Comedy Legend Thomas Lennon Explains Why Jay Is Lazy

Tom Lennon tells us he's not working that hard on the unbelievably large number of projects he never stops working on. From writing movies (including a “HALL OF PRESIDENTS” SciFi comedy) to acting in 100s of shows to playing in a Smiths tribute band Thomas Lennon doesn’t stop. And don't try to stop him. 
Bio:  Thomas Lennon is an actor, producer and New York Times Best Selling author from Oak Park, Illinois. He attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, where he was a member of the influential sketch comedy group The State. The State’s hit television series ran on MTV for three seasons and received an Ace Award nomination for Best Comedy Series.  After his work on The State, he created two more popular series: Viva Variety and Reno 911!, on which he also played Lieutenant Jim Dangle. Lennon has also written numerous feature films, including Night at the Museum, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, Reno 911!: Miami, The Pacifier, Balls of Fury and Hell Baby. In addition to writing films, Lennon co-authored, Writing Movies for Fun and Profit, a book about the studio system that Anna Kendrick called, “The Best Book about Hollywood… Hilarious and insanely accurate,” in the New York Times. In 2019, Lennon debuted on the New York’s Bestseller List with his children’s book Ronan Boyle and the Bridge of Riddles. In March of 2020, Lennon released the sequel with Ronan Boyle and the Swamp of Certain Death followed by the third installment of the series, Ronan Boyle: Into the Strange Place in 2022. A DreamWorks Animation feature film of the Ronan Boyle series is currently in development.  As an actor, Lennon has appeared in the films Transformers: Age of Extinction, The Dark Knight Rises, Le Divorce, Heights, Conversations with Other Women, Memento, 17 Again, I Love You, Man, Cedar Rapids, Knight of Cups, Bad Teacher, Harold and Kumar 3D and What to Expect When You’re Expecting. His other credits include Netflix’s A Futile and Stupid Gesture, Half Magic opposite Heather Graham and Clint Eastwood’s The 15:57 to Paris. He can be seen in the Russo Brother’s film CHERRY, with Tom Holland. In television he has been seen in How I Met Your Mother, Sean Saves the World, The Odd Couple, Drunk History, The Santa Clarita Diet, Supergirl, Lethal Weapon, and The Twilight Zone.  Lennon also recently produced a musical stage adaptation of the beloved 1980’s film TRADING PLACES.  Lennon lives in Los Angeles and Wisconsin with his wife, the actress Jenny Robertson, and their son, Oliver.Aired 7-2-25

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Straw Hut Media. Oh hey, it's Thomas Lennon and I
spent eight months avoiding the email to be on Don't
Be Alone with Jake Cogan, and now I'm here.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Don't Be Alone with jj Cogan.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Hey, guys, it's Jake Cogan and you're watching Don't Be
Alone with Ja Cogan. I'm so glad you're here. I'm
very excited about you tuning in. I'm very excited about
your subscriptions, your likes. People are giving me positive feedback
that makes me happy. Please do your best. Subscribe to
the show when you can, like it, when you can,
send me emails at dbawjk at gmail dot com. I'd

(00:42):
love to hear from you, and especially your guest questions,
which I read each and every show. We have a
great show for you today. Let me just preface this
by saying, I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I do stuff, a
lot of stuff, but I'm tired all the time. So
I wanted to guest who sees indefatigable. The guy's never rests.

(01:04):
He still does stuff all the time. He's got boundless energy.
And his name is Thomas Lennon. You'll know Tom. He's
one of the stars and creators of Reno nine one,
one the plays officer Dangle. He's been on many, many
movies and shows. He was seventeen again. I think he
was in this movie with Matthew Perry where he was
the uncle. Was fantastic, How I Met Your Mother and Friends.

(01:26):
And he was on my show Wendeln Vinnie at one time.
I mean, he's always working, always doing stuff. And he
did stand up comedy, and he's done improv, and he's
in a band, and he's a father, and he's a husband,
and he works, works, works and writes movies. He wrote
Night at the Museum movie and all those movies, and
Pacifier and Balls of Fury, endless amount of stuff. And

(01:47):
he's at midnight. I saw him recently on the show
at midnight. So he's he's always working. Me, I'm mostly
sitting and I just sometimes I leave the house to
go for a fifteen minute walk and then come back
and sit. I feel like our energy levels are different,
and I'd like to be more like his energy level.
So maybe he'll give me a clue as to what
makes him tick, what drives him and moves him forward,

(02:10):
and maybe give me some of that i'd love it.
Let's find out right after.

Speaker 2 (02:14):
This, don't be alone.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
You saw how many emails it took to get me
to come in here.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
And I love you. I understand. No, it's a listen.

Speaker 1 (02:28):
How many months did I just kind of loot it slid?
I don't know eight yeah, eight almost a calendar year.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Yeah, that's all right.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
And I love you.

Speaker 3 (02:35):
Yeah, I understand, Tom, I love you back. And I've
met And that distance that you created with the email,
that's fine. So hard, that's fine.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Damn, I was trying so hard to get you to
just forget about it.

Speaker 3 (02:45):
The thing about podcasts is it's there's one thing. Yeah,
getting a guest, that's I'm well aware, that's it. Just one.
Do you have your own podcast?

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Fuck?

Speaker 3 (02:54):
No, okay, well I have a living I was gonna say,
why haven't I been on your podcast?

Speaker 1 (02:59):
Fuck you, I don't have one. People have jokingly said
that they think I try to not have a podcast,
right as a status symbol, right, yeah, could be, could be.
Usually something goes great, a podcast goes big if somebody
says some batshit.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
Crazy, right, I want to do stuff about transgender stuff,
so I just want to like but no, they won't.

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Even I don't even think the word. You can have
it in your podcast. Okay, yeah, all right, well then
let's whatever you just talked about got bleep.

Speaker 3 (03:23):
I'll take either side of it, because.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
We're all free speech absolutists.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
This is let's turn this into an actual thing. You
are a very funny guy who seems to be when
I want you perform. You're pretty free and easy about
whatever you want to say and how you want to
say it in character and true. And and your your
line is is it funny?

Speaker 1 (03:46):
True? That is I think a very good point. But
that is that's an interesting point because so many people,
so many things aren't that funny.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
It's true, that's true.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
So it's an easy test. It's a very easy test.

Speaker 3 (03:56):
But you're willing to say something that's controversially strange or
dirty or we grows as long as it's funny. Yeah,
as long as you think it's funny. Yeah, the world
will be the judge.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, and we've got into a weird We're going to
do a very weird place on that, yeah, where everybody's like,
well it was just funny, but it was funny, it
wasn't right.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
Well, that's the that's the problem is that we don't
all agree about what's.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Do you ever wonder how when people who write dramas, like,
how do they how do they feel like they're done? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (04:28):
Right?

Speaker 1 (04:29):
You know? I mean you know when you're done right?

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah? I do. I do.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
That's it.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, it's it's although could always be punched up a
little bit more.

Speaker 1 (04:36):
It could, but also maybe not. That's sometimes you Sometimes
you do.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
This is you.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
The real secret is knowing when you're done right.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
This is this is why this is you know this
so I don't know. A podcast Don't Be Alone with
Ja Cogan is about solving my problems.

Speaker 1 (04:49):
Are we gonna plug the fucking show every time you
mentioned it or something like that? Yes, we have to do.

Speaker 3 (04:53):
I've told that reputation promos now in the middle, it's
not a promo.

Speaker 1 (04:57):
Do I have to hold up some kind of boner pill?

Speaker 3 (04:59):
You do that?

Speaker 1 (05:00):
I'm okay with. Do you have a boner pill or
anything like that?

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Don't have a boner pill. We'll get fantastic. I mean,
we're the kind of guys who are let me create
our own and then sell it. I'd be awesome, absolutely,
Cogan Cogan Linen boner pills or Linden coked.

Speaker 1 (05:12):
Excuse me, No, we'll give it a fun name. Okay,
we'll call it the zipper.

Speaker 3 (05:16):
Yeah, spraying, just spraying.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
It's called literally strying. Yeah, you've been ratting out.

Speaker 3 (05:23):
To spring sprying and cinnamon string. You have them both.

Speaker 1 (05:27):
You have to crunch it up and just you have
to roll it like a like a peppermint log. Very complex,
like you know, like when you get pepperin barket Christmas,
you just roll it around on your boner until it
By the way, I think that probably will give a
reaction to your boner if you just rolled it in
peppermint bark.

Speaker 3 (05:41):
I think, as a jew, if I roll around peppermint
bark at Christmas, there'd be some horrible reactions.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Welcome back to Don't be Alone with Jay Cogan brought
to you by rolling your boner around in peppermint bark
It's just something we're gonna try. But we're feeling pretty
good about.

Speaker 3 (05:54):
My question that I brought up was going to be
you work all the fucking time.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Seem like that.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
It does seem like that, at least at least it
seems like you're all over the place a lot of
the time I see you on the on the social
media's I see you doing the concerts and going to
sketch Fest.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
I turns out I have attention deficit disorder. Yeah I know, yeah,
as you noticed that. I couldn't wait for the end
of your question. Yeah, yeah, yeah, your bullshit question?

Speaker 3 (06:21):
That right, dragging on what I wrote in the fourteen
page document the questions there, but.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Oh that some of it's in bold.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
The thing about it is that's an email.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
That is eight photos in it. I'm like, what the
fuck is this? Do you realize that there's eight photos
in this email of things?

Speaker 3 (06:35):
Most of my guests have mental impairment, and so I
have to I have to be very gentle with them.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Not only did you get me, you got me on
Saint Patrick's Day.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
I know what you know, crazy, You're Scottish and Irish.
So is part of you really mad about Saint Patrick's
Day and part of you really happy about It's what?

Speaker 1 (06:54):
You know? What's the interesting thing about that that DNA
I went and got my twenty three and meter done.
And when I say got it done, I mean and
that's it, You're done. Yeah, And uh, I was only
slightly shocked I knew I was strong of the British Isles. Uh,
I'm an Irish citizen, but that's not okay to your DNA.
But would be an Irish citizen, and my DNA was

(07:19):
one hundred percent of people only from the British Isles.
We never ever to my line. Now, my sister has
a tiny bit of like Viking, sort of Scandinavian stuff. Okay,
because your your siblings can have ever so slight variations
in your stuff. But I don't. So I am only
made up of several thousand years of cousins thinking the

(07:42):
other cousin looked pretty cute.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
That explains a lot.

Speaker 1 (07:44):
I explained so much. I remember anything, right, no memory.
I literally can't remember anything. I'm always bumping into stuff,
probably probably some of the drinking stuff.

Speaker 3 (07:55):
Add this is just a little bit of it's a perfect.
This is a perfect that's going on. That's that's fine,
it's good. I tried to get my twenty three and
me I went to the down to the company.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
You went down.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
I went down there and I masturbated on the building
and nothing. I have not received a letter. Nothing. I
don't know. I mean, I couldn't have given more of
my DNA. It was not possible to give more DNA.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
That was a we were back in the day, speaking
of a real tent time. We had to do this
in life. We were trying to have a baby back
in the day, and then we did a great job.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Congratulations.

Speaker 1 (08:28):
Yeah yeah, but for a while we were trying with
all the high tech. Sure, yeah, well you go down.
We never did an IVF because that's pretty complicated, but
we did a lot of stuff, one of which means
like every Saturday morning going to Beverly Hills and putting
some sperm into a thing right in like a weird,
very fancy office building in Beverly Hills. And then you

(08:51):
get to go to the room and you see what
they what have a bunch of like doctors, I think nurses,
Asian nurses in their seventies. Right, what do they think
is going.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
To get you going?

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Ready to go and fast? Right? And uh, some of
the choices were weird.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, I agree, I was created through IVF.

Speaker 1 (09:14):
We should go find the materials they had and frame them. Well.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
I actually thought that the porn that was provided was
actually provided by Pfizer, like it seemed. It seemed like
the people doing it worked for Fiers that there was stuff. Yeah,
it was like all of the stuff. They seemed uncomfortable
sometimes wearing lab coats.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
There was warnings, you know, I don't think it's actually
pretty smuch.

Speaker 3 (09:34):
Not masturbated, if allergic to masturbation. There was like these
legal things that they had to go through for Pfizer
or whatever it was. Yes, there was gay porn. There
was like threesomes. There was all kinds of stuff. There
was like a wide variety. In the doctor's office in Robertson,
I went to.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
This and make you watch it at the child's.

Speaker 3 (09:53):
Christening or something.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
Yeah, some sort of ceremony, like some sort of kingson Eira, you.

Speaker 3 (09:58):
Know, right's child's are. Here's the porn.

Speaker 1 (10:01):
Remind you of anything.

Speaker 3 (10:03):
Uh my son, My son was created through this. And
I masturbated a lot. Uh in in offices. I still do,
by the way, no longer have to do a baby
if you're if.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
You're yeah, sometimes they crucify you if you do that. Yeah,
when you're paying them. Exactly, if you could just go,
you've got thirty six thousand dollars.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
Go ahead and masturbating my mock yourself.

Speaker 1 (10:23):
Out and we're gonna check in a second to see
how it's going.

Speaker 3 (10:27):
How's it going in there? Yeah, let's it's it's the
reverse of when you're thirteen. There, Matt, you better be.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Jerking off in the wonderfully and exactly did you find
the one with the Pfizer lady with the glasses?

Speaker 3 (10:38):
Exactly? It's very strange, uh I. At this point, I
masturbated so many plastic cups that I get hard in
party supply stores.

Speaker 1 (10:48):
But that will take a break.

Speaker 3 (10:49):
Yep, you don't, ja.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
I avoided doing the show for eight months, and you
know why one more day. If I'd avoided itoud have
felt like something there was a rift in our friendship.

Speaker 3 (11:02):
Well you wrote yes, sure, but within the short I
felt a sigh.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
I felt there was yeah, sure, there's a real ellipses.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
Sure yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. I was like and couldn't
have been kinder, but I felt the sadness in the answer.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
The answer is what it's like my version of ghosting.
You were right. I'm like, let's find.

Speaker 4 (11:22):
A day, right exactly, just leave it alone fucking year
agoes back, yes, and then I like act like my
old eyes, like, oh man, my emails got crazy or
something happened I know it really didn't.

Speaker 3 (11:32):
I know what people are saying. No, I do have that.
I do get to know.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Actually, who's giving a who said no?

Speaker 3 (11:37):
Larry David said no, Larry David said no.

Speaker 1 (11:40):
I don't think he likes me. So many times I'm
sure he's gonna have to come on the show respond
to me saying I think he does not like me.
I think I bug him.

Speaker 3 (11:51):
I think everybody bugs him.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Well, it felt pretty specific. A couple of times I've
read for him and he's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no no.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
What is who is? What's you?

Speaker 1 (12:02):
What is this right? What are you doing? What is he?

Speaker 3 (12:06):
Was he allowed to do this?

Speaker 1 (12:08):
And I'm like, oh, I was like, so this is
not the kind of improvisation that I do with the thing. Okay,
we're playing a game called guests. What Larry David thinks,
right is the actual game?

Speaker 3 (12:16):
Yeah, Tom, You've been on both sides of the casting
Uh yeah, yeah, both sides of casting couch. So when
you are auditioning people, are you like, come right this way,
let's talk, let's the feels. Okay, what do you do?

Speaker 1 (12:34):
No? It depends if you're auditioning for RENA nine one one,
which is like probably the biggest one. We just improvised
with people. We just say, you know, did you call
the police? Don't tell us anything at all, but just
begin with saying, did you call the police? Or were
the police called about you? Right? And that's the only
thing we say.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
And then how do you get Toby hust to shut up?

Speaker 1 (12:54):
That's a real problem. Yeah, but do you overshoot? You
just keep shooting, just keep doing h Yeah, that's the
same a's sports and we just keep shooting.

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Yeah, that's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (13:02):
And then you turn it into like four very short
pieces and two next week on, which means there was
literally one joke. Sure, but we had to use it. Fantastic.

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Well, I mean what that's an industry that like there
are nine one one as a concept and as a
success story. It's fantastic.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
It's neat. I think people. I think it spawned a
lot of people thinking, oh, just doing just do like improvise,
like take this sort of scenario, I just improvise it.
When the answer is we only improvise after there's a
spectacularly detailed map of everything correct, you know, right, and
there's like squibs are placed and everything's careful. What we

(13:40):
do is we make up dialogue once everything's care very
carefully plied up.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
But then you have to go through it a few
times before the squibs go off. Yes, you do, so
you want to make sure that before is off takes.

Speaker 1 (13:53):
Here nothing worse than like being in a scene. But
what we don't do is every time I go in
for Larry David.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Oh that's terrible.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
He's like, bar get me a bar bag. I thought
I was kind of good at that. One time I
was came in, Were you ever uncurved? Never?

Speaker 3 (14:09):
All?

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Right? One time I came in and I read for like,
do she Hollywood screenwrider? Right that leaves his lap Larry
leaves his laptop with for like ten seconds? Right?

Speaker 3 (14:18):
It seems like it was written for you.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Jesus, What the fuck? What about do she Hollywood short
rider who happens to be sitting next to him at
a coffee bar? Apparently I didn't nail it, not even close.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
Okay, I want to ask you something out. This was
supposed to be about how busy you are and how
not busy I am, and how can I be busy?

Speaker 1 (14:37):
I think, well, that's an interesting thing that I think
you the perception would be that you. I love that
you think I'm busy. I do, because to me it
feels like, why the fuck aren't there more things that
I'm doing?

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Really, and I think you're doing everything all the time
on paper.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
If I were to list things I'm doing, I'm like, well, fuck,
that seems normal. Ill ran that list to my psychiatrist
and say like, I seem like I'm doing a normal
amount of stuff. And then he says, yes, but you're crazy,
and I'm like.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
I'm not supposed to tell you that.

Speaker 1 (15:00):
He always says it about every call, open end closing.
He's like, well, it seems like you're crazy.

Speaker 3 (15:04):
You're not crazy.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
No, No, I might be, but he's a very good psychiatrist.
But energy, I am restless. I definitely write compulsively.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Does Ben, your sometimes writing partner, have the same energy
you do?

Speaker 1 (15:19):
He does? We don't really write together anymore, okay, no, no, former. Yeah,
we used to write together, but now we write separately.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
So did he have the same energy?

Speaker 1 (15:27):
He's got a very man you know. But you have
to I think you have to. I think once you
start to realize what the ratio of things that you write,
things that get made will be right. And if you're
playing at the world class top of TV and screenwriting,
one out of eight to ten things you right might
get made might.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
In the movie world. That's an amazing record.

Speaker 1 (15:49):
It'd be an amazing record where we're as when we
were a partnership, we were something like that.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (15:53):
We had fourteen films made or something like that.

Speaker 3 (15:56):
Incredible.

Speaker 1 (15:56):
But that means we've also written yeah, one hundred, yeah,
a lot, a lot, probably probably like and I'm not
being facetious. I mean we've probably written just things that
no one remembers or cares about, and they threw away
the second they looked at it.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
They were like, fuck me, I've written so many things
and I remember every scene, every joke, every detail of that.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Don't get too attached.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
And it breaks your heart every time because you have
to fall in love with it at a certain point, right,
it starts.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
Breaking your heart less and less as you start.

Speaker 3 (16:25):
To not have a heart. Yes, okay, good for you, congratulations,
welcome to Hollywood.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
What heart?

Speaker 3 (16:32):
That little boy from Chicago just come and now he's
here and he hates the world.

Speaker 2 (16:48):
Don't be alone.

Speaker 1 (16:55):
I've joked about this on occasion. We had very good
practice for Hollywood by being in the State or Comedy
group because we every day at three you would pitch material.
And it's not like we're rooting for each other necessarily
because if your sketch gets in mind does not right.
So it was like very cutthroat.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
You guys didn't help each other. Hey, you know it
would work if you did.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
We did. We did. We were like a gang too.
But like the pitching process was very intense, you know,
and it got you ready to sit in a room
with people who do not want to hear your idea, right,
we don't like it.

Speaker 3 (17:31):
The rejection is a huge part of show business, if
not the major part of show business.

Speaker 1 (17:36):
It's the main part We got Adam Sandler unattached himself
to something one time. Yeah, we were in pitching to Sony,
to Doug Belgrad, the head of like the president of Sony,
pitching this what we thought was an amazing movie. It's
about like a limo driver who basically has to take
these like these five boys around, like ten to twelve

(17:56):
year old boys. He's like babysitting these boys.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
For some mob boss pedo driver.

Speaker 1 (18:02):
That's no, no, no, it's a little different.

Speaker 3 (18:05):
Okay, alright, but so.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
The idea, it's like a my fair lady. There's these
four or five boys. They've been raised on like reality
TV shows, and they're all gross and once some mobster
onans like a credit.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Maybe maybe this limo driver is going to teach them
something about real takes.

Speaker 1 (18:18):
Them to the thunder Front down under and teaches them
what gentlemen are like and how to type tie. It's
like a big movie about just making these guys nicer
human beings. And there's a little minor caper happens in
the background. Okay, fun little picture, right Sandlers. People love it.
Sandler's attached. We going to pitch it to Sony. We're
pitching it to Doug Bell, Gretdit Sony. It's going off

(18:38):
the rails, fantasticod We are fucking killing it. It's like
a Harlem glove trotter's game. We're doing trick shots, we're
doing bits right. Assistant comes in with a post it
note and shows it to Doug in the middle of
the meeting. It was like, guys, this is amazing. Thirty seconds.

(18:59):
I have to take this thirty seconds. I love this.
Right right back forty five seconds, come back Doug Cobswacon,
get back in it, guys, go we finish up, boom,
lay up, three point shop buzzer kill it, pitch of
our fucking life. Never hear another thing from them for days.
I'm like, hey, did anybody think was weird that we
had our Arlem globe trotters like we're doing backflips pitch.

(19:21):
We were basically like you two at Red Rocks right
like we.

Speaker 3 (19:25):
It was the best It's ever gonna be.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
It was Freddie Mercury Live eight best It's ever.

Speaker 3 (19:30):
Magic magic moment, and then was interrupted by a note
and then quick closed it.

Speaker 1 (19:34):
Note was Adam Sandler calling on the other line. Uh huh,
and Doug went down to take the call about something
totally unrelated issue.

Speaker 3 (19:40):
He said, I'm not doing this very close right.

Speaker 1 (19:43):
Doug said, oh, hey, your boys are in here pitching
the Limo driver idea, and Sandler apparently said, oh, I
don't know about that.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
Oh oh that was all it took.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
Oh I don't know about that. All right.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Well, you know what, you gotta be careful.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
Because sometimes you like count money, you know.

Speaker 3 (20:01):
Yeah, car no, no, I'm never carrying that money. And
even when it's written.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Get one Gumar get one McLaren.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
Right, So if it's sold, it's written, it's been filmed,
I still not kind of don't come Yeah, it's just.

Speaker 1 (20:14):
It's not coming right because it's also not coming right.

Speaker 3 (20:17):
Well, that's the thing about show is you have to
love doing it and be willing to get punch in
the gut every every now and then.

Speaker 1 (20:24):
We had a big idea, I mean, Ken Marino had
a really really really big idea recently that did not
go okay, And I can talk about it because it's not.
It's never going anywhere, all right. You cannot and will
not be done. All right, can't be done?

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Then tell us and tell us what is the idea
that can't be done?

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Right? When we come back, we don't have commercials.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
You don't take great doing, We don't take commercials. Then
I'll come back. Hey, we're talking here with Tom Lennon,
uh TVs and movies, great actor, comedian, writer, does everything.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Put some peppermin bark on your boner and see what happens.
I think something fun will happen.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
You literally YouTube in search a commercial in the middle
of a sentence, we have nothing to do on YouTube.
We're on YouTube. We're on Spotify, we're on Apple or
on everything.

Speaker 1 (21:11):
They bullshit.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
But let me just say this, it costs them nothing
to subscribe. It costs you nothing. Just subscribe or like,
but subscribe back in.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
The email you told me you're like, here's all the
ones you can watch and listen to on YouTube.

Speaker 3 (21:24):
And I'm not doing that right exactly.

Speaker 1 (21:26):
Ye scribe yokle. I listened to podcast will when this
one comes up, so that it shows that I give
your numbers.

Speaker 3 (21:34):
Okay, all right, So all right, so you and can
have this great but impossible idea.

Speaker 1 (21:39):
Not impossible at all. I'm gonna I would love to
as one of my as a writer. Who I you
know you're writing and I think you're one of the
funniest guys as much as we're goofing around about peppermint
bark and stuff. So Ken and I did a we
had a thought experiment and here was the thought experiment.
What is m a Disney ride? What is the worst

(22:01):
most impossible Disney ride?

Speaker 3 (22:03):
Make a movie to make a movie of Tom Sawyer Island,
time Mark Twain, Paddle Moode.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Nope, keep going put it in the comments. You're about
to know. Let's see in the comments.

Speaker 3 (22:14):
It's it's in Fantasyland.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Nope, no, it's at it's in Florida. It's in Florida.

Speaker 3 (22:20):
One of the pavilions, maybe the French that's sort of
very close. It's Scottish food pavilion.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
They got it in the comments. The Hall of Presidents,
the Hall of President's Okay, seems like an impossible movie
to make, right.

Speaker 3 (22:31):
Yeah, that's not impossible, sure, And where they come to life?

Speaker 1 (22:34):
I did that. That was not a museum, I know, and
we literally wrote it. But wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, right,
here's the real premise for this. And at the end,
at the end in the comments, tell me if this
is not if we didn't crack Hall of Presidents as
a movie, okay, okay, right, I'm always saying this because
it's not going. I know it's not going for me.

Speaker 3 (22:52):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
We got a firm right.

Speaker 3 (22:57):
So from the people who owned the rights.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
Yeah, well, the president's at weirdly are fair game. You
can have that. So the movie set in nineteen eighty four,
so we're in the Reagan era. Okay, so it ends
with Reagan. We don't know anywhere, no president's past rage
exists in this world, right, all right, We've got a
young girls are heroin and she is like a very

(23:21):
good with computers and things like that, and she's got
like a Commodore sixty four. It's that era of computing
and things. She's also a sort of a super fan
of the Hall of Presidents or her parents or split.
Her mom works at the Space Center on robotic stuff
and her dad's in the Secret Service with Reagan. We
open the movie with like, there's a Kathy Bates character

(23:43):
who is an anarchist, who is the granddaughter, the great
granddaughter of the anarchist who assassinated McKinley. So we start
that's our backstory on that.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
And she is mad at the government and she's you
know what she's going to do. She's going to take
the Hall of Presidents.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
Not yet. Okay, you're ahead of me, all right, you're
ahead of me, but also way behind me. Okay, okay,
so kids down there the the it opens with that
that the Kathy Bates anarchist has woken up an old
defense system that we used to have, which is under

(24:19):
a lot of our national parks, but we've built. We
were worried that the Soviets were gonna build like some
big kind of gort like giant robot type things. So
we built some too, and it was like a secret
project that nobody remembered. But she has now gotten the
codes and woke awakened these like sort of iron giant
e gort right defensive robe, huge defensive robots that we're

(24:43):
supposed to protect us, but now she is gonna fuck
with us because she's also a French anarchist. Right, So
this happens. Reagan comes on the news and it's like,
ladies and gentlemen, we've been attacked by someone as this
old technology that we sort of forgot that. We had
the girls down at the Hall of Presidents because that's
where she goes a lot when she's trying to kind

(25:04):
of lay low, and there we meet the guy who built,
who restores and builds the the.

Speaker 3 (25:12):
We're trying to reprogram the President is to fight the
giant monsters.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
So with the help of like, yeah, of lin Manuel, Miranda,
she uh, there's like a lin Manuel, he's the guy
he lives with like attack that's not finished. She's got
a Nancy Reagan that's like a spider that with just
a head and metal, sort of like an ex mocking
a Nancy Reagan. And after the attack, the robots attack

(25:37):
and they're like, look, we could roll over or we've
got you know, up to up to Reagan. We've got
like thirty eight or forty.

Speaker 3 (25:45):
Robot Each one has a superpower.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
They're going to okay once we fucking rebuild them, and
they load them into a truck and they with Nancy Reagan.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
Woodrow Wilson's white hot racism will have a beam out
of his eye.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
Yeah FDRs and can go real fucking.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
Fast, super speed.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Yeah. Yeah, they've just like got yeah, they've got like
basically they've made an army of.

Speaker 3 (26:06):
Six million, five men. Yeah yeah, all right, fantastic.

Speaker 1 (26:09):
So we did crack it.

Speaker 3 (26:11):
I feel like sure, sure I got it.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Went all the way to the top.

Speaker 3 (26:14):
Really Oh yeah yeah, Okay, Well, congratulations on what Congratulations
on just the thought experiment. Good for you guys for
putting your creativity to use. I don't know, it's always sad.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
It's the longest project you work on that never went anywhere.
I'm still doing it, which is it? It's just say it.
We wrote when we wrote on the Secret Life of
Walter Mitty. Yep, we were writing on it, and there
had been drafts of it, just of that version going
for sixteen years.

Speaker 3 (26:41):
I write a bunch, I read a few I saw you.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
Did you ever see the like arbitration pages on that? Yeah?
For it was crazy. It was like a who's who?

Speaker 3 (26:50):
I'll tell you that the story of that. So at
one time our friend Mike Myers was attached to play
Walter Mitty.

Speaker 1 (26:58):
Almost everybody was.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
So he said, okay, I want to do this kind
of thing, and it was very specific, and he helped
me sit sure and says, okay, So I come up
with many different versions of it. No, no, no, no no,
It's like, well, Mike, what do you want to do?
How about how about this version where it's a super
spy and it happens and it's okay, let's do that.

Speaker 1 (27:19):
Isn't you pitching all some powers? Uh?

Speaker 3 (27:21):
No? It was a Waltermitty waltim media is still happens,
a regular guy who becomes I'm aware, I'm aware of the.

Speaker 1 (27:30):
Three years on and still are draft was thrown, totally thrown, uh.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
And so I write the outline to his very detailed specification,
of course. And I turned in the outline and the
movie company calls Mike and says, you got to get
rid of this stuf. He's happened just we've he's gone
off the rails man and and Mike. To his credit,
he did protect me. He said no, no, let's let's

(27:54):
keep going. And eventually he says, I, uh, we'll make
some changes.

Speaker 1 (27:59):
I've got him a big, big trouble. One time with
a producer, I got in big trouble because I made
a fucking crazy mistake. We'd written a script that I
was really proud of called rent to Ghost really good,
really really proud of it, and I when it was done,
and was the first draft was done, sent it to
the producers and the star at the same time. That's

(28:22):
the stars send a note back saying how much he
loved it. It's like, oh my god, I love it
so much. I believe he said, you couldn't have knocked
it out of the park any further. This movie did
not go. The producer apparently was screamed for so so
loud and for so long.

Speaker 3 (28:38):
That I would dare to send it to the star.

Speaker 1 (28:42):
Of the movie so that he couldn't come in and
yell at us before the star saw it. Now, I'd
like to point out the star read it, replied all
and said, I love it so much. You absolutely knocked
it out of the book. So in a normal if
we didn't live in bizarre world, that producer would have

(29:03):
been like.

Speaker 3 (29:03):
Holy fantastic, we got it.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
I got a real tough star to say, yes, right,
we got it.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
Right.

Speaker 1 (29:09):
That was not what happened. No, because it's Hollywood.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
And this guy must have thought himself, mind, I'm bigger
than that star in matter.

Speaker 1 (29:18):
You just fucking stole the joy. The only joy I
have is yelling at these fucking writers, right right, that's
the only joy I get. Well, I get it a lot,
they are, Yeah, but I took one away. Yeah all right,
Yeah the movie never happened. Obviously, the movie never happened.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
So that was my original topic that you refuse to answer,
which is where does this work ethic come from? And
you just dismissed it saying there's no it's.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
A genuine fear. I mean, I think when you picked
the life of doing the things the kind of things
that we do, because there was so much rejection, because
there is because so many things will just evaporate in
front of your eyes that were going like, oh, I
accidentally sent a script that the star loved to the star,
and now I think I'm fired, Yeah, off of a

(30:00):
movie that the the star loved and that movie can't
get But other guy's really mad at me, like so
mad that we're done kind of But let me ask
you this.

Speaker 3 (30:11):
Once you do that by sending it to the star,
you were going to circumvent of course. Okay, So then
he knew that I was being a dick. He knew it,
and he just caught you on it.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Yeah, all right, But I thought i'd won, right, because
there's another universe where the star writes back, and it's
like a lot of heavy lifting to do it right. Right,
Sometimes you get that, sure. Sometimes Adam Sandler's on the
other line, going, I don't know about that right right now?
That sounds dumb. Also, why would we do this with
the presidents? That's dumb, right, No, I think it's out
of one hundred percent fear.

Speaker 3 (30:40):
But are you still afraid you've done so much stuff?
Are you still afraid?

Speaker 1 (30:43):
Of course? All right, So when you know, when do
you feel like you're gonna feel like, oh I did
everything I could do?

Speaker 3 (30:49):
Oh never, never, never.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
But if you feel if you ever feel like I
did everything I needed to do. You probably don't do
this that much.

Speaker 3 (30:56):
Right, No, it might not be for you. There's a
drive within me and clearly within you to want to
be making things, to be seen, to have attention on you,
to sort of be perceived as successful, and.

Speaker 1 (31:10):
To be run away as fast as you can from
an unbelievably deep, deep loneliness and need to go for approval. Yes, well,
I'm not running towards something, I'm running away. But why
is that deep loneliness.

Speaker 3 (31:23):
At my age? I am over sixty, why does that
still exist?

Speaker 1 (31:28):
I remember, like when I was a young person, there
be times where I would like spend an afternoon playing
a video game like GoldenEye or something. Or I'd read
a book, right, or I'd go walk around and look
at a park. Right. Not fucking doing that? Now, there's
stuff I could do.

Speaker 3 (31:42):
If you're writing books, you're writing the running books.

Speaker 1 (31:44):
You're writing a book. If you've got time to go
walk around a park and smell something, you have time
to write a fucking book.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
But you need to go walk around and smell something.
You do you do in.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
Order to write the book. Now you do that when
you're doing bit parts in Vancouver, you take a little
walk around, and then you get back to the thing.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
The park that I used to walk around and burn down.
So I now have to find a new walking spot.
But I wanted to find out, like the not everybody
from oak Park is that where you're from. Not evenbody
from oak Park decides I'm going to devote my life
to comedy. I'm going to go, well, how did that happen?

Speaker 1 (32:14):
Well, you know, growing up in Chicago is there is
one interesting detail, which is because of the theater scene,
because it's such a vibrant art community, because there's Second
City and the improve Olympic and things like that. The
idea of being like a working actor if you grew
up in Chicago does not seem as far fetched as

(32:36):
it could be if you're thinking about being in like
places and things like that, which is something that I
probably sort of thought I was going to do. It
would be like a sort of theatrical type person. Right,
And then I was very lucky, really early something happened.
I mean there's a very finite one person I met
who changed my life entirely, and.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
Jesus Christ, whose name was Jesus right, Okay?

Speaker 1 (33:00):
And it was so I went to I was into
theater and stuff, and like I liked, I thought I
was gonna always act and stuff. And then I went
to the Northwestern summer theater program that it's called Cherubs,
and there was a teacher there. I mean, I had
an actual, like you know, like Dead Poets Society sort

(33:21):
of scenario with a writer who people you probably know.
His name is Peter Hedges. He wrote the novel and
the movie of What's Eden Gilbert Grave, and then he
wrote Like an Ocean in Iowa. And he also used
to write like a play a week in New York.
He would just like write and write and write and write.
And when I got to Northwestern, I was like, who
is this Guy's also like very cool. Peter had like
cool flowing hair. He was roommates with Tom Holes, and

(33:44):
I'm like, this the coolest person I've ever met.

Speaker 3 (33:46):
Fucking Manson girls so cool, had.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
Set of Manson girls. And I was like, and it
was this guy that Peter who like opened up the
idea that you should write every every day for like
the joy of it, you know. And he would do
like we do like dead poetry thing. You'd be like,
let's go down to the beach at Northwestern, like, let's
write a one act play and you'd be like, well,

(34:12):
probably won't be good, and he's like, fuck you, who
cares if it's good three hours from now. We're guys
who've written in one act play, right, we aren't right now?

Speaker 2 (34:21):
Right?

Speaker 3 (34:22):
That's true?

Speaker 1 (34:22):
So what maybe one of them is if we do
it six times, and the one of them.

Speaker 3 (34:25):
Is of writing is fun.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
It's very fun.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
It's very fun.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
Actually, the problem.

Speaker 3 (34:31):
With getting to the act of writing is overcoming the
idea it's going to suck. I'm going to sell.

Speaker 1 (34:37):
You can't worry about that, and I of course you can't.

Speaker 3 (34:39):
You're not supposed to.

Speaker 1 (34:40):
But everybody just will tell you that, but everybody does.
Don't go back and look at what you wrote. Never
look at what you wrote.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
Everybody worries.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
The joy of doing it is that is doing it right.
That's always My question is like, would you do this
for free every day forever? Right? And a lot of
people are like, no way, bro right, And I'm like, well,
then don't do it because the terms that I am
doing it for free and almost always yeah, I swear
to God, even if you were at the top of
the game, it is mostly free.

Speaker 3 (35:05):
Every day, Yes, exactly, so you better like it.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
And then every once in a while bucks for the mickey.

Speaker 3 (35:13):
Sure, you get something, you get a little something, you
get a little taste.

Speaker 1 (35:16):
You get you get your beak wet just a little bit,
and it brings you back in and then oh yeah, yeah,
but it's our I bet chum, this has been good
to us. He can complain to us. I'm not complaining.
It just made us crazy.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Don't be alone with.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
What made you want to write the Run and Boil books?

Speaker 1 (35:48):
That was I'd always wanted to do a novel, you know,
I'd always want to do a sort of a funny novel.
I grew up like, I grew up very obsessed with
sort of the Douglas Adams, Hitchikers concerts and things like that,
which is just sort of like science fiction or fantasy
but done with a pretty dry tone, you know. So yeah,

(36:08):
so I was in Ireland and I was like standing
in this old castle looking at this castle wall, and
a guy was telling me about what Sheila Ley's were for.
She was a carryus Shiley, which is happy today. Yeah
it's not a walking stick, no, it's a weapon. It's
because Catholics couldn't carry metal swords. They weren't allowed right
to carry metal swords, So it's like, what's the scariest
thing you can carry that's not metal?

Speaker 3 (36:30):
Yeah, I'm still down with that law, by the way,
I'm absolutely so. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
It's been keeping me down for a long time. I know,
I know, but I was going to have some amazing sticks.
But so, and you know, like when we do what
we do of like scripts and stuff, people are always like,
can you make this much more concise? Like we're over
our page count is crazy? Sure, you know, every page
is very expensive, you know, so it's like, is there
any way to fit all of this description or this

(36:58):
whole character, what this character is doing. We did just
like write tighten it down books, exact opposite.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
Yeah, just go on.

Speaker 1 (37:05):
Absolutely, there's like a long there's chapters in my book
where you get to hear what the robot vacuum thinks,
and I'm like, oh, you can absolutely do not only
can you do that, it's that's the fun of it.

Speaker 3 (37:17):
It's required.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
Yeah, it's required.

Speaker 3 (37:18):
Yeah, fantastic.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, all right. There's a second the second part of
my book that go to the land of unicorns for
a while, which is basically like Abisa for nicorns. It's
like retired British unicorns at buffets and stuff, and our
main hero gets kidnapped and becomes a sidekick to Aquassos,
who's the unicorn of wonder Is is like they do

(37:41):
this show like nine times a day.

Speaker 3 (37:43):
Okay, so it's like a cruise.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, a cruise ship. Yeah. So it's like there's fun
stuff I get to do, and and the unicorn in
book two I based very much on like Morrissey okay, yeah.

Speaker 3 (37:54):
Yeah, which is I know that you're huge, very specifically Okay,
so there's a there's a lot of.

Speaker 1 (37:58):
Fun stuff you get to do. I know, you know
what you can It's great if you're just thinking of
obstacles for your main character in a book. They can
go on for a long Yeah, you can really really
get into the weeds.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
And how do you know when you're done with the.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
Book that tough for tougher, Yeah, it will reveal itself
usually all right, even in the last book revealed itself.
But I mean it will reveal itself generally.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
And then when you're second drafting it, are you cutting
a lot? Are you add you're.

Speaker 1 (38:30):
At adding tons? Tons and tons? And I'll get like,
sometimes I love my editor is really amazing Maggie Luhmann
at Abrams. She'll like give me a little note of
just like talk about this.

Speaker 3 (38:41):
Mor Yes, it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Well, I have I was always the opposite of movies.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
I was interested in writing a book, but then I
thought I would have to read one first.

Speaker 1 (38:48):
No, you don't have to, Okay, Yeah, what you do
have to do is if the book goes well, you
have to read the audiobook of it, which is a
farting nightmare.

Speaker 3 (38:55):
Oh they won't. They won't make me do that.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
And they do not. Basically, if you read the audiobok
you never ever ever stop unless you mess up.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
Right.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
So like my books, which are three hundred some pages,
I've read them all in like two days.

Speaker 3 (39:10):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (39:11):
But like at the end of it, I'm like shaking.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
You ever get like, hey, can I take that line again?
I don't think I did it well? Did They say?

Speaker 1 (39:17):
No? They tell they will come back, and then they
take it. They go away for a couple days and
they're like, here's the twenty lines you have to fix.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
Okay, But usually they're just like go yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:26):
They don't want to help, they don't care they don't care.
Are we going to go to a break or there
is that we are going.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
To the next section of our show called question.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
Time is question.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
This is from Holly. How has fame changed your life?
Is it better, worse or the same.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
I'm fine for the most part. It's interesting because I'm
also in a weird category of not quite that thing right, right,
but recognizable in a weird.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
People recognize you, I would say, probably mostly from Reno.

Speaker 1 (39:58):
Mostly and then a little bit of a there's a
younger crowd that likes Uncle Ned from seventeen again, sure,
which is a fun little one. But I think for
the most part it exacerbates what you already were already. Right,
You'll find that the lovely people generally got lovelier and
the ikey weirdos generally got ickier and weirder, and then

(40:22):
they remove themselves from show business. Right, So the longer
you stay in show business, I find that people tend
to be delights.

Speaker 3 (40:28):
I agree with you. I do think that most people
I run into are fantastic, fun, interesting one.

Speaker 1 (40:34):
The ones that are around for a long time, yeah,
tend to be fucking delight.

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (40:37):
I mean, there's no the ones you hear about like,
oh my god, they're gone.

Speaker 3 (40:41):
The problems that people are not brooding for no reason
like fun, Yeah, exactly, it's I that's complicated. I will
say that. And they asked me that sometimes my level
of fame is much lower than your level fame, and
your level of fame is you know, they recognize you.
Sometimes it's easier for people to like like there's there's
a moment where there's a moment of introduction or there's

(41:02):
a moment of commonality where they're going to find common
aality of something that you've done that they.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Like super unfair advantage. That's it's a real unfair advantage.
And the one thing that I've seen play. The only
thing that bugs me about being famous, and it doesn't
bug me, but it's it does bug me is I
will go places with my wife and people are like
falling over themselves to make sure things are wonderful right
and that she'll go back without me right. And you're like, oh, oh,

(41:31):
you were only really being nice to us because you're
because of that. Now I'm that's not great. I'm like,
if you're gonna addict, be addicted to everybody, don't be lovely to.

Speaker 3 (41:39):
Me definitely ask about little known stories between he and
Matthew Perry and seventeen again.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Okay, sure. One thing that you probably know that not
everyone knows is Matthew and I have a major girlfriend
in common.

Speaker 3 (41:53):
Oh who Gabby? Okay, I didn't know that now, Gabby Greenborough?
I know Gabby?

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Sure, Alan Gabby, yeah, Bobert sure. So Gabby was my
last girlfriend before my wife.

Speaker 3 (42:05):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
And when I started dating Gabby, she was just coming
off of a very long relationship with Matthew. All right,
So it was kind of a funny uh turn events.
And we're still quite close, right, and Gabby uh came
and brought her kids to odd couple. It was a
particularly odd odd couple. Was very odd for Gabby.

Speaker 3 (42:22):
Yeah, I can imagine, because it's both both book guys. Yeah,
more odd for Rob Greenberg, I would think probably. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
So, but I mean we're happy, we're a friend. Adult show.

Speaker 3 (42:33):
We're all adults now.

Speaker 1 (42:34):
I'm on Animal Control fantastic, let's do it clip. Yeah,
we can't do that.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
The wee McGuinty. Will we ever get to see the Lord?

Speaker 1 (42:42):
No? We wrote a movie about a guy wakes up
and finds out he was a lepron Yeah no, no, no,
I mean the world used to be Yeah, yeah, I
mean we used to write all movies about all kinds of.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
Stuff that's not gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
It was in development for a while. Yeah, we had
a movie in development.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
Who was your dream?

Speaker 1 (42:58):
Well it was we wrote it with like Pete tinklih
in mind. Okay, yeah it was a small guy, right,
but it was not. It was not a cutesy pie
sort of half its fucking.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
A mess right no, yeah, yeah, so many.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
It wasn't like a tiptoes kind of thing. It was
like a real sort of like it's about a guy
who like washes up and he has no memory. It's
it's a born identity. Sure, but a guy doesn't remember
what he is and what he is is he's a
leprec on frontest from teer to night.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
Why are we making that? I don't know, man, they
get a short. Why we went an Academy award.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
We're not making ninety nine percent. We're not making my
fucking Hall of Presidents things. But you were iffy on
but I know is amazing.

Speaker 3 (43:33):
Do you keep an extra mustache in your pocket just
in case people cannot identify I.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Do have a ziplock back lately when I was packing
for something that has two mustaches in it and nothing
looks sadder. Yeah, you know, then when you find a
weird little just the same bag mustaches around, it just
feels like some something weird like John Waters movie happened,
or yeah, something something curious happened.

Speaker 3 (43:54):
Something curious happened.

Speaker 1 (43:55):
Who is why were all these fellows meeting up with
fake mustaches? What happened here?

Speaker 3 (43:58):
But maybe AD's cheer miss.

Speaker 1 (44:00):
Well the mustache. Once you have the mustache, it's very
very different. I get treated very differently.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
The grooming seems rough.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
I can authoritatively tell people to knock, not stop doing stuff,
and they will stop.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
Right okay, because you have I could go right out.

Speaker 1 (44:15):
There, right now, right and we could get anybody to
stop what they're doing, because you have the muscae and
a certain way of carrying yourself. But the mustache leads
to the way your characters.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
The reason I don't have it, well, among the many
reasons I don't have it much, I don't know where
to stop. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (44:30):
Where the conversation. Yeah, yeah, it's a huge conversation because
it's pretty soon you start it's you're not You turn
into Tom of Finland pretty fast, and I know you're
aware of kids. Go look at Tom of Finland.

Speaker 3 (44:41):
Kids do kids?

Speaker 1 (44:43):
Kids do not demand the comments click on Finland children. Boy.
Kids have to learn.

Speaker 3 (44:52):
About that, not today. They don't have to learn to do.
What's it like to have a few seconds of Dark
Night Rises.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
More than a couple of seconds? A lot of fun
stuff about that picture. One the script came on red
paper and everything was redacted. That wasn't something I said,
So I could not see what anyone said in the movie.
I couldn't see any character.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
That they did that for you because they know that
you're going to sell all that information.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
It got hand delivered to me. Somebody came from Christopher
Nolan's office with a page and a half of red
paper with redacted information. And I'm like, this is fun.

Speaker 3 (45:23):
The security that goes through scripts. Now I get. I
get the lamest sitcom script pilot of all times. It's
Jay Cougan. It's number as if I'm going to immediately
go to an eBay and sell your shitty script. Yes
a script.

Speaker 1 (45:36):
Actually, the Dark Knight Rise of script probably would have
been pretty valuable. It is now it had a code name.
The movie had a code name, of course, because the
movies don't have I don't even know if I can
say the code name of it now. I'm not going to, Okay,
done a code name. When we made they were filming
that a movie in like five places around the world,
in India, London. One of the past words downtown Los Angeles.

(45:58):
And I was like, oh, I bet my scene is
gonna end up in downtown's Los Angeles. And it ended
up in London.

Speaker 3 (46:02):
Fantastic fucking Croyd. And that's, of course.

Speaker 1 (46:04):
He shoots on films, so you have to stay till
they've looked at the days, real dailies or actual film.
I was there for like four days. The first day
I was there, some princes, bevy of wives and daughters
from the Saudiast the world had checked into the same
hotel that we're at, and I'd gone out to dinner

(46:25):
with Steve Gurky, the script supervisor from all the Nolan movies,
and I came back at the Langham and I got
a note. The manager had left a note and said,
one of our guests is like a prince and his many.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
Many family members.

Speaker 1 (46:41):
Family members would like that whole floor, so we need
to get you off of that floor right now. And
I was like, oh, I was in a really terrible
hotel room and then they put me in like one
of the presidential beautiful sweeps for the rest of the
week that I was. Then I was in a suite.
I have one scene with Bail, who's a hilarious guy person,

(47:03):
very funny dude.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
I'm very happy to hear that because I don't I
don't know him. I only know his work, and he
could be literally anything. As far as I.

Speaker 1 (47:11):
Would not, you could not like him more. Yeah, he
is an absolute mench. It was always interesting because you
heard that. You know, he got famous when that sort
of tirade came out and people were like, oh wow,
Christian Bial's I was like, first of all, if you
listen to what he's saying and what happened, I agree
with him one hundred percent. People will fuck up scenes
that you're doing that are hard for no reason all

(47:33):
the time. And what he's saying is, well, you can't
get back what we just did, right, And I totally agree.

Speaker 3 (47:38):
I agree with what he was saying. It's the tirade.

Speaker 1 (47:41):
I liked it.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
The anger that he said it with, which made it seem.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
I liked it. I liked it. Sometimes you gotta be
performatively mad. Yeah you know what I mean. Have you
never done a thing where you get performatively mad a
little bit?

Speaker 3 (47:54):
That's not in my wheelhouse?

Speaker 1 (47:55):
Scare somebody, it's not in my wheelhouse.

Speaker 3 (47:58):
So now it's time for listener mail.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Now it's time for listener man.

Speaker 3 (48:07):
So, dear Jay and guest, is there a compromise between
comedy and dignity?

Speaker 1 (48:12):
And dignity I mean to me, if you've seen my work,
I think you really can't. You can't get into really
funny things unless you get over the sort of vanity
and you have to get over the idea of looking cool, right,
And you know there's like you can't be cool, I think,

(48:34):
and really reach a level of.

Speaker 3 (48:36):
Right because you know, it's not about cool. It's about
showing flaws. It's about showing what's wrong. So so the
answer is, yes, there's a real compromise if you want
to be if you want to maintain dignity, well that's
this is not for you. This is not for you, however.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Or you can do it, but you won't be you
won't really you.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
Know, on the other side of being a crazy, undignified
nutbag is adulation and applause that give you a strange
amount of dignity. Like it like there's a sure, there's
a fulfillment in it that comes on the other side
of that, But you do have to crawl around in
the ship before that happens.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You got to do a lot
of you know, like the reno na'mu on one Burning
Man episode. Sure, I'm just in a fall on right
through you know days.

Speaker 3 (49:16):
You don't really mind that.

Speaker 1 (49:17):
It's fine, it's fun, it's fine. It's also just something
to do, right sometimes, like you know, you could have
your dignity or just there is something to do, you know.

Speaker 3 (49:25):
Yeah, I guess so I will do.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Things on camera that I would There's no amount of
money you could pay me to do them if we
were not filming, right, But once we're filming, I'm game,
right because it's for the thing, it's the very game. Yeah,
there's been stuff we've done that I'm like never never, Like,
what's one thing we're gonna film it? Uh? We like
we wanted we did a scene where we went to
the swamp and uh, way up in like Santa col Rita.

(49:50):
But the water was like forty five degrees or something's
freezing cold, and we went down under the water and
get under the water. Right, stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
The answer is yes, fuck your dignity, be funny and
there's something better about being at later.

Speaker 1 (50:02):
You just have to leave it and they'll you'll get
it back later.

Speaker 3 (50:05):
You seem like a guy who needs to sometimes just
calm down and breathe. What what is it like like
you're not doing pot?

Speaker 1 (50:12):
What are you doing? I do? I do go to
like a very hard, hot yoga class every single day,
all right, every day, all right?

Speaker 3 (50:18):
And in that vein we have something called moment of joy,
a moment of joy? What do you do to bring
yourself to what? What's something that you do that's not
your kid, not your family?

Speaker 1 (50:33):
And the Smith's not right, okay, Smith's I play in
a Smith's cover band.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
Right, yeah, okay? And how often do you play?

Speaker 1 (50:39):
I play as many shows as I can with them,
but it keeps me. The other thing that that I
think is important about me playing with the Smith's cover
band is it's good to do something that do something
that you're not amazing at?

Speaker 3 (50:51):
Right? Why I do this. Keep Yeah, you're fantastic, correct.

Speaker 1 (50:55):
And you know it's good to do something where you
have to struggle, like I have to struggle to keep
up with that band, and I have to learn hard
things that I would not know.

Speaker 3 (51:03):
That's why I also one of the reasons I do
sex is I'm not very good at I keep practicing
and I'm not good at it, and.

Speaker 1 (51:09):
Then eventually he'll just wear yourself out. Exactly, You'll just
doze off.

Speaker 3 (51:15):
Tom. I want to say a few things before we go.
Thank you for being here. I know no one wants
to be on a podcast, but no one, no one
more than you.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
I really am wanting to get here, so you.

Speaker 3 (51:25):
I owe you big time. And also the lunch you're
going to arrange with me, you and Christian Bale is.

Speaker 1 (51:31):
It's not impossible.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
I'm already thanking you for that because now he.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
Doesn't need a lot of stuff. Though, have you ever
seen how rip that news? He's good Now he's doing
handfuls of walnuts and stuff. I think I had lunch
with him one day and I came back and I've
got like macaroni syle and then regular macaroni. I've got
like four chicken nuggets shoved into like.

Speaker 3 (51:48):
A bun because he didn't need anything.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Oh no, he had. He had four beats, like perfectly cut,
like like somebody.

Speaker 3 (51:58):
Said, you go like he'd savored to be No, no, no, no, he.

Speaker 1 (52:00):
Just saved them like a normal man, whereas I was
just like macaroni stand. I'm a macrarni man. Yeah. If
you want to feel bad about what you put on
your plate, sit by Christian Bale at lunch.

Speaker 3 (52:12):
I don't. I don't need any help in that. I
feel bad already, a boy. Whatever I put on my plate,
it's already there.

Speaker 1 (52:16):
Oh oh, maybe I should have not sat here because
I'm I made a pressed sandwich with macaroni in it.

Speaker 3 (52:25):
But you're generally healthy. You're generally healthy. Yeah. I just
wanted to thank you for being here. I also want
to thank you, uh for your friendship. I like you.
I've liked you for years. I like I feel a
Cadie exactly pretty connection. And I don't always feel that
with everybody, even everybody in comedy, even everybody in improv comedy.

(52:47):
I don't always feel that.

Speaker 1 (52:49):
Okay, I don't think it has to do with Also,
the tremendous amount of respect that I have also for you.

Speaker 3 (52:53):
That may be it might I like you, you like
me exactly.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
But I might avoid your emails for eight months.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
No, don't.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
It doesn't mean I'm gonna avoid them forever.

Speaker 3 (53:01):
It's good, it's good, it's good. I will I will
not press. I will not press. But thanks for doing.

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Think about the number of podcasts I do not do well,
let's count unbelievable. Really, it's unbelievable something like that.

Speaker 3 (53:14):
I don't know, forty thousand podcast every day. Yeah, that's good.
You got to be a really good pal. Oh that's good.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
I really appreciate all you writing time too.

Speaker 3 (53:23):
You know that's true. But I'm always looking for a distraction.
Something was for disraction, so that's easy for me. Thank
you for being here, Tom, I'm a big fan. I
like your work, and thank you for being here. My audience,
Please subscribe to this dumb show, listen to it, send
some to your friends, and more importantly, spend time talking

(53:43):
to cool people like I'm doing. That's the whole point
of this. Yep, goodbye. Hey. That was Tom Lennon. Everybody.
He was one of my very favorite guests. He just walked,
He literally walked out the door. All right, Uh, come back, Tom,
come back, please come back.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Oh, don't be alone to J J. Cogain