouldn't say that myself.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  You probably get that all the time, I bet.

• 13:47Adam Friedland?

  No, you get it probably all the time, too, you remind me of Michael Keaton more.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  No, you, you remind me more.

• 13:51Adam Friedland?

  You remind me the most of Michael Keaton.

• 13:53Speaker 02

  You remind me of Michael Keaton right now.

• 13:54Adam Friedland?

  I thought I was sitting next to Multiplicity.

• 13:56Speaker 02

  I bet you, Michael, whatever he's doing right now is what, I bet you he looks just like you.

• 14:00Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, right now.

• 14:01Adam Friedland?

  Chill out the fuck out, dude.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Take it, just take it, you can have that.

• 14:05Adam Friedland?

  I'll take it, I'll take it. Remember Multiplicity, it's such a good movie?

• 14:10Speaker 02

  I miss that one, so you do look more like Michael Keaton than me.

• 14:13Adam Friedland?

  It's just me seeing a movie, you remind me in, in terms of your effortless chill style, and everyone, when you show up on screen, everyone's like, the, he has the effortless chill style that Michael Keaton once had.

• 14:27Adam Friedland?

  In the way that Batman couldn't move his neck in the early ones.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  I'm the same way, yeah.

• 14:31Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. I guess like, how would you characterize yourself as a kid? Were you, were the, I mean, you sound like a fu-

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Like, go, go ahead, tell me, what did I sound like?

• 14:41Adam Friedland?

  I mean, like, uh, a fucking pimp, dude.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  You know what, I was, uh, you know, I just marched to my own drum. I didn't really give a shit what people thought, I just did my own thing. I liked movies, I liked, uh, I made movies in my backyard when I was like, in middle school and high school.

• 14:59Adam Friedland?

  What did you shoot on?

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Shot on a little like, Panasonic VHS camera.

• 15:04Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, we had a, we had the, the Hi-A, the Sony Hi-A.

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Those were nice.

• 15:08Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  Those were really cool.

• 15:10Adam Friedland?

  We'd shoot jackass videos on those when I was in high school.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  That's perfect, no one got, no one got hurt, huh?

• 15:15Adam Friedland?

  No, a lot of people did, I got a concussion, actually, and then I took a nap, and then my dad got yelled at by my mom that you can't take a nap after a concussion.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  We, a friend of mine broke his arm when we were making, we made, we were making Stand By Me Part Two. Uh, this is serious, it's sixth grade, it's a very serious movie. And, uh, the Ray Brower comes back to life and kills the people that saw his body.

• 15:38Adam Friedland?

  That's funny.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  Uh, that's what we were making, and when my friend was playing River Phoenix, and he, uh, gets pushed off of a balcony, and he was just gonna hang off the side of the balcony, and then we're gonna cut, and then just like, zoom in. And instead, we were filming, he goes on the balcony and he just drops and just straight breaks his arm on the, uh, deal. And then all the rest of, uh, the movie, cause we shot everything just in camera, he suddenly has a pink cast on for the rest of it.

• 16:04Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, continuity issue, yeah. And then he overdosed on the sunset, at the Viper Room.

• 16:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, yup, we're sixth grade, yeah, that's what he was up to. This is for my bachelor party, yeah.

• 16:17Adam Friedland?

  When Foot, there's a legend, I mean, you've told the story probably a million times of like, Foot Fistway, like, you guys just fucking around making it, uh, and then, uh, what do you call it? Will Ferrell and Adam McKay finding it, and then it coming out. Like, uh, did you guys know that you were, this was the funniest thing, like?

• 16:37Speaker 02

  We did, and we hoped that it would be, but we, uh, we were just, you know, we were just making what made us laugh, and so we were, we didn't know where that would land, or if it would get, if it would score anything for us, we had no idea.

• 16:49Adam Friedland?

  My favorite moment is when your wife is coming home, and you have the knife.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  And I tried to scare her.

• 16:54Adam Friedland?

  And you say, "Fuck you."

• 16:58Adam Friedland?

  We would replay it.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  See, those are fun things to do with your wife.

• 17:02Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I was like, "I got you."

• 17:09Adam Friedland?

  I, I heard you once say that you like it when your characters don't like, teach anyone any lessons. Like, is there, I feel like in a lot of your things, there's a notion of human nature, where people are just really who, it's so, why am I talking this way?

• 17:24Speaker 02

  Go for it, no, you're killing it.

• 17:25Adam Friedland?

  I'm nervous, I'm really nervous. People are just really, do you think people ever change, right, like?

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Uh, you know, I mean, sure, some people change, you know, but, uh, don't you feel like change mainly? I, I kind of feel like, uh, sometimes it feels, uh, insincere when like, you watch someone completely change in an hour and a half, watching a movie. It kind of feels like, all right, they totally changed.

• 17:47Adam Friedland?

  In real life, but, like, I am kind of who I was at seventeen, when I was jerking off to-

• 17:53Speaker 02

  Well, you're more Michael Keaton now, so there's definitely been that change.

• 17:56Adam Friedland?

  I was jerking off Mr. Popper's Penguin, scrambled.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Sick, and then you moved on to Multiplicity.

• 18:00Adam Friedland?

  I think I was just like, yeah.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Is Mr. Popper's Penguin a good thing to jack off to?

• 18:05Adam Friedland?

  I don't even know if that was when I was, I was jerking off to Soul Plane.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:09Adam Friedland?

  We used to, do you ever pull the move where you go to the movies at like, eleven?

• 18:14Speaker 02

  And jack off, no.

• 18:15Adam Friedland?

  You see Four, you jerk off. Crouching Tiger, yeah, yeah.

• 18:21Speaker 02

  And what, you just stick around the movie theater and just kind of bounce from one to the next? I've definitely done that before, I haven't done Four, I've done, I've done Two before.

• 18:28Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, me and my friend Alex in high school, that was our move. And, yeah, it was just, I miss, like, they used to just make crap, and then you'd go see the crap that they made.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  I would see everything that was out. That was fun, too, to sneak into them, cause like, you'd finish one movie, then you'd like, go into the bathroom, and then be like, it's, the next thing I wanna see is in that theater, I'm gonna go in there, and then you go in, you're like, damn, this shit doesn't start for like, an hour.

• 18:51Adam Friedland?

  You have to check-

• 18:51Speaker 02

  And I was like, hide in the back here.

• 18:53Adam Friedland?

  You have to check the paper, right? You have to check the like, the times that they announce, yeah. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess I'll, I'll sit in on The Scorpion King with The Rock.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Why not?

• 19:02Adam Friedland?

  For like, thirty minutes, see what that shit's all about.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  It's perfect.

• 19:05Adam Friedland?

  And then Crouching Tiger starts, I mean, I, I remember, it was just like, I would just, they used to just make garbage, and we, but it was the garbage they gave us, right?

• 19:14Speaker 02

  So we'd take it.

• 19:15Adam Friedland?

  And we'd take it, and I have a real like, romanticism about it, like-

• 19:18Speaker 02

  It was pretty awesome, I mean, you think they stripped their, you know, if that stuff becomes unpopular, there really is like, nothing for kids to do, other than just like, huff paint, do drugs, if we don't have movie theaters, we need it, it's important.

• 19:28Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, it's true, I don't even know what they do nowadays, they watch gangbangs on Blue, on the-

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Jack off to Mr. Popper's Penguin, I think, is what all the young children are doing these days.

• 19:37Adam Friedland?

  I don't know if that's really lasted-

• 19:39Speaker 02

  No, I think it is, I saw a Dateline special about it.

• 19:43Adam Friedland?

  You guys were like such a tight crew. You, Jody and Danny. Sorry. Gordon. David Gordon. David. David. Run it again. It was you. You guys were such a tight crew. You, Andrew Tate.

• 20:03Adam Friedland?

  The luxury of working with the people that you like knew as very young like men.

• 20:11Adam Friedland?

  I guess it's like a... Do you think that your work benefits from the fact that it's like such a small crew?

• 20:18Speaker 02

  You know what? I think it makes the whole journey of it more fun. Like, you know, when you've... I've known a lot of these guys. Because even beyond Jody and David, like, there's writers on the show. There's our productions. There are all these guys who are dudes I met when I was 18 years old when we were at film school. So like, we... Even behind the scenes, there are a lot of the same group of guys. But, uh, yeah, it's just always kind of surreal when you're thinking about like, you know, we were just fucking around when we were basically teenagers and then everyone's like getting paid to do it and we're showing up in different places. So I think it makes it more fun. And then with our crew, everybody has their own sensibilities and their own tastes. So everybody goes and does stuff on their own. So I think it takes that pressure that like maybe a band has, where like everybody has to like stay together or else no one is gonna get paid, you know?

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Like ours is, the pressure's always off because everybody just goes and does their own thing.

• 21:06Adam Friedland?

  When you... Did you guys all move to LA together? Was that how it worked?

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Uh, some of us did. Green... David Green lived in Texas. But yeah, a big group of us moved. A lot of kids I graduated from the North Carolina School of the Arts at film school moved to LA. I think when we moved there in like the fall of 99, there was like 30 of us. And then after the first year, there was like six of us.

• 21:28Adam Friedland?

  Was anyone turning tricks?

• 21:29Speaker 02

  Everybody was. The guys, the six who stayed, that's how we survived. Yeah, we're not fools. We're not gonna go, "Pee-ay." We're not gonna show up and be a camera guy on a podcast. We're gonna turn tricks.

• 21:39Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. What was it like at those pool parties at David Giffen's house in the hills?

• 21:44Speaker 02

  They were so cool. We... I would just walk around in a banana hammock, serve a Mai Tais, and everybody seemed to love it. They thought I had a future.

• 21:51Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:52Adam Friedland?

  You're like, "Look at me, I'm a fucking twink."

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, look at me. Yeah. They're like, "You're a twinkie." You're not... Yeah, no one here wants to fuck you, dude.

• 22:00Adam Friedland?

  You're trying to get fucked. The worst part is you were trying to get molested.

• 22:05Speaker 02

  I know, and it just never happened for me, unfortunately.

• 22:07Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Why not me? Why not me? I remember, I forgot where I heard it, but you told this story, like, there was a... It was... You had an ex-girlfriend who said that she got involved with... What is the... What was the story? I try to find it everywhere online. The guy had an Escalade or something?

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Well, there's the story. I went to go... I had an ex-girlfriend who, after we broke up, or after she broke up with me, I moved to LA with her. And my life quickly fell apart once I moved to LA for the first time. She met somebody new. This guy was a pretty big guy. He was a gym guy. And I guess things didn't work out for her. She was trying to break it off. She called me to come pick her up. I showed up. The guy didn't like it. I came there with some friends, because we're not fighters. None of us had like really gotten to big scuffles. And I ended up with like a golf club and I tried to take a swing at this dude and it didn't go well. And we got our ass kicked. And so...

• 23:06Adam Friedland?

  Wait, it was four of you versus one guy?

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Well, my friends never got out of the car. They stayed... I thought, we drove there in my Hyundai Elantra. I remember driving there. We lived in Glendale and we had to go pick her up in Burbank. And I remember trying to hype them up, like, "When we get there, you know, we have to just fucking go for it. We can't show any reluctance." And we were listening to Rolling Stones Satisfaction in the car, just sort of like getting jammed. "Here we go." And then the reality was, we got, we pull up and the guy is like 6'5" and he's standing there and all my friends are just like, "Fuck." And I'm even just like barely rolling on the window like, "Come on, come into the car. We don't need to go out." But then we got into this fight and, uh, and so then we get back... It's very traumatic. We get back to my apartment in Glendale.

• 23:53Speaker 02

  And then the ex-girlfriend tells me like why she was breaking up with him, that he was basically a criminal and had been involved in a car ring theft. And I'm like, "Oh, Jesus." He like assaulted a police officer. And then he's sort of, you know, then she... He's calling her saying, "I'm gonna kill your... I'm gonna fucking kill that guy." And I'm like, "Oh, God, is this really happening?" And I'm like, "Well, at least he doesn't know where we lived." And she's like, "Actually, he does know where you live. We went on a date like across and I pointed out that you live there." And it got really crazy. That dude rolled up with like a bunch of people and me and my friends escaped. And I literally never went back to that apartment for like three months. I just like took a... I took like a duffel bag of stuff and just crashed at my friend's house for a while.

• 24:37Adam Friedland?

  You left all your stuff there?

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, I left all my stuff there. I took like a duffel bag. I grabbed a butcher knife and a duffel bag full of stuff and like made my way out to my car and escaped Glendale.

• 24:50Adam Friedland?

  Was he a Glendale-style guy?

• 24:53Speaker 02

  I think he was, yeah.

• 24:54Adam Friedland?

  Armenian-style guy?

• 24:55Speaker 02

  No, no. He was. He wasn't a Glendale-style guy, no.

• 24:59Adam Friedland?

  I was reading about it. You said you that you tried to... You considered Eastbound to be like British TV. Like, what do you mean by that?

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Well, only in the sense that when we were watching British TV shows and they were all so small, so short. They were like six episodes long and American TV was not that way. I mean, sitcoms are like 24 episodes or something.

• 25:19Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Which shows were you watching?

• 25:21Speaker 02

  I watched The Office, Spaced, which like Edgar Wright and Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's show. And then I'd watch, you know, things like...

• 25:30Adam Friedland?

  Brass Eye?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:32Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  And, uh, and what's it called?

• 25:34Adam Friedland?

  Partridge?

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, Alan Partridge. All the Steve Kugan stuff is awesome. But when we, when we sold Eastbound, I think even at that point HBO shows were like 13 episodes, you know, was what they were. So when we sold it, it was like, "We just wanna do six episodes." And everybody, like our agents and even HBO were like, "Why, that's ridiculous. Like, they wanna pay you to make more." And we just felt like, you know what? Six is, we can, just enough time to like make it make sense and not to like wear it into, run it into the ground.

• 26:03Adam Friedland?

  How did you manage to like... Like, every season is so distinct and like, how did you manage to grow it? Because it's, every character, like, it's Janowski, like, he really has a wild ride.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  He does. And you know what's so funny? We didn't even know... We had no idea that that was gonna be his run from the beginning. Like, we had him in that pilot. And when we got on the set, I just thought Steve Little was so incredibly funny that I was just like, "Well, this is what the whole show is, is gonna be like these two dudes together." And so then like a lot of it, I think, is just, you know, we'll have some kind of plan, but really it's about like making it and seeing what we have fun doing and then just the next time, like letting that guide what you're gonna keep doing.

• 26:44Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. I mean, it is the best show ever. You know, do you realize it's the best show ever?

• 26:49Speaker 02

  You know, I try not to think about it. I don't look into the past a lot. You know, I just look forward.

• 26:53Adam Friedland?

  You know.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  I just look forward.

• 26:54Adam Friedland?

  You realize it's the best show ever. It's the best fucking show ever. I mean, oh, God. Yeah. I guess it's just like, um, yeah. That's the cool thing about that show is that no one really changes, but they change so much.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, they go through a lot.

• 27:09Adam Friedland?

  You know what I mean? Like, you could tell that there are cracks of their insecurities that are beginning to show and then they just have this... Kenny ruins everyone's life.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Everybody's life, yeah.

• 27:19Adam Friedland?

  He ruins everyone's fucking life.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  He's the biggest piece of shit of all time.

• 27:23Adam Friedland?

  How did, how did you like come up with the concept each season? That's like the Mexico season, the Myrtle season and then the, like, I guess Inside the NBA, kind of?

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, you know, we really wanted every season to feel like it could just be its own movie. And that way, even if you don't like the whole series, you might have a season that you would like, like, "I only do the Myrtle Beach season" or whatever. But we wanted them, uh, you know, we're like, that was the first thing we had ever done in television. So we were used to just writing for movies or thinking about stories in movie terms. So we really approached each season like it was a sequel. Just sort of like, you know, if they're in the snow and Empire Strikes Back, like, what's our version of what weird outfits will they wear this season? And so then it was kind of, we would just think that way of like, "All right, what kind of weird shit would Kenny be wearing? Like, he's in Mexico. He's wearing like Mexican stuff. He's in Myrtle Beach. He's wearing dipshit stuff."

• 28:17Adam Friedland?

  Did you go, that was your vacation spot as a kid, Myrtle?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  I went there like once or twice, yeah. You know, I actually had to go there last week and my son was in a lacrosse tournament there. It's a long time since I've been there, but get a lot of mileage when I, when I show up there at Myrtle Beach.

• 28:32Adam Friedland?

  It is, it's such, there are like a bunch of cities in the part of the world that you live in that are so distinct from any other city. You know, like you live in Charleston.

• 28:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:41Adam Friedland?

  It is distinct from any other city in America. Savannah is distinct, but Myrtle Beach is just, it is, it is a mirror to America. Like, it is just hell on earth.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  It's really, it's sticky. You go to restaurants there and your arms stick to the tables, the weather outside is sticky, the floors in the hotel are sticky. It's sticky.

• 29:02Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, I've been there once and it's so, it's like, I can't get over it.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I used to, I mean, when I was a kid, it was so much fun to go there and you'd just see all of the, like, all the tourist attractions. Yeah, so I think it made an impression on me when I was a kid. And so then when we shot Eastbound, I just wanted to have the experience of taking, like, other people and making them live there for a little bit.

• 29:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  I remember one night, we were shooting and Craig Robinson and Will Ferrell were there. It was like, they were doing the, all that crazy biker stuff in Myrtle Beach.

• 29:31Adam Friedland?

  Black biker week.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and Will was like, we were gonna go grab dinner and Will was like, we should just go to the Planet Hollywood here. Just like, us three go in and see if we can get set. And we didn't end up doing it, we should have. We went to Bojangles instead.

• 29:44Adam Friedland?

  Oh, okay. Yeah. They, they wouldn't have been like your table.

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're like, this is all the memorabilia from Elf. We'll sit you underneath this. No one really comes here.

• 29:54Adam Friedland?

  I remember when I was a kid, I asked my parents if I could have my birthday party there one year and I had it.

• 29:59Speaker 02

  What'd they say?

• 29:59Adam Friedland?

  They said yes.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  Oh, they're good parents.

• 30:01Adam Friedland?

  And I was like, I was like, guys, you know Sylvester Stallone is a part owner?

• 30:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:07Adam Friedland?

  My friends were like...

• 30:09Speaker 02

  That didn't do it for him?

• 30:10Adam Friedland?

  No, no, they didn't care at all.

• 30:12Speaker 02

  Wait, what was that voice that you just did? That's how you talk when you were a kid?

• 30:15Adam Friedland?

  That's how I talk when I'm not around Gentiles.

• 30:17Speaker 02

  Oh, got it, got it, okay.

• 30:19Adam Friedland?

  My, my real name is Rabbi Menachem Shneurson.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  I heard that.

• 30:24Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. This episode is brought to you by eBay Live. Here's how it goes. First, you're just watching eBay Live, seeing some rare finds, not even bidding, just lurking, and then you see a rare rookie card. Go for an absolute steal. A 90's handbag comes up and you have to jump in. Maybe put that, put that rookie card in the handbag. Maybe you lose your first auction. You bid again and win. And that winning feeling, it's such a rush because you know everyone else wanted it too. Meanwhile, on eBay Live, you don't just watch the action, you're in it. Download the eBay app to stream and shop live. eBay Live, things people love.

• 31:04Speaker 03

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• 31:35Speaker 04

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• 32:03Speaker 04

  Before this...

• 32:07Speaker 04

  There's this.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  As you celebrate the game, take a deeper look at its roots. The people grow in the

• 32:15Adam Friedland?

  grass, paving the lots, welding the goalposts, inspecting every football. The hard-working people that make every Sunday possible. Carhartt is proud to outfit the crews behind the game. Visit carhartt.com/jointhetraids to learn more.

• 32:33Adam Friedland?

  You were a substitute teacher before you made that show?

• 32:35Speaker 02

  I was, yep. I was living at my, I was, had moved home from LA. And, yep, I was substitute teaching.

• 32:43Adam Friedland?

  How nice of parents do you have?

• 32:45Speaker 02

  They're pretty cool.

• 32:46Adam Friedland?

  They're pretty cool? Yeah, they're like, you're doing film as a job?

• 32:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then they were, I think that they saw it coming. I think that they, they were always supportive of me when I went off to film school. I think it was a lot like, well, good luck to you. And so I think when I came home from LA, they were, I don't think it was a big surprise. I think that they were, I think what's happening now is probably a bigger surprise to them.

• 33:04Adam Friedland?

  Was the Civil War a big deal when you were growing up?

• 33:08Speaker 02

  It had just happened in the 80s. It had just finished. Yeah, so a lot of t-shirts and memorabilia.

• 33:13Adam Friedland?

  In VA, like...

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it totally was. I mean, where we lived, Fredericksburg... I've seen reenactments. I've never done that myself. Should, it should be fun. It'd be nice. But, yeah, Fredericksburg is like, it's known as, I think it's the bloodiest ground in all of North America because the amount of wars there. That's where I'm from.

• 33:34Adam Friedland?

  When you first moved to LA, is that when you realized that the North were the good guys?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  I was like, oh, the Civil War wasn't fought out here. I can't stay out here too long.

• 33:41Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:42Adam Friedland?

  Have you found out yet or that the North are the good guys or?

• 33:46Speaker 02

  I'm not sure what you're talking about. They're the what?

• 33:49Adam Friedland?

  Good guys?

• 33:50Speaker 02

  The good guys. I don't know. It's not something we discussed in my house.

• 33:53Adam Friedland?

  All right, that's fine. That's fine. Do you think Robert E. Lee was a little too hyped?

• 33:59Speaker 02

  He, you know, a lot of people...

• 34:01Adam Friedland?

  He kinda was an office man. He was like Grant.

• 34:03Speaker 02

  The thing about Robert Lee that a lot of people kind of like wash over is that he was an incredible bodyboarder. He would often, he would go to Myrtle Beach, yeah, before he kinda led the troops.

• 34:11Adam Friedland?

  When you got hurricanes and smoked opium and go boogie boarding.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  And he'd go down there and he would, he would surf and stuff. And, you know, that stuff, that's the thing, is we just whitewash people, you know? We don't look at all of the cool things that they really did.

• 34:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, he had the pot leaf...

• 34:26Speaker 02

  That was inspired by him, yeah, yep. Robert Lee was all about weed. A lot of people don't know that.

• 34:32Adam Friedland?

  Was he? That's what the war was really about, dude. That's what they'll tell you. It was, yeah. They were, they wanted to put their, the North wanted to put their laws on a, just a simple, on a plant.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:44Adam Friedland?

  Can you imagine on a plant that Ja gave his out?

• 34:47Speaker 02

  In history. You got it, yeah. And it was Ja.

• 34:50Adam Friedland?

  I love history, yeah. Your dad like made crossbows? Is that what he did, bro?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  You know, my parents got separated after I was in 6th grade. And honestly, I don't really keep up with my old man. But I, so I've heard tales of what he's up to. But at one point, I think he was working for a crossbow, a place that makes crossbows, and then a place that makes boat windshield.

• 35:10Adam Friedland?

  She got custody?

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, I just became a runaway. I raised myself. I hopped on train cars.

• 35:15Adam Friedland?

  Why wouldn't you go to the judge and be like, can I please live with this crossbow?

• 35:20Speaker 02

  It's dangerous.

• 35:21Adam Friedland?

  I will be representing myself, your honor. Dad, he might have some problems, but he wants to show...

• 35:28Speaker 02

  But he's making crossbows now.

• 35:30Adam Friedland?

  He was the head of the, for the Confederacy, the crossbow.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  The crossbow division, yeah.

• 35:37Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. What did your, what did your mom do growing up?

• 35:41Speaker 02

  Raised us. She raised us. You know, she...

• 35:45Adam Friedland?

  Raised you good.

• 35:45Speaker 02

  Raised us good. When I was a kid, we went to church a lot. And so then, one of the deals she did was she, she was, did this puppet ministry at our church where she would write these puppet plays and then perform puppet ministry for children.

• 36:00Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. What, what branch of Christianity is puppet?

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Grew up, grew up, they were all Baptist puppets. Yeah.

• 36:07Adam Friedland?

  Baptist, okay.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Southern Baptist puppets, yeah.

• 36:10Adam Friedland?

  There's a difference between Catholic puppets and...

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's more ritual involved with the Catholic puppets.

• 36:15Adam Friedland?

  They got something different inside.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Some of the stuff is Latin and, you know, with Southern Baptists, it kinda just let it rip.

• 36:21Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. They got some, they...

• 36:24Speaker 02

  They got a hand inside of them.

• 36:26Adam Friedland?

  In Baptist.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, yeah.

• 36:27Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, they have them.

• 36:29Speaker 02

  They have a what?

• 36:30Adam Friedland?

  Penis. An adult's penis.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Oh, and which one? The Catholic ones?

• 36:34Adam Friedland?

  Cut that, dude. They're friends. I don't want to go at them. Yeah. Yeah, what, what inspired vice principals, I guess? What the fuck am I, James Lipton?

• 36:46Speaker 02

  It seems like it. You went from Michael Keaton to James Lipton pretty quick. It's wild.

• 36:50Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. And then you said, "For shizzle, for the first, Dave Chappelle. You're the fastest to say sh- for shizzle." I literally, we had the pilot of Eastbound memorized. I wrote on our door in our dorm room, the, I'm the one with the ball. I'm the one who could throw it faster than fuck.

• 37:13Adam Friedland?

  Was John Rocker was the, was the inspirational?

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Well, you know what's funny is that, you know, growing up, I was never into any sports, like there wasn't anything. So I didn't even know.

• 37:22Adam Friedland?

  You should listen.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  I didn't know, I didn't know anybody. I didn't know who John Rocker was when we even wrote this. And then after we started writing it.

• 37:29Adam Friedland?

  You could tell from how you throw in the, when they do the baseball season.

• 37:33Speaker 02

  We, I didn't even, we were so worried about making the show that it wasn't until about a week before we were shooting. And we were like, maybe we should like, should I like meet with someone to make sure I know how to like, you know, look like I can play baseball. And so we got this guy from Wilmington, from UNC Wilmington. There you go. And he came and he watched me throw and he was just like, fuck, no. This is a good thing this is comedy. Yeah. And so I tried to learn how to throw over the course of the four years. I barely got it. But, uh, yeah, I don't know why we even chose baseball, to tell you the truth. Like when it was all over, like, we know nothing about baseball. Like, why did we choose to make a show about a pitcher? But that's just how it came to us.

• 38:10Adam Friedland?

  Did, do you think John Rocker saw the show?

• 38:12Speaker 02

  I hope so. I'd like to think so.

• 38:14Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. You think it made him change a little bit, maybe think about.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  Well, then what I've learned from, about John Rocker since then is like, I think he's, I think John Rocker has always been John Rocker.

• 38:23Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's off his, off, off his rocker. That was a friendly laugh. That was really nice of you to laugh at that. You're the best.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  You're doing great.

• 38:33Adam Friedland?

  You're the best. Uh, you've been writing, is this the first time you've written like prose before?

• 38:41Speaker 02

  This is the first prose. That's a big word. That's nice.

• 38:43Adam Friedland?

  Terrible question, terribly.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, this is the first, this is my first foray into literature.

• 38:49Adam Friedland?

  Did you find that you already knew how to write, basically?

• 38:52Speaker 02

  You know what? You know, I've been writing for TV now sadly for like 20 years. I've written over 80 episodes of television. So.

• 38:59Adam Friedland?

  The good place, obviously Ted Danson.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Yes, Ted Danson. You, uh, you learn from that, but it is different writing for this, you know? Like with TV, the writing can just be whatever because eventually actors are going to come in and, and they'll make the lines better. Or, you know, some editor will come and cut out all the stuff that sucks. And with writing like this, you're a little more exposed. There's nobody coming in, putting a cool song over it to make up for stuff that's not working.

• 39:25Adam Friedland?

  You don't get a song.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  You don't get a song. Yeah. Can't put the shit in slow motion.

• 39:29Adam Friedland?

  It'd be cool if, the publisher's here right now, right?

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. All, everyone from the publishing house is here.

• 39:36Adam Friedland?

  Like, you know, when you get a birthday card that you, it like has a song, when you open it up, put that in books, maybe. Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  I think that's great.

• 39:44Adam Friedland?

  If you swap bodies with a random guy in China, do you think you would get found out first? You think the Chinese guy's body or the Chinese guy in your body, who would get in trouble?

• 39:53Speaker 02

  It's a fascinating question.

• 39:54Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Thank you.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  I'd like to think that I could use my powers as a world-class actor to, you know, inhabit the body of anyone, regardless of race or ethnicity.

• 40:09Adam Friedland?

  So how would you just, day one, if, how would you?

• 40:13Speaker 02

  I would just do all the cool stuff that Chinese people do.

• 40:16Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Okay. So like what?

• 40:17Speaker 02

  It's all, you know, you know what it is. Yeah.

• 40:20Adam Friedland?

  And like you go home, your wife's there, she's moaning. What's the first thing you say?

• 40:24Speaker 02

  Which, his wife or my wife? The Chinese wife or my wife? His wife. His wife. And why is she moaning?

• 40:30Adam Friedland?

  You don't know. You don't speak Chinese. Yeah, it's your brain.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  That would probably be, that, that, you know, I probably would speak in the international language then of just, uh,

• 40:39Adam Friedland?

  Fuck.

• 40:39Speaker 02

  Fucking, yeah, that's right. Try to figure it out. Try to, try to read between the lines.

• 40:43Adam Friedland?

  Also, you have a chair in your house called my chair.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. I've always had that.

• 40:48Adam Friedland?

  Yeah. Okay. Um, anyone else could sit in it, but if you get it.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Nope. It's my chair.

• 40:54Adam Friedland?

  It's your chair?

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:55Adam Friedland?

  Or you're, it's kind of like I beat my family kind of thing, no?

• 40:59Speaker 02

  You think so?

• 40:59Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, a little bit.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  I mean, now that you say it, those two things do happen. So I guess that is indicative of that. Yeah. You're right.

• 41:07Adam Friedland?

  I don't think for the publisher, they would like that. Alright, cut it.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  They don't care. They're just trying to figure out how to put the music in this book now.

• 41:14Adam Friedland?

  How do you put just one song? What about Steal My Sunshine by Len? Okay. Have you ever met a ghost before?

• 41:23Speaker 02

  You know what? I have a fucking crazy ghost story. I think, I think I have, I think I've encountered ghosts twice in my life.

• 41:30Adam Friedland?

  Two?

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Two of them, yeah.

• 41:31Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  Not the same one.

• 41:33Adam Friedland?

  Really different?

• 41:34Speaker 02

  Different. When I, when I first moved to LA, I was living in Burbank and I was the night manager of the Holiday Inn, uh, there in Burbank. And I used to just come to work and I'd work on scripts late at night. Nothing was going on there. But there was rumors about a guy who jumped off the roof of that Holiday Inn. And there's a bar upstairs and none of the housekeeping or staff liked going up there because they said that there would be someone up there who'd whistle at them, that the ghost of this dude was up there. And so at night, I would oftentimes go up and just walk around and challenge him. Like I wanted to see if he was up there. It's be completely dark.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  And I would say, come for me. Come, reveal yourself to me. And, uh, he would, nothing would ever happen. And then this one night I was up there and I was doing the same old shit. Come, show me what you got. And all of a sudden I felt that there was something in there with me. And I was like, oh God, there, there is something here. And I kind of like ran back to the elevator and I could, I don't even, not explain it. I could just tell that it was, I talked shit and something showed up. I could feel it.

• 42:41Adam Friedland?

  It went in you?

• 42:42Speaker 02

  It was just around me. And it felt, you have the hairs of my, back of my neck were standing up. And I'm like hitting the button for the elevator and the door opens. I come inside, the door shuts, stays shut for a second, and then just opens back up again. Like something opened the fucking door up.

• 42:57Adam Friedland?

  Cause the ghost needs the door to open.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  He was like, I was planning to go down.

• 43:00Adam Friedland?

  The ghost can't pass through.

• 43:01Speaker 02

  So he's got to press the button. And then on the way down, the elevator stopped at every single floor going down.

• 43:08Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 43:09Speaker 02

  That's, that was my first experience with a, with a supernatural entity.

• 43:12Adam Friedland?

  And that was the day after the pool party at David Gethin's?

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It was, it was the spirit of my, of my innocence.

• 43:23Adam Friedland?

  And then what's the other time you met a ghost?

• 43:25Speaker 02

  The other time is a little darker. It's a little more fucked up. I didn't make pottery and it ended with one of my buddies, like he, he woke up middle of the night and was completely on fire. And his room was on fire. He was on fire. For real? I lived in West Hollywood in this shitty apartment complex. This is serious. This is very fucking serious. Okay? This is ghost shit. We lived in this apartment and there was like six of us living in this like two-bedroom apartment. And everybody was just smoking weed and slipping around on the couch. I mean, we will, it was, it was a, it was a halfway house. Everyone was like moving in and out. My buddy had a room, so he was one of the lucky ones. And every time he was in his room for any amount of time, when he came out, he always seemed different.

• 44:09Speaker 02

  Like he just seemed off. And it was strange. He'd have like a weird look in his eye. And I started kind of like taking note of this. And I'm like, something is up with that, with him. When he's there, he's fucking strange when he comes out. There's something off about it. And then in his part of the house, you could sense that there was some weird energy there and mainly from his bathroom. It felt like whatever was there, that's where the weird energy in the house was mainly there. Well, I was like writing, I would always start documenting this stuff. I'd get a buzz on to start like, you know, writing what I was observing about my buddy. And I told one of our neighbors, like, yeah, I think that there, I was like, don't say this to him, but I feel like he's losing his mind because I think there's like a spirit that's like living in the bathroom of his room.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  And that's, I know it sounds nuts, but that's it. My neighbor, she told me, she's like, it's so weird you're saying this. Because he literally has come to me and was crying, saying that there's a fucking thing living in his bathroom. And at nighttime, it shows him stuff. And I'm like, what? It shows him stuff? What the fuck does that mean? And so she's like, you should talk to him about it. So I talked to my buddy about it. And I'm like, you know, I'm not trying to like say, I think you're nuts, but I've had this weird theory that there's something that lives in your bathroom. And, and, you know, our friend said that you told her the same thing. So that like, we should talk. She's like, you said it shows you stuff. What does it show you? And he's like, it like, I don't know, will just like show me things and say stuff. And it was like, wow, that's.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  So I moved out of that place then. And a few months had passed and I had, this is when I, I went back to Virginia and I was substitute teaching. And I was going to go visit my buds back in LA. And so I called that friend. I'm like, yo, what's been happening with you? What's going on with the ghost? And he's like, you know what? Everything had been fine. And then it hadn't been around. And weirdly, last week, it showed up again. And this time it grabbed a hold of my arm and burned my arm. And I'm like, what? And he's like, yeah. And he's like, and it's, so he's like, I haven't really been sleeping in my room because it's like gotten weird. And I'm like, oh man, that's nuts. So I'm coming out to LA. I, I like, I'm getting up on an early flight and there's a message from my friend on the phone, like before I go on the plane.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  It's him, but it's not him. It's like a weird version. And he's like, how does it feel to be a burnt black tomato? How does it feel to be a burnt black tomato? I'm like, what the fuck? What is he on right now? Thinking he's drunk. I call his phone. No one answers. I call again. The roommate picks up and he's like, oh God, you haven't heard. He's in the hospital. He woke up and his whole entire room was on fire. And including himself. And so I went back to LA. He has no recollection of that, making that phone call or calling me or anything. And yeah, he got bad third degree burns on like most of his body. He's one of the writers on Halloween and Gemstones.

• 46:56Speaker 02

  So he's, he lived, he conquered the ghosts. But that, that was, that was my other experience with the paranormal.

• 47:03Adam Friedland?

  And he went to the hospital. They said, yeah, it sounds like a ghost?

• 47:06Speaker 02

  Well, they did. I think, I think they maybe thought that, I think they thought that they tried, the apartment complex tried to sue him. Cause I think they were like, well, we don't know what's going on. But it was really weird. When you'd go into that apartment, nothing else in the apartment was touched, but his room was just completely scorched. And then just the bathroom door opened with the light on, spirit in there, cackling away.

• 47:27Adam Friedland?

  And he's fine now?

• 47:28Speaker 02

  He's fine now.

• 47:29Adam Friedland?

  He has kids?

• 47:30Speaker 02

  He doesn't have kids.

• 47:31Adam Friedland?

  No.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  He burned his penis off.

• 47:32Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, he burned it. Really?

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so. I don't know. I've never asked. I'm assuming.

• 47:35Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:36Adam Friedland?

  Hit him up. Text him.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  We'll call him. Are you still burnt black tomato? Yeah.

• 47:41Adam Friedland?

  Burnt black tomato?

• 47:42Speaker 02

  It's gross. It's kind of a weird thing for a ghost to say, right?

• 47:45Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 47:47Adam Friedland?

  It's like a racist? It sounds racist.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  Maybe he's just talking about like what color he was going to be after he was cooked.

• 47:52Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 47:54Adam Friedland?

  Is he, uh, Latino?

• 47:55Speaker 02

  He's an Eskimo.

• 47:56Adam Friedland?

  Okay, nevermind. Okay. So that was a stereotype.

• 48:00Speaker 02

  So he, like, fire is like his, uh, that's like his weakness.

• 48:03Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:04Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  All Eskimos are.

• 48:06Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, they have zero words for fire.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:08Adam Friedland?

  You know that. Yeah. How have you guys, like, they've taken down episodes of 30 Rock off of like streaming services. How, how have you guys managed to like skirt that in everything you've done?

• 48:20Speaker 02

  I don't, honestly, I have no clue.

• 48:21Adam Friedland?

  Maybe it's HBO?

• 48:22Speaker 02

  Honestly, I felt like when they started taking down episodes, I remember like, uh, Jody and David and I were like, oh, like, how come no one wants to take down our episodes? I guess maybe our, our shit's not as dangerous as we thought it was.

• 48:35Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, it's true. Like, is it the, at the buzzer right now in movies and TV? Do you feel like, uh...

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Wait, what does that mean?

• 48:43Adam Friedland?

  You feel like it might go, they might end movies and TV eventually?

• 48:47Speaker 02

  You know what? End it? I don't think so. I think that it's just like, I think we're in this weird phase where like, you just need the younger people to be able to start making movies. I mean, there's been some pretty big movies made by young people recently. I think that that's what's been missing. It's like, all the old guys need to get out of the way.

• 49:02Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  I think so, right?

• 49:03Adam Friedland?

  You think you're old guy?

• 49:04Speaker 02

  I'm on the verge.

• 49:05Adam Friedland?

  You're kind of like young Michael Keaton.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, young Michael Keaton. I get that a lot, yeah. Just as long as I keep drinking this Diet Dr. Pepper, I feel like it's...

• 49:12Adam Friedland?

  Can you just try it for Justin?

• 49:14Speaker 02

  No, no way, Justin.

• 49:15Adam Friedland?

  Why did he put that in there?

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Justin, god damn it.

• 49:18Adam Friedland?

  Just how many did you get?

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Thirty-six, it looks like.

• 49:23Adam Friedland?

  Okay, bring him out, bring him out. I'm gonna try it. You wanna try it? Yeah. It might be good.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  It's probably gonna be delicious, to tell you the truth.

• 49:32Adam Friedland?

  Are you, you do drink it every morning?

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Never, never had one.

• 49:36Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. But not because I'm against it. He's gonna shotgun that one, right?

• 49:42Adam Friedland?

  No.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  What do you think?

• 49:43Adam Friedland?

  It's a professional studio.

• 49:45Speaker 02

  Mix it in here with this coffee.

• 49:47Adam Friedland?

  Oh, like in España?

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's how they do it.

• 49:50Adam Friedland?

  That's what they do.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Okay, all right, here we go.

• 49:53Adam Friedland?

  Cheers.

• 49:53Speaker 02

  Cheers.

• 49:54Adam Friedland?

  To you.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  To you. To the doc.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  It's disgusting.

• 50:02Adam Friedland?

  It's pretty good. Just try it raw.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  No, I'm not, I've had enough.

• 50:06Adam Friedland?

  You had it with coffee?

• 50:07Speaker 02

  I've had enough.

• 50:08Adam Friedland?

  All right, fine. You have any questions for me here?

• 50:11Speaker 02

  So, in Vegas?

• 50:13Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Did you turn tricks there? Were you a call girl?

• 50:16Adam Friedland?

  Uh, I was a cocktail waitress for a while. No, no, seriously, it was hard for me, growing up. My dad, uh...

• 50:25Speaker 02

  Was a cocktail waitress too?

• 50:26Adam Friedland?

  Was a cocktail waitress. He had to get, because of my special needs, educationally, I, we only had one bed, so like, my dad and my sister and my mom slept on the floor.

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Oh, that's sick. That's a good arrangement.

• 50:39Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. How much money do you have?

• 50:41Speaker 02

  So much.

• 50:42Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Tons.

• 50:43Adam Friedland?

  And do you know the number?

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do.

• 50:46Adam Friedland?

  You wanna text it to me?

• 50:47Speaker 02

  I just, you know, DuckTales, Scrooge McDuck just swims in it. That's what I do in my house.

• 50:51Adam Friedland?

  You do that style? I always thought it was like, it's, first of all, it must be very dirty.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Well, I've changed, I spend most of my time cleaning it, you know? I've, uh, I've transferred all to gold coins.

• 51:03Adam Friedland?

  You have a coin cleaner?

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I polish it and clean it and stuff.

• 51:06Adam Friedland?

  Yeah, yeah. And then also, it must hurt just to dive headfirst into like...

• 51:09Speaker 02

  It's kind of like a ball pit at like a Chuck E. Cheese or something. You kind of, once you have your angle, you can kind of scurry your way in.

• 51:15Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 51:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:16Adam Friedland?

  You have my number, right? You wanna text me just the amount of money that...

• 51:22Speaker 02

  As soon as this is over with, I'll do that.

• 51:24Adam Friedland?

  No, I just, I think it'd be funny if I reacted and... Can I text you something?

• 51:28Speaker 02

  I don't have my phone on me. I just want to be present for you.

• 51:31Adam Friedland?

  Can we get his phone? I wanna text him something.

• 51:34Speaker 02

  I smashed it before I came in here. I knew this was gonna happen.

• 51:37Adam Friedland?

  What happened?

• 51:40Speaker 02

  I like that you went with the orange phone and the orange case, huh?

• 51:43Adam Friedland?

  I'm trying a new thing, like, I don't know...

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Is it so you wouldn't lose it? That's why you want to be so bright?

• 51:48Adam Friedland?

  I just want people to be like, that guy's fucking random.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Is that what Orange does, you think?

• 51:55Adam Friedland?

  Sometimes. Where's your phone? You have it on you.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  I don't, I'm not, I'm not a prisoner dog. I'm not strapped to it.

• 52:00Adam Friedland?

  Can I, I'll just show you when I text you then.

• 52:05Speaker 02

  Let me see.

• 52:05Adam Friedland?

  Pretty good.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  Well, that's beautiful. Everybody knows someone who looked like this. It's a great meme.

• 52:12Adam Friedland?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  Is what you sent to me? Sick. Thank you, I appreciate that. I'll respond with a meme of my own one day.

• 52:20Adam Friedland?

  No, I don't really do memes, but I like this one. It's, uh, it's Peter Griffin with like a Latina high school girl haircut.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  How'd you find that? Did you search for it?

• 52:33Adam Friedland?

  Someone sent it to me years ago. Yeah, it's kind of just a...

• 52:36Speaker 02

  You were like, sick memes?

• 52:37Adam Friedland?

  The top 10 right now, New York Times, this is number one. The rest is porn for moms, right? But wait, publisher guy, that's all people read anymore, right?

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, porn for moms.

• 52:48Adam Friedland?

  You publish any of them porns for moms? No, not a wish. Like a pirate guy with strong arms and then he just backwalls her? Yeah, you do that? Yeah, no, no, we have to. Okay, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, just tell us, uh, what, give us like a rundown of...

• 53:03Speaker 02

  They're short stories. I feel like if you like the shows, I think you're gonna like this. This is how it's written to be an extension of that. So, it's the same kind of humor, it's the same kind of characters. I was just trying to take what I've done in film and TV and try to do it in a different format.

• 53:18Adam Friedland?

  I think that, that sounds as good.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  You're in.

• 53:22Adam Friedland?

  Okay, so one last big question.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Give it to me.

• 53:29Adam Friedland?

  I'm gonna get there. What, have you ever figured out an anagram of your name?

• 53:36Speaker 02

  No, what is it?

• 53:39Adam Friedland?

  I wonder if your parents did this on purpose? Cyber mind DNA?

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Sick. Yeah, they probably did do that on purpose. They've always been into that kind of shit, yeah.

• 53:50Adam Friedland?

  I don't know, you mind like, can we call your mom?

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, she's in prison.

• 53:55Adam Friedland?

  Really?

• 53:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, we have to do it at a certain time, and now's not that time.

• 53:59Adam Friedland?

  Okay.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:03Adam Friedland?

  Is your dad the guard?

• 54:05Speaker 02

  He is, yeah, maybe, maybe so.

• 54:07Adam Friedland?

  Danny McBride, everyone! We're at? I got another one, okay.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  Oh my gosh.

• 54:16Adam Friedland?

  No, we could just do a pickup.

• 54:23Adam Friedland?

  Would you spend your summer spending on this?