December 2, 2025 • 49 mins
The always in demand, Michael Hitchcock, talks about how children's theater led to adult theater which led to a career of acting and writing with the groundlings, mad tv, christopher guest, crazy ex girlfriend, currently the lowdown and nobody wants this. We chat about writing vs acting and what it takes to realize where you should be.
Bio: Actor, writer, producer (and when he was a teenager, semi-professional magician), Michael currently appears as Ethan Hawke’s frenemy “Ray” in the critically acclaimed dramedy “The Lowdown,” available on FX and Hulu. He also plays Kristen Bell’s rather clueless dad in the Netflix hit comedy, “Nobody Wants This.” Many dog lovers recognize him as Parker Posey’s husband “Hamilton Swan” in the Christopher Guest iconic comedy “Best in Show,” and has appeared in Guest’s other celebrated films “Waiting for Guffman,” “A Mighty Wind,” “For Your Consideration,” and “Mascots.” Additional acting credits include “The Paper,” “Jackpot,” “Palm Royale,” “Your Place or Mine,” “Crazy Ex Girlfriend,” “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” “Black Monday,” “Space Force,” “Bridesmaids,” "Glee," "United States of Tara," "Men of a Certain Age," “Super 8,” “Serenity,” "Entourage," "Party Down," and "Arrested Development." Writing and producing credits include the acclaimed television series “Crazy Ex Girlfriend,” “Glee,” and “Mad TV.” He also wrote the films "House Arrest,” “The Ultimate Christmas Present,” and “Where the Day Takes You.” He is an alumnus of the sketch and improv comedy troupe, The Groundlings, and has performed comedy improv for the U.S. troops all over the world including Japan, South Korea, Iraq, Bahrain, Cuba, Guam, Honduras, and Kuwait.
Bio: Actor, writer, producer (and when he was a teenager, semi-professional magician), Michael currently appears as Ethan Hawke’s frenemy “Ray” in the critically acclaimed dramedy “The Lowdown,” available on FX and Hulu. He also plays Kristen Bell’s rather clueless dad in the Netflix hit comedy, “Nobody Wants This.” Many dog lovers recognize him as Parker Posey’s husband “Hamilton Swan” in the Christopher Guest iconic comedy “Best in Show,” and has appeared in Guest’s other celebrated films “Waiting for Guffman,” “A Mighty Wind,” “For Your Consideration,” and “Mascots.” Additional acting credits include “The Paper,” “Jackpot,” “Palm Royale,” “Your Place or Mine,” “Crazy Ex Girlfriend,” “Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar,” “Black Monday,” “Space Force,” “Bridesmaids,” "Glee," "United States of Tara," "Men of a Certain Age," “Super 8,” “Serenity,” "Entourage," "Party Down," and "Arrested Development." Writing and producing credits include the acclaimed television series “Crazy Ex Girlfriend,” “Glee,” and “Mad TV.” He also wrote the films "House Arrest,” “The Ultimate Christmas Present,” and “Where the Day Takes You.” He is an alumnus of the sketch and improv comedy troupe, The Groundlings, and has performed comedy improv for the U.S. troops all over the world including Japan, South Korea, Iraq, Bahrain, Cuba, Guam, Honduras, and Kuwait.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Strawhut Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hi, I'm Michael Hitchcock and I'm alone with j Cogan
and I'm not supposed to be. The title is Don't
be Alone Stupid.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Me, Don't be Alone with jj Cogan. Hello, Cognation, It's
me Jake Cogan, host of Don't Be Alone with Ja Cogan.
That's what you're watching or listening to. And I'm so
glad you're here and so thrilled that you have decided
to join me. I'd be even more thrilled if you
were a subscriber. Are you a subscriber? If you are,
(00:34):
I love you, and if you're not, I question your taste.
So subscribe to the show and like the show and
share the show with other people. If you have a
question or a comment, or a suggestion or compliment, send
it to me at Dbawjka at gmail dot com. That's
Don't Be Alone with j Cogan at gmail dot com.
You can also learn more about the show and me
(00:55):
at the substack J Cogan Substack, which is fantastic, And
you can also just do nothing and listen to the show.
That's fine. I'm not going to know any different, but
I would appreciate your interest and I always love when
I hear from people. It always makes me feel good
that we're just doing the show and a lot of
people are listening, and that's great. Anyway, Today we have
(01:17):
a lovely show for you. Someone who I've been a
big fan of for many many years, someone who I've
known tangentially many many years, but never really gotten a
chance to sit and talk with. A very funny actor
writer named Michael Hitchcock. You'll recognize him. He's been in
a million shows. He's also been behind the scenes as
(01:38):
a writer producer of many many shows. So he does
what I do, at least what I dream to do.
He is a much more active actor than I am.
I say writing we're probably on par but you know,
he's living my dream life, and I want to live
his life without the magic tricks he does magic tricks.
I just think he's really nice, interesting guy with a
(01:58):
good head on his shoulders, and I want him to
teach me why his reputation is sterling. Teach me why
everybody I know who who has ever worked with him
loves it, including Christopher Guest and making all those great
Christopher Guest movies, Waiting for Guffman and a mighty wind
and uh, for your consideration, those kind of things. He's
(02:21):
been a part of everything. He's been on Curby Enthusiasm.
People love him. People call him and they say, Michael,
can you do the show? I want those calls? How
do I get them? Interesting life, interesting story. You're going
to hear more about it right after this Don't Be
Alone with j J. Cogan. So, Mike Hitchcock, welcome to,
(02:48):
Welcome to Don't be Alone with Jake Cogan. You're You're
a hard get man, I really am.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
You've got it super hard to find. You had to
go through five public and get a.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Lot of people to the thing, like you had a
lot Tomay.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I sure did. I got my I got No, that's
I get a die.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Coke unsweetened iced tea is what you said, black off.
You're on sweetened water and water, so it's it's uh,
it's fine. I hope you're comfortable. I hope we've fulfilled
our end of the contractual bargain.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
For the most part, I wouldn't mind a chair that
isn't quite so like because I'm afraid I might I
might break it.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
The risk of falling and dying in the chair is
part of what keeps the show a lot. Oh that's good,
that's what's exciting. Uh. So I've known you tangentially for decades. Yeah,
but I don't really feel like we have known each other.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
No, we kind of were doing separate paths at the
same time with a lot of mutual friends.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Right, it's an incredible overlap. You're you're a go to
writer for many shows. You're a go to actor all
the time for many shows. I mean you're I told
my son I was I was seeing Uh Michael Hitchcock
was the guest today, Oh because, oh yeah, from Curby Enthusiasm.
He was the guy who didn't talk. He just started
(04:04):
rattling off things that you were in and was just
very excited that I was coming to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I wish you could call my family and tell them
to maybe watch some of the stuff. I meant night.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So you have been doing writing and acting for.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I don't know a while, a while and ninety.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, okay, at the same time as me. I'm eighty seven,
same thing. Thing.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
But see, I wasn't writing on Frasier and all these
fantastic shows.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
No, you're writing on other fantastic shows. You've been writing
on Housewives. No, I didn't write that, would you did?
The Mad TV?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
You did?
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Glee I did, and Desperate Housewives.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It's really it's almost the same thing.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Gay centric Ladies loved to say, Oh they were such
good singers. And and Crazy Ex Girl Friend one of
my favorite shows of all time.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
That was another. Yeah, that's very very funny show. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I mean, and you know, but along the way, you've
done a lot of different things, but you've also been
acting along the way, and amazing. I have to tell
you about yourself. You know, you're part of the Christopher
guest world, those people, but you're like every year kind
of a go to guy in terms of, you know,
(05:22):
a guest character, a regular character.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, if you need the guy that's sort of obnoxious
and then he gets his come up and right leaves.
That's that is bread and butter a lot of times.
And so when something where I'm not that guy comes along,
it's it's like, what, so.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
You're the twenty twenty five mister Drysdale, Is that right? Yeah?
A little bit all right?
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, it's good, good, good comparison.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
How'd you fall into from a place called defiance? Right?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Defiance, Ohio?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Right?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Which home of Fort Defiance. There was a fort on
top of the hill because the Mammie River and the
Auglais River met, so it was a good place to
sh shoot at people. Sure, yeah, because they'd become a down.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
The river protect shootout him protected by water.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So but to find Ohio was and is a big
General Motors town. Uh, that's where my dad worked. He
worked for General Motors. That's where I grew up. Great
place to be raised as a kid because like I fished,
you know, we could go across the street and fish
and you know all that kind of stuff and ride
mini bikes and you know all that stuff that was
(06:25):
for the Indians. I didn't root for anybody. I was
doing magic tricks, right, I understand. And then it's sooner
or later we moved to When I was the sixth grade,
we moved to Chicago and he became an engineer for
another place fantastic.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
So sixth grade is a pivotal time to move.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Horrible time to move. Yeah, it was truly horrible.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, I was a suburb of Chicago. I shouldn't say
truly horrible. I know people there.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's still it doesn't You said your experience was true
truly horrible. He didn't say the place was true.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Place is beautiful, right, what's the name of the Horrible
Springs villan known as tree Village? A lot of trees,
also known as hell for a sixth grader, he just
moved there halfway through the air, so it wasn't even
at the beginning of the year. It was halfway through.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
But Chicago is full of theater, yeah, and was that something? Yes?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Absolutely, that was one of the best things about Western
Springs and still is. They have a community theater there
that is fantastic, and they had children's theater and that's
where I kind of found my tribe. And then Chicago itself,
like our parents would take us down to see Second
City Chicago. So I grew up watching Second City, right,
(07:33):
and then there's The Goodman and there's Steppenwolf and all that.
So yeah, and we'd go to some of that, but
mostly you know.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
That's classy, yeah, classy family. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
But my dad also drove us around and you know,
literally when we first arrived, he would drive us down
to Chicago because you know, we're from Ohio and you go, like,
we're gonna go look at the bums and we literally
would drive to skid Row and look at these poor
house people and the first time is kind of fascinating.
But then when people came out to visit, right, we
would load up in the car and go look at
(08:02):
the bums. And that was like for him, a lot
of fun. I guess I entertain it was probably a
warning like this is what could happen. Right, But then
we'd also drive by the Chicago Merchandise Smart and he'd
always go, that's own that was owned by the Kennedys.
You know, Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger, right, and you
know he made his money bootlegging, and so we learned
(08:24):
a lot about bootlegging and the Kennedys.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
That sounds a little angry.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah he was.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
He was okay. But so somebody, I guess it's mom
or some siblings, somebody there is encouraging you to be,
you know, interested in acting and art. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I always kind of did that, And weirdly, even in Define, Ohio,
I kind of got my start there. Weirdly, Uh, through
the we went to the first Presbyterian Church of Defiance, Ohio,
and this lady named Missus Simmons, you know, took care
of the kids and the boys, which I don't to
this day understand. The boy. Every year, not the girls,
(09:01):
just the boys put on a marionette show. So it
was sort of like Shakespeare. The boy played them, you know,
but it was more that girls doing They were I
don't know what they were doing, but they had nothing
to do with the marionettes. It was just the guys.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Well you know, if you let girls touch puppets, bad
things happen.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Bad things happened. So you know, who know, they were
out shooting guns and playing baseball, right, we were playing
with marionettes. And I'm sure it had something to do
with the Bible. I don't remember that part. I just
remember it was fun to like, you know, there was
a stage and you know, you got to do this thing,
and people came and watched. And that's sort of where
I think my love of performing started behind a marionette
(09:37):
stage and defined so high that.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You had to play multiple characters if you were doing marionette.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I did all right, and then and then you know,
and then shows would come into town every once in
a while at the Defiance College or Reverend We go
see those, and I remember seeing a professional magician who
that also impressed me, so I wanted to do magic
at which I ended up doing. And I also remember
at the time I was a kid, I was maybe
six seven, but I remember he turned to the audience
(10:03):
and yelled at us and said that if he if
people didn't stop interrupting him, he was stopping the show.
And I don't remember who was doing it. I just thought, like, no,
I want to see this Mary, and I want to
see the magic show.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
But isn't it kind of the magician's responsibility to keep
your attention?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I think so, But it was It was probably a rowdy,
you know, audience full of kid I don't know what
got tricks. He's a good one.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
If he doesn't have their attention that something's wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No, he did.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
He was.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
He had like the sword box where you don't put
the lady in there and put sorts and they floated
a lady.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
So, so, how how magical were you as a teenager?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I was magical in the sense that I got paid
by like cub scouts and old folks homes to put
on a show. And i'd literally get parties, yeah, birthday parties.
I'd get like fifteen bucks maybe, and then I would
buy a new magic trick. It was down in Chicago
at Marshall Fields, which was a big department store that
sooner or later became Macy's. But they had a magic
(10:58):
department in the store, and you could, you know, buy
little tricks, you know, so whatever, like the dice box
and the you know, the floating ball and all that stuff.
And so whatever money I made, I put back into
the act. And yeah, I had no time to learn
like a sleight of hand, I was buying my magic.
So magic bits, puppets, poker, poker was not part of it,
(11:21):
but community theater was. And our community theater did like,
you know, children shows, so you would do you know,
Winning the Willows or The Wizard of Oz or whatever,
so that, and then sometimes I got used for the
adult shows, which was kind of cool. And then every
once in a while we would do the regular high
school shows if we deemed them important enough.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Were you in the regular high school show?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Well, I was Jesus and God's Spell, okay, don't get yourself.
And then we also did we also have like put
on our own like show where we you know, wrote
it and all that and and and all the money
went to pay for the the whatever it was the
high school place where we all hung out on the
wakends called the Corral, and so it was called the
(12:02):
Corral Show. And so I directed and wrote that for
a couple of years of high school.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So and then you'd have to like, did it also
have day by day in it or other?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
No, it was more of a comedy thing. But yeah,
I didn't star myself. I would have if I could have. No,
but that was one where you tried to get as
many people into it as possible so that you'd sell.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Want their parents and relatives to come.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So you'd have to corral like the jocks and the
cheerleaders and all of that, plus the you know, the
good the good actors. Tried to get them all together
and put on something sounds a little likely. Maybe we're
got the idea.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, all right, some people get to the groundlings when
they think I'm going to start I'm going to start
a career maybe enacting, and they show up to the groundlings, right,
you had decades of pre theater training.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Was I was working at actually a place called Embassy
Home Entertainment, which at the time was owned by Norman Lear. Yeah,
so it was it was part of the Norman Lyair
you knows for them. I at the beginning, I wrote
stuff on the back of vhs xboxes, So whatever the
movie was about, I would write what it was all right.
And I remember showing the boss say, you know, did
(13:10):
you think this is good? And she goes, it doesn't matter.
Nobody reads that, Like, oh no, all this college and
I'm doing this and clearly this nobody cares.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Somebody reads it, Yeah, well most people don't.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I tried to make it sound good.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah. So anyway, I was doing that and a friend
of mine said, you know, you kind of want to
be a writer. Take classes at the Groundlings because improvisation
is you know, will help you with your right right,
And so that's why I went there. And it was true,
like improv is great for writing because it's writing, you know,
on the spot.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
The greatest lesson I ever got from from improv was
it's okay to fail. Yeah, just go just do it
and see what happened.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Plus, it's a team sport. And so in a writer's
room there's you know, it's a room full of writers,
and so you can't just hold onto your idea. You
someone's pitching something and you can you know add on
to it. It's great for all of that.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Okay, well this leads me to perfectly into my question.
Every show, yes I do I invite someone on to
help me with my problem. Okay, okay, my problem. You
seem excited about it.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
You have so many problems.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I'm going to define this one. We don't have time
for all of them. I know specific one specific issue,
which is you're living my dream career in many ways,
and that's very.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Weird because you were living my dream career and still
are so.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
But but you're perceived and I think us you are
as a team player, as somebody who's on board to
do what it is to do, and people probably people
who you don't even have, people who've never worked with
you before. I say, we got to get this guy.
He's got a great reputation. He's going to come. He's
(14:54):
going to come act in our ensemble and be fantastic.
He's gonna write in our writing room and be fantas as.
He's going to give you what you want and maybe
even a little bit more. And you don't know, and
we can always cut that part out and you don't
know what it's going to be. But you know, along
the way, he'll be delightful. He's not going to be angry,
he's not gonna be furious. He's going to be a
(15:15):
team player who's going to try and make it better
and work with you. Okay, that's what that's what. That's
the reputation I have for you. That's that's what I've
heard for you. That's the reputation.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
You've never hired me on any of your projects. Well,
I'm jealous. Interesting, I'm jealous. So yeah, so like, fuck him?
Is that what you're doing a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Of the time, you're not available the way? All right,
I've hired many other dwellings. But he's already he's working
on this. As what I get, he's working. He's busy
on Glee. He's busy and crazy extra, he's busy. If
you weren't working so much.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Maybe I'm not working right now.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Me neither.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Okay, Well that's why we're.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Here, right exactly. Don't be alone with the thing about
(16:12):
it is, you must be you know. Obviously, part of
what we do is be creative, funny, we give that.
But another part of it is to be a team
player and be perceived as a team player and be
on board for the fun of it. For the Yeah,
and I think like Christopher Guest has his ensemble players.
(16:35):
Of course, I don't know, you get he was He
made a bunch of movies, but he also made a
bunch of commercials and stuff like that. I don't know
if you were a part on board.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
For I've done a couple of his commercials. But I
got on. I got hired by him because of the groundlings.
I was doing a Thursday night improv show. I didn't
know he was in the audience. I think my agent
had told him about me or something, but he secretly
came to see the show and they were doing Waiting
for Government, and uh, he came to see it. I
(17:04):
found out later he'd been there. And the way he
works is he doesn't really audition actors. You go meet
him and he's notoriously quiet. Yeah, so you you I
went to meet him, Well, he's he's he's His humor
is very very dry, and so you don't know quite
how to make of him when you first meet him.
And I think what helped me on that particular project
(17:27):
was because of my community theater background and this the
Waiting for Governments about community theater I started talking about
the many types of people that were I knew back
in the day, and I think that helped me secure
a spot in that film. So that's how that happened.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
And he says, you know that a lot of it
is just go, here's the situation, here's the situation.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Go go right. That's that happens like because you know,
in those movies, because they're they're you know, faux documentaries.
He doesn't like the term documentary. Right, there's interviews in them.
And I remember, for waiting for Guman, I thought, oh,
my character is about to be interviewed. He's going to
be behind the camera, he's going to ask me questions.
None of that happened. It was sort of like, okay,
and just start talking about the play. And I thought like,
(18:12):
oh no. And then I remembered an exercise that Syna
Sagetti talk called rumination, where you take a subject and
you ruminate on it and you just keep going. The
whole thing is just keep going and go through the wall.
And I thought, okay, well this is rumination. I've done
it in the class, we can do it here. And
that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
That's fantastic. Yeah, Gufman was a magical movie to watch
coming from an impron background, but I think just to
watch it, it has the very similitude of community theater,
but it's definitely a comedy. It's people putting on interesting characters.
It's almost groundlings, ask but a little bit. It's like
(18:51):
three steps less broad necessarily than the groundings, but still
that same vibe.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Well, the big thing he tells you right from the
get go is never go for jokes, like the comedy
is going to come from your character, and then you
know it's a real thing unless you're like a Fred
Willard type where that is part of your personality. God
blessed Fred Willard. Yeah, you know in heaven and I
can't wait to see him again. If you're lucky enough
to see him again. He's He's Chris is that way.
(19:21):
So you go in knowing that you better you know
you're delivering the character itself and ahead of time. On
that one, I was originally cast as someone auditioning for
the play. I wasn't a cast as my character, Bob
Odenkirk was. And then at some point Bob couldn't do
the schedule, and so they switched us, and so I
(19:43):
was switched into being a town councilman. And he goes like, well,
what do you want to do for that? And I said, well,
I want to talk about how I really wanted to
be in the play because I did, and that I'm
secretly in love with you, and so any kind of
kind of grant it, okay, we can try that. And
so then and then then I think the writer brain
in me went is like, if I talk a lot
(20:04):
about the other characters, I have a better chance of
staying in this movie, right, And so I'm a little
bit of a gossip, which helped, I think, you know,
further their plot, right, and help keep being.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
In the movie. How much of the plot, as much
as there is a plot, was known other than they're
going to try and put on a play and wait
for the producer to come who never comes.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Well, he does an outline. We have an outline ahead
of time. It's roughly, I don't know, thirty pages or so.
That's mostly breakdown of what the characters and then maybe
just a sentence or two of what the scenes are about.
Never any suggested dialogue, unless it's like the play itself
was written. So that part was written and the songs
(20:49):
are written obviously, so so yeah, you kind of know
what the bing bing bing is. But like I said,
the interviews talk about whatever you want. Or when you're
in the scene, like we know that he's going to
ask us for money of extra money for the play,
but that and we're gonna turn him down. That's all
there is. And then you do the scene. And even
like when you're blocking with the cameras, if there's movement involved,
(21:12):
you never ever do dialogue during those things. It's just like, yeah,
they might move here, they might move there, and be
ready for that. And then when the camera's old, that's
the first time anyone actually talks.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Right. Was it analogous to during a growling scene or
was it completely different?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
It is, all right, and because there's you know, there's
several people in the scene, so you have to give
and take do all that stuff. I can remember a
couple of times in my little judgment and be like, oh,
they just said something really weird, but you have to
go with it and you know, and so that's how
it goes. And he also does extremely long takes and
then you know, maybe the second time around he goes, Okay,
(21:48):
we don't really need that again, but let's I really
like this part of it, so maybe let's try it again,
so we you're obligated to remember what you said exactly,
not exactly, but he might go like, I like this part,
maybe try it again that way. And and then so
you kind of do that, you know, you do wide shots,
and then you kind of come in for the here's
the thing.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Now, you obviously did that one movie. But then people
liked working with you, and they're working with you again
and working with you again and working with you again.
I spoke to Rachel Bloom. She's a lovely woman. She
loved working with you too. Rachel's like, come on, you know,
she's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
She's like a little puppy, just so excitable with the
brain of Einstein. I mean, she is so smart. And
when we were doing Crazy Ex Girlfriend, you know, she's
obviously those songs are hilarious, but she knew it was
about so much more than just what you think it's
going to be about. It really delves into metal health and.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Every song usually had a point to it that was
both sociological and moved the story forward.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yes, between an impossible task impossible and then between her
and the lean Brush mckennaugh, who wrote The Devil Where's
produ of. They were an amazing team together and put
on the show that you know, the fans loved it, yeah,
you know. And it was on the CW, which at
that time was like superheroes and models, right, And I
think they weren't quite didn't quite understand it at the beginning,
(23:15):
but then embraced.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I didn't understand at the beginning, I didn't know what
it was. I saw posters as crazy as girlfriend. Oh,
this is probably on the CW. This is probably not
a show for me. Yeah, And then and then it was.
It absolutely was. It was a must see show. It
was great.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And the way she said that they pitched it, which
I still think is brilliant. When they went in to
pitch the show, they said, the first season is about Denial,
which is like, I'm just moving to this town to
get this job. It has nothing to do with a
boy I met in some you know, back in summer
camp that I'm still secretly in love with. That has
nothing to do with that. And then so that was
the first season of Denial. The second season was Acceptance,
which was I am in love with the guy, that
(23:50):
is why I'm here. I'm going to get him. Third
season was Revenge, which was you know, screw him, it's
not working out. He's going to get his And the
fourth season was Healing, and we for the most part,
stuck with that plan for the four seasons. That's a
brilliant way to pitch, Yeah, and that's what it was.
And they went in going we see this as a
(24:10):
four season show, and that's what it became. And then
she won the gold a little bit of mistake.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Don't pitch the final season. You never pitched the final season,
but they pitched.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Well, I'm not telling her anyone how to pitch, but
I just thought, like to do it like with themes,
where you don't have to get too far into the weeds.
So that's really smart.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, when you're a writer, like on a show crazy
Ex Girlfriend, and you're also occasionally a performer on that show,
is it hard to cross the line go back and forth.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
No, if it's the same show, it's easy, because you know,
you go literally, you know, if several yards away, you
do your thing and then when you're done, you go back.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
To the room.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
If it's a different show, then it's a problem.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And that's why that's why you weren't available to do
my show.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Well, sometimes, like you have to, you have to pick
your battles right, and you can usually only do a
part that lasts a day or two. Because again, if
you have a job, they don't exactly like it that
you're not at the job.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
No, I don't, but I mean it's like, if you're
hiring you, you might know. This comes with the territory
every now and then he's going to have to take
it down.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
That's true, but you can't only you can only play
those cards every once in a while. Like I would be like, hey,
if a Christopher guess thing comes up, I'm going to
do it and we have to talk about that now.
But if it's anything else, they're like, no, you can't.
And I don't blame them. You know, if you're hired
to write, you should be there to write. There's only
so many people, and then you're putting all the work
(25:33):
on other people. Yeah, so it depends, you know. I
had one job, actually it was a job on this
show called Gross Point. It only lasted a year. It
was this nine O two one oh takeoff. It was
on the WB. It was very funny. Darren Starr created
it and it was basically behind the scenes of a
nine O two one oh show and it got incredible
acclaim and then the wb fans didn't know what to.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Make of it, said, last one, they're making fun of
the thing that we like.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, and so, but it last one season was very funny.
But I recurred on that. But I was working on
med TV at the time and they did not like
it that I was leaving to go do the show.
And they basically said I could do it as long
as I'm at the writer's room by ten am, and
I'd have to go to the show, go to to
(26:24):
the gross Point show and say if you can film
me and I can be back in the office, which
was across town by ten, you can have me. And
so they would film me like at six thirty in
the morning, and then at some point they just went
like it's no, this's not going to happen, and we'd
have done so. Yeah, I got written out.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Well. Jim Wise just talking about like going to the
dentist a lot. Yes, he went to the dentist a lot,
auditions or other things that he was doing.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I remember during that one time there was a show
that they wanted me to go audition for and I went, Now,
it's one of those British shows that come to America
and that they don't work. Coupling had just come and
I'm going to skip it because it's so hard to
get out of work. It was the Office, of course,
and yeah I didn't. I never auditioned for it, and
not that I would have made it, but it's like
I turned down that audition because of.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
You might have been a good gym or pam.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
You could well, who knows what. I never know, but
that's the type of thing. You have to pick your battles,
and I picked wrongly on that. I should have gone
to the dentist that day.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
You don't know, you don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It's all right, that's how it goes.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
I did this thing. I don't think I've ever talked
about this on the show. There was the the Osbourne's
We're doing. I wanted to do a show, a show
with no script about their family and just a real
show about with no script. And they interviewed me and say,
you want to come produce this show and I'm like,
(27:48):
I don't get it, Like, what do you mean a
show without a script? What do we what would we
be filming us? And like, okay, but I mean, how
interesting are you? Like people on their daily are I mean,
Ozzy Osborne's a rock star, I get it. How interesting
are you? And they said, and Sharon was saying, we're
very interesting, uh, and you know we do and he
(28:09):
does crazy things and they would talk about like one time,
you know, Ozzy, I made a plate of brownies and
Ozzie ate the whole plate and I thought, it doesn't
sound that interesting. Couldn't have been more wrong, like, oh,
this was like the most you know, reality been great,
fantastic thing. I don't know. But then again, I also
could not understand a word that Ozzy Osbourne said. He said,
(28:31):
I would ask my question, so, Ozzie, you like this idea? Yeah?
So I thought this is not for me, not for you.
It sounded insane, and then it turns out it was good.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Well listen, I did it just like a Simpson movie,
her last one. Yeah, partly because I thought, wouldn't it
be fun to be around that and her father and
see that world?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
And they didn't disappoint. Okay, I mean it like that
part of it was great. The movie was called Private
Valentine and it was about as good as you know,
a private Benjamin rip off can be. And my family
screens in every few months. They all good, Yeah, you're welcome, Yeah,
but yeah. I was one of those where you're like
and nothing against her. She was a lovely person, but
(29:12):
just but you kind of I kind of went just
to see that dynamic the daughter.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Is strange that they like this, this fireworks. You wanted
to see this sort of them them either them fighting
or him dominating her, Like what was going on there?
Speaker 2 (29:24):
It was just what you'd kind of heard about that
relationship and that he'd you know, be bragging about her
daughter and was always around and a lot of that
stuff was happening, and and whatever reason, I wasn't working,
and I thought, well, why not, right do it? And
so did you do your tell all book about that?
I never did. But the funny thing about that thing
is it was shot in shreport, which fines either here
(29:46):
or there. But at some point I had to go
into do dialogue replacement. You know, a dr where you know,
whatever a plane goes but the audience might not. So
that's where if like a plane goes by and the
sound gets ruined, you go in and you redo the
W and you have to match your lips. So I
went in and then you know, it's the first line
out of my mouth. So we did it great, Okay,
now here's the second one. And then and then I
(30:08):
after a while, I went like, wait a minute, are
we doing all of them? Yes, that the sound guy
had mixed mixed up something. Every line had to be replaced.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
That can't be helpful to the movie. No, So everyone's
dialozed crazy microf.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
And we weren't outdoors. We were inside of a home,
so it was you know, technically, it should have been fine.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
So I'm sorry. I'm sorry to you and to Jessica.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
And me too, me too.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
It's not it's not great.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
But anyway, Yeah, you take those jobs everyone you do.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
What was your first professional TV writing gig? Uh?
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Where I got my This is the New Lassie. I
got my WGA card doing the New Lassie with my
friend Steve Stark, who is a very big producer in
these days. He does Handmaid's Tale and Wednesday all, you know,
tons and tons and tons of stuff Fargo, and so
we co wrote the New Lassie for Universal because he
(31:06):
was working for Al Burton productions at the time who
did it? And it kind of ruined my whole like
lure of Lassie because the plot was basically, they go
to Mexico and they got stuck in the flash flood,
which was the universal flash flood. So we were shooting
on the black clot and to make Lassie be excited,
they had two Lassies. One kind of was the main
(31:27):
one and then the other one, I guess did the tricks.
I don't know exactly which one did what, but the
one that day. To get Lassie to kind of do that,
they just had this little like chihuahua that was its friend,
and it would go like Snapper's here, Snappers here, And
that's how they got Lastie to do the thing because
his little friend, well Snapper was on the set right.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Well, I want to tell you something, Michael. It's a dog. Yeah.
It's not an act. It's not it's a dog.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
But yeah, it was like, yes, I see how the
sausages were made. You're just like, all right, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
How many episodes of Lassie did you write?
Speaker 2 (32:02):
I didn't one that got me in that got me
in the w G A fantastic Yeah, all right, Well
that's just sad.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And then how did you get to Mad.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
TV through the groundings?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Did you find it easy to churn out material or
was it tough?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Was it it was pretty easy? I mean, I think
the thing about Mad was we knew our place in
the world of late night sketch comedy. We knew we
were not SNL. We were never going to get those numbers.
It was much more I think, relaxed than you know,
and it was not a live show. It was we
had a studio audience that we would you know, do
live on tape and then hold up puppies, so they
(32:38):
puppies pretty much. And then but then we also did
you know, field pieces too. But and then you know,
you could film something in September and it would show
up in May. So it wasn't it could go all
over the place as far as that went, for sure.
But it was a lot of a lot of the
grounding writers or people were on that show. So it
(32:58):
was some friends, it was. It was a fairly easy
show to you know, feel at home. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
So yeah, my my niece when she was she could
have gotten to any show, like Uncle Jay, would you
get me ticketed? All she wanted to see was mad TV. Yeah,
because it was right in her wheelhouse exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I think the downfall I mean not the downfall, but
the frustration with that show would be they would the
audience would be young, like high school kids. They would
come in.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
That's how old she was when she wanted to see. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
And so then if you if the word like weed
was mentioned in a sketch that had nothing really to
do with weed, they would just go wow. And you'd
be like, oh, no, that's You're not supposed to laugh
at the word.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
That's not what it's. When you get to know your audience,
maybe exactly you plant the word weed in when you
want some action.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
But yeah, and so you'd have to like sometimes like
re re laugh at sometimes because they laughed at the
wrong place. But but great talent, I mean like everybody
from Key and Peel to you know, like Baron Holdtson,
I mean, just the list goes on.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Don't be alone with What was Glee like? And what's Ryan?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I loved? I actually I was a huge fan of
Glee when it came on. I remember seeing the pilot
and going, what is this? Why am I not any
part of this?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
This?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
You know? I love this whole, you know, like especially
season one, season two where they were you know, these
misfits who every they just the world hated them, but
they just did their thing and then they would put
on a show for themselves, right with these elaborate sets.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
It was very heightened reality, very goofy y MGM, let's
put on a show in a barn except in New
Times in my Ohio connection, like it's takes place in Lime, Ohio,
which literally we would.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
I have cousins that live there from my Defiance days.
So I was like, it's Lime, Ohio, like I you
know how my cousins are. So I loved the whole,
heightened all of it. And I I'm kind of secretly
a singer, even though I'm a horrible singer. So to
be around people that are that good at what they
do and was fantastic too.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
By the way, I fancy myself. I am very good singer.
And my son, who's a professional singer, yeah, reminds me
you're not. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
I don't fancy myself professional singer.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I do. I fancy myself. It's good and when I try,
I just get eye rolls. Yeah, So I guess I
guess I'm not good.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
So you could go over there during the day, like
on a break and watch them do these crazy numbers
and like and do them well, and you know, and
then they're having to do it twenty five, twenty six
times for all the takes and and you know, it
was just fascinating how all that went. I loved Ryan
Murphy to get to Ryan Ryan is he has a
sense of humor that takes a while to understand. But
(36:01):
what you understand it?
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I really really like, is it weird? Is it like?
What is it's?
Speaker 2 (36:05):
It's it's biting but not cruel. Okay, I guess there's
a way to do it and and very funny guy.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Right, all right, So now this is time for listener mail.
Now it's time for listener man. Thank you Sidney for
the question, uh listener Maile question your j guest. What
was the most challenging moments of your career and how
did you overcome it? And part two, what was the
(36:34):
biggest failure and how did you get past that?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Wow to your first.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
All right, So, the most challenging moments in my career
and how did I overcome it? I kind of think
the biggest challenge was at the beginning to me, like
how do you break in? How do you find your
way through? And knowing that it's a giant wall and
it's very hard to get over, and you just have
to have the tenacity to say, I'm just going to
keep doing it and doing it and do it until
(37:00):
I get over the wall. So that was the commitment
that I had learned doing stand up comedy and doing
some acting and doing the groundlings sort of braced me
for whatever the journey was. However long it would take
to do the thing to get to writing or get
to acting or break in somehow, is what I thought.
That was my challenge. Yeah, and I thought, and I
(37:22):
think I got through it just by head down, nose
to the grindstone, just keep going right and looking for
every opportunity. And I got lucky. Luck is a great
part of it because I got I got some brakes. Yeah. Yeah,
so that that was the big thing.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, the grind at the beginning is extremely hard. The
good thing is most of us when we're doing it
are younger, and you're everyone's sort of kind of in
the same boat. But yes, that grind at the beginning
is it's it's hard. Yeah, and it's sort of like
why what am I doing wrong? Or da da da da,
why don't they like me? Or I said the wrong
(37:58):
answer when I'm interviewing for the agent, or you know,
all of that kind of thing. Yes, that's absolutely it
probably my lowest when I had a and this is
I mean, I hardly ever talked about this, but I
wrote a movie that was an independent film. It was
like non WGA, So maybe that was my first thing
I wrote was She Going? But it wasn't TV. It
was a movie and it was called Where the Day
(38:18):
Takes You and had a great cast everybody from Dermo
Maroney and Laura flam Boyle and Kyle MacLachlan and Will
Smith's first movie. It was about street kids in LA
and it turned into an extremely frustrating, depressing experience because
I got rewritten and I found out about it by
(38:40):
reading it in Variety and by but I was still
showing the director around town and all the places, and
he never told me. And then I rewrote the rewrite
and then he allegedly took credit for that, and I
had to threaten legal stuff and it was a mess,
(39:01):
right and so, and everyone was sort of like well
you got a movie made and right, da da da
da dah, And well, you know that's good. What did
you learn from it? And the thing I learned was
I couldn't trust anybody, and that was like, oh, you
finally got somewhere. And then you know, the mechanics of
it and the egos really really threw me for a loop.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Well, I mean it's a hard lesson to learn early,
because I don't know, as you've had a very long
and storied career, you probably haven't run into that many
people that you can't trust.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
No, Yeah, And that was one of the first. And
it was also that thing of like it almost got
me out of the business because it was so like
what is this what it's like? You know, and it
was about street kids getting The whole thing was about
like street kids, you know, like right, horrible their life is.
And then all this all this mechanics of people taking
credit and this and that and you you didn't do
(39:54):
this and he did this, and it was it was.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Not a world of you know, a show business that's
under the radar and people are making it for nothing
and maybe a little bit more dicey, yes, than guilds
and laws and studios and contracts and all the not
that we can't get screwed over by big studios. People
do all the time, but it just feels like there
(40:18):
are more rules set in place for.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
That very reason. Yeah, I know with that whole thing,
like once you're in the guild and you go like, okay, well,
at least there's arbitration and ways to settle things like that.
And I know sometimes that doesn't work out either, but
at least it's your peers deciding for you, as opposed
to a producer saying no, just leave them off the
credit or whatever it was they were doing to allegedly
(40:42):
punish me for, you know, saying, hey, I wrote something
that someone else is allegedly taking.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Care exactly it's my If I'm not going to get
paid money for it, I should get the credit.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
So it's yeah, it did not turn into a great
experience at the time over you know, but the good
things come from everything, you know, and I made friends
from that and what have you. So that was that
was crappy. And then you know, I've been fired a
couple of times off of sitcom and when you're a
guest star, and that's always humiliating, But every comic I know,
every every comedy guy, I know woman, We've all. It's
(41:15):
it's it's a badge of honor. We've all. It's happened
to everyone, and you just it's just the way it is.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
What explains it? It's just bad chemistry, the right the
wrong reading, bad week. What do you think it can be?
Speaker 2 (41:26):
All sorts of things. I think the first time I
did it, I was probably green and was just you know, nervous.
I think that was probably part of it. But it's
also when it was it was multicams, and on multicams,
you know, Day one is you're reading for the you know,
the writers, and it's the table reading. The day two
maybe the studio comes in. Day three is the network
(41:47):
and then you're blocking and and there's no time and
so like if you're not exactly where you're supposed to
be on that day, you're gone. And that's just how
it is. There's no time to fix it.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
What's going on in life for you? Okay, so now
you're here, what's going on in life? We are men
of a certain age, Yeah, what what does the future
look like?
Speaker 2 (42:06):
What's going besides you going twice and I'm.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Still doing magic? I did, like, what what do you anymore?
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I've luckily this year, I've worked a lot, so that's good.
I've been doing the lowdown. And luckily I'm on another show,
Nobody Wants This, which is on Netflix.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Mentioned that earlier this morning.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, and it's season two and so luckily that's kept
a lot of my time right going.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
And that's that.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
That's premiering, UH October twenty third, and it's going to
be fun, very fun fun. Okay, things coming, Okay, America's
way on that show. Okay, I'm looking forward to, Uh,
America's Sweetheart. Well, will Jews and non Jews ever get along?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
I just don't know going to find out. I don't
know how to find out.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
But Adam Brody, Christ and bell Man, they are so funny.
I love them, and everybody that Chris Justin Lucas hilarious.
Everybody on that show is so much fun.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Is that Bruce Kaplan still wearing this? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Okay, he's great, great, Oh my god, he's the nicest
guy ever.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Also a very funny cartoonist.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
I wish he was like my uncle.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
You could probably ask him.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, he's so nice. Yeah, he's the nicest guy.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Really, nice and really funny.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Yeah, and I play on that show. I play Christen
Bell's dad, and he's loosely based on Aaron Foster has.
Her father is David Foster, a very famous music producer
who's also very famously a ladies man, been married several times.
And part of the show is based on my characters
(43:32):
sort of based on him, and that he wasn't around
that much when she was growing up. But that's the
only part that's the same. I play a gay Padietris, right,
but you're just newly out of the closet, all right.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Well, now it's time for the moment of joy.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Oh, a moment of job.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
So this is where I ask my guest, and in
this case, you are the guest. Oh, okay, what it
is that brings you joy?
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I'm going to listen to things and they're both very
oddish and one is very basic. Hued you the basic
one first. The basic one is I really enjoy reading
celebrity autobiographies. It brings me joy. I just got done
with with Charlie Sheen's book, which I highly recommend.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Did you see the documentary?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Saw? The documentary is the book and the documentary. Yeah,
they're kind of yeah pieces, yes, their companion pieces. It's
they obviously go to more detail in the book. But yeah,
the documentary, all that footage of like the home movies
of him as a kid with like the Sheens and
all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
I mean, Charlie Sheen, Yes, do end up liking.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
But what I also do when I do those biographies,
I will do obviously something like that or Jeanette McCurdy
who did like I you know, I'm glad my mother
is dead, and those books which are fantastic. But then
I'll do deep dives to people and read like say,
Gary Marshall, you read Gerry Marshall's book, and then you
read Penny Marshall's book, and you read like, you know,
did Sydney blame? Sorry book can't remember, but like all
(45:09):
of them together is makes up great, So you kind
of it's almost like Rashaman, right.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
No, I got it. I did. I did read Elaine
May's uh there's a bio not autobiography, but biography about
the lame May, and then one about Mike Nichols, and
then what about uh second City entirely and what about
you know and so and Alan Arkins, so like I'm
trying to get that group of actors fall in one spot.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
And then if you like, I highly recommend Ron Howard
and Clint Howard wrote a book together called The Boys,
which is basically them growing up as child actors. And
so you're also hearing all of that too, like they
get a.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Little bit like that they're both now incredibly successful. Yeah,
oh wait, no, well only Ron.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
But Clint does okay. You will see like Clint does fine, okay,
And he was massive as a kid, like a general
Ben yehs huge gels.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
The Star Trek episode where he's talks about that.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
And they talk about growing up in Burbank and that
they all got to, you know, as a treat even
though they were famous, they got to ride their bikes
down to Patty's Diner on the corner over on Riverside driving.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
So I mean, it's not like they were anonymous.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Yeah, they're all great books. And then the other thing
that brings me joy Bich is kind of sad is
I feed two crows, okay, And it's because there's two
crows that kept landing in my backyard, and so I
bought cat food and walnuts and peanuts, and I've kind
of started feeding crows, which is like my friend Jennifer said, like,
you have to stop that now because you're turning into
(46:39):
the old man who feeds crows.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Yeah, you're a little it's a little bit weird. It's however,
but I like however, crows are famously incredibly smart.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
They're so smart that they remember your face. They remember
if you're mean or you're good, right, and they tell
their children, so it will be passed down to generations
if you're a good person or a bad person, So
you better be good to crows.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
That's amazing. Well, thank you for that. I will not
be feeding crows, but I'm not going to. If I
feed them, they're going to come back.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
But don't be mean to them.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
I won't be mean to crows. I like crows, smile,
but I will read more. Biography is of famous people. Yeah,
it's kind of fun.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Charlie Sheen, I liked it. I wish Jeanett McCurdy. But
of all for your audience, the boys, it's so good. Yeah,
like Ron Howard, Clint Howard, great book.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
All right. Well Ron Howard, I've met many o casies.
He's a very nice guy. Yeah, very nice. I've never
met him one incredibly down to earth. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Shockingly auditioned one time with Clinton. I thought what category
am I in?
Speaker 1 (47:37):
And did you get it?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
I did not get it?
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Okay, I don't know. Okay, maybe neither one of you
or in that category. You don't know. You know, Michael,
it was so great for you to come in here
and meet you in this kind of setting, the longest
we've sat talking with each other in decades ever, and
I appreciate it. I want to do more of it.
Someday you'll invite me do the for Joyce Grand Slam,
(48:01):
Denny's Grand Slam.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
If you show up, You're more than what I can.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Go to Hollywood, I mean Hollywood now. It's yeah, it's
all good. But thank you for being here. And I'm
very much looking forward to uh low down, low down.
It's very exciting and to whatever else.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Is going to come next. And nobody wants this, and
nobody want season two, nobody wants us.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
I'll watch, I'll watch, I'll watch Season two. It's fun
show that. Although I have had my fill of Jews,
I gotta say it's just been the high holidays. I've
seen a lot of my my brethren, a lot all right,
and so it's okay. But I mean, I'll get you'll
get around to.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
You could just skip to the Christian party.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
So I'm like our family half of it. That's fine,
that's fine, and but thanks for being here, and thank
you for having us for being here. If you please
tune in to uh Don't Below with Jake Cogan. Whenever
you get a chance, please write into dB A w
JK at gmail dot com if you got a question.
Subscribe to the show and do yourself a favor. Sit
with somebody who you would like to talk with and
(49:00):
have a talk with him. This has been one of them.
This makes my day. You can make your day by
doing the same thing, and we'll see you next time.
Don't be Alone with j J. Cogain
Strawhut Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hi, I'm Michael Hitchcock and I'm alone with j Cogan
and I'm not supposed to be. The title is Don't
be Alone Stupid.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Me, Don't be Alone with jj Cogan. Hello, Cognation, It's
me Jake Cogan, host of Don't Be Alone with Ja Cogan.
That's what you're watching or listening to. And I'm so
glad you're here and so thrilled that you have decided
to join me. I'd be even more thrilled if you
were a subscriber. Are you a subscriber? If you are,
(00:34):
I love you, and if you're not, I question your taste.
So subscribe to the show and like the show and
share the show with other people. If you have a
question or a comment, or a suggestion or compliment, send
it to me at Dbawjka at gmail dot com. That's
Don't Be Alone with j Cogan at gmail dot com.
You can also learn more about the show and me
(00:55):
at the substack J Cogan Substack, which is fantastic, And
you can also just do nothing and listen to the show.
That's fine. I'm not going to know any different, but
I would appreciate your interest and I always love when
I hear from people. It always makes me feel good
that we're just doing the show and a lot of
people are listening, and that's great. Anyway, Today we have
(01:17):
a lovely show for you. Someone who I've been a
big fan of for many many years, someone who I've
known tangentially many many years, but never really gotten a
chance to sit and talk with. A very funny actor
writer named Michael Hitchcock. You'll recognize him. He's been in
a million shows. He's also been behind the scenes as
(01:38):
a writer producer of many many shows. So he does
what I do, at least what I dream to do.
He is a much more active actor than I am.
I say writing we're probably on par but you know,
he's living my dream life, and I want to live
his life without the magic tricks he does magic tricks.
I just think he's really nice, interesting guy with a
(01:58):
good head on his shoulders, and I want him to
teach me why his reputation is sterling. Teach me why
everybody I know who who has ever worked with him
loves it, including Christopher Guest and making all those great
Christopher Guest movies, Waiting for Guffman and a mighty wind
and uh, for your consideration, those kind of things. He's
(02:21):
been a part of everything. He's been on Curby Enthusiasm.
People love him. People call him and they say, Michael,
can you do the show? I want those calls? How
do I get them? Interesting life, interesting story. You're going
to hear more about it right after this Don't Be
Alone with j J. Cogan. So, Mike Hitchcock, welcome to,
(02:48):
Welcome to Don't be Alone with Jake Cogan. You're You're
a hard get man, I really am.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
You've got it super hard to find. You had to
go through five public and get a.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Lot of people to the thing, like you had a
lot Tomay.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
I sure did. I got my I got No, that's
I get a die.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
Coke unsweetened iced tea is what you said, black off.
You're on sweetened water and water, so it's it's uh,
it's fine. I hope you're comfortable. I hope we've fulfilled
our end of the contractual bargain.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
For the most part, I wouldn't mind a chair that
isn't quite so like because I'm afraid I might I
might break it.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
The risk of falling and dying in the chair is
part of what keeps the show a lot. Oh that's good,
that's what's exciting. Uh. So I've known you tangentially for decades. Yeah,
but I don't really feel like we have known each other.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
No, we kind of were doing separate paths at the
same time with a lot of mutual friends.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Right, it's an incredible overlap. You're you're a go to
writer for many shows. You're a go to actor all
the time for many shows. I mean you're I told
my son I was I was seeing Uh Michael Hitchcock
was the guest today, Oh because, oh yeah, from Curby Enthusiasm.
He was the guy who didn't talk. He just started
(04:04):
rattling off things that you were in and was just
very excited that I was coming to talk to you.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
I wish you could call my family and tell them
to maybe watch some of the stuff. I meant night.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So you have been doing writing and acting for.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
I don't know a while, a while and ninety.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, okay, at the same time as me. I'm eighty seven,
same thing. Thing.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
But see, I wasn't writing on Frasier and all these
fantastic shows.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
No, you're writing on other fantastic shows. You've been writing
on Housewives. No, I didn't write that, would you did?
The Mad TV?
Speaker 2 (04:42):
You did?
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Glee I did, and Desperate Housewives.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
It's really it's almost the same thing.
Speaker 1 (04:50):
Gay centric Ladies loved to say, Oh they were such
good singers. And and Crazy Ex Girl Friend one of
my favorite shows of all time.
Speaker 2 (04:58):
That was another. Yeah, that's very very funny show. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I mean, and you know, but along the way, you've
done a lot of different things, but you've also been
acting along the way, and amazing. I have to tell
you about yourself. You know, you're part of the Christopher
guest world, those people, but you're like every year kind
of a go to guy in terms of, you know,
(05:22):
a guest character, a regular character.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Yeah, if you need the guy that's sort of obnoxious
and then he gets his come up and right leaves.
That's that is bread and butter a lot of times.
And so when something where I'm not that guy comes along,
it's it's like, what, so.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
You're the twenty twenty five mister Drysdale, Is that right? Yeah?
A little bit all right?
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Yeah, it's good, good, good comparison.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
How'd you fall into from a place called defiance? Right?
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Defiance, Ohio?
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Right?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Which home of Fort Defiance. There was a fort on
top of the hill because the Mammie River and the
Auglais River met, so it was a good place to
sh shoot at people. Sure, yeah, because they'd become a down.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
The river protect shootout him protected by water.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
So but to find Ohio was and is a big
General Motors town. Uh, that's where my dad worked. He
worked for General Motors. That's where I grew up. Great
place to be raised as a kid because like I fished,
you know, we could go across the street and fish
and you know all that kind of stuff and ride
mini bikes and you know all that stuff that was
(06:25):
for the Indians. I didn't root for anybody. I was
doing magic tricks, right, I understand. And then it's sooner
or later we moved to When I was the sixth grade,
we moved to Chicago and he became an engineer for
another place fantastic.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
So sixth grade is a pivotal time to move.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Horrible time to move. Yeah, it was truly horrible.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Yeah, I was a suburb of Chicago. I shouldn't say
truly horrible. I know people there.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
It's still it doesn't You said your experience was true
truly horrible. He didn't say the place was true.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
Place is beautiful, right, what's the name of the Horrible
Springs villan known as tree Village? A lot of trees,
also known as hell for a sixth grader, he just
moved there halfway through the air, so it wasn't even
at the beginning of the year. It was halfway through.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
But Chicago is full of theater, yeah, and was that something? Yes?
Speaker 2 (07:12):
Absolutely, that was one of the best things about Western
Springs and still is. They have a community theater there
that is fantastic, and they had children's theater and that's
where I kind of found my tribe. And then Chicago itself,
like our parents would take us down to see Second
City Chicago. So I grew up watching Second City, right,
(07:33):
and then there's The Goodman and there's Steppenwolf and all that.
So yeah, and we'd go to some of that, but
mostly you know.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
That's classy, yeah, classy family. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:41):
But my dad also drove us around and you know,
literally when we first arrived, he would drive us down
to Chicago because you know, we're from Ohio and you go, like,
we're gonna go look at the bums and we literally
would drive to skid Row and look at these poor
house people and the first time is kind of fascinating.
But then when people came out to visit, right, we
would load up in the car and go look at
(08:02):
the bums. And that was like for him, a lot
of fun. I guess I entertain it was probably a
warning like this is what could happen. Right, But then
we'd also drive by the Chicago Merchandise Smart and he'd
always go, that's own that was owned by the Kennedys.
You know, Joe Kennedy was a bootlegger, right, and you
know he made his money bootlegging, and so we learned
(08:24):
a lot about bootlegging and the Kennedys.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
That sounds a little angry.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Yeah he was.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
He was okay. But so somebody, I guess it's mom
or some siblings, somebody there is encouraging you to be,
you know, interested in acting and art. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I always kind of did that, And weirdly, even in Define, Ohio,
I kind of got my start there. Weirdly, Uh, through
the we went to the first Presbyterian Church of Defiance, Ohio,
and this lady named Missus Simmons, you know, took care
of the kids and the boys, which I don't to
this day understand. The boy. Every year, not the girls,
(09:01):
just the boys put on a marionette show. So it
was sort of like Shakespeare. The boy played them, you know,
but it was more that girls doing They were I
don't know what they were doing, but they had nothing
to do with the marionettes. It was just the guys.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Well you know, if you let girls touch puppets, bad
things happen.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Bad things happened. So you know, who know, they were
out shooting guns and playing baseball, right, we were playing
with marionettes. And I'm sure it had something to do
with the Bible. I don't remember that part. I just
remember it was fun to like, you know, there was
a stage and you know, you got to do this thing,
and people came and watched. And that's sort of where
I think my love of performing started behind a marionette
(09:37):
stage and defined so high that.
Speaker 1 (09:39):
You had to play multiple characters if you were doing marionette.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
I did all right, and then and then you know,
and then shows would come into town every once in
a while at the Defiance College or Reverend We go
see those, and I remember seeing a professional magician who
that also impressed me, so I wanted to do magic
at which I ended up doing. And I also remember
at the time I was a kid, I was maybe
six seven, but I remember he turned to the audience
(10:03):
and yelled at us and said that if he if
people didn't stop interrupting him, he was stopping the show.
And I don't remember who was doing it. I just thought, like, no,
I want to see this Mary, and I want to
see the magic show.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
But isn't it kind of the magician's responsibility to keep
your attention?
Speaker 2 (10:18):
I think so, But it was It was probably a rowdy,
you know, audience full of kid I don't know what
got tricks. He's a good one.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
If he doesn't have their attention that something's wrong.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
No, he did.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
He was.
Speaker 2 (10:28):
He had like the sword box where you don't put
the lady in there and put sorts and they floated
a lady.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
So, so, how how magical were you as a teenager?
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I was magical in the sense that I got paid
by like cub scouts and old folks homes to put
on a show. And i'd literally get parties, yeah, birthday parties.
I'd get like fifteen bucks maybe, and then I would
buy a new magic trick. It was down in Chicago
at Marshall Fields, which was a big department store that
sooner or later became Macy's. But they had a magic
(10:58):
department in the store, and you could, you know, buy
little tricks, you know, so whatever, like the dice box
and the you know, the floating ball and all that stuff.
And so whatever money I made, I put back into
the act. And yeah, I had no time to learn
like a sleight of hand, I was buying my magic.
So magic bits, puppets, poker, poker was not part of it,
(11:21):
but community theater was. And our community theater did like,
you know, children shows, so you would do you know,
Winning the Willows or The Wizard of Oz or whatever,
so that, and then sometimes I got used for the
adult shows, which was kind of cool. And then every
once in a while we would do the regular high
school shows if we deemed them important enough.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Were you in the regular high school show?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Well, I was Jesus and God's Spell, okay, don't get yourself.
And then we also did we also have like put
on our own like show where we you know, wrote
it and all that and and and all the money
went to pay for the the whatever it was the
high school place where we all hung out on the
wakends called the Corral, and so it was called the
(12:02):
Corral Show. And so I directed and wrote that for
a couple of years of high school.
Speaker 1 (12:06):
So and then you'd have to like, did it also
have day by day in it or other?
Speaker 2 (12:09):
No, it was more of a comedy thing. But yeah,
I didn't star myself. I would have if I could have. No,
but that was one where you tried to get as
many people into it as possible so that you'd sell.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Want their parents and relatives to come.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
So you'd have to corral like the jocks and the
cheerleaders and all of that, plus the you know, the
good the good actors. Tried to get them all together
and put on something sounds a little likely. Maybe we're
got the idea.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Yeah, all right, some people get to the groundlings when
they think I'm going to start I'm going to start
a career maybe enacting, and they show up to the groundlings, right,
you had decades of pre theater training.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
Was I was working at actually a place called Embassy
Home Entertainment, which at the time was owned by Norman Lear. Yeah,
so it was it was part of the Norman Lyair
you knows for them. I at the beginning, I wrote
stuff on the back of vhs xboxes, So whatever the
movie was about, I would write what it was all right.
And I remember showing the boss say, you know, did
(13:10):
you think this is good? And she goes, it doesn't matter.
Nobody reads that, Like, oh no, all this college and
I'm doing this and clearly this nobody cares.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Somebody reads it, Yeah, well most people don't.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
I tried to make it sound good.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Yeah. So anyway, I was doing that and a friend
of mine said, you know, you kind of want to
be a writer. Take classes at the Groundlings because improvisation
is you know, will help you with your right right,
And so that's why I went there. And it was true,
like improv is great for writing because it's writing, you know,
on the spot.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
The greatest lesson I ever got from from improv was
it's okay to fail. Yeah, just go just do it
and see what happened.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Plus, it's a team sport. And so in a writer's
room there's you know, it's a room full of writers,
and so you can't just hold onto your idea. You
someone's pitching something and you can you know add on
to it. It's great for all of that.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Okay, well this leads me to perfectly into my question.
Every show, yes I do I invite someone on to
help me with my problem. Okay, okay, my problem. You
seem excited about it.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
You have so many problems.
Speaker 1 (14:16):
I'm going to define this one. We don't have time
for all of them. I know specific one specific issue,
which is you're living my dream career in many ways,
and that's very.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Weird because you were living my dream career and still
are so.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
But but you're perceived and I think us you are
as a team player, as somebody who's on board to
do what it is to do, and people probably people
who you don't even have, people who've never worked with
you before. I say, we got to get this guy.
He's got a great reputation. He's going to come. He's
(14:54):
going to come act in our ensemble and be fantastic.
He's gonna write in our writing room and be fantas as.
He's going to give you what you want and maybe
even a little bit more. And you don't know, and
we can always cut that part out and you don't
know what it's going to be. But you know, along
the way, he'll be delightful. He's not going to be angry,
he's not gonna be furious. He's going to be a
(15:15):
team player who's going to try and make it better
and work with you. Okay, that's what that's what. That's
the reputation I have for you. That's that's what I've
heard for you. That's the reputation.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
You've never hired me on any of your projects. Well,
I'm jealous. Interesting, I'm jealous. So yeah, so like, fuck him?
Is that what you're doing a lot.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Of the time, you're not available the way? All right,
I've hired many other dwellings. But he's already he's working
on this. As what I get, he's working. He's busy
on Glee. He's busy and crazy extra, he's busy. If
you weren't working so much.
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Maybe I'm not working right now.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Me neither.
Speaker 2 (15:49):
Okay, Well that's why we're.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
Here, right exactly. Don't be alone with the thing about
(16:12):
it is, you must be you know. Obviously, part of
what we do is be creative, funny, we give that.
But another part of it is to be a team
player and be perceived as a team player and be
on board for the fun of it. For the Yeah,
and I think like Christopher Guest has his ensemble players.
(16:35):
Of course, I don't know, you get he was He
made a bunch of movies, but he also made a
bunch of commercials and stuff like that. I don't know
if you were a part on board.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
For I've done a couple of his commercials. But I
got on. I got hired by him because of the groundlings.
I was doing a Thursday night improv show. I didn't
know he was in the audience. I think my agent
had told him about me or something, but he secretly
came to see the show and they were doing Waiting
for Government, and uh, he came to see it. I
(17:04):
found out later he'd been there. And the way he
works is he doesn't really audition actors. You go meet
him and he's notoriously quiet. Yeah, so you you I
went to meet him, Well, he's he's he's His humor
is very very dry, and so you don't know quite
how to make of him when you first meet him.
And I think what helped me on that particular project
(17:27):
was because of my community theater background and this the
Waiting for Governments about community theater I started talking about
the many types of people that were I knew back
in the day, and I think that helped me secure
a spot in that film. So that's how that happened.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
And he says, you know that a lot of it
is just go, here's the situation, here's the situation.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Go go right. That's that happens like because you know,
in those movies, because they're they're you know, faux documentaries.
He doesn't like the term documentary. Right, there's interviews in them.
And I remember, for waiting for Guman, I thought, oh,
my character is about to be interviewed. He's going to
be behind the camera, he's going to ask me questions.
None of that happened. It was sort of like, okay,
and just start talking about the play. And I thought like,
(18:12):
oh no. And then I remembered an exercise that Syna
Sagetti talk called rumination, where you take a subject and
you ruminate on it and you just keep going. The
whole thing is just keep going and go through the wall.
And I thought, okay, well this is rumination. I've done
it in the class, we can do it here. And
that's what happened.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
That's fantastic. Yeah, Gufman was a magical movie to watch
coming from an impron background, but I think just to
watch it, it has the very similitude of community theater,
but it's definitely a comedy. It's people putting on interesting characters.
It's almost groundlings, ask but a little bit. It's like
(18:51):
three steps less broad necessarily than the groundings, but still
that same vibe.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Well, the big thing he tells you right from the
get go is never go for jokes, like the comedy
is going to come from your character, and then you
know it's a real thing unless you're like a Fred
Willard type where that is part of your personality. God
blessed Fred Willard. Yeah, you know in heaven and I
can't wait to see him again. If you're lucky enough
to see him again. He's He's Chris is that way.
(19:21):
So you go in knowing that you better you know
you're delivering the character itself and ahead of time. On
that one, I was originally cast as someone auditioning for
the play. I wasn't a cast as my character, Bob
Odenkirk was. And then at some point Bob couldn't do
the schedule, and so they switched us, and so I
(19:43):
was switched into being a town councilman. And he goes like, well,
what do you want to do for that? And I said, well,
I want to talk about how I really wanted to
be in the play because I did, and that I'm
secretly in love with you, and so any kind of
kind of grant it, okay, we can try that. And
so then and then then I think the writer brain
in me went is like, if I talk a lot
(20:04):
about the other characters, I have a better chance of
staying in this movie, right, And so I'm a little
bit of a gossip, which helped, I think, you know,
further their plot, right, and help keep being.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
In the movie. How much of the plot, as much
as there is a plot, was known other than they're
going to try and put on a play and wait
for the producer to come who never comes.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
Well, he does an outline. We have an outline ahead
of time. It's roughly, I don't know, thirty pages or so.
That's mostly breakdown of what the characters and then maybe
just a sentence or two of what the scenes are about.
Never any suggested dialogue, unless it's like the play itself
was written. So that part was written and the songs
(20:49):
are written obviously, so so yeah, you kind of know
what the bing bing bing is. But like I said,
the interviews talk about whatever you want. Or when you're
in the scene, like we know that he's going to
ask us for money of extra money for the play,
but that and we're gonna turn him down. That's all
there is. And then you do the scene. And even
like when you're blocking with the cameras, if there's movement involved,
(21:12):
you never ever do dialogue during those things. It's just like, yeah,
they might move here, they might move there, and be
ready for that. And then when the camera's old, that's
the first time anyone actually talks.
Speaker 1 (21:22):
Right. Was it analogous to during a growling scene or
was it completely different?
Speaker 2 (21:28):
It is, all right, and because there's you know, there's
several people in the scene, so you have to give
and take do all that stuff. I can remember a
couple of times in my little judgment and be like, oh,
they just said something really weird, but you have to
go with it and you know, and so that's how
it goes. And he also does extremely long takes and
then you know, maybe the second time around he goes, Okay,
(21:48):
we don't really need that again, but let's I really
like this part of it, so maybe let's try it again,
so we you're obligated to remember what you said exactly,
not exactly, but he might go like, I like this part,
maybe try it again that way. And and then so
you kind of do that, you know, you do wide shots,
and then you kind of come in for the here's
the thing.
Speaker 1 (22:05):
Now, you obviously did that one movie. But then people
liked working with you, and they're working with you again
and working with you again and working with you again.
I spoke to Rachel Bloom. She's a lovely woman. She
loved working with you too. Rachel's like, come on, you know,
she's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
She's like a little puppy, just so excitable with the
brain of Einstein. I mean, she is so smart. And
when we were doing Crazy Ex Girlfriend, you know, she's
obviously those songs are hilarious, but she knew it was
about so much more than just what you think it's
going to be about. It really delves into metal health and.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
Every song usually had a point to it that was
both sociological and moved the story forward.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yes, between an impossible task impossible and then between her
and the lean Brush mckennaugh, who wrote The Devil Where's
produ of. They were an amazing team together and put
on the show that you know, the fans loved it, yeah,
you know. And it was on the CW, which at
that time was like superheroes and models, right, And I
think they weren't quite didn't quite understand it at the beginning,
(23:15):
but then embraced.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
I didn't understand at the beginning, I didn't know what
it was. I saw posters as crazy as girlfriend. Oh,
this is probably on the CW. This is probably not
a show for me. Yeah, And then and then it was.
It absolutely was. It was a must see show. It
was great.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
And the way she said that they pitched it, which
I still think is brilliant. When they went in to
pitch the show, they said, the first season is about Denial,
which is like, I'm just moving to this town to
get this job. It has nothing to do with a
boy I met in some you know, back in summer
camp that I'm still secretly in love with. That has
nothing to do with that. And then so that was
the first season of Denial. The second season was Acceptance,
which was I am in love with the guy, that
(23:50):
is why I'm here. I'm going to get him. Third
season was Revenge, which was you know, screw him, it's
not working out. He's going to get his And the
fourth season was Healing, and we for the most part,
stuck with that plan for the four seasons. That's a
brilliant way to pitch, Yeah, and that's what it was.
And they went in going we see this as a
(24:10):
four season show, and that's what it became. And then
she won the gold a little bit of mistake.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
Don't pitch the final season. You never pitched the final season,
but they pitched.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Well, I'm not telling her anyone how to pitch, but
I just thought, like to do it like with themes,
where you don't have to get too far into the weeds.
So that's really smart.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Yeah, when you're a writer, like on a show crazy
Ex Girlfriend, and you're also occasionally a performer on that show,
is it hard to cross the line go back and forth.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
No, if it's the same show, it's easy, because you know,
you go literally, you know, if several yards away, you
do your thing and then when you're done, you go back.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
To the room.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
If it's a different show, then it's a problem.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
And that's why that's why you weren't available to do
my show.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
Well, sometimes, like you have to, you have to pick
your battles right, and you can usually only do a
part that lasts a day or two. Because again, if
you have a job, they don't exactly like it that
you're not at the job.
Speaker 1 (25:05):
No, I don't, but I mean it's like, if you're
hiring you, you might know. This comes with the territory
every now and then he's going to have to take
it down.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
That's true, but you can't only you can only play
those cards every once in a while. Like I would be like, hey,
if a Christopher guess thing comes up, I'm going to
do it and we have to talk about that now.
But if it's anything else, they're like, no, you can't.
And I don't blame them. You know, if you're hired
to write, you should be there to write. There's only
so many people, and then you're putting all the work
(25:33):
on other people. Yeah, so it depends, you know. I
had one job, actually it was a job on this
show called Gross Point. It only lasted a year. It
was this nine O two one oh takeoff. It was
on the WB. It was very funny. Darren Starr created
it and it was basically behind the scenes of a
nine O two one oh show and it got incredible
acclaim and then the wb fans didn't know what to.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Make of it, said, last one, they're making fun of
the thing that we like.
Speaker 2 (26:02):
Yeah, and so, but it last one season was very funny.
But I recurred on that. But I was working on
med TV at the time and they did not like
it that I was leaving to go do the show.
And they basically said I could do it as long
as I'm at the writer's room by ten am, and
I'd have to go to the show, go to to
(26:24):
the gross Point show and say if you can film
me and I can be back in the office, which
was across town by ten, you can have me. And
so they would film me like at six thirty in
the morning, and then at some point they just went
like it's no, this's not going to happen, and we'd
have done so. Yeah, I got written out.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Well. Jim Wise just talking about like going to the
dentist a lot. Yes, he went to the dentist a lot,
auditions or other things that he was doing.
Speaker 2 (26:50):
I remember during that one time there was a show
that they wanted me to go audition for and I went, Now,
it's one of those British shows that come to America
and that they don't work. Coupling had just come and
I'm going to skip it because it's so hard to
get out of work. It was the Office, of course,
and yeah I didn't. I never auditioned for it, and
not that I would have made it, but it's like
I turned down that audition because of.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
You might have been a good gym or pam.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
You could well, who knows what. I never know, but
that's the type of thing. You have to pick your battles,
and I picked wrongly on that. I should have gone
to the dentist that day.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
You don't know, you don't know.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
It's all right, that's how it goes.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
I did this thing. I don't think I've ever talked
about this on the show. There was the the Osbourne's
We're doing. I wanted to do a show, a show
with no script about their family and just a real
show about with no script. And they interviewed me and say,
you want to come produce this show and I'm like,
(27:48):
I don't get it, Like, what do you mean a
show without a script? What do we what would we
be filming us? And like, okay, but I mean, how
interesting are you? Like people on their daily are I mean,
Ozzy Osborne's a rock star, I get it. How interesting
are you? And they said, and Sharon was saying, we're
very interesting, uh, and you know we do and he
(28:09):
does crazy things and they would talk about like one time,
you know, Ozzy, I made a plate of brownies and
Ozzie ate the whole plate and I thought, it doesn't
sound that interesting. Couldn't have been more wrong, like, oh,
this was like the most you know, reality been great,
fantastic thing. I don't know. But then again, I also
could not understand a word that Ozzy Osbourne said. He said,
(28:31):
I would ask my question, so, Ozzie, you like this idea? Yeah?
So I thought this is not for me, not for you.
It sounded insane, and then it turns out it was good.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Well listen, I did it just like a Simpson movie,
her last one. Yeah, partly because I thought, wouldn't it
be fun to be around that and her father and
see that world?
Speaker 1 (28:51):
Right?
Speaker 2 (28:52):
And they didn't disappoint. Okay, I mean it like that
part of it was great. The movie was called Private
Valentine and it was about as good as you know,
a private Benjamin rip off can be. And my family
screens in every few months. They all good, Yeah, you're welcome, Yeah,
but yeah. I was one of those where you're like
and nothing against her. She was a lovely person, but
(29:12):
just but you kind of I kind of went just
to see that dynamic the daughter.
Speaker 1 (29:16):
Is strange that they like this, this fireworks. You wanted
to see this sort of them them either them fighting
or him dominating her, Like what was going on there?
Speaker 2 (29:24):
It was just what you'd kind of heard about that
relationship and that he'd you know, be bragging about her
daughter and was always around and a lot of that
stuff was happening, and and whatever reason, I wasn't working,
and I thought, well, why not, right do it? And
so did you do your tell all book about that?
I never did. But the funny thing about that thing
is it was shot in shreport, which fines either here
(29:46):
or there. But at some point I had to go
into do dialogue replacement. You know, a dr where you know,
whatever a plane goes but the audience might not. So
that's where if like a plane goes by and the
sound gets ruined, you go in and you redo the
W and you have to match your lips. So I
went in and then you know, it's the first line
out of my mouth. So we did it great, Okay,
now here's the second one. And then and then I
(30:08):
after a while, I went like, wait a minute, are
we doing all of them? Yes, that the sound guy
had mixed mixed up something. Every line had to be replaced.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
That can't be helpful to the movie. No, So everyone's
dialozed crazy microf.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
And we weren't outdoors. We were inside of a home,
so it was you know, technically, it should have been fine.
Speaker 1 (30:31):
So I'm sorry. I'm sorry to you and to Jessica.
Speaker 2 (30:34):
And me too, me too.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
It's not it's not great.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
But anyway, Yeah, you take those jobs everyone you do.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
What was your first professional TV writing gig? Uh?
Speaker 2 (30:44):
Where I got my This is the New Lassie. I
got my WGA card doing the New Lassie with my
friend Steve Stark, who is a very big producer in
these days. He does Handmaid's Tale and Wednesday all, you know,
tons and tons and tons of stuff Fargo, and so
we co wrote the New Lassie for Universal because he
(31:06):
was working for Al Burton productions at the time who
did it? And it kind of ruined my whole like
lure of Lassie because the plot was basically, they go
to Mexico and they got stuck in the flash flood,
which was the universal flash flood. So we were shooting
on the black clot and to make Lassie be excited,
they had two Lassies. One kind of was the main
(31:27):
one and then the other one, I guess did the tricks.
I don't know exactly which one did what, but the
one that day. To get Lassie to kind of do that,
they just had this little like chihuahua that was its friend,
and it would go like Snapper's here, Snappers here, And
that's how they got Lastie to do the thing because
his little friend, well Snapper was on the set right.
Speaker 1 (31:49):
Well, I want to tell you something, Michael. It's a dog. Yeah.
It's not an act. It's not it's a dog.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
But yeah, it was like, yes, I see how the
sausages were made. You're just like, all right, I guess, yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:00):
How many episodes of Lassie did you write?
Speaker 2 (32:02):
I didn't one that got me in that got me
in the w G A fantastic Yeah, all right, Well
that's just sad.
Speaker 1 (32:07):
And then how did you get to Mad.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
TV through the groundings?
Speaker 1 (32:11):
Did you find it easy to churn out material or
was it tough?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
Was it it was pretty easy? I mean, I think
the thing about Mad was we knew our place in
the world of late night sketch comedy. We knew we
were not SNL. We were never going to get those numbers.
It was much more I think, relaxed than you know,
and it was not a live show. It was we
had a studio audience that we would you know, do
live on tape and then hold up puppies, so they
(32:38):
puppies pretty much. And then but then we also did
you know, field pieces too. But and then you know,
you could film something in September and it would show
up in May. So it wasn't it could go all
over the place as far as that went, for sure.
But it was a lot of a lot of the
grounding writers or people were on that show. So it
(32:58):
was some friends, it was. It was a fairly easy
show to you know, feel at home. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:05):
So yeah, my my niece when she was she could
have gotten to any show, like Uncle Jay, would you
get me ticketed? All she wanted to see was mad TV. Yeah,
because it was right in her wheelhouse exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
I think the downfall I mean not the downfall, but
the frustration with that show would be they would the
audience would be young, like high school kids. They would
come in.
Speaker 1 (33:28):
That's how old she was when she wanted to see. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
And so then if you if the word like weed
was mentioned in a sketch that had nothing really to
do with weed, they would just go wow. And you'd
be like, oh, no, that's You're not supposed to laugh
at the word.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
That's not what it's. When you get to know your audience,
maybe exactly you plant the word weed in when you
want some action.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
But yeah, and so you'd have to like sometimes like
re re laugh at sometimes because they laughed at the
wrong place. But but great talent, I mean like everybody
from Key and Peel to you know, like Baron Holdtson,
I mean, just the list goes on.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Don't be alone with What was Glee like? And what's Ryan?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
I loved? I actually I was a huge fan of
Glee when it came on. I remember seeing the pilot
and going, what is this? Why am I not any
part of this?
Speaker 1 (34:34):
This?
Speaker 2 (34:34):
You know? I love this whole, you know, like especially
season one, season two where they were you know, these
misfits who every they just the world hated them, but
they just did their thing and then they would put
on a show for themselves, right with these elaborate sets.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
It was very heightened reality, very goofy y MGM, let's
put on a show in a barn except in New
Times in my Ohio connection, like it's takes place in Lime, Ohio,
which literally we would.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
I have cousins that live there from my Defiance days.
So I was like, it's Lime, Ohio, like I you
know how my cousins are. So I loved the whole,
heightened all of it. And I I'm kind of secretly
a singer, even though I'm a horrible singer. So to
be around people that are that good at what they
do and was fantastic too.
Speaker 1 (35:23):
By the way, I fancy myself. I am very good singer.
And my son, who's a professional singer, yeah, reminds me
you're not. I'm not. Yeah, I'm not.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
I don't fancy myself professional singer.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
I do. I fancy myself. It's good and when I try,
I just get eye rolls. Yeah, So I guess I
guess I'm not good.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
So you could go over there during the day, like
on a break and watch them do these crazy numbers
and like and do them well, and you know, and
then they're having to do it twenty five, twenty six
times for all the takes and and you know, it
was just fascinating how all that went. I loved Ryan
Murphy to get to Ryan Ryan is he has a
sense of humor that takes a while to understand. But
(36:01):
what you understand it?
Speaker 1 (36:02):
I really really like, is it weird? Is it like?
What is it's?
Speaker 2 (36:05):
It's it's biting but not cruel. Okay, I guess there's
a way to do it and and very funny guy.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Right, all right, So now this is time for listener mail.
Now it's time for listener man. Thank you Sidney for
the question, uh listener Maile question your j guest. What
was the most challenging moments of your career and how
did you overcome it? And part two, what was the
(36:34):
biggest failure and how did you get past that?
Speaker 2 (36:37):
Wow to your first.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
All right, So, the most challenging moments in my career
and how did I overcome it? I kind of think
the biggest challenge was at the beginning to me, like
how do you break in? How do you find your
way through? And knowing that it's a giant wall and
it's very hard to get over, and you just have
to have the tenacity to say, I'm just going to
keep doing it and doing it and do it until
(37:00):
I get over the wall. So that was the commitment
that I had learned doing stand up comedy and doing
some acting and doing the groundlings sort of braced me
for whatever the journey was. However long it would take
to do the thing to get to writing or get
to acting or break in somehow, is what I thought.
That was my challenge. Yeah, and I thought, and I
(37:22):
think I got through it just by head down, nose
to the grindstone, just keep going right and looking for
every opportunity. And I got lucky. Luck is a great
part of it because I got I got some brakes. Yeah. Yeah,
so that that was the big thing.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
Yeah, the grind at the beginning is extremely hard. The
good thing is most of us when we're doing it
are younger, and you're everyone's sort of kind of in
the same boat. But yes, that grind at the beginning
is it's it's hard. Yeah, and it's sort of like
why what am I doing wrong? Or da da da da,
why don't they like me? Or I said the wrong
(37:58):
answer when I'm interviewing for the agent, or you know,
all of that kind of thing. Yes, that's absolutely it
probably my lowest when I had a and this is
I mean, I hardly ever talked about this, but I
wrote a movie that was an independent film. It was
like non WGA, So maybe that was my first thing
I wrote was She Going? But it wasn't TV. It
was a movie and it was called Where the Day
(38:18):
Takes You and had a great cast everybody from Dermo
Maroney and Laura flam Boyle and Kyle MacLachlan and Will
Smith's first movie. It was about street kids in LA
and it turned into an extremely frustrating, depressing experience because
I got rewritten and I found out about it by
(38:40):
reading it in Variety and by but I was still
showing the director around town and all the places, and
he never told me. And then I rewrote the rewrite
and then he allegedly took credit for that, and I
had to threaten legal stuff and it was a mess,
(39:01):
right and so, and everyone was sort of like well
you got a movie made and right, da da da
da dah, And well, you know that's good. What did
you learn from it? And the thing I learned was
I couldn't trust anybody, and that was like, oh, you
finally got somewhere. And then you know, the mechanics of
it and the egos really really threw me for a loop.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Well, I mean it's a hard lesson to learn early,
because I don't know, as you've had a very long
and storied career, you probably haven't run into that many
people that you can't trust.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
No, Yeah, And that was one of the first. And
it was also that thing of like it almost got
me out of the business because it was so like
what is this what it's like? You know, and it
was about street kids getting The whole thing was about
like street kids, you know, like right, horrible their life is.
And then all this all this mechanics of people taking
credit and this and that and you you didn't do
(39:54):
this and he did this, and it was it was.
Speaker 1 (39:57):
Not a world of you know, a show business that's
under the radar and people are making it for nothing
and maybe a little bit more dicey, yes, than guilds
and laws and studios and contracts and all the not
that we can't get screwed over by big studios. People
do all the time, but it just feels like there
(40:18):
are more rules set in place for.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
That very reason. Yeah, I know with that whole thing,
like once you're in the guild and you go like, okay, well,
at least there's arbitration and ways to settle things like that.
And I know sometimes that doesn't work out either, but
at least it's your peers deciding for you, as opposed
to a producer saying no, just leave them off the
credit or whatever it was they were doing to allegedly
(40:42):
punish me for, you know, saying, hey, I wrote something
that someone else is allegedly taking.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Care exactly it's my If I'm not going to get
paid money for it, I should get the credit.
Speaker 2 (40:53):
So it's yeah, it did not turn into a great
experience at the time over you know, but the good
things come from everything, you know, and I made friends
from that and what have you. So that was that
was crappy. And then you know, I've been fired a
couple of times off of sitcom and when you're a
guest star, and that's always humiliating, But every comic I know,
every every comedy guy, I know woman, We've all. It's
(41:15):
it's it's a badge of honor. We've all. It's happened
to everyone, and you just it's just the way it is.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
What explains it? It's just bad chemistry, the right the
wrong reading, bad week. What do you think it can be?
Speaker 2 (41:26):
All sorts of things. I think the first time I
did it, I was probably green and was just you know, nervous.
I think that was probably part of it. But it's
also when it was it was multicams, and on multicams,
you know, Day one is you're reading for the you know,
the writers, and it's the table reading. The day two
maybe the studio comes in. Day three is the network
(41:47):
and then you're blocking and and there's no time and
so like if you're not exactly where you're supposed to
be on that day, you're gone. And that's just how
it is. There's no time to fix it.
Speaker 1 (41:57):
What's going on in life for you? Okay, so now
you're here, what's going on in life? We are men
of a certain age, Yeah, what what does the future
look like?
Speaker 2 (42:06):
What's going besides you going twice and I'm.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
Still doing magic? I did, like, what what do you anymore?
Speaker 2 (42:13):
I've luckily this year, I've worked a lot, so that's good.
I've been doing the lowdown. And luckily I'm on another show,
Nobody Wants This, which is on Netflix.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
Mentioned that earlier this morning.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Yeah, and it's season two and so luckily that's kept
a lot of my time right going.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
And that's that.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
That's premiering, UH October twenty third, and it's going to
be fun, very fun fun. Okay, things coming, Okay, America's
way on that show. Okay, I'm looking forward to, Uh,
America's Sweetheart. Well, will Jews and non Jews ever get along?
Speaker 1 (42:43):
I just don't know going to find out. I don't
know how to find out.
Speaker 2 (42:46):
But Adam Brody, Christ and bell Man, they are so funny.
I love them, and everybody that Chris Justin Lucas hilarious.
Everybody on that show is so much fun.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Is that Bruce Kaplan still wearing this? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (42:58):
Okay, he's great, great, Oh my god, he's the nicest
guy ever.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Also a very funny cartoonist.
Speaker 2 (43:04):
I wish he was like my uncle.
Speaker 1 (43:06):
You could probably ask him.
Speaker 2 (43:07):
Yeah, he's so nice. Yeah, he's the nicest guy.
Speaker 1 (43:11):
Really, nice and really funny.
Speaker 2 (43:12):
Yeah, and I play on that show. I play Christen
Bell's dad, and he's loosely based on Aaron Foster has.
Her father is David Foster, a very famous music producer
who's also very famously a ladies man, been married several times.
And part of the show is based on my characters
(43:32):
sort of based on him, and that he wasn't around
that much when she was growing up. But that's the
only part that's the same. I play a gay Padietris, right,
but you're just newly out of the closet, all right.
Speaker 1 (43:44):
Well, now it's time for the moment of joy.
Speaker 2 (43:46):
Oh, a moment of job.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
So this is where I ask my guest, and in
this case, you are the guest. Oh, okay, what it
is that brings you joy?
Speaker 2 (44:02):
I'm going to listen to things and they're both very
oddish and one is very basic. Hued you the basic
one first. The basic one is I really enjoy reading
celebrity autobiographies. It brings me joy. I just got done
with with Charlie Sheen's book, which I highly recommend.
Speaker 1 (44:25):
Did you see the documentary?
Speaker 2 (44:27):
Saw? The documentary is the book and the documentary. Yeah,
they're kind of yeah pieces, yes, their companion pieces. It's
they obviously go to more detail in the book. But yeah,
the documentary, all that footage of like the home movies
of him as a kid with like the Sheens and
all that stuff.
Speaker 1 (44:41):
I mean, Charlie Sheen, Yes, do end up liking.
Speaker 2 (44:47):
But what I also do when I do those biographies,
I will do obviously something like that or Jeanette McCurdy
who did like I you know, I'm glad my mother
is dead, and those books which are fantastic. But then
I'll do deep dives to people and read like say,
Gary Marshall, you read Gerry Marshall's book, and then you
read Penny Marshall's book, and you read like, you know,
did Sydney blame? Sorry book can't remember, but like all
(45:09):
of them together is makes up great, So you kind
of it's almost like Rashaman, right.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
No, I got it. I did. I did read Elaine
May's uh there's a bio not autobiography, but biography about
the lame May, and then one about Mike Nichols, and
then what about uh second City entirely and what about
you know and so and Alan Arkins, so like I'm
trying to get that group of actors fall in one spot.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
And then if you like, I highly recommend Ron Howard
and Clint Howard wrote a book together called The Boys,
which is basically them growing up as child actors. And
so you're also hearing all of that too, like they
get a.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Little bit like that they're both now incredibly successful. Yeah,
oh wait, no, well only Ron.
Speaker 2 (45:51):
But Clint does okay. You will see like Clint does fine, okay,
And he was massive as a kid, like a general
Ben yehs huge gels.
Speaker 1 (46:00):
The Star Trek episode where he's talks about that.
Speaker 2 (46:04):
And they talk about growing up in Burbank and that
they all got to, you know, as a treat even
though they were famous, they got to ride their bikes
down to Patty's Diner on the corner over on Riverside driving.
Speaker 1 (46:14):
So I mean, it's not like they were anonymous.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Yeah, they're all great books. And then the other thing
that brings me joy Bich is kind of sad is
I feed two crows, okay, And it's because there's two
crows that kept landing in my backyard, and so I
bought cat food and walnuts and peanuts, and I've kind
of started feeding crows, which is like my friend Jennifer said, like,
you have to stop that now because you're turning into
(46:39):
the old man who feeds crows.
Speaker 1 (46:40):
Yeah, you're a little it's a little bit weird. It's however,
but I like however, crows are famously incredibly smart.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
They're so smart that they remember your face. They remember
if you're mean or you're good, right, and they tell
their children, so it will be passed down to generations
if you're a good person or a bad person, So
you better be good to crows.
Speaker 1 (46:58):
That's amazing. Well, thank you for that. I will not
be feeding crows, but I'm not going to. If I
feed them, they're going to come back.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
But don't be mean to them.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
I won't be mean to crows. I like crows, smile,
but I will read more. Biography is of famous people. Yeah,
it's kind of fun.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Charlie Sheen, I liked it. I wish Jeanett McCurdy. But
of all for your audience, the boys, it's so good. Yeah,
like Ron Howard, Clint Howard, great book.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
All right. Well Ron Howard, I've met many o casies.
He's a very nice guy. Yeah, very nice. I've never
met him one incredibly down to earth. Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 2 (47:31):
Shockingly auditioned one time with Clinton. I thought what category
am I in?
Speaker 1 (47:37):
And did you get it?
Speaker 2 (47:38):
I did not get it?
Speaker 1 (47:39):
Okay, I don't know. Okay, maybe neither one of you
or in that category. You don't know. You know, Michael,
it was so great for you to come in here
and meet you in this kind of setting, the longest
we've sat talking with each other in decades ever, and
I appreciate it. I want to do more of it.
Someday you'll invite me do the for Joyce Grand Slam,
(48:01):
Denny's Grand Slam.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
If you show up, You're more than what I can.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Go to Hollywood, I mean Hollywood now. It's yeah, it's
all good. But thank you for being here. And I'm
very much looking forward to uh low down, low down.
It's very exciting and to whatever else.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
Is going to come next. And nobody wants this, and
nobody want season two, nobody wants us.
Speaker 1 (48:21):
I'll watch, I'll watch, I'll watch Season two. It's fun
show that. Although I have had my fill of Jews,
I gotta say it's just been the high holidays. I've
seen a lot of my my brethren, a lot all right,
and so it's okay. But I mean, I'll get you'll
get around to.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
You could just skip to the Christian party.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
So I'm like our family half of it. That's fine,
that's fine, and but thanks for being here, and thank
you for having us for being here. If you please
tune in to uh Don't Below with Jake Cogan. Whenever
you get a chance, please write into dB A w
JK at gmail dot com if you got a question.
Subscribe to the show and do yourself a favor. Sit
with somebody who you would like to talk with and
(49:00):
have a talk with him. This has been one of them.
This makes my day. You can make your day by
doing the same thing, and we'll see you next time.
Don't be Alone with j J. Cogain
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.