Hollywood Handbook - Dominic Dierkes and The Scuzzman, Our Close Friends

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

The Boys talk to DOMINIC DIERKES and THE SCUZZMAN about some legal issues with their new show. Get a Hat Pack Hat here!Watch the video of today’s episode at Patreon.com/TheFlagrantOnes. Like the show? Rate Hollywood Handbook 5-Stars on Apple PodcastsAdvertise on Hollywood Handbook via Gumball.fm See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

this is a head gum podcast sorry if i seem a little distracted today no i um i just want to apologize in advance if i seem distracted at all that's not um no i not personal that's not towards you i just it's it's fine i i have my own stuff going i actually relate to it i feel like what you're alluding to is probably so i'm just sort of feeling this type of episode i think requires something of us that i don't currently have i wish i had another day. That's how I'm feeling.

I think that would help me. I think you're alluding to something specific. Mine is just sort of a non-specific like. I definitely wish I had another day or possibly more days than that to not do this. Okay. We are doing it now.

That's okay. something something is distracting you specifically uh i guess yeah uh you could say that yeah um do you want to say what it is or do you Do you want to say what it is? Oh, fine. You don't have to. I don't care. You dragged it out of me. I don't care. I don't care.

You don't have to. You dragged it out of me. I do not need to know exactly what it is. Okay, he's begging to know. I appreciate knowing that you have something going on that's distracting you. And I actually find this moving on and getting into the, I wish we didn't have to do it right now. Well, he begged me, but. I wish I had at least another day.

I guess I'll finally. Probably more than. There's a mongoose in my car the ant the animal that animal it's alive the snake hunting animal yes yeah that that's the only thing i really know i don't really know what it looks like the only thing i know about it is it it's like a weasel that it uh i mean go look in my car if you want to see it's like the only thing that can. Fucking thing is taking over in there. Kill a snake. So it is alive.

Yes. Okay. Tell you what's not alive. The snake. That's right. Yes. Okay. And so that's why you introduced a mongoose into your car.

Yeah, but now I'm going like, what am I going gonna put in to attack the mug because the fucking thing don't want to let me drive you know what i mean don't want to let me steer it wants to drive that can't talk obviously but there's a conversation happening which is i killed the snake i should get to pick the music i should get to pick kind of where we're headed so it's frustrating it's not like commandeering anything it's just talking no it can't talk i understand but it's just verbalizing like it's vocalizing it's making a lot of sounds and it's and there's a physicality okay which is putting its little claws on the wheel and pulling away it is commandeering the wheel yes yes yeah yeah i didn't know that word commandeer yeah commander i think is how i've heard it

the commander is also it is commandering the wheel around so when i said it the first time you you said no because you you just didn't know what that meant. The way you said it sounded so fucked up to me that I just was like, let me get as far away from this part of the conversation as possible. Where did you get it? You got it? You bought it somewhere? I didn't buy it, but yeah, I got it somewhere. You got it from the wild? No, I got it from a store, but I didn't pay for it.

You stole it from a store. Yes. Okay. Okay. no i got it from a store but you stole it from a store okay okay uh i i think we should start um and this is fucking dark gonna call the cops this is um blow it up scuzz man it's a dynamic that we haven't called the cops had before i don't. I don't even remember the last time I was in studio with this group. We even did an episode with this group. So I am just feeling very behind on what they've been up to, why they're back, if there's a specific thing that brought them.

Do we just want to give the floor to our guests? I think we both have pretty thoroughly acknowledged that we're not want to give the floor to our guests i think we both have pretty uh thoroughly acknowledged that we're not prepared to do the episode do we just want to let i don't want to do that either catch us up i actually don't want to do that either but i i'm happy to introduce them and get them started we have dom is here uh he's not here he's he's somewhere else i i don't know i don't know what the story is but don is joining us from elsewhere and is that a new place dumb uh it's it's where i've been kind of um it's where i've been held for the last uh several months uh it's a i'm in i'm in a wga holding cell is what i

mean a writers guild of america holding cell okay let me should we maybe this will help so the scuzz man is here also yeah what up what's up scuzz man how you doing you nasty motherfucker that's me that's what they call me

he has a a sunglasses case on his like crotch area. I thought it was. I was going to ask what that was. I thought it was just resting on it. And then he separated his legs. No, it never moved.

And it didn't fall. I was like, he's wearing a codpiece. I thought this was an odd place just to set it. But as it's gone on, it's like, no, no, no. It never is anywhere. And he is attending to it now. Not removing it. He's just unzipping it.

Well, that's how you use it. Okay, okay. So the sunglasses were in there, and now they're coming out. It's my new style is to put the sunglasses case clipped onto me near my crotch. And I remember you emailing me that you were going to get these. Those are the Cartman Respect My Authorita frames. Is that correct? Yeah, exactly.

That's really cool. That's what I base my whole persona on, is Cartman Respect My Authorita. Good. I do it pretty good. I do that voice pretty good. Oh my gosh. I felt like, I said, am I a cartoon now, or did Cartman become real life?

Because I'm sitting with Cartman, and I'm being told to respect his authority, and I do. So in the past, I'm just trying to remember what Scuzzman's VOD tells about about about the you do so much you're sit you're such a sort of renaissance man yeah and so to just pin you down to the most recent there's a boss i remember that i'm like leonard bernstein i got a lot of uh okay i got a lot of things and a lot of irons in the fire did you see you're suing my movie about okay yeah you're suing yeah i don't know if you've seen

it but i know you're suing i saw it i'm fucking pissed man i'm fucking real pissed about because you have a lot of things going on because i'm like oh that's like me he they're doing me i also don't think that's not a lot of what you were trying to do i didn't see the movie when i think of leonard bernstein i don't think of him as like the guy who had a lot of things going on. I guess maybe they covered that in the movie. I just think of him as like he made music. Yeah, that's almost obsessively, yeah. Okay.

He made a lot of music. Which is sort of the only thing you don't do. Yes. So it does feel targeted in a way. Well. yes so it does feel targeted in a way well uh the elvis movie you had a similar issue i did have a similar issue with that yeah because he did a lot of stuff that i did or there i do a lot of stuff and i'm watching them do a lot of stuff and i'm like whoa yeah it's not the same stuff but with elvis he did the army, right? Right. He did music. Music, movies.

Yeah. And he got that house, that big house that people go to. Which you have had your eye on, something like that. Yeah, I have. I've been trying to build my own by getting more buses. You've been trying to build your own house that people out of buses. Because I remember the Scuzz bus was a big part of your

identity. It was on the beach or in the water for a long time. You still have the bus. I have a water bus now. One that's where you go. You access the water by going a water bus now one that's like where you go you get access the water by

going into the bus and then jumping out the back and you're in the waves you walk on into the bus from the dry part of the beach and then enter the water from the back it just seems like you could just walk into the water but this is what i love about scuzz man that people don't appreciate is that so much of life is our perspective and so one person might tell this story i parked my bus on a rickety pier and when i came back it had sunk but what scuzz man will say is i have a water bus now yeah exactly and just the just that tiny shift just the angle you look at it from, and it's, you know, it's are you stuck in traffic or are you hanging out in the car?

And I think that Scuzz, man, is always hanging out in the car, which is a bus, which is a water bus. Exactly. And I have another bus also perpendicular to that bus that's also in the water. That's also in the water. And I have another bus also perpendicular to that bus. That's also in the water? That's also in the water. Double water bus.

It's perpendicular. Yeah, it's kind of like half. He uses that word a lot. I don't know if he knows what it means. He told me the other day that breakfast is perpendicular to lunch. Right. It's perpendicular to the front of the bus. So it's even more in the water. So you go on the water bus and you go through the front

and you get to the perpendicular one i hate to do this i feel like just so people can picture it i feel like this is how trying to picture it is like how they detect who's a replicant or something like well yeah i wanted to fry you i wanted to ask if there was a letter shape that we could associate with or anything but yeah i would say are we are we how are we with the letters yeah are we are we going like well i'm right we a hundred percent on those i know all of them i'm pretty sure i know all of them okay so you're writing you are still you're you're you're you're you're still writing oh of course okay well see this is where me and the Scuzzman have a little bit of a falling out recently, if I can put it that way. Is this related to why you're in a WGA holding cell awaiting arbitration?

Yeah. I mean, if you want to hear, I mean, this is actually the first time Scuzzman and I have really like gotten to talk in a minute because we, our last project was bus centric. Is that fair to say, Scuzzman? The last project we worked on? Yeah, duh. We were working on a show called, pitching a show and sold it called Who Wants to Be a Bussionaire? Okay.

And it was, if you're familiar with the game show format of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It sounds like millionaire. Yeah, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Well, it's the same thing except instead of winning a million dollars you can win a bus and kind of with each question you answer you win like like for the first question if you answer right you win one of the wheels and then if you answer the next question it kind of like keeps going up in tiers until if

you get the whole thing right you get the whole the whole bus and so that would mean at any time you can choose to leave yeah do you want to answer however many parts of the bus you've accumulated and you risk if you get one wrong losing all of the bus parts yeah so you can choose to what if you answer four questions right you could choose to walk with like just the chassis or something to something like that okay so chassis i would think would be like something that comes in later but i guess it's not something that you can apply it's not in the right order no there's well and so the reason i we started working on this show sorry i think the judgment that came from like the it's not in the right order it's maybe not in the order that you would have i guess that's right i need to work on that but it is his but it is his but they made the show

but it's a value judgment but it is placed on the order that well i'm sure there was there must have been network he said they sold the show was their network input i mean uh the network had some input i mean it was all happening very kind of below board like we didn't have formal uh meetings with the network executives which now i now know at the time board is like not above board like that's right it was all below board okay and uh i mean i prefer things to be above the board or or at board level okay um But this was below board because we... It was under the boardwalk. That's where the bus was there.

I love below board. That's where I like to hang out. We took the show out basically as soon as the strike started. As soon as the writer's strike began, we were... Well, that seems like a great opportunity because you're talking about a game show right so you know at a time when they need something that has less scripted content that's right and and and i had kind of the scuzz man had kind of set this up and he asked me like like he

goes i want you to be the guy i want you to be the showrunner i want you to be the head writer the executive producer with me on this and i was like well that's a huge opportunity for me but i don't want to break any guild rules right like it's a strike like the last thing you want to do is is scab and so he said no it's a game show it won't be like that but the more we kind of started stepping it out last thing you want to do the last thing you probably want to do is commit treason yes yes that's what yeah i and what i've kind of learned sorry i mean i i honor the guilds and everything but i think the safety of our country is a little more important than you know oh sorry i thought you were calling scabbing treason you're you're saying treason against the united states or something like that

is a way big yes you're just saying it's the last thing you'd want to do that feels extreme to me that feels like hyperbole yes the last thing you might want to do is murder right they kind of like what chris benoit did for example this is one example that's got to be among the last right i mean that's just and that's just off the top of my head i'm sure there are like i think even worse things like the crippler cross-faced like his family and killed them and that's a terrible thing. Any Chris, really. Chris Dorner. Yes, that's also... And I'm not organizing those things necessarily,

but I am putting them as something that would be worse to do than scabbing. Which is bad. But I think we can say scabbing is bad. You wouldn't want to do it without saying it's the last thing you'd want to do. No, I need to be more intentional with my words. Charles Manson.

Yeah, being Charles Manson would be a worse thing. Which his name had been Chris. And I just want to put, every time any of us have said scab, I don't know if this is something that just happened again. I don't know if this is something you've noticed, Dom, working with the Scuzzman. But when we say that word he looks around like where is it? And he licks his chops. Yes. Yes. Is that

I don't know what that's about. In the writer's world. And all the hairs on his arms stand up. He enjoys a good scab I think like in a like we've always had them at Crafty and no one touches them but it's only for

scuzz man i'll take down a tray of scabs like you wouldn't believe i'm odd yeah i just like i i i put them in my contract because i need them yeah you'd have to because they're never going to be there unless they could be anything they could be from anything it doesn't matter and you put in your rider no brown scabs and that's how you know they're reading the rider like you'll eat a brown scab right no but that's how you know they're paying because there's so many pyrotechnics involved yes exactly what you're doing you need them for safety purposes you have to say no brown like you'll eat it yeah oh of course but as anyway i and i apologize for saying that scabbing is the word, you know, the last thing I'd want to do. But it was something I was trying to avoid doing during the strike. Fair to say.

is that we that scuzz man had and were asking me to execute were a lot of behind the scenes kind of things like a lot of like okay we opened on me in my dressing room and i'm looking at my you know it was a lot of like it became a lot of kind of scripted sounds like there's like a narrative story taking there was a narrative story yeah he kept the fact that there are meetings at all i guess because the premise is so threadbare of it's who wants to be a millionaire but instead of different amounts of money i guess the meeting the one meeting that i would think you would have was how to organize the different parts of the bus which sounds like it sounds like that meeting either didn't go well or didn't take place yeah no i was kind of thinking i was kind of thinking wheels up or we we we order it in the most important parts of the bus.

The most crucial parts of the bus go last and the kind of like a lug nut would be the first thing or something. But Scuzzman has a very different view on what is crucial to a bus than I do. For me, it was like the engine is probably the most important part. Yeah, sure. The engine is one of the big sticking points we had you know you don't think that's important well i mean if you're gonna drive it sure but you know uh did you tell him about uh all the um wait i just want to say you've been here that you've been here through this whole conversation so whatever you know everything

whatever you've heard him say that's what he's told us about oh oh okay yeah sorry i i so you could tell us i was falling asleep or are you okay or you can like prompt him to to tell us but if yeah so did you tell them about um uh um about the other buses that i was uh put that i um put in the beach did you tell them about those no i didn't i didn't tell them i mean i could tell you that hasn't come up oh yeah you talked about the two buses, one perpendicular to the other. The one thing you've sort of added so far is that there was another bus, a second bus. Yeah. And now... Well, then we also

had a circle of buses around. I just wanted to make sure that he told you guys about the circle of buses that were on the beach. Okay. This was part of our communication problem is that you can just tell people things, Scuzzman. You can just convey the information that you have and you want people to know. Especially if it's an idea as simple as that.

Well, all right. Pertaining to the show, did you tell him about the questions, the type of questions that we asked? No. He did not. I am curious about that. This was one of the sticking points. And again, the questions, the trivia questions themselves wound up in the big scheme of things, taking up such a small part of a given episode,

because so much of the episode was like these kind of cold opens with Scuzzman, where he always wanted to fall down. And then like a kind of opening scene. Sorry, Scuzzman as a producer wanted to be falling down in the spot, or the cold open was scuzz man on camera wanting to fall down and somehow being unable to so so the the way i found out about what he wanted to do is i said he was saying like here's what i want to do for the cold open and as he was telling me that he fell down and i said are you okay and he no, that's what I want to do. Okay. In the cold open. I said, okay. So I wrote a scene where he kind of slips on like a, on some Vaseline that he was applying

to himself to start the broadcast. Like he always does. And then he slips and falls down. But when he saw that scene, he, you got really, you got really mad at me and you said, no, I want to do, I want to talk about falling down and then fall down in the in the scene and so i wrote that version that's interesting because i usually think of a character falling down uh as surprising right and they they don't or they don't normally yes kind of front porch it with uh a bit of a speech about how they're going to fall there's a whole

movie about it and he doesn't even end up doing it in the whole movie they just like they they push that off so much which i really didn't like i was just like come on what's going on i had written a scene where he was he was putting vaseline on himself because he said that he felt his skin felt too rough and he said no i should be putting Vaseline on myself to make it easier for me to fall down. Okay. And I said, okay. And so I had him. And again, if you're saying like,

wow, this sounds very scripted, this is part of why I'm in the kind of... I'm not, I wasn't saying that to myself. But if you are saying that to yourself... It wasn't at least my first response. Well, Sean might have been. I kind of see... Maybe you were.

I wasn't hearing that, what it was about, and thinking, wow, this sounds very scripted. It's time to come clean. I might have said that to myself, but I was really stuck on the circle of buses. Why it was so important for it to be brought up. Oh, I don't know. And, you know, the method through which that happened

and that this is all coming, this entire story is coming from the kinds of questions that were in the show, which also has me distracted, admittedly distracted. The kinds of questions were, Scuzzman wanted all the trivia to be about him personally his background his biography yeah things and and what he wanted what he said to me was find out things i don't even know about myself and ask the people about them that's what

i that's what i want and i didn't brave it's very hard to find out things about the scuzzman there's really no paper trail you don't have much of an online footprint i mean is that fair to say well he's done no i'm not anything on my fifth or sixth time doing the podcast and we only talk about details about him i don't it's not like a gigantic show like i see what you're saying okay it's not like a huge no but people know that no it is a huge show everyone listens to it it's accessible yes but what i'm saying is that he wanted me to find things out that no one knew, including people who listen to this show, including myself. And he said, even me. Okay.

Scuzzman said, find out things I don't even know. Even he doesn't know. Yeah, and I was doing a lot of things to throw him off the scent. You know, I was doing a lot of things to confuse him so he would know. Why? so he would know why because he's trying to he's trying to find things out about me

so it would also confuse me what's an example of something that you would do to confuse another person we're going back to the buses so that's why there are so many extra buses you did that

to confuse your friend to confuse my friend i would also um you know i would just go disappear for long periods of time that wasn't unusual though i didn't even clock that as being i you know what i i remember one thing you did You got a job for a week working as a plumber. Oh. To confuse me into thinking you were a plumber. No, you sounded surprised to hear that. This is news to me. You know, see, this is what he did.

So then when he came back and I said, like, oh, I have this trivia question about you now we can ask on the show is that you worked as a plumber. And you go, I didn't do that. I was doing that to throw you off the scent. And I said, but if you actually did do it then i would i think it's fair game to act like it's like because it's stinky and like when you do that throw it off the scent is that was that kind of i don't i was trying to get real stinky and i would just show up to people's places and start taking apart their sinks and taking apart their dishwashers and stuff like that. No, no. Those are some of the, among the less stinky things that a plumber. Sinks and dishwashers are relatively clean.

Well, you're only thinking about the toilet then. The toilet was what came to mind as like the stinky thing that a plumber works with. Well, if you need a plumber for your dishwasher. Right. Yeah, sure. It's probably stinky. Right. But i get that yeah but but it sounds like they didn't need him he just went in there and started i just yeah that's

found doors that were open i just sort of went in so how was that hard was that hard yeah i would drive around for a long time looking for doors okay that were open people hey people lock their doors news to me I don't know. You don't mean open like a jar, you mean unlocked. You're trying them. Yeah, unlocked. I was definitely trying some.

Some were a jar. Scuzzman has trouble sometimes telling if a door is open or not. If you show him a door, he's about 50%. It's basically as good as a random guess to know if it's open when I've been with him he'll go get a load of that door

it's perpendicular right now and then he'll walk into it or he'll slam it or something will happen but I've never been able to track what he's saying you know what he's seeing when he says that I've had a hard time with doors in my life they've

been my biggest bugaboo i would have to say i think there's bigger ones but it is a big one for sure yeah it's probably the biggest one i think to me is doors the scabs that there's so many things that you do that i think that's a problem i'm getting hungry just thinking about scabs all right i didn't mean i shouldn't bring it up. I'm sorry. Why is this show so gross? It is gross. It doesn't have to be this gross. I'm sorry.

Stinky plumber and eating the scat. It's just always so gross. I just wanted... You know, I really wanted to have a nice show. Oh, this is nice. I really wanted to have a nice show, especially today today when you kind of barely wanted to do it it seemed like well i know what i'm going back to when i get out of here and which is like a mad kind of say what you want about a mongoose in the car at least it's not a gross thing

it's like kind of like fanciful like kind of yeah and I don't want to argue with you. Like rickety-tacky-tappy. It is an animal in the car. They're going to the bathroom. So you're saying that's gross too. It's getting gross, yeah. It's getting gross. Maybe I can help you with it. It was the uncrossing of the legs.

Yeah, holy cow. Look at the placement of that thing. There's no shot clock here. Get the whole idea ready and then bring it to me. Oh, well, I was thinking maybe I could help you out with With your situation, with your mongoose situation. Okay, how would you help? I've come across them before in my time. Well, and did you?

Okay, so how you would help is just telling me that you've seen it before? Do I have to hire you before I find out how you would help? Yeah, there is a process we have to go through it's a lengthy thing but we could just skip that actually because man when i when you say mongoose are you picturing an animal with antlers right isn't that okay so he knows it's not like a goose like a goose like a bird like that's something no yeah yeah every animal he pictures animals every you want every animal to have antlers every and i want every animal that have antlers and i'm sure this one definitely does the one that's in your car so what you got to do is you got to start

with the antlers you know what i mean okay just if you start there without the help i Just if you start there. I'm okay without the help, I think. If you start there and work your way down, where are the antlers on this animal? I haven't seen any. Antlers are always on the head of an animal if they have them, I think. So Dom says it's on the head. I haven't seen it. What are you doing? You want to grab them, right?

You know? You just want to... You want to fucking get them a little bit. So your way of helping me is to tell me to grab the antlers of this animal. Well, this is to start with the antlers. This is where it starts. And then you will be working your way down from there.

Yes. You're going to weaken his mind by going, eh, starting, then you're going to want to get to the face. Okay. Okay. And from there, you're going to want to. I've really been trying not to engage too much with the face of this snake-killing animal.

This is why you're having an issue with it. Once its mind has been weakened, maybe it's less capable. Do you think the antlers are attached to the brain? That they're like the handlebars of the mind? I mean, yeah. Yeah, you got to be careful not to rev it up like a motorcycle. Oh my God, that'd be so cool. I kind of wish I had some antlers on my mind and rev them up.

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Hollywood handbook. Alright, where were we? I haven't known where we are at any point. Well, I feel like I Scuzzman has left me hanging a little bit with this show. With who wants to be a Bussionaire?

I was kind of left holding the bag on a job that turned out to be clearly against the strike rules, against like a job that did wind up being more scripted. Those cold opens sound like, yeah, they would fall under the purview of the WGA. And act twos and the trivia questions wound up just kind of become something we ran over the credits. And were the contestants, I haven't heard you mention them at all were they part of the show they were scuzzman played both the host and the contestant um he would we would shoot it in a way where he would ask questions and then he told me he goes i'm gonna alter my appearance it's gonna be crazy it's gonna like you're not gonna be able to tell it's me. And ultimately it was, it was confusing.

Like it looked like we were cutting from the same shot to the same shot. So not only is he, does he look the same? He's facing the same direction. The eye lines are not right at all. He's looking right to left in both of them. And so it just is like, it looks like a mistake like an editing mistake like he's asking questions that he knows the answer to and then he's telling you the answer some of them i didn't that's true sometimes he would he would stump himself and those were i'll say those were

interesting moments but once we delivered this episode to the network and once we kind of got, uh, started, you know, people, we put this out there. I, uh,

I realized I was in pretty big trouble. I got, um, I got a very angry piece of mail from the WGA followed by, but this is not on any of the paperwork, I guess. That's right. I, I,

he signed the show over to me. He said, and he said, I want your name on this. This is a big opportunity for you. You're going to run this show. And I was like, Disguise Man has never been this gracious to me before. It's always, if anything, I have to kind of fight for credit in things that we do.

So it was a nice change, which is maybe why I was a little blinded to the risks involved. Well, that's why the con works. It's the greed of the mark i got very greedy i got so i got so so greedy and and it was a human fallibility a lot of the kind of restaurants where we met up to talk i i when i went back to them they weren't restaurant like it was an empty fallibility is what scuzzman was also trying to yes it's a story about human fallibility in the cold open yes like you know like it's like it sounds interesting like the narrative structure i mean that's part of what makes it like a

scripted show and but this is only that arbitration stuff only really happens once it's like a go project so like this was it was ready to go. The network was so excited. What's the network? It was a kind of joint Hulu, Netflix. They were going to air it. Because they were just so like, oh my God, we're getting no content right now. We're getting no... Well, this was during the strike, so they were all in the same room all the time anyway.

We got them all. Well, we were pitching them. You got them all pretty proud of that. I was pretty proud that we got them all. Well, we were pitching them. You got them all. We were pulling them out. I was pretty proud of that. I was pretty proud that we got them all. We were going to... When we were pitching this to them and showing it to them, we were kind of going in the room where the WGA was negotiating with them. We were saying, hey, can you guys pop out real quick and hear this?

Because they were all... Right. Because they were all in the same place. And ultimately, I think that is kind of how the WGA got a whiff of it and realized that this was wrong and not what they, you know, kind of went against. Not just the spirit of the strike, as I found out, but the letter of the strike, the literal intentions and goal of the strike. And so what is life inside the WGA holding cell been like for you is uh like adam conover coming by you know he's telling me yes he's he's he's not talking to me directly but he's putting a camera on himself

and kind of talking near me in a way that is conveying information to me uh that uh some stuff i didn't know a lot of stuff i did know and then uh you know um so don't watch it man no i know i don't i mean i don't i can't help it no it's nothing i disagree with it's too it's not even anything i disagree with it's just a lot it's just a lot and then and then um you know it's tough because the like they they take away all my writing implements i don't i'm not allowed to have a pen i'm not allowed to and it's torture because they give me a desk. They gave you a desk. Those are your ways.

Yeah. So it must be so tantalizing to have a hard surface, but nothing to write with. And all these thoughts. And I still have ideas for our shows, because, man, I do still have, like, I can't just turn it off. I want to ask, since the desk is behind you, what is your podcasting equipment? I'm straddling the toilet. i'm straddling the toilet you're straddling the toilet the toilet and they give me podcast equipment tank facing the tank yeah

they give me a they give me a camera and a microphone because video isn't writing talking isn't writing but right you know the the pen to paper is writing and we learned that didn't we during the strike blow it up yeah give hell yeah hey hey we can't because you're over there i'm gonna break you know i'm gonna break you out was this a decision you made based it sounded like you just kind of it seemed like you had totally cut bait here but you're something about what you're hearing today is maybe just him straddling a toilet i feel like is when i saw you perk up the idea of him straddling a toilet seemed to really activate

honestly what i would prefer scuzz man is that you maybe i'll come straddle that maybe just testify at the arbitration and tell people you So you can straddle the toilet facing the day. Ooh, testify at the arbitration? That's what I would prefer, to tell the full story, because I'm really taking a lot of the heat of this, and I've told them that we worked on this together, and I've told them, and they say, well, it's just you, so you coming here and maybe could take a little bit of the heat off me

and actually telling the full story. The testimony that you want him to make is that he came to you and said, I have a show I want to do called Who Wants to Be a Bussionaire? It's like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, but all the answers to the questions, you get different bus parts.

Then asked you to do a bunch of cold opens where he is covered in Vaseline and wants to fall down it happened so gradually you hear the description you understand why you would not really think you were getting involved in a scripted show until finally you're so deep in rewrites and i i actually got a look at the formal complaint registered against you and and i was surprised too because you haven't even brought up that in addition to the fact that you were writing at all there's like a sort of a plagiarism

licensing thing happening where i guess the third act post questions would always be wholesale lifted scenes from franklin and Again, with Scuzzman playing both parties. Franklin and Bash, yeah. And again, with the eyelines, with the having conversations where they're facing the same way. Yeah, which again was confusing. And Scuzzman's take on Bash,

I think he read too much into the name, the character name Bash. Like I think he played Franklin, I think pretty much like Franklin is meant to be played. Yeah, in the footage I saw, I thought it was a serviceable Franklin. Fucking nerd, Franklin. But the Bash character, you played kind of a bruiser, like kind of pinning people up against the wall

or pinning yourself up against the wall, I guess, which, again, spatially was confusing. And, yes, so the Franklin and Bash guys are coming after me pretty hard as well for lifting their scenes. I mean, that was in and Bash guys are coming after me pretty hard as well for lifting their scenes. I mean, that was in the complaint that Chris Kaiser read me when they came and delivered the subpoena. And he personally dragged me off to the cell. My arbitration is tomorrow, Scuzzman. So if you're going to testify or break me out or anything, time's running out.

Yeah, I think I'll go down there, talk to Chris Kreider. That's not his name. No, don't ask to speak to whoever go down there, talk to Chris Kreider. That's not his name. You got to get, no, don't ask to speak to whoever you just said. It's Chris Kreider, right? It's not Chris Kreider. It's not Chris Kreider. It's Kaiser, but it doesn't. Oh, man, I'm thinking of Chris Kreider.

I know. That's what you kept saying, yeah. But the, and I. I can go down there. You felt comfortable talking to chris kreider it feels like kaiser's maybe you're a little more apprehensive about that yeah i don't like the chris kaiser guy but if it was chris kreider maybe we could get him you know come i don't know who that is i don't know what he is oh yeah i't know who he is. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Yeah, maybe he's... Professionally or that's just something he likes?

Yeah, professionally, yeah. Well, hmm. I see him on TV, so I assume it's professional, but he could be just a guy off the street. He's singing Chris Chelios. So you want me to come down there and talk about Franklin and Bash? I want you to...

I can do that. No, no. That's not what I... I want you to help me tell the full story. I guess that probably wouldn't be helpful because... No, for you to just can do no no that's not what I I want you to tell I guess that probably wouldn't be helpful because no for you to just come down and no it's a real acknowledgement like it would be basically it was Zach no Zach from say by the bell was yeah Mark Paul Gosselaar ah yeah yeah I think Franklin or maybe you said Zach Woods for a second. You were briefly, the misconception that Zach Woods. Was either Franklin or Bash. Was either Franklin or Bash.

He'd have to be Franklin. Yeah. Wasn't he? Yeah. I know. You know, I get my names wrong sometimes. I had a whole pad and paper with me at one point. With names on it?

Yeah. What did you do with it? Well, hmm. at one point and uh with names on it what did you do with it well hmm i was using it to uh write down what i had to do for the day and it was hanging on one of the buses and i think it just like fell in the water or something you know you were carrying it around with you and it was hanging on one of the buses yeah carrying around me i come back from my day's work and it had names on it but it also had what you had to do and also i would that had well sometimes names are what he has to do yeah that's right i do names a lot of the plumbing work i was i had to keep track of and all the parts that I was buying.

But hey, man, I'm going to break you out. Yeah, don't try to do the fist bump with your camera. The fist bump thing completely confused my laptop camera, and it made it. It's a laptop camera without keys because, again, I'm not allowed to write, so it's just kind of more of a clamshell. But if you are going to gonna break me out if that is what you don't don't try to send me a cake with something in it i saw another guy here uh they're onto that they're onto that kind of method of breaking people they came up with it right like

the writers like they've known yeah the writers invented that concept yeah it's hard to come up with a way to break me out of because especially but if anyone could come up with something that no writer would ever it's true devise because you gotta figure the guy who created the show prison break is in the writer's guild exactly like it's very difficult to get around he he'd have to be yeah very difficult to get around a mind like that but if someone could come up with an entirely new approach to bringing someone out of prison that no one in the writer's guild would ever conceive of i truly believe scuzzman is that person i don't disagree i'm gonna work on it because uh you know i don't do hearings well you know i don't like to go to stuff like that so do you

think that now what you're saying what you're trying to say is that you're not your hearing is a little not what it used to be my hearing is definitely not what it used to be it's shot well once but i don't like got in the water it led to so many infections for you i have a lot of water in my ears and i can't seem to get rid of it and so you're saying you're gonna work on it the the the prison break it sounds to me like you're gonna come up with something but not anything right now no i'm gonna go back home that's not the process from what i gathered yeah i'm gonna go home and i'm gonna you know sit on it okay so experimenting with ideas for how to break down that coming up with that.

We're not doing that. Well, we can maybe toss around a few balls. I mean, I'm thinking, you know, go back to the well of what we just talked about here. You know, scabs and hockey. I think when I went on the hockey tangent there might be something there. So it has to be something we've already discussed. What we're working with is

just things that have been brought up in this conversation. Not as part of anything related. Specifics that resonated with you are just going to kind of pinball off each other. And hopefully that results in some kind of prison break. But this is how you get around the writer's guild.

No, no one else would approach it that way. No one else. You hit the nail on the head, son. Yeah, like the mongoose maybe plays a role or something. Oh, i completely forgot about him that would be that would be great the sum of things that have been discussed that you remember that we talked about just sort of the scabs now the mongoose and what if we kind of uh just got him out of the car just let him loose in the wga and run around yeah he can't get the the there was

him getting out of the car yeah but you we had gotten to the face i don't maybe we were kind of like figuring out i think we were just going to work our way down the body i just i mean they basically said that yeah that's false advertising we went from the antlers to the face and i kind of but he said what we were going to do with each thing, he said you're going to get the antlers and kind of go... Yeah, weaken the mind. Weaken the mind. But what would you do with the face? Well, you got to get the face,

and you got to start to talk to him, and then just kiss him a little bit on the face. Kiss the mongoose on the face. And then you start to kiss his neck. What do you say? So you do work your way down yeah you do work your way down i'm not saying you suck them off or anything like that we're not getting there okay okay you're not like that no no i'm not like that no one's no one's yeah no one

no one uh this is how you do it and once you get to the belly he should uh sort of relax into your arms you just chuck him out the window okay excuse me can i ask you a question i heard a rumor in here i heard a rumor in in the wj prison that you are pitching another game show called who wants to marry a bussionaire is that correct yeah is that what you're doing that's true feels pretty disrespectful to me um because that's an idea that we did discuss you want to be involved with with this project now well he's gonna need something to cover the legal fees when he gets out yeah yes i'm but it sounds a little bit like bringing in a mongoose to to kill the snake

like you're just gonna have a new problem well this is the process of working with the scuzzman you know and and it's it's a partnership that has been fraught but it's yielded a lot of positive things in my life yeah it's a double-edged blade you You always say that. Yeah. Sharp on both sides. Yeah. It's a blade that has two sides. They're both sharp, and both sides cut you. But at the end of the day, you get a pretty cool sword out of it. So they're both bad. Like, both sides of the blade have big problems for you.

But there's two different, totally different bad things that happen. Yes. And on any given day, one of them... You're acting like he's going to have the same problem. No. It's a very similar problem i mean much like a totally new problem much like a double-edged blade it's kind of the same problem but the strikes over wouldn't be the same problem that's true except for the fact that i mean it's like you brought up but it's mostly a plagiarism issue i think at some point. That element's not going away.

No, that's going to be sticky. I think at a certain point, the kind of just discovery phase of this hearing, of trying to figure out how this show came to be, I feel like they kind of got tired of even getting to the bottom of it. Now, what I'm mostly in trouble for is the Franklin and Bash stuff and the kind of outright places. When they say they got tired, you could say like, oh, well that's the goal of going on who wants to be a bussiness. Who's getting tired.

Getting tired, yeah. Retired, retired. Yeah, that whole area is fun. Just getting tired I think is fine. I don't think like retired is... But am I wrong? None of the buses have tires. Let's, retired. Yeah. That whole area is just getting tired. I think is fine. I don't think like, yeah, but am I wrong? None of the buses have tires. Let's get retired. Let's get retired.

Yeah. Or to retire a bus, you know, put the tires back, like put tires on it again. You know, we were, we've been talking about putting tires on Scuzzman's bus before,

but he's pretty against it. He, he wants to try other options yeah okay so i assume the tires we've seen it what you'll hear from scuzzman a lot is we've seen it i've seen that before yeah we've seen tires let's try to think of other things that could go i love replace wheels someone says that that something that we'll hear a lot from you, and then we do hear it. It's really like clockwork.

We just hear it. It feels good. It's satisfying. It's a formula that works. It can be tough when you're kind of trying to write with the Scuzzman for him to say, I've seen that. I've heard that before. I heard that just now when you said

it like that's not new you already pitched me that yeah you already you just pitched me that i said that that was my idea don't say that to me i don't want to see it ever again yes that's right yeah yes but it does challenge you to kind of find new like i you know what scuzz man always says is like creativity is best when there's like restrictions and boundaries and you're forced to kind of like. Yeah, you just go beyond what you even thought was possible because you're really even searching outside the confines of traditional language. Why do any of these characters have to be people or animals or any kind of beings that we're familiar with? You know, why can't they be something else? Yeah.

And I'm, you know, it's like, where did you land on that? You know, what kind of creatures are we talking about? Kind of like clouds, almost. Clouds with antlers is what I remember seeing. Clouds with antlers is what, yeah, so you saw that cut. Yeah, clouds with antlers, kind of where, excuse me, grab the antlers of the cloud and kind of mind control know mind control yeah yeah

like uh and make the clouds rain i i love i love to hear this because you know it's sort of like you know bill belichick you know and all the people that have worked with the scuzz man and it's sort of like my students sorry did bill belichick work with the scuzz man i didn't see the connection it's sort of like the students. Sorry, did Bill Belichick work with this Guzman? I didn't see the connection. It's sort of like the coaching tree, you know, that comes from Bill Belichick, like my writers, you know, working with me. I guess now I'm wondering what it was that you heard

that made you think of this, that you love to hear, because we've only been talking about one person. It's Dob. How it's a challenge, you know, how it's a challenge for him to to work with me and it's it's obviously made his writing better i mean look you know look at him look at him right now so okay i wouldn't point to my current situation as like proof of success but well i guess they don't come for you unless you've had some level of success yeah You know what I mean? That's true.

That's true. If we weren't making an impact, no one would have cared, you know? But all right, the idea of who wants to be a Bussionaire is sound and it resonates with America. But it's an idea that, you know, resonated to an extent that it must have seemed dangerous to some of the powers that be. Because they locked you up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They locked me up and they, you know. You're a revolutionary. You're a revolutionary. must have seemed dangerous to some of the powers that be because they must have yeah yeah yeah they locked me up and they you know you're revolutionary you're revolutionary yeah they did in some ways a

political prisoner it's not unlike bill belichick and his coaching tree yeah yeah it's it's it's what i think about in here every day i'm like i am kind of a bill belichick like figure oh so you think you would you wouldick in this scenario? Whoa, wait a minute. I thought I was Bill Belichick. That's definitely what I thought, too. Yeah, that was also what I thought. I'm not used to being as in tune with what Scuzzman is thinking

compared to you. You're like Mangini, Bill O'Brien, Romeo Cornell. Josh McDaniels. Josh McDaniels. We talk a lot about the Bill Belichick coaching tree in a lot of our writing sessions. Yes, yes, we did. And Scuzzman claims that there are two Bill Belichicks,

that there is not just one, that there's kind of the one who wins and the one who loses and that they're two different human beings. Okay, that might be just a misconception about when you cut away from him then cut back to him he thinks that's a different person because that's yeah he's so good they they put happy bill belichick out there they put sad bill belichick out there like okay so one is happy and one or they all have different emotions the one who's winning is kind of happy although he's a

pretty like frowny guy i guess in general okay i don't think we need to disparage the facial expressions of a well-respected coach in order to make it engaging podcast like i'm not just not in for like the clickbait we don't come like we don't want to hear like bill belichick is frowny yes and then that gets aggregated by all the blogs and then all of a sudden we're in these heated X battles on the X website that's just not how we like to court engagement

so if you want to do that go ahead and do it on another show and yank Cat Williams I just want to say yank Cat Williams yank Cat Williams y't Cat Williams. I just want to say. Like, you ain't him. You ain't Cat Williams. You ain't Cat Williams. You ain't Cat Williams. You ain't Cat Williams. Cat could go out here and, like, he can do his thing.

He can say his stuff on. He's earned that right. Yes. That's a hard-learned lesson for me is trying to do the things Cat Williams does and getting just the worst feedback. People don't want that from you. They don't want it. They're either offended.

They're confused. When I call people pimpin' and stuff. When I wear the suits I wear, they just don't. It hasn't been getting a great response. What's that? Get beat up by a middle schooler. I get beat up by a middle schooler. When I kind of do those things,

people don't receive them in the way that i uh that i thought they might um but scuzz man scuzz man you you do a pretty good cat i do a pretty good cat bye that was a hate gum podcast