Going Deep with Chad and JT - Ep 124 - Zoom Podcast w/ Tony Yacenda

Episode Date: April 8, 2020

What up Stokers! We are joined by Tony Yacenda, co-creator of American Vandal and director of Dave, we talk directing, self isolation, and other dank topics. Sponsored by Manscaped: Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code GODEEP20 at Manscaped.com. If you wanna trim your pubes during a contagion.

what's up stokers and stoke nation this is chad kroger coming in with the going deep with chad jt podcast guys before we begin i want to remind you once again that we were brought to you by manscape manscape thank you so much for keeping our trims pubes for looking after our hogs guys it's quarantine time but that does not mean that you can't still manscape because you want to make sure that your package is ready to go when you enter the world again so use code go deep 20 at manscape.com to get 20 off for free shipping the code go deep 20 mans manscaped.com to get 20% off for free shipping. The code go deep 20 manscaped.com. And,

um, we have a guest on today, Tony Ascenda. Welcome. Thanks for having me. Of course. Um, director of a new show,

Dave on Hulu, co-creator of American Vandal. And then, any other credits you want to throw out there? I got a real documentary coming in May for Netflix, too. It's called Trial by Media. So I did an

episode of that. What is that about? So that's about a bunch of different court trials. That's a little redundant. A bunch of famous trials that were sort of playing to the cameras and the people are exploiting real people's lives for the the uh theater of it all so like oj is uh was kind of the start of that and my episode is about this murder that happened after a an episode of the Jenny Jones show. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that was a period where you had Maury and Jerry Springer

and all of these sort of ambush shows where people would come on and they'd see their wife and their wife would be like, I've been fucking this guy for the past five years. And you'd get the audience to all laugh and enjoy watching people like ruin their lives and our show uh is about one episode of the jenny jones show a guy comes out to meet his secret admirer turns out the secret admirer is a guy and uh in the 90s i guess that's a big thing but they just sort of laugh it off and then three days later he kills his secret admirer and uh our documentary is about that murder trial and then the the subsequent civil trial where uh warner brothers is sued by the victim's family and uh it yeah so

trial by media the series is talking about how then they made the court tv like gavel to gavel coverage its own sort of perverted uh television entertainment so did you pick that case or did they float that to you yeah i i was interested in getting into like more uh comedy documentary stuff uh and i was having a meeting with the guys who do chef's table. And there's something like darkly comedic about these crazy ambush TV shows. And they floated it by me. I thought it was really interesting and kind of like an indictment on the media in a way that, uh,

American Vandal, which is like a four hour dick joke is still like an indictment about the true crime. And, uh, right. So that's subsect of the media. Nice.

And go ahead. No, go ahead, Chad. And, uh, American Vandal, that, that was, uh uh inspired by how to make a murderer right making a bunch of them yeah yeah i love thin blue line in film school i also love the podcast serial yeah right did you guys listen to that i did yeah i didn't watch the hbo follow-up though like

but i did listen to the pod i don't know if it's a essential viewing but i was like i listened to cereal maybe like five times as we were making american vandal because they just got you to to care so much about this mystery and yeah like yeah figure this out even the cops and the judges and juries weren't but like sarah we'll figure this out together yeah yeah i'm a big errol morris fan too speaking of thin blue line i was uh like when i first saw fast cheap and out of control it blew my mind that he could thread all those things together into like a kind of cohesive story. Yeah. He's,

he's the goat. Wormwood is another one recently that like, I don't know. It starts maybe as a slow burn and some of the, the tricks he do, he does spell a little over the top and maybe a little self-indulgent. And then he's tying everything together and it all comes yeah and he's just a master storyteller yeah he's insane he seems like a weird guy too

like a genuinely odd human being uh how'd you get your start uh i went to film school at in emerson college which is in boston and came out here and uh just started making uh shorts for the the web like little comedy shorts uh and then they would go to like the front page of reddit and uh they'd get millions of hits on youtube back when people like cared about that sort of thing so then i started working for college humor and uh pitched on a little dicky video and then started working with him and then started doing commercials and stuff like that so just kind of leveling up in the in the digital comedy space for a while how How'd you meet Lil Dicky? Did he know him beforehand or just through work? No, he had that first phase where he put out some videos with just like his

bar mitzvah money. Then he did a Kickstarter and got like $100,000 on the Kickstarter and was using that to create his next like phase of music videos So he reached out to a bunch of people who were working at different companies I was at College humor at the time and I really loved the song So I kind of threw my hat in the ring and my pitch to him was that like this song Let me freak. Have you have you guys heard that song? It's a it's a funny it's a funny journey 2015 or something i thought the song was so hilarious and i was just uh my pitch was you

don't want a music video director trying to uh elevate the comedy trying to be funny you want a comedy director who knows that the story you're telling is doing the heavy lifting comedically and just grounding the world around it and grounding the performances and making it feel like a like a movie rather than a music video and that pitch worked and then we've done like six music videos since then and then we've started working on the show yeah just what i just watched your episodes of the show I just literally finished the mental health issues really powerful actor who played a date is incredible yeah I've been watching all day to gator is I've known gator for like five years because

he's like he's been Dave's hype man and all of that stuff is is oh really oh that's real yeah it's it's uh it's pretty amazing that he was able to tap in that place and be so vulnerable and open about it but yeah it felt very genuine yeah it was a great episode but he was uh taiga's hype man. He performed on Madison Square Garden and stuff and then was battling his own demons and then met Dave and has been slowly chipping away at it. And this is like, it's so great to see him just hit it out of the park on such a national stage.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. And dude, little Dickie's so vulnerable on the show with like i'm a big fan of ability that the stuff about his penis is like uh it's incredible because it could feel it could feel cheap but it didn't feel cheap at all it feels very like earnest and and uh and close to all it kind of elevates it but it's uh yeah yeah tapping into his like deepest insecurities like those conversations are conversations he had with his parents when he was 13 years old you know

and stuff that he was like he didn't want anybody to know now he's putting out on hulu and fx for millions of people to see. Yeah. It made me laugh thinking like him, him pitching it. Like it's going to be about my P and then the people he's pitching it to probably in their heads. Like, wait, is this real?

Like, is, is this real? And then he's like, it's real. And then they're like, all right, we're in.

Yeah. Yeah. I don't have that amount of security. Could you imagine talking about all your deepest stuff like that i don't know do you guys do that i tried to like i got herpes i try to talk about that but some stuff i don't talk about yeah jt more so than i'm i'm working on i'm trying to break through my walls but i'll get there i don't have herpes. Dude, get them, dude. Get them, bro.

I'm trying to get herpes so I can be vulnerable about it. I like that. You're owning it. Yeah. We did a series of Trojan ads with Dave, too, because he's obsessed with uh with stds and he's super neurotic about all of that stuff and there was a time where he's like you know what if i'm ever like big enough to influence change one of my platforms should be destigmatizing herpes oh really nice like it's

just like it and i it makes perfect sense right you're so scared of getting it and the reason you're scared of getting herpes is is simply because you have to tell people you have herpes it's not the bumps you have every once in a while and he's like if we can all just like destigmatize it then we defeat it yeah trying to do my small part yeah i it really isn't that bad. I mean, it's easy for me to say because I have them. But I mean, obviously, you should wear protection and try not to get them. But yeah, I think probably the stigma is worse than the actual disease of it. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, I'd much rather have herpes than COVID-19 or coronavirus. Yeah. I'd much rather have herpes than COVID-19 or coronavirus. That's the one I'm trying to dodge. How are you doing in your quarantine? How's it been going? It's so weird. I'm trying to stay productive, like writing from home and stuff, but it's weird. I'm in a one bedroom with my girlfriend and a puppy. So it's nice to have company but you also when you just walk

from the bedroom a couple feet to your desk it's tough to sit down and be productive. Making excuses for myself. I don't know. No, not at all. What's been going on in my quarantine? I think that's everybody's dude. I'm losing my mind every day. I'm like, at first, I was like, I'm going to come out of this so strong. And now I'm just like, I just got to survive this thing. And just come out the other end of it with my self intact. Yeah, man.

What else are you guys doing? I need advice. I've somehow got in my mind that I wake up every morning just like i'm so busy at like for some reason i feel like i'm just more busy than ever because like i don't know there's something about the quarantine where i'm like oh this is a time where i can get everything that i wanted to get done done i just have the time to do um so like i've just been i've been writing i've been watching movies i haven't uh seen but uh just trying to keep up content and stuff as much as i can you know dude it doesn't help me at all that's what i'm trying to do that's the goal right

everybody's like you should be using this time to really to be as you've ever been and you're just like yeah i'm doing it no no i'm i mean that's in my mind but i'm not actually like doing it i'd say i've been playing more halo and teabagging dude um okay then uh actually doing that shit but it's in my mind uh but yeah i don't i don't know how to break through that i mean um getting out you know exercise has helped a lot i guess yeah yeah but now i'm scared to go outside now like i like ran past like a family yesterday and i was like they were old i was like they might be contaminating the air i might be breathing in this like toxic old covet air i'm just gonna skip rope in my mom's now i think that i'm gonna i'm gonna limit it to that and you're yeah so you're with your mom too so you don't if you bring it back you're bringing it to your parents as well so the state dude she got sick last week with sinitis

but my friend who's a doctor told me it starts as a cold and then it progresses. I just saw your puppy in the background. And then, uh, cute. And then, uh, and then I, I, for like a week, I was like, Oh my God, I gave my mom COVID-19 and she has, she has a diabetes and stuff. So I was like, I killed my mom. Uh, and I'm a pretty dramatic person and my old roommate had no sense of taste or smell. So I was like, I was like, I killed my mom and I'm a pretty dramatic person. And my old roommate had no sense of taste or smell. So I was like, I was like, oh, I passed today symptomatically. But thankfully she's fine. And I got tested and I'm negative.

But then feeling guilt, I started bringing lunch to the hospitals, to the emergency rooms. I just drop it off outside. But I did that a couple of times after I got tested. So now I'm worried I have it again. That's awesome that you're doing that. Well, I only did that to make up for the karma of going to be with my mom and maybe giving it to her. I heard that my grandmother is having her groceries delivered. We buy the groceries and there's somebody in,

in North Jersey who drives them to her. They leave it on the porch. She like desanitizes it and brings it in. And it's like a no contract drop off. And it's totally free. Cause all of these people are like volunteering to do that for the, for the elderly, which is like,

which is so incredible. So I heard that and I was like, I gotta, I gotta look at it. I heard that and I was like, I gotta, I gotta look at, I want to do that. I want to help, but I haven't even, I haven't Googled it. I haven't even started and you're, you're doing it. I have one passing thought and that was five days ago and I've done nothing. Well, I did, I did it a couple of times. I feel like I've balanced my karma and I think I might be retired, but who knows? I might get a hair up my ass and then want to do it again. But right now, I'm just trying to stay in and stay put and stay sane. Those are my stays.

Do you think comedy is going to be... How do you picture comedy being after all this is done? I guess there's a lot of uncertainty in that because like we don't know what how all this is going to play out but have you thought about that at all like what if comedy is going to be different like tonally or something yeah i don't know it's a little scary people uh really funny people around the world are posting terribly unfunny stuff on on social media yeah so that's a little scary like oh my god this guy's one of the best stand-ups i know and he's he thinks this video is funny right um but uh yeah i i hope i i hope there's more people like Chad who are using this time to just be like, to just work on scripts and generating material.

And it always helps me to like watch my favorite stuff. I'm doing a Coen Brothers marathon right now. Oh, nice. Oh, nice. What's your favorite coen brothers we uh we just watched barton fink last night i haven't seen that since film school but fargo is a perfect movie did you watch a miller's cross that's tonight miller's crossing is Oh, that's a fire one. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah.

So hopefully like that stuff helps and offsets how stir crazy everybody is in the apartment. I feel like there's going to be more of a demand for comedy, at least after all this is over. Just because I think people are going to play you know uh levity so oh yeah and uh uh so i think yeah that could be a good thing that comes out of it i guess um i just wonder if there's going to be, if the comedies are going to be about coronavirus or if we're just going to like go back to like, like a sitcom that's about regular people doing regular stuff with like no mention of it.

Yeah. Yeah. Isn't it weird when you're writing stuff, you're like, okay, if this is taking place and when we're out of it, it feels weird not to mention it at all. Yeah. Right. Yeah. when we're out of it it feels weird not to mention it at all yeah right yeah yeah it's it's got at least being like the the prologue like and then after this is right after this happened you just show like a montage of coronavirus in three minutes or something yeah it'll be interesting though because i feel like our lives are going to change so much just the way we live so seeing how that's reflected in comedy because it's the only thing that ever happened in our lifetimes it's like this but i bet if you really looked at movies in like the 1940s

and you're like how much mention of world war ii is it could you just have like a comedy with roommates in the 1940s yeah do you have to mention like yeah we're in a world war right now i don't know i feel like you gotta mention it but you probably don't yeah people probably prefer if you don't i mean i remember post 9-11 there wasn't, there was a lot of 9-11 movies, but it wasn't like the norm. Like it was most, most movies didn't deal with it. There was some really good ones. 25th Hour was really good. But I don't know if I want every movie to be 25th Hour. is like it affected us all mentally and emotionally 9-11 but it really didn't affect our daily life yeah like I got out of school early ones but this is like 20% of the nation is out of their jobs and yeah everybody has to stay in their own house. It's closer to a world war in terms of how it affects your... Yeah. Yeah.

Right. Your partner, Dan, how'd you guys get connected? We've been making shorts since, uh, since film school. Um, he was a super talented actor writer and I was more the acting major on the film school major. And we would try to just make people laugh. So we had our, our group and we did, uh, a bunch of comedy shorts when we first moved to LA and with another guy, Sean Kerrigan, we formed a kind of a trio. Our first video we did, it was a parody of that LeBron James commercial

where he's like, what should I do? And we did it with Brett Favre. And that got us like enough to get a thousand dollars here, a thousand dollars there to do a bunch of other videos. So Dan and I have been together doing stuff for college humor. We did a series of 30 for 30 parodies that kind of led to American Vandal, like 30 for 30 Space Jam, 30 for 30 Rocky IV. So I guess I'm just like trying to get my YouTube views up by plugging everything I've ever done on this podcast. Who are your biggest inspirations in comedy here growing up?

in comedy here growing up um i my favorite show of all time my favorite comedy of all time is the sopranos uh yeah oh yeah it's so relentlessly funny but like that's not why you're watching it the engine you're watching it because it's like a a cerebral family prime drama. So they can go 10 minutes without a joke. And that's why when they hit you with a joke, it just like lands so authentically because you're not like, oh, here's my favorite funny character. And he's going to come in with the punchline. Yeah. So that's the stuff I like that excites me the most.

So that's the stuff I like that excites me the most. It might sound funny coming from the guy who's like only doing dick jokes, but in success, like when you watch American Vandal, you're actually watching it for the mystery as opposed to like, okay, make me laugh, funny man. And once you're like, once the engine is something that's not comedy then uh you can really surprise surprise audiences can you tell us yeah yeah i've noticed that like an american vandal didn't you guys um isn't the the cinematographer the the um so as a director of photography or whatever he was like actually a documentarian yeah i'm making a movie amanda knox all of our editors were all documentary

editors or at least hybrid documentary narrative um and yeah we just did everything we could like when uh we had look books for our art department i'm like i don't want to see any uh images from narratives i just want to see documentary um and yeah writer's room same thing just like let's let's limit our references just to documentaries as opposed to pulling from mockumentaries. Yeah. If you can get the audience just playing the same game of guess who that they do when we're watching a real documentary, then we can really hide the fact that it's really a show about a high school and these characters right yeah because it it felt very like grounded and real and it's just like you just have that one little absurdity with the dicks and that's sort of all you need uh to make it hilarious yeah we thought that was that's what we needed to do the heavy lifting.

And it's super uneven with how often the jokes come. It's not a joke in every page. It's where they need to be. So I don't know. I might sound pretentious. Comparing that approach to The Sanos or like succession i think is so so funny um but that's kind of what we're that's what we're trying to do those are our loftier ambitions is getting the audience to like be really checked in for the the plot and

and the mystery do you have a take on who did draw the dicks on the plot and the mystery. Do you have a take on who did draw the dicks on the cars at the end of season one? Yeah. Yeah, I think we wanted to keep it... We didn't think it was as ambiguous as the rest of the world did. I think we kind of set out who we thought did it and then like but we can't say for sure because like you can't operate on incomplete evidence and if you did you'd be no worse than the school board so i think that was our way of like here's they can't say it yeah but you know everybody has their own take. And that's fun for us, too, because really it's just we wanted to do it.

A story about about Dylan, you know, like this one, the one kid at the center of the whole thing. If it's that a lot of these true crime documentaries are about kind of dumb people that the justice system railroads. And Making a Murderer is about Stephen Avery, this like kind of Midwestern blue collar guy. And like, what's the funny high school version? It's SoCal Stoner. So that was kind of the... I feel that.

Did you write it with Tetro in mind? No. He was so perfectly cast in that role. You know, a reference we used was... Have you seen those Kyle Mooney? Yeah. That SoCal character he does with the poetry and stuff. That's kind of what we wrote to.

And we wanted him to be a little squirt we never thought it would be like kind of alpha jock bro um but the way we approach it it's like we have sort of archetypes and then we cast a wide net in casting. And if you find somebody who feels really authentic, then you go back and you rewrite around it. And so Tetro just had an entirely different read than we were thinking. But it just felt so honest. And it was...

Yeah. We knew that had to be the guy and we had the whole cast was amazing that's the show around like when mac when mac like the the scene where mac's talking to uh doing one of the interview sections and she gets called out and then she goes from like disbelief to like almost crying at the end of it i was like oh my god and i think it's all one take and i was like this is like insane acting well my approach is because i was writing and directing i was able to like know that the tricks we had with the documentary were able to like okay let's lean into like jimmy's strengths and he ended up improvising for days and days and just gave us like a wealth of

material and brought this vulnerability and we could pick all of the best stuff and then I remember in the writer's room writing that Mackenzie monologue where she like breaks down and cries and just thinking like well there's no way we're gonna find an actor who's able to do this let's put the audition sides out there and see who does the best but then we're gonna have to find another like documentary trick to get that story be accomplished without having like a one-er of just somebody talking like right off camera because that's just too challenging performance wise but uh camille ramsey came in and uh just delivered that audition and we were like all moved by her audition yeah it was moving we could just like that scene

as written because she yeah yeah it was really good dude also i can't some of the stuff like some just the details like uh the the president who probably did it, what's her name? Crystal? Crystal Carlisle. When she gets levels at the football practice, I didn't want to laugh and I was dying laughing at it. And then also when you show the kid, Trimboli, getting a handjob at school and you animate it and the red animation has a boner that's getting jacked up.

Like that little detail that the animated character had a boner, I was like, it just made my mind run. It's kind of immature, but I was like, how long did it take for them to come? Like, did the first animation have a boner? Were you guys like, no, we need to add a boner. There's a big laugh there that we need to add in. First of all, that's one of my favorite jokes too and uh we argued at length about how big and cartoonish the the boner should be i knew it only through a couple only through a couple iterations

but i i also could you imagine being like a producer on the sopranos or succession and hear me talk about those shows and then start talking about my show and then be like... The boner bit with the animated hand job and... Right. I think they have some comparable... I mean, there's like the eating the jizz in Succession

and then in The Sopranos. I mean, anything Ralphie Cifaretto's up to is probably even more juvenile than anything else out there. How good is Joey Pants? Oh, he's incredible. He's got any more stuff. Season three is my favorite because it's when he comes in. I like season two a lot, too.

I know people think that one's kind of like a mismatch because the mom died. But I think those two seasons are probably my favorite. And season three specifically because of Ralphie. that's when he comes in, right? Yep. Ralphie's season three. And then Steve Buscemi, I think is four. Yeah. He's great too. Right. Yeah. But there, there are some classic episodes in season one that I was, I was in film school when I first started watching it.

And I remember like a couple episodes in just going maybe maybe i i want to do tv and really because you always thought yeah i always thought i would do features i mean you have that that uh hubris when you're when you're 18 years old and all of your, yeah, your high school film competition. I honestly been making movies since I was like eight years old. I've been saying I wanted to be a director.

Wow. Yeah. I was that precocious kid who, uh, I, all right. I'll tell you about my first movie guys i please it was uh a ripoff of the karate kid it was called karate war and i was seven years old and uh you know how karate kid is about a guy who trains to beat up his bully. Karate War is the same thing, except for it's just him beating up a bully in every scene. It was played by my best friend, Ethan Goldblum.

And one day I wanted to like, my parents were filming this, and I wanted to kick him off of the dock at Marsh Creek Lake. And my parents were like, no, you can't kick him into the water. His parents are picking him up in an hour. Like he has all of his clothes on. Don't be insane. So I'm like, all right, well, what if I kick him and he jumps off, but on the bank, but then like ducks down. So we think he fell. And then mom, you push a rock in the, in the water. So we hear the splash and think he fell and then mom you push a rock in the in the water so we hear the

splash and think he fell into the water and like that trick it totally didn't work uh but i like knew that that's the first time i thought like oh that's interesting that that game of like trying to trick uh trick the audience was kind of fun and i I'm like, okay, what's that job? That's a job, right? And they're like, yeah, that's like a director. That's like, oh, Steven Spielberg and whatever you think when second grade. Were your parents supportive?

Yeah, yeah. They've been very supportive. Were they movie people too? Like not working in movies, but did they like movies? I guess my mom taught art in elementary school. She was an art teacher but my dad was an accountant and then ran an insurance company. So it wasn't, I was not like and it was in the suburbs of Philadelphia so it's kind of a random thing but I guess the fact that my dad always had the the video camera around when I was when I was a kid I was always just like so drawn to it I don't know kids today are like for me it was kind

of novel because because my dad had a VHS video camera, me being able to see that he's shooting something and then see the playback, you know, right away was something that was super fascinating to me. But kids today are going to be so used to that, you know, constantly shooting content. Yeah. Yeah. What, what was your first movie that you like loved as a kid? Um, maybe, uh, Robin Hood. I love. The Kevin, the Kevin Costner one.

No, the, uh, Errol Flynn animated one and the Errol Flynn one. Yeah. I've never even seen the Errol Flynn one. It's too old for, um, um, I can't, I struggle with that one. When I was like four years old, I watched that movie a lot for some reason. But I love Indiana Jones was the first one that I really got obsessed with. And I was Indiana Jones like four years for Halloween. How about you?

What was your last week? Mine was Heat. That's your first favorite movie? I think so. I think it was like my mom loved it and she let me watch it and I was like six or seven and I was like it was the first like adult movie because

even a kid you don't understand like everything but it's a pretty straightforward movie that makes sense to almost anybody and I was like this is fucking badass i could tell action had more like verisimilitude than the action movies i had been watching previous to that you know yeah like i was like these are good these are good gunfights and these guys and val kilmer's hot those are my main takeaway what a cool mom if you give your mom corona i'm gonna be pissed at you dude you and me you and me both brother i've been struggling dude lots of calls to the therapist about it yeah she's hilarious about it though she's from columbia she's like i don't give a

fuck i want you here you stay here you give me whatever i'll be fine as she like cheaps a cigarette i'm like all right yeah it's scary though man I mean do you guys see about Boris Johnson today the fucking prime minister of England is in ICU yeah intensive care yeah insane dude this thing does not care it is yeah I watched the news all morning it's horrible what are you out of your mind I couldn't help i said one of those days yeah i just couldn't stop are you been watching the news tony or even staying away yeah from from time to time i'll watch some of those donald trump pressers yeah brutal yeah what a show yeah it's unbelievable yeah the timeline we're living in i try not to swerve into politics too much but it's hard not

for me to think like what could have been different if things were different at the top positions but yeah i don't think you have to be hugely political to look at those press conferences and be like we're all watching this right yeah yeah where were you in the middle of like any big projects that had to be uh tom pause from this or are you kind of like in between? I was lucky enough that nothing was like about to go in production, that we have a couple of things in post and then a couple of things in earlier development. So. Are you still able to work on things in post or is it you guys? Yeah. I, for some of them,

I'd love to like get in a bay and it's way more productive than just like getting a cut and then giving notes but yeah it's not like other people who are halfway through production and have to shut it down and lose millions of dollars yeah crazy too and and the fact that like once the train leaves the station on uh on projects like that you you gotta you just gotta keep going and building the track in front of the train and now that you're stopped you have this like unique uh ability to keep looking back at the scripts and maybe you'll overthink some things maybe uh but the the ability to keep circling back and and revisiting all of the the scripts and stuff is it could be a good thing for you guys yeah i always i always reference

deadwood i guess deadwood i didn't even watch it but i heard a timothy olafman talk about it i guess they had one scene one season built around this kid and the kid's mom was a dick so milch just killed the kid in the first episode and just rewrote the whole season and everyone says it was their best season so what yeah writing it on the fly i guess something like that or like with just a couple weeks before to go the kid's mom was just a nightmare and he's like he's like you know i'm not gonna deal with this and just rewrote the whole thing and it came out great so that's always the thing i go back to i'm like i mean obviously he's doing a different thing than

what i'm doing but i'm like all right well just just just trust in the process i guess and then you're in such a gangster move yeah he's a beast. Imagine having a mom that sucks that much. Yeah, that kid must be pissed. I don't think he's gone over it. Yeah. He ended up being on that show Blind Justice instead.

I'm kidding. The one where the cop's blind. Oh, yeah. Is that a real show? Yeah, that was real. he had a great model it's based on a movie i think for the movie movie with rector howard that was very similar in the late 80s he has a good model i was like i did two tours in iraq i served in the toughest drug crimes unit in new york city and i will make this work yeah I get it dude um what talking about uh directing

and stuff so when you like kind of graduated I guess from doing like smaller stuff to working on bigger sets like American Vandal how did you transition into like kind of that leadership role when you're dealing with like a 50 person crew rather than like a six person crew or something? Yeah, you know, it was I think it kind of helped that it was such a weird show. like I had to make it look like these documentaries for it to work. And that I was the only one like really policing that. So I just felt a little bit more comfortable with fighting those battles because there was like a real sort of rigid philosophy to it. I had another,

like another showrunner gave me like really good advice. He said that like, you know what the show is like, you know, the rules of, of what the show is and what it isn't. And if you're getting notes or you're getting pushed of something that is just like not the show,

just against the rules, you have to fight to the death. But most little decisions you're making aren't something that violate the rules of the world. Those are just like the guide. And then there's like a ton of negotiation within those guardrails, right? So it is not a dictatorship. It's super collaborative. Even if you prefer one joke over the other or one casting decision over the other, if it doesn't violate what the show is, you can be like super collaborative.

And that's a philosophy I really agree with. And it was kind of clarifying and liberating where like it needs to feel, it needs to feel real. It needs to feel true crime and, uh, it needs to feel like a premium documentary. And those are the things I'm like constantly policing.

And then otherwise, like I can lean on Jimmy Tatro. I can lean on Dan Perel. I can lean on our cinematographer adam bricker um and uh feeling the the help around you like that 50 person crew makes you feel much stronger and more capable if uh if you kind of know just the very core principles. A really long answer. That was a good answer. Yeah. How did you come up with the idea

for using the found footage, like Snapchat, to tell the story? Well, we knew we were telling the story of a high school, and it was just like a natural thing. We were watching these documentaries, and it's all like phone calls and police reports and voicemails and uh whatever evidence they can scrape together

and like well if it was high school today you would have all of this media so that was one of the the fun sort of assets of the show and something like that those very first pitches we talked about how we could do it in a way that doesn't feel gimmicky. I feel like in a lot of TV comedies, you see cell phone videos and people recording like a vlog or something. And it feels like an old person writing social media content. And we tried our best to keep it as uh as familiar to the stuff that we see on

those platforms as as we could you guys drilled in dave too with the end of episode four like with him going viral that was so well done yeah for that for that montage dave and i uh went took the cell phone everywhere and he had that crazy Zoot suit. And we went to the, the Ram Seahawks game, Sunday night football. And we had him do, and there was all of this great footage. He even got on the Jumbotron and he's just, you have all of these great clips of him yelling, somebody suck me at the Coliseum.

And then Disney legal said we couldn't use any of that. He couldn't get it cleared? Oh, that sucks. Damn. Damn. It's just cell phone footage. We hadn't, but. Man, people are the worst.

That's why it's like all these, because like when we started working on something where we were working for like bigger companies I was like oh this is going to make it a lot easier but it was so it's easy the way just go out in a public we don't releases we don't have to worry about the music we don't have to worry about like who's in the shot we can literally just do anything it's kind of yeah I mean there's pros and cons to both ways but I kind of love the guerrilla style. Totally. There's a lot more people who can help you on the bigger stuff and a lot more people who can say no.

We're watching now in your quarantine. Oh, besides the Coen brothers, I guess. That's what you're watching. My girlfriend is, I saw the first season of Ozark and now my girlfriend is... I saw the first season of Ozark and now my girlfriend is catching up. And then we're going to do the next two seasons together. Nice.

Too bleak for me. It is. It's well done, though. The performances are so good. Did you watch The Outsider? No, I haven't seen it. It's good? Yeah, it's good.

I'm finishing that up. I'm trying to HBO. That's also Jason Bateman and Ben Mendelsohn. But, yeah. It's something to watch. Is it scary? Yeah. Well, the first two episodes are pretty crazy because so many people die.

And then there's just like, there's a little paranormal. It's Stephen King. So there's some paranormal stuff in there. And so the first two episodes are really intense. And then it gets kind of slow and then it builds back up again. But yeah. Check out the first two episodes for sure. Yeah. The episode dave that dealt with

death it hit harder in these conditions i was like the one about the the the kid passing away i was like oh man all right yeah yeah in my episode in episode four there was a beat where Young Thug is talking about how he's friends with Tom Hanks. Oh, yeah. And then passes a joint to Dave and then coughs. And Dave's like, whoa, is that? He's like, I'm not contagious. He's like, how do you know if you're contagious? And we shot that back in September, October maybe.

Dude, do you feel like you put bad juju on Hanks? I don't know, man. Young Doug is the coolest guy in the world. It was so intimidating. But after we were reading that line to him, he's like, the thing is, I don't know Tom Hanks. Is he going to think I'm like, I don't want to piss off tom hanks pretend like i know tom hanks but i'm not friends with tom hanks and i think it's we're just joking that like the world of celebrities is

is so foreign to everybody that it's possible that young thug could be friends with tom hanks and he's like yeah all right all right i like it and then and then he did it he's just so effortlessly cool yeah he seemed he seems like a really cool guy it was that was that had you directed like i know you direct little dicky but had you directed other rappers before or worked with them before yeah so it's it's it's, it's, it's interesting in the show too, cause there's like, rapper time is, is different than like normal actor time. So you, you have to be ready to shoot when they arrive. And that's its own, its own sort of challenge, but it's.

Cause they like roll in and they're like, all right, I'm ready to shoot. And they're not going they like roll in they're like all right i'm ready to shoot and they're not gonna like chill in the trailer and wait for like a pa to grab them or something yeah yeah that's that's absolutely true and their manager will be like yeah he'll probably show up in this window it's like a cable company yeah i'm friends with a clay thompson we went to high school together and I asked him to do the podcast. And the day before he was supposed to do it, I go, Clay, I'm like, we're starting at noon. He's like, just start without me.

And I was like, it's a podcast. It doesn't really work like that. But he was already gone. He had already walked away. Oh, man. How was Clay Thompson in high school? He's so good. He was really nice.

I don't think anyone expected that he would be this great I mean we thought he'd be like a good Pac-10 player and then maybe he'd be a good like a you know a player off the bench you know like a maybe like a Kyle Korter juniors like that and then he just he just got way more laterally quick and his confidence just skyrocketed and the NBA changed and it was kind of like this perfect storm and now it's like who knows what he's capable of where was he drafted he was drafted 11th and I think it was because Jerry West kind of saw where the league was going I think Jerry West was the guy who drafted him which is so fucking cool but uh yeah and then they wouldn't trade him for kevin love which

even i at the time as his buddy and like biggest fan was like that's crazy you gotta trade clay for kevin love and then of course the warriors ended up being right and you know yeah crushing all these chips and being loved and hated and he's still super cool he but i'm always asking him for stuff when i text him so he doesn't get back to me super quick but it's also i'm always asking him for shit yeah and he's clay thompson also yeah he is an nba star that's that's the coolest, right? Yeah. If you could be anything. Yeah. Yeah. We were around a bunch of athletes recently, a bunch of baseball players, and we're like,

these guys are so – they just had so much effortless confidence. They were just so much cooler. And we're just like, God damn. They just had so much swagger. And you can just feel it with athletes. Dave is friends with a lot of the guys on the Sixers. So he invited me out one night. And he's like, just remember, these guys are kids.

And we're losers. 20 years old and then you know we're 10 years older than them and we're just losers yeah they are they just they look invincible and and they carry themselves like they are i think i think acting and entertainment allows for a little more self doubt. I think there's any space for that in athletics. You got to like really just be the man. And, uh, and it's,

it's, it's a convincing performance. I'm like, yeah, you are the man. Yeah. I remember when Clay found out I was, I was like,

cause you know, I was doing comedy, but I was driving Postmates and I told him I drove Postmates and he was just like, what? you know, I was doing comedy, but I was driving Postmates. And I told him I drove Postmates, and he was just like, what? Like, he was so shocked. You drive Postmates? Why? And then I asked him if he was strong for a two-guard, and he was even more shocked by that.

He was like, I'm the strongest two-guard in the league. I was like, I don't think you're stronger than James Harden. Dude, also, I was stoked. Because I've been doing comedy in LA for a while. One of my favorite comedians, genuinely, always, was Ryan O. Flanagan. And I loved his sketch group. I loved his stand-up.

I loved his videos. And then I saw him. You put him in your episode of Dave, too. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah. He's one of my best friends we went to we went to japan together we even have a he's he's the one person we have a quarantine pack with so oh really he's living alone but it's me my girlfriend and ryan sometimes comes over

because he's right down i instagrammed him Instagrammed him last night. I said, dude, I watched you on American Vandal. You were fucking amazing. Like, I felt so... Every line reading he gave cracked me up. I laughed. He's so funny. Yeah. That's another one. That character was supposed to be, like, 45 years old

and kind of overcompensating, trying to be cool. But I actually... I had seen his sketch group, Dead Kevin, and all three of those guys are so funny and then coming back from a lcd sound system concert once i saw him on a train and was just like you're the you're from dead kevin you're so fucking funny and i was just in the uh in the casting process for for vandal and i'm like i want to just like bring you in to read for something and uh it was way different than all of the other reads for mr krebs but that was another one where he just like kind of rewrote it for him because yeah his delivery specific and weird yeah yeah it's so good yeah he made me laugh every time he's talking about the student being hot like it's just he strikes such a perfect balance because he doesn't he makes it somehow charming no matter

what he's saying it's pretty incredible yeah it was a it was a thing in the writer's room too where we just knew we actually shot for him for hours because we just wanted him to like riff on every topic so that if we ever needed like a laugh in episode four where we're talking about a certain character we could just have like the mr kraz soundbite and keep the keep the audience going um so he was kind of like a comedic lifeline for us by design and then he just came in and found a way to just like riff and make and improvise and make everything really funny yeah he's a super funny dude jack too he's jacked for a comedian he's like a jacked good looking guy for a comedian yeah yeah i think like the pandemic the pandemic is hitting him hardest because he goes to the gym every day and he has no idea what to do oh yeah i think i've seen him at the gym golds he

goes to golds on western right golds on western every single day yeah yeah i've seen him in there i don't know if that's his goals i don't know i might be wrong actually someone else told me they saw him there he's a gold he's a gold guy for sure. Nice. Should we answer some questions? We answer listener questions. Can you help us answer these? Yeah, I'm so wise, man. I'm going to really help these people. Hell yeah.

Hey, Chad and JT, how's it going? Recently, about a day or two ago, this girl I had been friends with told me she liked me. And I had to have my friends walk me through on how to get with her and date her is there any advice to make me smoother on getting girls and not having the bros help you out very general yeah practice right that's what clay thompson just you got to get out there you got to shoot you got to shoot you got to shoot out there. You got to shoot. You got to shoot. You got to shoot. Yeah. So like stop emailing in podcasts. Just keep shooting.

Yeah, I agree. May, you know, he's in the quarantine right now. So may play out some scenarios, do some rehearsals. So when you get out into the world, you can crush it. Yeah, I think now is the time to practice too. I think people are definitely lonely right now. They're eager for connection. They're eager for new experiences, for some kind of excitement.

I think you can provide that excitement, dude. Just think of yourself as a lightning rod of fun and bring that positive self-perception into all these encounters, especially with this girl you like, and just tell her what up. I think it's going to go great. But yeah, I think practice is the key. David Mamet said, how do you write a great play? You write a lot of plays. So just fire off a lot of messages. And the good thing for him too, he's operating.

a lot of messages and and the good thing for him too he's operating he's got a good head start because he has girls emailing him saying they like him putting so he's gotta be like bringing something to the table now he just has to learn how he's what his strengths are and just keep capitalizing on it exploit the weakness in the defense yeah it is true too i think sometimes it can be scarier if someone reaches out to you it's scary both ways but if someone reaches out to you you're almost like you like you don't want to fumble the ball you're almost like oh they gave me the ball and i'm at the one yard line i i really you kind of get in your head you're like i hope i don't drop this thing it's like you put one foot in front of the other and then you're in the end zone baby

yeah the emotional end zone i'm not talking about ass. All right. What up, Chad and JT and possible fellow guest legend? What up, Tony? I just want to start off by saying that you guys have been keeping my stoke levels up with your dank positivity and overall vibes in these dark and unprecedented times. So thank you for that. I'm a high school English teacher, and with the current situation,

I'm not able to be present in the classroom and spread overall stoke to my students. Rather, we are doing digital learning through online modules. I was wondering what I could do as a teacher to keep my students' stoke levels up during the Q team. Like, should I assign Fast and Furious clips to them to break down and analyze?

Do I assign them episodes of the pod to listen to? If you're in high school right now, what would you like your teacher to do? Oh, interesting. Yeah, I mean, having them analyze Fast and Furious clips, I mean, that's a dream scenario. So I think you have the idea right there. You should go for that for sure.

I like this guy. Yeah. Yeah, he's cool. Yeah, dude, I think having them analyze Fast and the Furious would be really beneficial. Actually, I always liked the Fast and the Furious, but we've been reenacting scenes of it for content, and we've been having all of us play our respective parts

from our respective quarantines. And it really – I'm playing Vin Diesel, and it gave me such a newfound appreciation of how well he plays that part. I had to deliver the line you embarrassed me to Vince and I put too much anger in it. There wasn't enough family bond in my delivery

but Vin does it so perfectly. You didn't really realize how perfectly crafted it was until you try to like remake it yeah yeah it's it's really really good so yeah i guess that's a good quarantine takeaway yeah what else could he assign maybe uh what's another classic i mean you could do speed face off con air con and the rock yeah if i had an english teacher assign me those films that's a that's a father figure for life

maybe air force one yeah dude that's one of my first favorite movies. When you say Air Force One. The first R-rated movie that I felt like, I can't believe I'm watching this, was Air Force One for me. That's awesome. Yeah, I love that movie as a kid. It's nice, too, because the bad guy is such a clear bad guy, and the good guy is such a clear good guy, you know? Yeah. In these corona times, it's like i can't punch corona but you can fucking throw gary oldman out the back of an airplane and snap his neck get off my plane oh it's gary oldman i didn't

realize that yeah dude he's a chameleon oh wow yeah that. Yeah, he can do it all. Any idea why that guy betrayed the president, the American insider schmole guy in that movie? Money. Money, dude. Just money. It's gross, dude. Just a bad guy. He's just a bad guy.

What up, guys? Stoker from Australia here. Not a question question just a recommendation for you guys Toby Ord an effective altruist and a philosopher

from Oxford has just released his new book called The Precipice Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity I recommend I reckon this is going to be

a game changing work alright cool sorry not quite a question but I appreciate the recommendation alright first off I want to say thank you to you all right cool sorry not quite a question but i appreciate the recommendation all right um first off i want to say thank you to your hombres of stoke for keeping me absolutely

loaded during these draining times fellas i bring you a philosophical dilemma i'm going to a music fest at the end of august and corona might not be nullified then do i stay or do i go am i a schmull for asking? Anyways, wash your hands, you beauties. He signed a Pascal Siakam, but I'm suspicious of that because his email's different. It might not actually be Pascal. I know, dude. I wish. Fingers crossed.

You can't get anything by you. Yeah. I don't know. Am I too trusting? If they're allowing events like that, it just kind of depends on what the world looks like, right? Probably not. Probably you're not going to a music festival in August. I feel like at that point,

maybe restaurants will be half open or something. But I'll just do what they tell me to do yeah i i agree i think i just listen to the cdc and whatever they're saying um i mean i assume if they're having music festivals in august it probably would be safe because then they wouldn't they would never allow that the government wouldn't allow that unless they were completely safe, right? I do love a world in which, like, you have tickets to a music festival and you're like, what do I do? I got a no from JT and Chad,

whether or not it's safe. Well, yeah, and I feel bad saying that to snuff out this dude's optimism. I mean, I think we all have to have things to look forward to but I don't see us being out of the woods to the point where we're having 50,000 person get-togethers by August yeah unfortunately but I'm a pessimist when it comes to these things. And, and, and some of my confidence in expert predict predictions has been, uh, eroded.

They just, like, Oh, go ahead. Like, dude, I'm super, I'm,

this is tangential, but I'm super pissed. Like now they're telling us to wear a mask. Yeah. Like what the fuck dude i had masks and i felt bad for having masks so i gave my mask away and then literally literally the next day they're like you should be wearing masks i was like dude i had the fucking mask and you told me not to hoard it and i listened to you and now i'm potentially fucked. The story keeps changing. So I'm playing it safe.

I'm not leaving my mom's. I'm not leaving my mom's ever, dude. I'm here for the long haul. I'll see you in January, homies. What do you guys think events will look like? Do you think they'll be checking for fevers and stuff? Because they're doing that in China, right? Like they check your fever with like a

little gun yeah i think i think they'll be doing fingerprint 15 minute like diabetes tests to see if you have covid but dude i'm reading articles that say those things have a 30 false negative rate yeah yeah that's what germany is planning. They said they want to do like the antibodies test and give people like, let's say they've had it. Yeah. That seems cool. Yeah. No, it's a good idea.

The antibody test seems like the best possible route out of this thing. Yeah. That'd be pretty sweet to get an antibody test and find out you had it. That would fire me up. Dude, I hope I had it already and didn't give it to my mom and i'm just on easy street but dude now they're saying i'll leave all my pessimism behind me after this but have you guys seen get it again the reinfection oh my god i hope that's just the the Chinese fucking up the test.

And is that just like the boogeyman media being like, hey, guys, what's the scariest thing we could possibly put in your feed today? Here it is. Yeah. Well, is it a reinfection? Or is it just like it never fully leaves the body, so it comes back? Whatever that's called, like a recurrence or um i read that i don't know yeah they're talking about reinfection like the guy the doctor that joe rogan had on said like we just don't know if you get it beat it that you're immune we just don't know yet

right great i'd love it if they knew one thing about this i'd love it if they knew one thing about this. I'd love it if they had one thing that I could count on, but it seems like. Don't feed it after midnight. You are though. Is that the vast majority of coronaviruses, once you have it, you're immune from. Oh, is that true? Yeah. Fuck yeah. from. Is that true? Yeah. This would have to be a really abnormal

coronavirus for you to be able to reinfect. Did you see any of this coming or did it catch you completely by surprise? I honestly didn't see any of this coming

up until the week before. Yeah. Yeah. I was at the very last Lakers game before. Oh, really? The next day the NBA was canceled. Wow. Oh, shit.

Like, I was – it wasn't until Rudy Gobert that it got real for me. Tom Hanks was the same day. Yeah. Tom Hanks and Rudy Gobert back to back was the moment where it's not like I didn't know it was real, but I'm like,

oh, the next, the rest of the year is going to be severely different. Yeah. You know what else is crazy is it goes from it gets real and then your brain wants to return to normalcy to what we've known normalcy to be and you go back to being normal and then you get hit with another news fact that puts you back into like oh shit nothing's normal this is a new. You need to remember that so that you don't get cocky. That's, that's my, that's my day to day. I've been looking at a website. It's a COVID19.healthdata.org.

And they had a, they have like charts projection, like for like projections. And this guy, he works at like university of washington but it's pretty optimistic that like by june uh the numbers will be way low according to this guy that sounds great i think i think i can keep my brain together i I think that's true. But then once we start letting stuff open again, it shoots back. So it's going to be a metering thing where you're like, okay, people can start going back into restaurants at half capacity. Okay.

Now, now full capacity. Okay. Now that now we're closing movie theaters again. Like I think there, Okay, now that now we're closing movie theaters again, like I think they're It's gonna be a long time of like back and forth until we have the vaccine and like a year wait, so how do how do you make a TV show in those conditions I

Hope that the That it's open that like I don't think big music festivals are going to happen for a while but it's very possible when the numbers are really dipping that you're like a movie set where there's 50 people

and it's they have other like restrictions and precautions where people let that happen because i don't know what else you're gonna do like we can't it's it's untenable to just like not produce anything in any industry for a year we have to the world needs to keep moving i don't know i guess i guess just for us we shoot a lot of stuff at conferences and big gatherings. It's kind of like a – but now I'm going to be doing it with an N95 mask, two gloves, and a hazmat suit, and some kind of blaster that shoots out sanitizing foam.

We can zoom into city council meetings meetings i think they're doing yeah oh really can you do public comment from zoom to do that that's hilarious yeah i think we should figure out how to do that yeah all right are you guys spotted right away when you do that now yeah uh it varies some Most places, yeah, but there are others like Glendale, for example, where they just have no idea. So, you know,

those are, we hit those more frequently. Yeah, it's better when they don't know us, but sometimes some of them do know us it's it's actually pretty hilarious too because like they it's funny to watch the the relationship ball you know yeah like at manhattan beach they kind of hated us and now when we come in they're

like hey guys it's good to see you and like uh they've kind of, they're trying a new tactic now. They're treating us as allies rather than foes. That's smart. Yeah. Those videos are so funny. Oh, thank you. I sent those to everybody. Oh, you did? Yeah.

Thank you. Yeah, they're fun to do. Yeah. My dudes, I'm a new stoker from all the way in Ireland. And I want to thank you bros. Since I've started listening to the pod, my stoke has raised and has significantly helped my mental health. Thanks bros.

My question is one of my bros came back from a year away and I was stoked to have him back, but another bro and him recently had a falling out. And now he told him he doesn't want to hang out with him anymore. I'm close to both bros and aren't sure if I can help the Sidge or how to move forward. Big love from Ireland. I guess I need to know what the falling out was too. Like did one of the bros deeply betray the other bro? Because then you probably got to go with the bro who didn't do the betrayal.

Unfortunately, even if you like the other bro more, you kind of got to go on the bro who didn't do the betrayal. Unfortunately, even if you like the other bro more, you kind of got to go on morality if it's a deep enough betrayal. Yeah, I don't know. For me, I tend to be Switzerland with those things. Unless it's like, it's got to be a pretty deep betrayal. Otherwise, I'm just like, come on, guys. We're all adults. You can hang out with each other

and you invite them both places and you just kind of don't acknowledge their rift. That's what I do. Bury my head in the sand and pretend it doesn't exist. One of my buddies stole my car and I was always pretty frustrated with my friends who still hung out with them. But- What do you mean your buddy stole my car and I was always pretty frustrated with my friends who still hung out with them. What do you mean your buddy stole your car?

Like I left the keys in it at night and he stole it. Didn't tell me he had it and had it for a couple months. And then, and then, but some of my homies still hung out with them after the fact because they were really, and you know, he was a cool guy, but he did a cool thing. And, and I would, I would like be kind of disappointed in my friends when they did it,, you know, he was a cool guy, but he did another cool thing. And I would be kind of disappointed in my friends when they did it, but you know what?

It just made me work harder to get closer to them so I could push them out of the picture with just being a better hang, I guess. Wow. All right. Yeah, if it's cars feeling bad, I that's that's that seems to be the line i guess i'm asking you tony would you still be friends with the guy who stole the car i don't know how cool is he he seems pretty cool he was a friend's car for a month that guy sounds crazy he sounds like the best time of all time

when i found the car he left his bong in it and a really cool album with like Sayosin on it. That is insane to just steal. And you, did you go to school together, high school together? We both got kicked out of the same high school and then, and then went to different high schools. So you guys were both very cool. Yeah, but he was more like criminal edge. I was more of just like loud. Yeah. I don't know.

I was not hanging out with friends that were doing stuff like nearly that cool. So I don't have any experience. But that guy sounds like a blast. Who was like your posse growing up? I was ran track and cross country. I was with relatively good kids. They would sometimes help me make my movies and stuff. I would do the video yearbook.

I'd pay them $20 to be the B-cam and then they would run the basketball team and stuff like that. We would play poker a lot, which we're doing now in quarantine. A lot of my high school buddies are, there are sites where you can just play money online and then Venmo each other afterwards. Oh, that's fun.

Oh, nice. Yeah. You still tight with your high school bros? Yeah, I'm in a fantasy football league with 12 of them. Same 12 since 2001, we were in eighth grade. It's the fucking greatest, same thing for me. Yeah, it's the best. Yeah.

Kids that like I never would, you know, good dudes. And I just get to, like, keep that relationship somewhat alive because we have to figure out a trade before the deadline. Are any of them in California or are they all spread out all over the country? One of them was, I think, but he moved back to north carolina or something i don't know yeah they're all still on the east coast do they do they think you're hollywood yeah yeah man i named uh they're like characters in american vandal that are named after them and stuff

oh that's awesome that's awesome. That's awesome, yeah. I don't know if I'm supposed to say that because legal would never approve stuff like that. It's like they didn't approve the Rams game footage. If it's similar to anybody you know, you can't use it. Interesting. But nobody sued me yet.

Right. They're all probably deeply honored yeah that's cool what's like your favorite thing you've written that you couldn't shoot because it just wasn't like feasible i don't know that's tough i don't really have a good answer that do you have a do you have an answer for something you wanted to do what's yeah i mean i guess we wanted to host the white house correspondence dinner that's still a possibility and we wanted to get on stage at cola we've had a couple where like i think we'll and you know honestly i think i think it'll happen at some point but it's just uh we didn't get it on our initial.

And what I mean by initial attempt is we literally just said it out loud. And that was the extent of it. Chad, do you want to do a, do you want to do an ad read and then we'll get into the beef spades and legends. Yeah. I've got new quarantine ad reads so okay uh what's up guys i'm interrupting this podcast so you know once again that we were brought to you by manscape manscape thank you so much for keeping our trims pubed

for looking after our hogs for making sure that our dongs look fresh and clean because you know that it's time to quarantine manscape and chill uh manscape is the only men's brand dedicated to below the below the waist grooming and hygiene and guys do not miss out when you're in the q-team do not miss out on the forever changing grooming game kit the perfect package 3.0 essentials kit perfect tools for your family jewels uh they got anti-chafing ball deodorant whoa they've got deodorant uh and then they got the lawnmower 3.0 which has the best ball shaving technology on the market guys i mean you do not want to miss out on this um because you know you want to come out of this self-isolation with

a freshly groomed tube area so yeah use the code go deep 20 at manscaped.com to get 20% off free shipping. That's go deep 20 manscaped.com 20% off and free shipping. All right, back to the show. Dude, it's so important to like, keep up like the appearances, you know what I mean? It's so easy to just be like, I'm just gonna wear underwear all day or not shave for like a year. But yeah, it's like your, your're your subconscious knows you're not taking care of yourself so you gotta you gotta treat yourself like you're still you know your full going out normal life self absolutely tony i forgot to ask have you been manscaping uh lately i actually have the the lawnmower dude what yeah dude uh and it it came just like just as

quarantine was starting and my girlfriend was like who are you trying to impress what who what's happening right now yeah she was skeptical yeah it's just making me feel better yeah oh dude yeah I've been manscaping every day. I love it, dude. I can tell. Yeah, thank you. So, Tony, were you able to prepare a Beef Babe and Legend of the Week for this segment of the pod? Yeah.

Yeah, I got it. Do I go beef first? Is that how it starts? I was going to throw it to Chad first. Oh, no, but hey. No, no, no, Chad. I can't go first. Mine aren't that good. I bet they're pretty solid. Chad, who is your Beef of the Week?

My Beef of the Week is with the spaghettios can packaging um you know i was treating myself yesterday having some spaghettios and every i had two and every time i opened the can the sauce would spray everywhere um and yeah just you know i was trying to treat myself have a good time it really put a damper on my evening so you, I think if they just went with a traditional can opener instead of the pole, that would prevent a lot less spillage. And because now my kitchen is just full of tomato sauce. So, yeah, it's my beef. Pretty simple one, but, you know, I just had to call them out for it.

So that's what's up. Legend. Tony, what's your beef of the week? I've been thinking a lot about like what's essential now as jobs and what isn't because it's so surprising like how much we rely on grocery store workers and delivery drivers. And it's kind of recalibrated how, you know, I look at society. And in this recalibration, I'm like, you know, who's still like the least essential job is bathroom attendance. Like, I hope when this is all when this is all done, like we realize that's still a not essential job. a not essential job and we don't have to go through this charade of like me reaching to my wallet and giving you a dollar because you handed me a towel it seems like a job we can

just eliminate it's uncomfortable yeah yeah like touching you yeah yeah like what other jobs like if there was a guy if there was a job for somebody to just like play ukulele at a library you would you would say let's get rid of this job he this person is making the library worse that's i don't know how society let this happen but if we're like looking at what what jobs are essential and what aren't get rid of it done yeah i rarely uh carry cash too so i always feel bad when i'm in there and i'm like oh i don't have any i have anything to tip with um it's always just bacon dude And tip for what? Bacon, dude. Yeah, right. Bacon, bro. Is there bacon? Are you using the cologne or something?

I don't know. No, I just feel like you have to tip, right? I mean, because they're in there. It's customary. I don't know. I don't know. But yeah, I always try to... Do you take some of the candy or anything? No.

Or do you just sort of beeline it out? Yeah, I just try to wash my hands and be polite. But I don't know. Non-essential. Yeah. My beef of the week is, I already went off on it, so I'll keep it brief. Just on the ever-changing stream of information, I'm deeply disappointed in how the information has been disseminated

about this thing and how it frequently backtracks or contradicts what we had established as a very important truth. It's like, it just, I don't know. You know, I don't know. I'd like to have faith that someone out there is looking out for me and is going to save me. But I feel like that has been shipped away a little bit. I still have faith.

I believe in the collective good of humanity. And I think we'll all come together and rise out of this better than we were before. Maybe not me, but everybody else for sure. I got a lot of faith in everybody else. Dude, I'm just a coward. But yeah, let's figure out what we're saying and stick to it.

Aaron, do you have a B for the week? Sorry. I do. My B for the week is COVID-19, but for a reason not yet established. It's because it pushed back the release of Top Gun Maverick. Oh, yeah.

Great call, Aaron. And that is not, that is not a winter movie. That is not, that is something I wanted to walk out of stoked into sunshine, into warmth. And now it's December something. Dude, such a good beef, dude. Chad, who is your babe of the week?

My babe of the week. I saw this article in the New York post that rim jobs have been outlawed. And you know, because you can spread it. in the New York post that rim jobs have been outlawed and, uh, you know, because that's, you can spread it. Um, I guess it's in fecal matter. So, you know, I, I'm, I'm not a big rim job guy. I've dabbled here and there, but you know, um, suddenly when it's outlawed, that sort of makes you kind of like take a step back and just think of how much you miss some of the things that you take for granted. Um, so I just want to give a shout out to rim jobs.

Uh, you may be outlawed right now, but you will return. And, uh, I will pay homage to you. I was watching the Dave episode today about eating ass. I'm like, we can't do that right now. Yeah. Um, that hole is going to be glowing. It's going to be, yeah. It's going to have,

it's going to be like the Shire. I've been visualizing it. Yeah. That's actually my girlfriend plays Allie in Hulu. So really that that's my quarantine buddy right now. So I don't know. Well, your girlfriend's the lead in Dave. Yeah. Oh, she's amazing, buddy right now. So I don't know. Wait, your girlfriend's the lead in Dave? Yeah.

Oh, she's amazing, dude. Yeah, she's really good on the show. Yeah. She's so good. That's awesome. Did you talk much with Greg Mottola? I'm a big fan of him, too. Yeah, he's a really smart guy.

He seemed really cool. We overlapped a few days. He had a scene picking up in my block or I was shooting a scene from my block in his. Yeah. It's just like, you could tell it was just like a pro. Yeah. All right.

Who's your baby? Oh, you said,, right? Did you say it? No. Well, I mean, Taylor, Ali from Hulu. But also, I mentioned earlier, too, I was talking about the people who are delivering groceries to my grandmother. And, like, that's, it's so cool that people are doing that.

And it also, it's like making me hate myself a little bit for like, I should be doing something like that. It's cool that you're taking food to hospitals. Aaron, do you have a babe of the week? I do. I have a couple of babes this week. My babe, first babe is a COVID-19 survivor. It is my favorite baseball player of all time, Jim Edmonds. He got it? Pirates, Cubs, Brewers, Reds. But, yeah, he got it.

Came down with some bad symptoms. Was in the ER for like a few hours, it seems. They sent him home because they're like, you're not in respiratory failure and you're in good shape. So they sent him home, and like the next day he was fine. Wow. So, you know, it's the power of being one of the best centerfielders of all time, I guess.

Best catch I've ever seen. Oh yeah, Superman catch is amazing. Look it up if you have not, Stokers. And then my second babe of the week is my mom. She was tested for it and today came back negative.

Yes. Was she feeling under the weather? was tested for it and today it came back negative. Yes. Was she feeling under the weather? She just had a cough and a sore throat and her doctor was just being super cautious and just like, well, let's make sure you don't. And she didn't. That's good news. Good.

My babe of the week is my friend Hannah. She's a really hilarious comedian. She has a new Snapchat show called Get Money for Comedy Central. And it's really good. And she's just been a really good friend during this whole quarantine. We call each other freaking out all the time, FaceTiming. And we always think we have Corona and we just call each other and get walked back off the ledge. And yeah, I'm just grateful to have her in my life and it's nice to have friends you can turn to when, when you're feeling squirrely. So thank you Hannah for the support and for your show. It's really funny. Chad, who's your legend of the week? My legend of the week is my dad. He's a doctor.

So he's not on the front line uh he's a hand surgeon but um i mean he's still he's still going into work and uh you know i just wanted to give him a shout out uh just for he's staying strong staying optimistic and um staying strong, staying optimistic. And, um, he's just a beast, you know, he, uh, he loves what he does. He loves doing surgery. He loves working out and, uh, you know, it's, it's kind of scary having him still go to work cause he's, you know, there are coronavirus cases at the hospital, but, um, you know, I, uh, his uh his optimism is uh keeping me optimistic so uh yeah i just wanna get a shout out that's awesome tony who's your legend of the week uh buffalo wild wings oh hell yeah i love that place unironically so much. We would go, there's one right by us

where I would have, we're sports gamblers. So Taylor will pick a parlay or I'll pick a parlay and then we'll go to Buffalo Wild Wings and watch the games on the TV as reading. to Buffalo Wild Wings and watch the games on the TV as reading. Now there's no sports. There's no, you can't sit down at Buffalo Wild Wings, but we have the sauce and the hot and wild sauces. And she likes the Parmesan garlic. The sauces are just, they're excellent.

So it's not much of a hot hot take it's not the coolest like underground tip but you know I love it I love buffalo sauce I think we talked about it on the last podcast yeah I love buffalo sauce more than anything

and buffalo wild wings is really good because it's like as hot as it can get where it still tastes like buffalo um where a lot of like wings when they get too hot they lose the essence of what right we love about that flavor that tang they've really they have a lot of locations for a reason. What part of town are you in? I'm in West Hollywood. I'm normally at Hayworth and Melrose, but I escaped to Orange County.

Nice, dude. I'll jump in real quick. That brings me to my legend. I don't know if you know about this, the best restaurant in LA just shut down besides Buffalo Wild Wings, my favorite place to hang out in the world. A place that is very near and dear to my heart swingers diner. I think it's, it is genuinely my favorite restaurant in the world. I go there, my girl would get upset with me because I'd be like, she's like, where are you?

I'm like, eating. She's like, are you at Swingers again? And I'd be like, yeah. And I had my order down to like a science. I'd get the steak, no fries, extra broccoli, side salad, balsamic vinaigrette, no tomatoes, strawberry and peanut butter smoothie if I was extra hungry with almond milk.

And then, and yeah, the staff was amazing. You always saw other comedians in there that you could shoot the shit with. Um, they kept long hours. So you could go there at two, three in the morning, Chad, we'd always go there after our show at the Hollywood improv. And it was always a place that we'd go get a Sunday afterwards to kind of just like commemorate a special experience. And, you know, it's one of the really sad parts about this entire ordeal is that places like that that were doing great

are now forced to go under. It's closed forever? I don't know if it's just closed temporarily. I've heard both things. I really haven't done my due diligence. I know they have a GoFundMe up. If you're a fan of swingers and you live in la uh check it out and i mean i know there's a ton of stuff to contribute right now so you know you have to

choose judiciously but uh but yeah if you like swingers kick in because it was it's it's the best yeah damn i know dude aaron what's your legend of the week so my legend of the week is um i don't know if you guys see on netflix but there's they got a bunch of jeopardy episodes and uh i was watching just got back into trivia during the quarantine and my friends have been hosting some like trivias over zoom and stuff like that and twitch so i got back into it uh through using jeopardy as a tool and uh i got through like a whole season worth of it and then you come to the end of that season uh and it was the contestant that was winning like six games in a row was this woman who kind of looks like Kate Micucci.

She was real soft spoken. And I was always like, why, why is she so soft spoken? Why she, she's so smart. She's like really good at this. And then at the end of the sixth episode,

when she finally does lose Alex Trebek says she had stage four colon cancer this whole time and she died before the episodes ever aired. She won like a hundred grand all that money went to cancer charities. So Cindy Stowell was her name and she is a legend. Total legend. Big fuck you to death. Big fuck you to death big fuck you to death Chad what's your quote of the week I don't know if I've done this before but it's from Wedding Crashers I caught Wedding Crashers the other day

such a good movie and it's from Will Ferrell from his cameo just going to be one line yeah from Will Ferrell from his cameo. Just going to be one line. Yeah. Crazy horny. That's my quote.

Dude, I think that's Will Ferrell's best performance. I really think it's the top one. Yeah. When it came on screen and I was just like, oh yes. Fuck yes. You're living the dream it's just yeah um what's yours Tony do you have a quote of the week I forgot to do a quote

but I got I was just watching the there's a Trump clip where he's talking to some reporter and he's just like yelling at the reporter and he's like you'll never make it really such an insane playground fight you'll never make it just stuck out to me

but I'm going to do a Sopranos one this was always one of my favorite ones from the Sopranos. They're arguing about what to do with their mother, Tony and his sister. And she says that they should send her back to Green Grove, the old folks home where she was at. He's like, they won't take her back at Green Grove. And then they chime in.

And then he gets so frustrated. He goes, she was abusive to the staff. And then they chime in and then he gets so frustrated. He goes, she was abusive to the staff. And I always, you just have to love her. She'd be like, you can't send me back to that nursing home. It's a retirement community. Exactly. Yeah.

So funny. Aaron, what's your quote of the week? My quote of the week is from Shawshank Redemption. It's in Andy's letter to Red that he's following it to the movie. Remember, Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies. And I think that's what I read. Fucking crush it with the quotes.

You had Return of the king last week god damn dude thank you man come on Chad do you have a phrase should we end it Chad do you just want to end it

with your phrase of the week for getting after it oh yeah I haven't thought of one let's see let's flatten the curve dude perfect yeah

yeah Tony thank you so much for uh for coming on this was fun thanks guys yeah dude thank you so much for doing it man it's a real pleasure and stokers check out dave on hulu american vandal on netflix um and yeah yeah i was watching dave all day. Great. Dude. It's so good. Yeah. Yeah. Don't go anywhere guys.

Don't go. I'm going to play Halo. If anyone wants to play. Dude, you got to do call of duty, baby. I like bagging dudes on Halo. You just like the tea bag,

huh? Yeah. All right. Yeah. I'll go on the Call of Duty too. No, no. I respect the team bagging. I think it's special.

But I wish it was better in Call of Duty and then we could have both. Yeah. Yeah, me too. Maybe the newer version. All right, guys. Yeah. See you later, guys. If you need advice These guys are really nice You wanna know

What to do Where to go When you need someone to guide you There's no one to have The world beside you Go with the stream Go with the stream I'm going deep.