Wondry subscribers can listen to armchair expert early and ad free right now. Join Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome, welcome. Welcome to armchair expert. I'm Dan Rather. I'm joined by miniature Mouse.

Hi there.

And we have a very special episode today.

We do.

I've been teasing that this was coming out, but it was the 20 year anniversary of the release of without a paddle on August 20. I had hoped we could time it perfectly, but Matthew was in Toronto filming the sequel to a very successful movie.

He's a big.

In which he plays Voldemort, which you'll.

Hear about in the fact.

Yes. Which is not. Maybe he doesn't play Voldemort, but yes. So, Seth Green, we love Seth Green, Matthew Lillard, myself, and we got to just go down memory lane for 2 hours. And it was so fun. And also, I'm going to add, to further confuse everybody, this is a Monday episode.

Yeah.

And it's video. And I know that's not how we're gonna do it, but I thought if ever there was one that would be fun to have on video, this would be the one. And why not? It's also our first episode of the New Deal. Welcome to our new deal.

Welcome, welcome to welcome, welcome.

Hello. It's Bob. So, yeah, please enjoy Seth Green and.

Matthew Lillard without a paddle reunion.

Without a paddle reunion. Wap reunion.

Uh oh. Uh oh.

That's. There it is.

What's up, guys? It's your girl Kiki. And my podcast is back with a new season. And let me tell you, it's too good. And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest. Okay? Every episode, I bring on a friend. I mean, the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox. The list goes on. So follow, watch, and listen to baby Tiki Palmer on the wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

He's an object.

Yeah.

People didn't like that.

It's complicated, guys. Real hard to be a people.

It is so hard to be a people.

Well, especially over distance. Like, it's one of the things that I love about both you guys, and I'd like to say I saw it coming, was that we're all like, this is what we do. It's a career. It's not just like, I got to make this movie.

I like being included in that. But in reality, especially for this movie, that was true for you guys. You guys were like a decade into acting professionally, that specific movie.

I really realized as it was happening that it was such a significant moment for each of us. That it was going to be incredibly important for each of us for it to work.

I was mostly just scared.

Scared. I think the funny thing is that what we tell ourselves past an experience is so powerful. Because I saw a dude who was explosive, funny, charming all the time, taking.

Risks, zero fear as my coping mechanism of, oh, my God, I don't belong here. I'm not certain what I'm supposed to do. They're all looking over there. I guess when we switch to that camera, we all move this way and, like, a little panicked inside that I'll be exposed as not deserving to be there. And a chip on my shoulder about coming from punk.

Sure.

And having loved both of you and wanting you guys to think I deserve to be there. It was complicated.

It was a complicated moment for you.

And then I think I'm, like, overly charming. No, but you're probably. No, but, like, fearless. Here's what I can do. I'm afraid about the acting, but I can jump off the waterfall like, please, brill, let me do that.

That'll prove it is funny what we tell ourselves versus what anyone else is even thinking. You were so there on purpose. And I, who had already met you at groundlings. And then I got punked by you ish.

Do you wanna walk through the scenario, what you guys did to him?

Yes. Punked.

I.

Right. Which I didn't know existed. I had spent, like, years hanging out with the cast of the seventies show. Cause Wilmer and I had done party monster together. And I just knew all those kids through the business. We'd all go hang out at the taping of the seventies show. And then sometimes go out for drinks afterwards. Cause it was a very pre cell phone camera time. It was an entirely different place where you could actually just go out as a gang of highly recognizable people. So Wilmer's like, oh, hey, you should come to. I'm doing a charity grab it. Just come after the taping. It's going to be great. And I was like, I don't know, I'm tired. And he was like, no, do it. And so I go. And it was at the Sunset tower. And I had just been in this room six days prior for a table read. And so I had been in this exact same room where all of the lights are incredibly bright. And I was like, oh, they remodeled this room. Cause a bunch of mirrored extensions were built in front of closets.

Wow. They redid this place, and they were like, let's put a ton of mirrors in here.

Well, I just didn't think about it. You would never imagine that there's, like, a hidden camera. All the lights were on. There's no music playing, and they're like, do you want a drink? And I was like, I'll get a drink. But this is a terrible party, I have to tell you. This party. And I started walking around, I was like, maybe we dim the lights.

This says a lot about you, and I think it's lovely, which is like, you got into this situation, and there's a ton of other actors there, and everyone's acting like they're gambling and stuff. And he is immediately like, I don't like the lighting. I'm changing the lighting in this room. And everyone in the camera department is like, oh, my God. Shit. Go up to f four. You know, like, they're changing exposures and everything. And he has no problem walking into a party that's not his party and completely changing the lighting because it didn't suit him.

Maybe you don't know how to.

That's not a people pleaser. And I'm jealous of it. It's an enviable quality.

Oh, that's funny. But it really felt like, oh, you.

Were gonna make it resolve everyone.

Yes. Dimming the light. I was like, you would have more fun.

You could raise money at this fucking thing. Like, you're not gonna raise any money if nobody's enjoying them.

Everyone looks like, I'm here for the charity.

And then Al, the guy from hits from the street, bet Al sheer, he looked familiar enough that I wasn't a scared of him. Takes me outside and tells me that the whole plane that we're all gonna give each other Covid, he takes me outside and says, hey, man, I wanna be cool. I like your movies. And I was like, okay. And my kid really likes you. And I was like, all right. And he says, listen, I'm a cop, and I'm undercover. Been undercover for weeks.

Oh, my God.

Breaking up this underground gambling ring. And I was just like, what are you talking about? And he goes, whose game is this? And I go, I literally don't know what you're talking about. My friend invited me to a charity thing.

I'm planning on giving $500.

I wasn't even trying to get in on it. Oh, that was the other thing. Coach comes over to me, and I auditioned for dude, where's my car?

With him.

So I think because I was so young in this business, and I've seen all the other young people come into it. I have a real soft spot for actors trying to do it. I had a lot of nice people say, hey, hey, hey. You totally fucking this up. Don't ever do that again. And you're just like, oh, thanks. Thank you. I actually appreciate that. So I like being able to give a heads up. You've probably never been here before, but I've been here. You all watch that step.

Letting folks know where the potholes are, as we would say in rap.

As we would say when I'm repeating.

Lyrics from Jay Z.

Okay, potholes on my lungs.

Hold on. I'm gonna make my first joke to Matt about Seth. So this is gonna be the 21st anniversary of the episode of Punkt.

Oh, it is.

No.

Oh, yeah. I don't need to.

You are deep.

I guess that's true.

But you did.

We're already in the dynamic that we had.

The whole movie.

21 years is gone by, and we're, like, already in the exact dynamic.

I should have brought it back at my kit.

Start with radio days.

What.

Was that your first movie?

That was, like, my 7th movie. How old were you? I was 1212.

Okay, long story short, this guy tells you there's gonna be a raid, and then all of a sudden, there's guys flying through the windows.

Literally somersaulted through the window. And I was like, this is so excessive, guys.

Oh, my God.

So I immediately see that none of these. These cops have guns. And I was like, okay, well, this is chill.

You weren't nervous at all?

Yeah, I was nervous, but I've also been in handcuffs a lot prior to this moment and been questioned about.

Did you say a lot?

Couple of times.

No, you don't. You don't strike me as that.

I was a bad kid.

Seth had the funnest history of. He wore trench coats. He kept size. What are they called? Psy swords.

I never had size, but I got into throwing knives.

Well.

Cause the second I found out that ninjas were a thing, I was like, well, I want to be a ninja.

Sure.

Naturally, that's an option. Yeah.

Well, I got picked on. As you can imagine, I was not a popular kid. I had a tremendous amount of energy. I was hilarious looking. I wore all of my sister's clothes cause we didn't have money. And then I had a mom who was eccentric and bought me norwegian shoes. And then I had to wear that shit to school in Philadelphia.

Like wooden shit?

Yeah, like straight up wooden clogs. There was at least three years that my sister and I rolled in no socks, in clogs.

Oh, my lord.

If you want to get your ass kicked in the same neighborhoods that Will Smith got his ass kicked. I didn't even play basketball.

It was really bad.

Did you fight?

I've been in a couple of fights.

I mostly threw punches or got punched.

Yeah, I mean, I, like, threw punches.

You swung back?

I flailed meaninglessly in the face of some serious aggression. I was also crazy. This one kid who'd been tormenting me, we were coming down the stairs. At one point, he was just, like, four stairs ahead of me. I just fucking left off the stairs, wrapped my hands, like, around his neck, and started punching him in the face. It was. We both fell.

Oh, wow.

To the polished concrete floor. Four more stairs below. Why did I do that?

Well, that's a bit of the red hair. Yeah, you always got the x factor really quick. 1 second story. So Monica and I are talking, and I was explaining to her that I, growing up, saw on, like, five different occasions, redheads get in fights at my school. In most cases, they were kind of outmatched size wise, and that they started crying right before the fight. And I saw a strengthen and a veracity I've never seen anywhere else other than the redheads. And they always won. And she goes, I find it very hard to believe that every redhead you saw get in a fight, they started crying first and then won. And I said, let's call Aaron weekly. So we call my best friend, and Monica goes, how did you phrase this? Something like, what happens when Redhead's fights? He goes, oh, well, first of all, they start crying.

And then.

It was like, the exact. Anywho, the point is, we knew each other from punk. I think that's. Yeah, but who got in the movie first? You were in without a paddle first?

I was, because I had just made the italian job with Donald Deline for Paramount.

Great movie, by the way.

Great movie.

Great movie.

It was the only time in my entire career that the head of a studio was like, we want to be in the Seth green business. And I was like, thanks, sherry Lansing. What do you have for me? And Donald was like, we have this comedy. This character is written as a fat guy, but maybe he's a short. And I was like, oh, fuck it. Let's read it.

That's a great time for us to introduce. And this will reign as an excuse about some of the jokes in the film. It's indicative of the period. This is 2003, and to make a comedy. Yeah, you're gonna have a short guy?

Well, it's more the archetype that you can fill to make a very specific type of physical joke over and over again. Whoever's playing whatever the archetypical role is has assumed the burden of carrying out all the physical gags possible on behalf of their body type. John Cleese talks about that endlessly, like, you know what you're there to do, do, right? You're gonna shamelessly do it in a way that lets the audience feel the thing that you need them to feel.

Yeah, it just was a different time. I don't think the executives right now are like, hey, we're having a hard time finding a fat so or a little person. That conversation's not happening.

No.

You know, legally, I don't fit the criteria for the little person, but I'll choke that down.

I watched it this morning. I never seen it.

You did.

Oh, my gosh.

I'm curious how it resets real quick.

Three takeaways first, and major takeaway is it's so fun and nostalgic. That type of movie is gone. And I really was like, oh, yeah, I get why everyone loves this and feels so connected to it.

Great.

Uh oh. I have warned you about it, though.

You'd warned me about some things that would trigger me.

I do an indian accent in the movie again. I would not. Oh, my God.

Of course.

This is like setting up the 2005. I see that in the script, and I'm like, okay, I can do that. And then, of course, Monica and I are becoming really good friends, and we're talking about that accent, and I'm really understanding. Like, the only fucking example if you're indian and your kid was Apu, and I'm like, oh, my God, Monica. I have done the fucking accent, and I feel terrible. So I was like, just don't ever see that movie.

But that's not why I didn't. It felt like a boy movie.

You weren't a twelve year old boy.

Two is. You're the exact same person.

Really?

I can't believe it when you're, like, on your motorcycle and the jokes you're making and even when you're singing in the car. I was like, wow, he has not changed. But in a good way. In a good way. It was like, oh, you've always been that. I liked it.

You don't agree with that?

You've just seen so much actual internal evolution. You witnessed your own expansion in ways that the you in that movie wouldn't have actually imagined possible.

I watched it last night with the girls many scenes. My body's so tight. You guys like, watching? Oh, my God. I was new, and I was pretty stiff. Sometimes I just grew as an actor over time. I was watching it, and I was also thinking, like, oh, my God. I was, like, so tiny.

You were tiny. I actually was like, he looks so tall. You're not gonna like this, but I think the bigger your body is, the shorter you appear.

All right.

That's why I never get real deep into the bed. That's exactly what's preventing me from going into the cause. Otherwise, I'd be wolverine.

Guys, wait. What's your third takeaway?

The relationship? And I know just from hearing Dex, he reflects on that time as being so special. Yeah, I get it. Like, I watched it, and I was like, oh, man. They all are firing on all cylinders. The chemistry's so good. It looks like such a fun time.

I loved these guys so much right away, and they were so kind, and it could have been competitive, and it wasn't. And it was very mentoring and kind and helpful.

You were so funny. We were both like, how do I steal his jokes right away? Like, oh, my God.

In fact, I think I stole a jump years. And in the makeup chair, you're like, don't you ever do that again. And I was like, I think I made a joke. Not on set.

Right. It wasn't coming through the thing we had all done.

I don't remember.

I remember.

I don't remember specifically, because we were.

All throwing out some kind of one liner coming into a scene. We're all entering a scene.

I have not thought of each one of you.

Thank you. I'm glad.

Cause I feel like, I swear to God, now that I fucking remember.

I haven't thought about it, but I remember each one of these. These experiences. Cause they were so seminal in all of our experience together. I've been working for as long as I had been working. I knew.

Wait, go tell what happened.

Each one of us starts to say a line, and then we do a second take, and we each come through and add an improv line. And then the third take through, you said one of the things that I'm.

Under my third improv. And then you grab my first improv. That's what happened.

We were just, like, picking up each other's shit because it felt very cares.

It was like I had taken his.

Daughter, but it's because of where you came from, right.

So, first of all, absolutely. It was not a big deal. Yeah.

Your line was better than anything I was ever gonna come up with.

I'm, of course, embarrassed by that because, again, I had done punk before that it was just me. I'm out there improving these things. And then prior to that was the groundlings, and that was the conversation we had in the makeup trailer. I hate that you remember. I do, because I really regret it, but I remember trying to get into it in this way of, like, you didn't really do, like, a comedy background, huh? Matt, I'm trying to lay out, like, you would never do that at the gromden. Like, you would never improv someone and someone would take it. And so, yeah, I was triggered and scared that I sucked in the movie and how embarrassing. And I'm sorry. And, yes, we should all just take whatever comes up and make the movie great.

Oh, it's embarrassing.

Well, we all learn and grow, even though you're the same.

You know, it's funny. Can't you talk about the Bidus morphe that was happening?

The Biden body dysmorphia?

Oh, you and I, for the record, were so freaked out about taking our shirt off and being present in our own bodies.

Yes.

That the fear that was a part of that movie from beginning to end was palpable. I mean, it was defining, and we.

Were obsessed with the fact that Seth just looked like a fucking genus.

We were working out in between takes. I wasn't eating. I was, like, in my underwear the whole time going, look at this. I'm so fat. And I look back now, and you look great. I think that every time we look back were so ensconced in this fear of that moment. And the reality is like, oh, you were so beautiful for those people at home, like, dude, let it go. It does not serve you at all. I teach acting a lot. I brought this woman in to talk about the woman's perspective on the journey, and she told this great story about how when she was younger, she had this white bathing suit and she wanted to wear it in the movie, but she was terrified to put on this two piece white bathing suit. And at the end of the day, she looks at these pictures of her, like, ten years later, she goes, I was gorgeous. Yeah, it was so beautiful. And the story I was telling myself at that time in my life was.

So destructive, and it's impervious to anything. You can't break out of it.

And there's no amount of, like, accolades or work. It's just a mindset. But there's got to be a way in the moment to tell yourself, this isn't the truth.

We were. And we talked about non stop. That whole sequence is five days away. We were like pageant contestants. This swimsuit section was coming up.

There's like 15 days in her underwear. Do you remember? We went to italian restaurants.

I was just gonna say celebration. Yeah, with Deline. What was that great place?

Ate, like, a hearty olive garden.

And, Seth, do you remember? Not wanting to take the compliments, but you look like a gymnast. So Matt and I. But I'll be doing our push ups.

Push ups and sit ups every day.

You joined in, and we were even like, this asshole doesn't need to do.

Such a dead push ups.

He's got good ass cheeks.

Your shit was so legit. You are pound the most beautiful man in Hollywood. I've said it a million times.

Have you seen Kevin Hart?

Oh, man, he looks fantastic.

Incredible.

Yes.

He survived breaking his back because he's in such good shape. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so you were in the movie first?

Yes.

I'm bringing him back to a semi chronological timeline. And then you were in before me. But how did you get in the movie? Because you guys are really hot. That sounds embarrassing, but you were just in the italian job and you were just in Scooby Doo, which was enormous.

Hit the studio, love. The only question was whether or not he is this leading man. The guy who kisses the girl, the guy who proposes to the.

I tried to talk myself out of that film, like, three times.

You did?

I did. I read it. I'm like, I don't love it. And that could be also my own fear about being that guy. And there was a whole section in the middle with the women and the trees. And I'm like, that's so stupid. It doesn't work. And I sat down with Brill and Deline, and I'm like, I just think the comedy's off in some places. And I articulate that there are two different forms of comedy in here. There's this big, bold ridiculousness, and then there's this really fellowship driven our friends running for your life, really high stakes and, like, girls in a tree with long hair on their legs in two different movies. And I was like, this doesn't make sense. At the end of the day, they came through with an offer, and I was like, regret what you did, not what you didn't do. They were like, we have this guy, Dax Shepherd. Seth Green's in. I love Seth Green.

We just got to work on Scooby.

That was Scooby one, Scooby two.

So this is the reason that I remember I loved Matt for so long. He's one of my favorite actors.

If you didn't fall in love with Lillard on screen, your eyes weren't open. Door.

Well, I saw him in SLC punk, and I was like, oh, shit.

He had to go deeper.

Cut.

Well.

Cause, like, the things that you see him in, it's his studio stuff. And then you see the stuff that he's like, this is my heart. And I'd put this on film so that you can do what you want with it. That's the shit that impressed me. And so we got to do that scene together. I was so happy. I met Gunn, too. Like, it was an incredible experience. And so, at that point, they were like, we're thinking about, maybe it's Matt Lillard. I said, if this is me and Matt Lillard and Dax shepherd, this is a hit. The movie will work.

How did you get.

I ended up getting the offer, and I said yes. Did you audition?

So not only did I audition, and this is where I'll say, seth, really? Seth and Brill? Brill wanted me, which was awesome.

Why did he want you?

He liked Punk'd. He thought I was doing something really cool on Punk'd. Then I went in redden, and I was not good reading the script. I was not very good. And Seth had been brought in to read with me, and Burr was like, forget the script. You guys just improv scenes. Because he knew I could improv. And then when I was improving, I was very relaxed and calm. And thank God Seth's a great improv. So we just basically improv three scenes that they sent to Sherri Lansing, president of the studio, to get me in that movie, but would not have got it by reading Tom size. And so, really, you and Brill are the reason we all got put in.

A situation to win, and we did this little movie to Manga's point, they don't make anymore. Nobody's making a $20 million.

Yeah, I looked it up. 19 was made for 19 in another country. Okay, so we all get the movie. We're all in the movie. We land in New Zealand. That was really important for everyone to see.

Blacks were playing the, like, best of.

That was in the middle of.

Yeah, I think when we got there, there was more like a World cup thing. So we get down there, and what's really cool, and, again, doesn't ever happen. In fact, that's the only time this ever happens. We were there, like, three weeks early to learn to do all this river work in canoes. What an awesome way to, like, bond in a hurry. We were not good at it, and we were going through things that canoes don't go through. And they had hired this amazing dude, Auggie Auggies. And he was fijian.

Yes.

He had just won a gold medal fucking rowing in a previous Olympics, and he was such a stud. And we all were, like, trying our hardest to impress Auggie.

That was so cool, too. He was like, oh, you guys are gonna get this.

He did say at one point, he's like, no matter what happens on the river, if you're in trouble, you have to get yourself out. Cause nobody's coming to save you. That scared the shit out of me. For the next three weeks, remember the first thing we got into the canadian.

Canoe in that whirlpool?

It was like a little waterfall. At the bottom of it was this churning thing. And there's three grown men up to, like, our waist canoe, trying to get it out and keep falling back into the. God. That was not a great introduction again.

Because it was my first movie, I thought, this is how it went. We did all these things that let's just say I haven't since gotten to do. We're jumping off waterfalls, and I was operating under this very weird thought of. I felt like I was at an amusement park. Like, well, this is safe. You're on a movie. They've got this all figured out. If they're letting me do this, everything's cool. And let's just cut right to, like, the craziest moment probably on it also, they told us, oh, it's summer New Zealand. You're good. The water was never above 50 degrees. We were raising the whole movie.

We had no body fat with zero carbs.

There's one scene in particular, and we arrive and we learn of this. And I have to be delicate how I say this, but one of the stunt guys the day before was shooting the canoe, going through this class five with all these eight foot drops and stuff. And this was an olympic rower, and kayaker came out, and he cracked his head open really, really bad.

Broke his ribs, shattered his shoulder. They had to airlift him out. It was my stunt guy, and the idea was, five times a day, they would open a dam, and tens of millions of gallons would come rushing down the Waiareki, and they would then in this huge wash of water, they would put three kayakers in this so that they can get a shot of people kayaking in a class five rapid, which we were supposed to be doing with no helmets and very little safety. And this is before, like, you just take things out with a computer. He did it three times, and on the third time, he got absolutely and.

Airlifted out of there. And then the following day, we're there, and we're not going to try to ride a canoe through, but where the canoe has tipped in the movie. Now they need footage of us going through that same section. So we're just jumping off of a rock into this thing, and they're going to film us. And you're not acting. You're just, like, trying not to die.

Survive.

I did try to make, like, hilarious faces.

Might explain what happens next, which is, this is crazy. We're already a little nervous. That was the day where I was like, oh, if the stunt guy is getting airlifted, maybe I need to watch up. So we all jump in, and then Matt and I get to the side of the river in. Seth's gone. There's no fucking Seth. Like, I don't know how many seconds it really was, but it felt like 30 seconds of, like, where's myself? Where's Seth? Where's Seth? Where's Seth? Guys on jet skis are starting to rip around because there's jet ski safety. I'm panicked, like, because I know what just happened to stunt guy. And Seth is gone. He's not visible. He came up, like, 300 yards down the river.

They had said to me, worst comes to worst, you just ride the river. We got a net down here. And then we got a guy with the binoculars at the end of the river.

Oh, my God.

So they're like, look, we're gonna get you. And if worse comes to worst, we.

Will eventually find you.

Promise that we will bring you back United States.

We're gonna figure out how to sell your stuff.

But you submerged and went under the.

Safety line, the merged safety line. But then the second guys, they got me. Like, I stand here, guys, we got him.

But he was Monica. He was very, very far away.

It was really funny.

But within that, we also had the greatest accomplishment that I have not ever felt in my life. But we had this moment where we had this, like, little class three wave that we had tried multiple times for three weeks straight. I was in the front. Dax was in the back. Cause he was steering and set up.

To be in the middle, keeping balance.

Sure. Very important role.

And you would hit this class three little wave. You want to get through the wave and at the other side, be on this canadian flat bottom canoe. And every time.

Every time, we either fell over or it filled with so much water by the time we get through just our shoulders would be above water, and the only time it worked was when we were shooting it. That was unbelievable.

I have to thank Jonathan Brown for making us all look like superheroes. He was ours that shot that film.

Did they ask you guys, are you guys very, very proficient swimmers?

No.

Cause, like, I would be fully dead immediately.

You could always say, no. I've definitely worked on projects where the actor's like, I'm not doing this.

There was a really hysterical moment with Burt Reynolds, so he arrived, which was incredible. We were all so excited, and at that point, there was.

That's intro.

Okay.

You were as excited as any child about to meet Santa Claus. I have never seen anyone adore a man from afar more than you adored.

Yeah, I brought posters with.

Yeah.

He got some that I couldn't get my hands on for me and left him in my trailer before he.

Would literally, preemptively, without you asking.

Yeah.

Would leave dvd's for you.

Brie got several, too. She hadn't asked for any, but they.

Your ex girlfriend.

My ex girlfriend. Brie?

No, the cheese. Burt's like a crazy cheese. It's what killed him in the end.

Here's the two photos Burt gave her. One was with him bare naked on a horse, holding a dog over his private parts. And then the famous rug one, of course, naked on a rug. These are the ones for breeze, and.

Each of them on a horse like this.

He rescued it, clearly, Seth, it was probably injured. And it said, like, beautiful brie. This is when I was young and cute like Dax. It was one for both of us. Yeah.

Tell the story from showing.

I had been begging our director, Brill, to let us jump off the hundred foot waterfall. We did jump off, like, a 25, 30 foot one with the four wheeler gag.

I had zero interest in jumping off this hundred foot waterfall, it should be.

Said, but I was really driving brill nuts at this point. He's like, they're professionals. I'm like, you think there's someone who's professional at falling through the air? This is a racket. You're proposing to me that you can be better or worse at falling through the air?

It's really how you land more than.

I was driving him nuts. Burt got there, and I thought, you know, I'm gonna use Bert to help me convince Brill that I should do it. And I tell Bert, like, listen, they got this stunt come up, and they don't want to do it. And he pulls me, saying, listen to me. I did the exact same thing on my first movie on deliverance, I insisted they let me go over this waterfall. I broke my back. And you cannot tell it's me in the movie. Do not jump off that waterfall. And I was like, okay.

The greatest thing about that is he showed up at this incredible resort in the Waiareki. They've thrown this party for Burt like it's supposed to start at seven. And Burt shows up like 11:00 at night.

Well, time change.

There's five of us waiting for him. He was everything you wanted him to be. He loved his stories. I mean, this is the best possible way. The story is probably jumping off a 20 foot waterfall. That was probably the reality. He probably slapped his back. But over time, it popped to him and now it was 700ft and he almost died.

I ate that bear.

But we sat there and every one of us just let him be the movie star that he was.

And he was so loving to the actors.

He was.

He was rough with directors, but he loved actors.

He got into a place in his career where he needed to remind people that he knew what he was doing. He would make a bit of a demonstration on set about how much homework he had done or how good he is at his job. That's a common folly. It just is an insecurity thing. You could tell, man, it was the first movie he had done in a while. And getting back at a job for a studio, not just not the lead. He was much older and playing like an older man, really struggling with his own vanity, really struggling with what he can look like and what he's supposed to play that can challenge an actor, any human.

It's hard to sort of grow old gracefully.

We already admitted were bad version would be vain, the kinder would be, we're insecure. You and I were already. I don't know if I'm good looking enough to be in these.

We grew up with that baggage.

Yes. Stay tuned for more armchair expertise, if you dare.

What's up, guys? It's your girl, Kiki. And my podcast is back with a new season. And let me tell you, it's too good. And I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest. Okay. Every episode, I bring on a friend and have a real conversation. And I don't mean just friends. I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox. The list goes on. So follow, watch, and listen to baby. This is Kiki Palmer on the one app or wherever you get your podcast.

Tam tam the mo, by the way.

Still get people do they? Oh, yeah, because the podcast, we talked about it. Big stunt that he did.

Yes.

It's not even in the.

Please tell the story. Yes, it is.

Him going over the railing.

I don't know if it is. I just watched him. But he was going to get shot and go over a railing.

Over a wood pile.

Okay. Over the wood pile.

Yeah. Sorry. I don't know why that's so.

I thought it was a Rayleigh point.

Is, he's gonna take a big fall.

Sure.

And of course, there's a stuntman brought in to do that. He's, like, in his seventies. By the way, don't do your own stunts. Really? Like, get him out of here. I'm doing the stunt. Get my wetsuit.

Oh, gosh.

He travels with it instead of having pads that you should have or normally would have. His move is to put on a wetsuit. And he's like, I can jump off anything as long as I have the wetsuit to land.

Absolutely no rationale.

He got squibbed. He goes to launch himself over the logs. He gets caught on the logs and starts to, like, scoot over the logs of. And flops on the backside. So three of us had rapped, and we stuck around to watch it. The entire place erupts and literally, it's like. That's a wrap on Burt Reynolds bringing stunt gun.

This is such a great point of perspective. Cause, like, in my memory, he did it.

Hell, yeah.

I thought he did it, too.

You're him.

That's why I'll never forget Burt Reynolds slapped me in a scene. And I don't think I've ever seen you jealous of me in your entire life.

Except for that one moment, I was furious.

You were like, how did he slap you? Why?

You put up with so much from him.

Yeah, but do you know the thing about the slap? So Burt Reynolds and all those cannonball run movies and any movie he did with Dom Deluise, when one of them would forget their lines, they'd slap each other. And then at the end of the movie, there would be a great gag reel, and you'd see Burt Reynolds slapping everyone. And so he slapped Lillard, and I was like, oh, man, I wanted to get slapped.

Yeah, that's sad. But your point about age, everyone feels this, right, whether you're an actor or not. But for an actor, visually, you see a timeline of your life and little things changing in your body and your face. It must be hard. It's hard for anyone. It was just my birthday, as we just discussed.

Happy birthday.

You guys already sang to me. It was very sweet. But, you know, it's like, whoa, no, we don't have to do it again. It makes you think about. We've been talking about it so much like death and mortality, and I. And when you see the visual representation, it must be harder.

I don't feel different.

Exactly.

I still feel like this beautiful boy in the movie, and I look at my body and I look at my face, and I'm like, oh, I am not the same. And I do love this sense of gained wisdom over time and having an ownership of a career that I'm proud of, being an artist. All these things I've grown into as a man, I still look at who I was growing up and, like, you've come so far. It's humbling.

You have a bit of compassion for yourself. Like, why was I doing that to myself?

In my mindset, I've always been scrambling up a ladder with very little success. When I look back at my career beyond my wildest dreams, have I been successful?

Exactly.

And still working.

You couldn't shoot this on time. I wanted this to come out on the exact 20th anniversary, and it's delayed because you're in another fucking country where you're in Toronto.

Toronto.

Don't geotag him. He's trying to get some food with his family.

Five nights is the single biggest thing to ever happen in my life. That movie, five nights at Freddy, isn't that crazy? So five nights at Freddy's is a franchise that came out last year.

The movie?

Yeah, it's a video game years $20 million movie me. Wow.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

Guys without a paddle. Still my biggest movie.

Is it really?

I've been in a couple that made more, but I wasn't really in them. You know, like, I wasn't on the poster, but for a movie that I was one of the main people. And it never got better film wise, it went downhill from there.

But you also got to put in years on a drama with some of the most gifted intelligence.

I've always had great luck on tv, and, of course, I never embraced it.

You've just become the same thing. The shows are the shows, the movies are the movies. Yeah. Because of the reality tv, I think it's just democratized the concept of fame. People become intimate with you in whatever your form of expression is, and I'm.

At total peace with everything. I could not be more delighted with the way everything shows out. Right. But that first movie was as good as it got for me. In the trades. Our joke was that the three of us combined, hopefully, would equal, like, an Owen Wilson, right?

We were like, let's hope that the.

Three of us adds up to what Owen Wilson. I just want to touch on one of the stories Burt told at that dinner because it is, to this day, probably my favorite story I've ever heard. And I wonder if you remember. It's the Hal Needham story. He's living with Hal Needham in real life. Burt Reynolds. And one day Hal comes home from work and he says, bert, you gotta take me to the hospital. I broke my back. And Burt goes, Hal, I don't think if you broke your back, you would have driven home and blah, blah, blah. He's like, take me to the fucking hospital right now. So they go to the hospital and Hal and Bert are in the examination room. This is a weird part of the story, but he does include that Hal's, like, flirting with the nurse and got something going with the nurse. And the doctor seems to be annoyed by that. Burt's opinion is that maybe the doctor and the nurse were having an affair or something. Stuntman, stuntman and direct man, he directed Hooper. He directed smoking the bandit, the most legendary stuntman of all time. So they give him an x ray.

The doctor comes in and he says, you have broken your back worse. You have a good deal of fluid in your lungs. And I have to drain the fluid out before I put you in the back brace and send you on your way. And he says, okay. And he says, you're gonna have to stand up against the wall. I need you standing. I'm gonna put this needle in your back. And then he says to the nurse, the doctor says, I want you to hold his leg. And Hal is in the full little gown. And so Hal's against the wall, and right when the doctor puts the needle in his lungs, Hal shits all over the nurse who's holding his legs. Do you not remember this story? I've never heard a story in my life where I thought it was going in one direction. It was about how tough he was. He was flirting with her. And then was the doctor and him gonna fight. And I'm like, hell. Shit all over the nerves. That's what this story is about.

I do not remember.

How could you have forgotten?

I remember the next day you going, I just wonder what part of that was real. And I was like, man, don't you dare let logic stand in the way of a story of this magnitude. Just allow yourself to think that happens. I think another fun thing. So one of the very scary things was like all the river work and the jumping. The next thing is Bart the bear.

Oh, God, I tell that story all the time.

Okay, we want to hear your version because we've heard that and I want to see the comparison.

I bet Bart the bear comes up on this podcast more than any other thing from.

Stories we could probably recite.

You know Cedar point, don't you?

Of course. Yeah, of course. It was the best. It was the best.

I can't.

Magnum X champion.

That was like a family vacation. Cedar Point was a family vacation.

This is a runner now for anyone who's from Michigan or even around there will start talking and drives her fucking mess.

And by the way, we all say.

The same exact, the best low res.

Okay, so your versions of Bart.

Bart gets there, right? He's taken like seven or eight stops.

Utah, San Francisco, China, Australia, New Zealand.

I thought it went to Alaska. Oh, didn't he go up?

You're right. Utah, Alaska.

How many ports he needed to stop in? Or was this other he was doing along the way? Bart's doing a bunch of appearances. He signed an autograph, crab fair parts.

In Beijing, signing all.

Exactly. So. So he gets there. They'll have this meeting. They're literally anyone who's menstruating. Please don't be on set.

Okay? That's part of it.

They've got, like, a long ladled frying pan that they fill with coffee and whipped cream.

How hard that is to lift it. Like, think about cleaning a pool, how challenging that is, and then balance a fucking frying pan.

And they would get this bear all hopped up on coffee and whipped cream. And then they bring Bart out. Bart's trainer talks like this.

Done.

And his son's there.

He's got a dart gun duty.

Yeah.

And so long and short of it is there's a scene where the cameras here, Bart is moving across the foreground and Dax and I are behind. Now, listen, the bear has learned not to go over these little wires that literally will get you in the ankles. They're electrocuted little wires.

Yeah.

During the training they have been, but then they don't have them electrified when we're actually shooting. It's just precaution. And it's a psychological trick that they play with Bart the bear. This could be the moment that Bart was like, hey, these aren't on.

Yeah, we don't know.

So they get this shot, right? And we start shooting action. And the bear starts to walk across. All of a sudden through the bear stops and you hear the trainer goes, Bart, no, Bart, no, Bart. Don't look at the bear. And Dax and I are sitting there like, what the fuck? He's like, don't run. Don't panic, boys. And the bear's like, oh. Oof. Oof. And you can see the bear getting agitated. He's like, don't look at the bear sitting in our underwear.

Do you remember? He tore the fake tree apart. He attacked.

There was a fake tree.

Just demolished this fake tree. Like, we saw his wrath.

And he's screaming, and we are like, literally two naked men.

We were dressed. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

All of our naked stuff.

Now I'm embarrassed, but, yeah. And then you see his son with the gun trained on the bar. What else did I forget?

My version, of course, is here are the rules around Bart. If you're on your period, you can't come to set. Two, don't look Bart in the eyes. Three, don't run in front of Bart. It'll trigger his predatorial instinct. And then don't be afraid around him because he can sense it. In the very first scene in the movie that you just set up, if you recall, my back is completely to bar. You guys are staring at him, and you guys are telling me to turn around. There's a bear. I turn around, I look Bart directly in the eyes. I scream, and then I run. And I was like, guys, I'm gonna do three of the four things. I'm just not on my period. That's the only thing I have going for me.

It was a wide shot, so there's nobody close to us on either side. It's nothing but darkness behind us. And the bear going across. And they don't look at them, boys. Don't look at.

Okay, but now turn around and look.

At them and scream and run. And then the other weird one that happened was when Bart was thrashing that horse trailer when he needed to work, but he was in there thrashing the horse trailer. Everyone doesn't know what to do. And Doug got in the horse trailer by himself and shut the door. And we're listening, and you keep hearing Doug go, no, Bar.

No, Bar.

And then the trailer moves around.

Then you hear, oh, bar.

Oh, good boy, Bar.

And clearly, he's calmed him. And he would lay on top of Doug, remember.

Thing I remember the most was him laying on top of Doug, because you would all of a sudden hear that, like, good boy part.

It was madness.

Monica.

Yeah. I'm shocked you guys survived this.

And everyone had the opportunities for all.

Of us to die on that movie. And none of us did, guys. None of us did.

And everyone had a lot of scars that worked with Bart, except for Doug. Do you guys remember Doug's eyes?

No.

They were magic. They were, like, the most beautiful, soothing blue eyes I'd ever seen. I was like, that's why he can get down with Bart the way he can. Something about those eyes until you can't.

Still a bear.

That's right. Popped up on coffee and sugar.

Exactly.

That was crazy.

Everything that happened on that movie is super imprinted for me because it's my first one. I probably remember so many details. That was like your 29th movie.

It was the first time that I had gotten a direct offer. It was the most I'd made on a movie at that point. It was the first time that the studio was like, yeah, we're gonna put you on the poster on purpose.

On purpose.

You know what I mean?

So there was a little bit of not pressure, but I was like, all right, guys, well, this is our shot.

You leveled up, and it was like a thing.

Why didn't it level us up? It leveled you up. I never got leading man role after that.

That's so honest and true. And we talked about it. I got a lot of opportunities out.

Of that, for sure.

You guys were known quantities, and I was this new thing, and I was a part of something that worked, and I got a ton of opportunities. I got to lead maybe three movies in a row right after none of them worked. You'll be happy to know.

So it was a short live.

I'll be happy to know.

I know you're always waiting for me.

I do think it's funny at that point in your career, because you were brand new. You had lots of ideas of what fame looked like, lots of ideas of what money looked like. That was a big thing for you. You're like, this is what I'm doing. If I ever make money. And I look at your life now, you're doing very well. And the difference between that moment.

Fantasy. Yeah, yeah. You were so rich to me, and.

You probably said, so. Did he say, I don't know, but.

I went to your house.

Yeah.

Sadina. And I was like, oh, my God, look at this pool. And he has a Porsche.

And I think that's funny now because you have who you are now.

And what's funny is I got the money when I stopped trying to get the money.

That's how it.

Happiness goes. Has anything to do with money.

No, it's the Mike Tyson quote, because when someone tells me that having a lot of money will make you happy. What I know about that person is they've never had a lot of money. Money. I'm like, whoa.

I had told 26 year old Dax that that was the case. You'd be like, fuck you. You're rich. You have no idea what you're talking.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, I know. I say that all the time. Like, I'm passing this on. I wouldn't listen. You're not gonna listen unless you can experience it. Yeah, well, I think movie wise, unless there's any other scenes you guys think of that we should chat about. But I think now what would be fun is just what was happening off camera was so sweet and so fun. We started in Wellington in the North island of New Zealand. And then we were kind of on the road for the second half. And when we were in New Zealand, you had an apartment. I had an apartment. You were at the Intercontinental hotel life room service up.

Yeah. I'm surprised you guys didn't go for that.

Well, I was saving, if you guys recall, all my per diem.

Yeah.

Again, back to the money fears. I was like, I get this per diem, I gotta save it. Remember you got, like, a nice apartment. It was by a gym. I'm like, how much is that place? How much of your per diem are you spending? You're like, I'm not thinking about my per diem. That's what it's there for.

I get the money.

Oh, it was driving everything. And I saved all my per diem until I relapsed at the end of the movie. And then magically, all of this per diem. By the time I got on the airplane, I had zero per diem. I was like, where'd all the per diem go? Oh, that's right. I've been fucked up for four days. And that was all completely gone.

I just think your ability to express your own journey in sobriety publicly is incredible.

It really is.

Oh, thank you.

Because I would be like, I can't share that.

There was a lot of things for me that was going on, but one of them was I was maybe two months sober when I got there. And it's like my first movie. And you guys are normal, so you can drink and have fun. And I feel like I'm missing out on that. And I don't know how much I was talking about, but I guess when Ethan arrived, I was really fucking happy. Cause Ethan was also sober. I could at least commiserate with him. And he and I were both smoking 6700 cigarettes a day. If you recall drinking 5000 cigarettes at.

One point when we were working together. I remember specifically because we were out in the lake and you spit something out of your mouth that I had never seen before and I was like, are you alright? And you, and you said, yeah, I'm just not smoking cigarettes anymore. So all this shit is coming out. The second you stop smoking, your lungs start doing the thing that they're supposed to do and start filtering all this shit.

Oh, my.

Out of your lungs. You wind up like coughing up all of the stuff that's getting chopped it.

But he was sober too.

Well, he quit smoking weed.

The athleticism required. I just knew it was gonna be endurance challenge and also it was like a first big opportunity. I was like, I do not want to be at all cloudy. I'm gonna run my program. I'll find my moments of sleep. I'm gonna eat what I need to eat, I'll exercise when I need to exercise. Like everything for the movie at that point. And I knew that smoking, he wasn't.

Smoking weeds, but he drank.

People were buying me shots all night.

Walking in New Zealand with Seth, he is the most recognizable celebrity.

I look exactly like me. Exactly like you.

Refuse to, refuse to wear a baseball.

Hat a little bit like, what? I'm just going to a movie. Let me be a people.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

Let me be a people.

And we have to surround him to get him out.

I loved it.

You're like, I'm in the movie too. Hi, I'm Dax.

Is punk down here? He is not.

Okay.

But then all that to say one of you two, I feel like it was you. Matt got the idea, let's rent. There's this spectacular house.

Oh, yeah, the king of Thailand.

Thailand had built some crazy house. He didn't live there and he was just about to rent it out for the first time. And you figured that out and you were like, let's all share this. Okay, that'll be all my per diem. But, uh, yeah, that is just like as special as it gets.

And we were playing games.

Yes. You were making us do.

So much fun.

My birthday every year. We'll play like celebrity running charades.

You told us we all had to bring five minutes of our favorite movie.

Coffee and clips. Yeah, that's funny. Coffee and clips is you ask people to bring a clip of a movie. It can be anything three to five minutes long. You just have to have a reason why you've chosen it.

Ooh.

So you show the clip and then you sort of have a conversation about why that clip means something to you.

I love that.

What film. It's sort of like a great way to get to know people because you're, like, sharing. Like, this reminds me of my dad.

Very cool.

Even within that is, I think, also what was an interesting dynamic between all of us, which is it's impossible that the symmetry could work so well, but no one was in each other's lanes. And I say this with real respect. Matt's a fucking artist. He loves acting. He loves teaching. He loves learning. You're, like, such a beautiful, real artist. And Seth was, like, in the middle of that spectrum. Great reverie for it, a professional, but also can pop in or out. And then I don't know what I do by an improv, and I don't have much reverie for any of it. And it was so fun. Like, we all had such different approaches to what we were doing. And then I would even say, like, you're very alphabetical. You're the leader of wherever you're at, and I'm kind of the leader, but we're such different ones that there was never, at least from my point of view, no, never. Just like, love and coexistence. And then you are your own version of Alpha, which is like, you've never done anything you didn't want to do, ever, period.

It's not Alpha. Maybe not on film, but, you know.

You'Re a very convicted person in a really admirable way. You know what you like and what you believe and you're not easily swayed to. So you know, that it just gelled the way it did is kind of magic.

You know something? I look back on that experience specifically, and I think that a lot of people, like, go off and have college experiences. They're in a fraternity. They're in whatever. We have this moment. You're together. You're inseparable. You're through thick and thieves. You're thick as thieves through thin. Through thick.

I got it.

Check that part out.

I gotta leave that in.

I'm sorry.

Thank you.

What's a great metaphor for it all just comes together?

No, but we were together, and we were thick as thieves and together all the time. And there was that bond.

Who do you think's changed the most.

Circumstances or as a person?

Not circumcision as a person.

We've just watched him mature and evolve into this role in a way that I think we both saw coming, at least as a. I did not see coming.

What are you talking about?

When we worked together, I'm like, oh, this guy could do it. Don't make missteps. And you crush this. You got the right attitude. You definitely got the goods. You just gotta show up and do the job. Like, actually do the job. You didn't make a great case for it at the press junk.

I wouldn't have bet on me.

Oh, I'm not saying I wouldn't have bet.

I don't mean career wise. Let's just fast forward to the end of the movie. So I had been sober the whole movie. We get to the last, like, five days. Well, I know exactly what specifically happened is, when I would go out with you, I would always order a red bull, and you would get a Red Bull vodka. I was at the bar fully intending to stay sober, and I ordered a red bull, and I grabbed it, and I took a huge pull, and it was vodka, like, right when it hit my throat. Oh, you know, alcohol is such a specific feeling in your throat. I was like, huh? Well, I already drank that. I'm like, what am I gonna do right now? And I'm like, I was gonna drink the rest of this Red Bull. So I drank the rest of the Red Bull. No further issue. That night, a couple days went by. I was like, yeah, look at that. I had a drink, showed up for work. Everything's groovy. I'm gonna get a bottle of wine when I go home, and I'm just gonna drink one glass. And then I did that successfully.

We're doing all right. Next night, same.

Cut to it was the Saturday party, the sun up party.

You guys remember? We were shooting through the night, and I'm like, I'm gonna have a party at my apartment in Wellington. When we rap, and I took all my per diem money, they guaranteed us.

We were gonna rap in daylight.

And then we had two days off. It was like, the last shot of the week. And then I'm like, fuck it. I did great. We have one day left. I think maybe I'm gonna host a party.

Before we wrapped, you said, hey, the locals have something they're calling crank. And I'm.

No, no, pee. They called it pee.

You're like, it's basically like bathtub crank. I think it comes from a bic pen, like the faculty. And I was like, I don't like anything, crystal, man. Come to find out, I'm just gonna get.

Many members of our crew were fully on pee the whole time, which was not revealed until this party I hosted. So we have a party at my apartment that starts at, like, 08:00. A.m. there's, like, probably 30 people from the crew. You're there. People are there.

Yeah, I'm not there.

You knew that this was not a good idea.

I had a wife and kid. I mean, I was in a different world.

Yeah.

They were like, we're gonna get some weed. And I was like, you know what? I'm gonna smoke a joint. It's in the daylight, during the sun. I'll be the first time in three months. All the work is behind us enough that I'm gonna take this moment.

I also think I would have jumped, and I also don't know about the fighting. I'm pretty sure, bro, you do not fucking do that.

Separating yourself from the situation, though.

I am.

You're a very good guy, and you would have tried to help, and maybe.

You knew that, which is maybe why you didn't invite him.

Yeah.

Oh, I'm certain I invited him. For whatever reason, he wasn't there. Everything's kind of kosher. I don't remember his name, and I don't even want to single him out. But there was a dude that was hanging around that had been one of the characters in Lord of the Rings, and he was an enormous dude. He was a stuntman and an actor, and he was, like, six four and Maori and, like, 300 pounds. We party. The normal people leave. All of a sudden, the pee comes out. I'm smoking pee with the crew members. This turns into, like, a two day thing. Turns into me hanging with this dude who's enormous. He's like, do you want to get some ecstasy? Yes. Cut to me and him on four hits of ecstasy. I've been awake for two days, and this whole time I'm around him. Cause I'm so afraid. He's so strong. I have to find out. I'm like, would you like to wrestle? He's like, absolutely. Cut to us wrestling for 40 minutes on ecstasy of my apartment.

Day two.

Somehow get through the last day of work and then the rap party. I don't know if you guys remember the rap party, but I had had so many hits. My lips were, like, so big. And Drew was like, what is happening with your mouth? I'm like, I've been chewing on it for. For the last three days on pee. And my God.

I actually left the wrap party after only a half an hour and flew to New York to shoot Sesame street. So I was just having a completely different experience.

I find that so heartbreaking.

You do?

Yeah, I know.

I find it so heartbreaking. I know. That your candor is, like, part of your superpower. But it just makes me so sad that. That how it ended.

Yeah. I remember on the plane ride home, I was flying back, sitting next to brill. He's, like, observed the last week of this experience and how quickly it ratcheted up. And he goes, you know, I was, like, bummed you didn't drink, and I thought it'd be fun to party with Dax. And having witnessed it, you shouldn't. Don't do this. And I was, like, already in the shame of having done all that. I just remember that flight home. Him just real talking me.

That's one of those moments where, like, an adulthood or as much of an adult as you have is like, hey, man, don't fuck this up.

Yes.

I think at some point you said to me, you're like, the difference between you and me is that you can have a drink and be fine. I immediately start to think, well, where am I going to get my next drink? What time does the liquor store close on Sunday? There's a Friday. I go, okay, I'm gonna go buy bottles for Saturday. But I know I'm gonna go through it. So on Sunday, I need to make sure I have drinks through the night. And then I end up at LAX smoking crack.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ghost town.

There is no end to the chase.

Until the body collapses. My fear of leaving that state where I don't have insecurities and worries and fears to leave it, I'd rather be dead. So I go until the body goes, that's it. We're turning you off, you know. Yeah. Well, that got heavy.

Yeah, usually does. Yeah. Addiction is the fucking worst.

The upside is, like, also, thank fucking God I made it through 95. I would have ruined that whole experience if I hadn't at least held it together as long as your whole life.

You wouldn't be in this seat right now. Hollywood would have been like, that. Kid can't trust him.

Yeah.

You would not have gone to do four more movies. To understand that there's real value to you. You got to the point where you were able to, in your addiction, love yourself. I think I know nothing about it.

Yeah. Yeah.

Not that I don't have yourself at some point.

Yeah. I read Tom Arnold's book, which has the best title ever. It's like how I lose seven pounds in ten years or something like that. Roughly the name of the book. He said in that book. Luckily, the only thing I was addicted to more than cocaine was wanting to be famous. I knew I would lose this other thing I wanted so bad. It's the only thing I want worse than cocaine. And in some level, that was true, because I got sober for without a paddle. I came home. I was fucked up for a period from that relapse. Then I got sober for idiocracy, then press tour, which is its own funny. We could do a whole episode on just our press.

We talk about it on set, original episodes.

We talked about nine cities in 13 days. So fun and insane and way too much work for anybody. What's your funnest moment from the press tour?

Was it Wrigley Field in Chicago?

Oh, that was fun. We threw out the first pit, but it was.

That whole night was so insane. I shot video of you eating the deep dish pizza. That still makes me laugh because we took a random pizza and then it turned into a bit of us just eating the pizza and weeping over the quality of the pizza. So Dax is just like, I'm just so hungry.

The thing I remember most about the whole, whole experience is the two of you always had. Bits were always on.

We'll start doing the same voice, and we're so annoying to be around.

And Heather was like, have fun today. Good luck. Two of you make each other laugh. You bring each other legitimate joy. And so the two of them at a table, like, 15 people, like.

We were doing an old man voice a lot. We were constantly going like, well, those awesome, decadent penis.

You had been stopping this character because you were building your own version of Fletch, which I was like, so I'm like, this is what you do. And he's like, all my heroes. Steve Martin, it's Will Ferrell. You write your movie, you say, I'm this character. And then he had all these characters he was workshopping, and you had this southern gentleman who was a refined, sophisticated fella, loves us, saw himself as the o's aficionado of the new.

It must have been maddening for you.

It was hilarious. When you're surrounded by people that are authentically funny. There have been a couple times in my life I'm like, I'm funny, I'm charming, but these two men are the two funniest people in that space. I would try to compete. I learned this about myself. I can't compete at that level.

Yeah.

So you just sit back and enjoy or get annoyed.

Either is fair.

My favorite memory on the press tour is at some point you had two women that you had brought to the plane to go over the border. I was like, how are they going to get back. It doesn't matter. I was like, they need passports. You can't just get them on the plane.

We fell in love in an interview.

None of that is true.

I did.

We were in Canada, and we met some press women journalists that were young women, comparable age, and they were both, like, very professional. We're like, listen, why don't we go out for dinner tonight? Come me to sit the airport, because we gotta fly out. But we have at least an hour, then the plane is grounded. We're like, hey, we're here through the night. Maybe this is a thing. And the whole pastor, we were like, get on the plane with us.

Every city, they were trying to get women on the plane.

Time to remind people you were in an open relationship.

Yes.

Yes. Were you in an open relationship?

Yes. How could you not remember that?

I don't remember.

We were very open about that.

It was pretty open.

We would always tell people, stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. Okay. My two favorite memories are one, I was always so hung up on where we were gonna sit because all three of us would go to all these shows all around the country. Clearly, one of you two should be next to the host. It's debatable. Who's more famous, right? Well, we know where Shepard sitting. He's sitting like, wherever the third seat is. The whole trip, we're doing some weird local sports show in Philadelphia, and you two are right next to the host. And I'm just like, out in fucking left field. And I'm now bored. And there's a boxing glove on display. And I just grabbed the boxing glove and I put it on, and you're like, mid sentence.

Because this is at the end.

Like, we had gone, and I just fucking blasted you in the shoulder. Like, I'm wearing a boxing glove. All of a sudden, they had to finally widen out and show who's the.

Third guy in the room. I don't remember that, by the way, but I do think that that was when they asked you about Family Guy, because family Guy was down.

Oh, yeah, I know.

Family guy cut to. It's still.

It's been on 25 years.

That's crazy.

This part of the story plays into the family guy. So we had a little gap between interviews, and we were all hungry, and we went to a chili's that was in the parking lot of a mall in Philadelphia. And we get in the restaurant or sitting at a booth looking out the window, and Seth goes, oh, my God. This is where my mother used to drop me off for the bus. That would take me to summer camp. And she drove such a piece of shit. I would always want her to drop me off, like, really far away from the bus. But it's a big, open parking lot. It's hard to hide. And on this one occasion, she pulled into the lot, and the car was engulfed in flames.

And I'm on the bus, like, trying to make time with this cool girl. I'm like, hey, we're gonna spend the weekend together. What are you into?

Is that your mom's car? On?

What? No. That's some poor kid. No way.

No way.

It was also where he pitched robot chicken.

Yeah.

And I was like, that's the dumbest idea I've ever heard.

And Kaja has a studio, so back to family, guys. I don't know what it was. Three years ago, it was very public that the core actors had signed an incredible deal for an incredible amount of money per episode and that they ordered two years right out of the gates. And I read this article and I sent it to Seth, and I said, first of all, congratulations. I am so fucking proud of you. Also, I think you should go buy a brand new cadillac and set it on fire in the mall. I can burn this bitch. I do.

I do. I love that I had to remind you. I just don't have that kind of impulse in my heart. So serious. I'm not thinking about any of the people in that city or neighborhood or that parking lot or that summer camp.

Did you have a money thing?

No. I read a lot. I took psychedelics when I was 16, and I really got through a lot of the things that most people take a much longer time to go through.

Yeah.

When I met that, I was walking into Paramount for something, and I see Seth Green pull in to the guard shack. And of course, I know Seth Green. He's famous and he's rich, and he pulls in. He's driving a Honda Civic. And I was like, what is this guy doing driving on Seth, like, known for this? He drove a Honda Civic. We hung out a ton. You and I are fucking bros. We got back from without a pedal. We did not stop. He had a little apartment in the.

Valley with all these toys on the.

Uh huh. And he built a tree inside the place.

He never had any kind of flash.

At all, but it's admirable if you especially. You're saying with your mom in the car and the shoes. And I feel like most people would be compensating for that for a while if they had the means, which did.

When I say like self conviction, like, you know yourself and you're really not trying to appease anyone. Yeah.

When you're this heightendez with this face, figure out how you fit in.

Perfect, bud.

Well, I don't know where you guys rank it, but it never got better. I am so lucky that I got that experience with you two guys.

Ditto.

It's one of these things, too, where it's like, I think that experience was nine months because, you know, I have so many memories about how long was it?

It was three, four months.

There's no doubt that that's the most fun I've ever had on a film. It's easily the best relationships I've ever made on a film that persevere. I mean, we don't see each other, but I love the two of you. I've always said that, and I feel like it's beloved. It doesn't matter what that movie did financially. That's one of the highlights of my life, without a doubt.

I told you guys when it was happening that what was happening was rare. Like, I've worked on a lot of movies, especially location movies, stuff where you get the luxury of that summer camp vibe where everybody is there. And I've done it at the smallest scale on, like, a shitty independent horror movie. And I've done it on that huge scale where the studio's got, like, lobster in your craft services.

You know what I mean?

There's an excessive version of it. It doesn't necessarily make it better when it works, when everybody on it has something that they need to prove and nobody's trying to prove the same thing when it actually is just working the way it's supposed postal work. It is so rare.

This is fun.

Yeah, it was so fun. Back to, like, looking at yourself and going like, I can't believe I hated how I looked. I would say additionally, that movie's not the work I've done that I'm proudest of, and that's the movie that would get traded last, right? So it's like results versus experience. Like, it's not like I look at the results of that movie and I'm like, yeah, that's my finest moment. Not by far. I had so much to learn to, but the last one I would trade, maybe hit and run a movie I directed with Kristen. But other than that, that'd be the last on the list of things I would ever lose my memory of.

Yeah, I don't ever want to.

So let me ask you a question. What'd your daughters think?

They loved it.

Did they?

You know what's really great about the movie, and I think this went away in comedy is like, there are set pieces one after another. There's a bear chasing somebody, a bear carrying somebody. There's stakes were panicked. Then there's an ATV. The physical comedy works in that movie like crazy. I think it's also funny just to let people know that we thought we were making diner. We were certain of it. We thought we were making a coming of age diner young adult. And we all saw it and we were like, I love Brill and I love the line, but we were all a little bummed when we came out of the first screen because it's just.

Like, here's what you need to know. And literally, no. And we had all done this scene with the dead kid's mom and like, got handed the box. And this was important for our friend. And we were all in it as actors talking about, well, what was our life like when we were kids? Well, clearly we played Indiana Jones and like, just psychologically to follow the thread. And so they told us early on, Brill was like, yeah, we're gonna reshoot. So fuck the funeral scene. We're gonna have you guys find the box in the tree house. Now you'll discover why is the mom, she just lost her son. Everything's sad. He's like, we gotta get into the adrenaline. So we did those pickup shots. And then you see it when you watch the movie, you can see, oh, shit, nothing matters until we're on the water.

Yeah.

The truth is, they were right. Yes, it was a movie for twelve year olds. That's why it worked. And it should have been a movie for twelve years. And it didn't really matter that we thought we were making diner in the woods.

But our intent, our sincerity, yeah, all of that is palpable, even if you only catch like a moment of it, because we did all of the actual emotional work in the margins. When you watch these quick clips, there's no doubt from the audience that you feel the way you feel that we're going through what we're going through.

Yeah, I was really, as much as I was hating my stuff, I was aware of it at the time. But you're really, really, really great in it. You're really great, Matt.

I want to do this podcast every week.

Held up.

You can relisten.

I'm expecting all of us to have a little egg on our face. And I watch, you know, I'm like, you did as good as a person could do in that role. You were really great.

Thank you. No, I asked my son, who's 16, I was like, hey, you want to watch the movie? I see it, like, six times. My kids have all watched it. It's really fun because your kids are young. They're going through the journey of what it's like to have parents that are famous. And so you're like, at some point, you don't even register. And at some point, all the kids in your life register. So you start to register in a different way, and then as they get older, there's a deeper appreciation for what you do. We're now at that point where my kids are going back and watching SlC punk and watching these little good or bad movies. In my past, it's kind of a cool gift.

I was never able to go watch my parents as young people and recognize, oh, they were people, and they were young once. It is kind of a neat thing that our kids have the option to do if they wanted.

Yeah.

All that to say, I love you guys so much. The love has never dissipated at all. It really was real.

When I see you in public, I'll just hug the fuck out. I see you.

I love you, Dax.

Yeah.

I have seen you from the moment we met. Oh, and I tell you with all sincerity, I love you.

Well, I feel it. You guys, thanks for doing this.

Yeah, yeah. How fun.

Let's do the 40. Let's do the. Remember.

I don't remember anything now I know.

We'll hear how the story change. The same stories, how they change.

The bear will now be two bears.

All right, well, I love you guys. Thank you.

Yeah, it was good.

Bud.

Stick around for the fact check.

Because they're human, they make lots of mistakes. Because Lillard wore a hat and it.

Made you want to wear a hat.

I was like, oh, yeah, I guess you can wear a hat in here because we. I can't wear a hat upstairs because of headphones.

Yes. Like, we can do so much stuff. We can wear hair in all kinds of ways. It's almost too much freedom, too many options. Yeah. Is that your shirt on the ground?

Yeah. I didn't know where to put it. Where would you have put it? Not on top of the trash can. That'd be crazy. What kind of shirt it was can't be in frame.

What is it?

It's my guinea tee, my tank top.

You call that a guinea tea?

Yeah.

Is that what it's preferable to?

Wife beater? Right. People don't love wife beater.

Interesting.

Yeah.

So it's rebranded as guinea tea.

Although I hope they know. Wife beaters. Not like celebrating wife beating. It's just that it seems like an inordinate amount of men who did that were wearing those tops.

It's not good for that. The guinea? Yeah.

No, no, but it needs a specific to call it a tank tops. Not totally accurate either. Right. So specific.

David Letterman's dinner table.

Yes. I wouldn't go that far.

This is our first garage. Fact check.

Previously black mold paradise.

Yeah. Rip. I can't believe this was that place.

I can't either. I mean, I know intellectually, my drum set was right there and. Yeah, I can't even really. There was a mirror there. Two shitty air conditioners. Water everywhere. Mold growing up.

Sure. Rats.

It's quite a transformation.

It is.

It is impressive.

It had rats, and now it has mice.

I don't think there's anything anymore, because I put out a lot of.

No, I have a mouse.

Oh, right, right. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I missed that. Where are you coming from? Oh, the dermatologist. How'd that go?

Well, it did.

Does it hurt when they give you that shot or you're used to it?

I'm just so tough.

High tolerance.

Yeah, high pain tolerance for people who don't know what we're talking about. You'll have to listen to next.

Next week's, next month's fact check out the December 15 fact check for the Easter egg. I wish you were watching chimp crazy simply because the woman in it, she's. I mean, I applaud her on some levels.

Yeah.

She lets them film her during all of her procedures, and she's always in there getting lip filler or spray tanning. Yeah, traditional sun tanning booth. But she's in this massage chair at one point, and she has so much numbing cream all over her lips because. And checked it, and it just looks like there's icing on her lips, but it's caking up in corners and then it's falling off. And then she grabs her water, and she's like, they tell you not to drink when you have this on you. And then she glug, glug, glug, glug, glug. And clearly there's numbing cream just going down her throat.

Yeah. Oh, boy. Yeah. What's weird is, you know, we're full of contradictions as we talk about on here all the time. And I'm four. I am pro, obviously. I have chin filler. I have some botox now.

Oh, was that new?

Well, that was on the same day.

Oh, okay. Was that your first round of box?

That's the first time I've ever done anything.

Your face is very alive still. In fact, just now, you raised your eyebrows. I was like, okay, well, good. We have still a lot of mobility.

He gave me the. I think it's phrased as the placebo. I think it's pronounced placebo. The, like, actor's dose or something. And so it is. You still can have movement and emotion.

Minimal movement.

But have you seen mine before? Befores and afters?

No.

I'll show you.

Do you think they're dramatic?

Yes, I can tell. I mean, yeah, they are. Okay.

Because I have zero ethical issue with Botox. I could care less about how to use it. But I do miss the movement of some people's faces.

Oh, sure. You know, well, I. This is the contradiction I am for people doing whatever they want to make themselves happy when they look in the mirror. But I also do have some sadness. The reason I feel like I have to say this is now we're on camera, and people saw me go, oh, yeah. When you were talking about this lady. And it's because I feel sad that she's obviously so uncomfortable with the way she looks.

Oh, yeah.

That she has to go.

You know, she's also owning, like, a champ, too. Like, there's a lot of.

I know. It makes me.

She's an enormous wig on. It's, like, the biggest wig.

Everything's a costume and a shield and an armor.

Yes.

And that's that. Okay, here. Here they are.

Oh, my goodness. Paired like a whole file for.

Yeah, they did.

Oh, my God. I love that they made you go like that.

Yeah. You have to make very specific expressions so they can.

Before I get into trouble, just what sides, what you'll be.

Uh huh. If you don't know, that will be fascinating.

And we know what's really cute, though, is it looks to me, first of all, you look eight years old. For whatever reason, this makes you look very young and tiny. Okay. Yeah. What's cute, though, is that you're kind of. You have a little tiny smile on the right. Cause, like, you know, it's. That's.

Cause my new face.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So it's like they're not apples to apples.

Cause you're like, no, I think part of it is. There is a slight upturn. That's part of what they did.

Okay. Yeah, I see, I see.

Do you see looking at me right now that my mouth is a little upturned?

Yeah, but you just turned it up. A little bit.

I'll be right.

This is my favorite photo. That was the direction. In this photo, you've just smelled something very pungent. Horseshit. Like, even dog. Dog poop wouldn't be, you know, horseshit. Can some sometimes be sharp?

Yes.

Like when you're in Central park.

Oh.

It's like.

Yeah. Gets here.

It's like it singes your nostril. Yeah. Okay. In this one, I'm seeing the Botox difference. That's what we're seeing. Yeah. You still scrunch your face again. Like, you're just happier in this one because you're. I know. Because you're happy.

No, I'm not happy. That's how my resting face is now. It's like this.

It is funny. Side by side. I can see a difference.

Yeah.

Just. If I just bump into you, I'm not going, like, what have you done?

Yeah. You know what's sweet, though?

You gotta post these now.

Oh, God. You know what's sweet is when my parents were in town and we had dinner one night, then the next day, I told them that I had chin filler. I forgot to tell them.

Yeah, yeah.

And.

Or did you have any reservation about telling them? Like, did you feel like they were gonna be disappointed? Like, hey, we made you perfect.

I didn't really care.

Yeah, sure.

I don't really care.

Yeah, yeah.

But I was like, oh, I got this. And my dad said I knew something was different about your face.

He did?

Yeah. He's like, I didn't know what it was, but I could tell something was different.

Really?

Yeah. I thought that was sweet, actually.

It is.

He knows his baby.

Yeah. We definitely notice, like, sometimes night to night, little changes. Yeah. Lincoln will wake up, and I'm like, oh, my God. You look just a little bit different this morning.

Yeah. That's sweet.

It's really weird to.

It's cute.

Speaking of looking different without a ding.

Okay, well, now's the time that I guess I was gonna. I didn't know when I was gonna do this, but I have a surprise for you.

Oh, my God. I love surprises.

So, I. We. I have a message for you.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

Do I have to guess who the sender is, or. It'll be.

Well, that's what I'm. Should I tell you now, or do you want to wait? Do you want it to become you?

Build it.

Let's build it. Okay. If you build it, it'll come.

I'll come.

You'll.

I mean, they'll come, but it's singular. I'll come. But codes.

I thought it was. If you build it, they will come. Oh, I thought it was. It will come.

No, no, they. The people come watch the baseball game. Oh, I've never even know what it's from.

Yeah, it's from field of dreams, but I've never seen he builds a baseball.

Field in the corn.

But I thought it was like a metaphor. Like, if you build it, it will come. Like, your dreams will come true. The field of dreams.

Yeah, sure. That's an easy misunderstanding.

Okay, ready?

Yeah.

20 years ago, we did an adventure movie in it. We did all the adventure y things. Rivers, rapids, guns, woods, bears, chases, fires, falls from great heights, ropes. But I swear the biggest, best adventure was getting to know old Dax, aka Dan Shepard. Shooting this shit with you was just as fun and exciting as shooting the rapids. By the way, I went canoeing a few weeks ago on a placid lake and it is exhausting and hard and boring. It really made me realize how good you got at it. We were also fearless. We flew a deadly 500 pound grizzly bear to New Zealand to stand 5ft from you. Matt was close, but you dachs were like 2ft away from certain mauling. This should have been and would have been all plates in CG if we did it now or if I was smarter. But we just did it. You and the bear in the same frame. Frame and only a medium built, jet lagged wrangler with the club stuffed in his pants to protect you. So dumb, but fun. You risked your life in pursuit of a moderately funny scene. Actually, I think it was very funny.

Moderately funny.

There was near death on and off the set throughout this movie. Wild Kiwi, water God, stuntman going straight down impossible rapids and our production designer going straight down a possible staircase. But we had fun. I actually hate when actors, directors go on and on about how we had so much fun shooting a movie. Like that matters. Oh, I'm so glad those rich, good looking, pamper people had fun.

I would hate for them to have been uncomfortable during that.

And I'm not sure I had fun making the movie, but I sure had fun getting to know you. Dax and Seth, aka Squire, and Matt, aka Matt. And I know I had fun watching you meet and work with Burt Reynolds. That was cool. Glad we made it out. None of your post panel journey and success is surprising. It just confirms what I thought 20 years ago. You are so talented, engaging, whip smart, funny and fucking awesome. Love you, braille.

What a sweet message.

Nice.

Oh, what a sweet message. He's such a good writer.

Oh, yeah, that was.

He's such a good writer. He has some emails that I have, like, thought, like, I want to print this out and somehow keep this around in my life. What a lovely message. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare. I would say I often give Ashton so much credit for having discovered you saved me from the swamp I was drowning in. But equally so, bro, because it was then quite another leap to take a guy from a reality show and think he should be the lead of your movie. Then he fought very hard to both get me in, and then also was so good at getting things out of me, and, yeah, yeah, change your life. What a lovely thing. How did you get ahold of it?

I texted him.

Oh, did you have his number already?

No, I asked Christopher.

I hope he doesn't feel hurt he wasn't here. No, I just got caught up.

Oh, gosh.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my gosh. I.

Four people's too many to be.

There is four people.

I mean, regaling.

Yeah.

Yeah. Three was.

It's hard.

Just barely juggled. Three.

Yeah, that's right. That's more of a panel situation. I did want his voice involved.

Yeah. Oh, what a sweet message. I hope you'll forward that to me.

Of course.

Britt was so funny. He had so many bits. He was often robot director.

What's that mean?

So you would. You would go up to him, and you're very sincere, and you. I'd go, like, bro, if I walk over there and I'm supposed to land on that thing, I can't walk around the canoe, because I'll leave frame, right? And he'll go, beep, beep, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. Baby robot director. He wasn't just a robot. He was a baby robot director.

Oh, cute.

And then I go, oh, no, baby robot director. Beep, beep, boop. Okay, so I'm just gonna kind of have to guess. Beep, beep, boop, boop, boop. And he would never give you an answer, and you just had to figure out what you had to do.

Very funny.

So baby robot director was sometimes directed.

That's a ding ding ding. Cuz now in our world, we have a baby director and a robot.

And you're right. Wants to be a boy. A real boy. Yeah.

Comes full circle.

What was this other feral circle? Yeah, that was a blast.

Yeah, it really seemed like it. I'm glad you had that experience.

Yeah. I just had breakfast with Nate.

Yeah. How was it?

It was so fun. It's my favorite medicine.

Yeah.

We were laughing so hard at the top of our lungs in cafe 101.

Fun.

I even saw some people are looking at us like, okay, that's. Guys. It's a little early for that level of screaming. Laughing.

Yeah.

You know, sometimes you're laughing so hard, you. Well, I don't know if you have a. This. I've passed. I'm out of air, so I'm no longer making a noise, but I still have to express my. And I clap.

Oh, yeah.

So there was moments where I was, like, laid back in the booth and I was, like, just clapping like a seal.

What?

I think people are caused.

That is anything you can share, or is it?

Boy, one's tricky. I guess if I could leave out the. It's all about deliveries with Nate. And so we were talking about this certain person, and he's like, yeah. And I'm like, wow, so that's great that she ended up with him. He's like, yeah, yeah. You know. You know, and he loves her. And I go, yeah, yeah, he loves her. You know, he loves her. And then it beat. We just built on that for a very long time.

You love to build.

This is a reality. We know people, they end up together, that they were lonely, they found a partner and they're doing it together.

Yeah.

Was it the storybook love? You know? I don't know. You know, they love you. They love it.

That's okay. Not.

Oh, absolutely. There's nothing wrong with it. But of course, you're supposed to go like, oh, yeah. You know, he just loves her. He loves her. They're good. They're great. He's a good husband. You start just kind of.

They're good together.

They're really good together. You keep deviating away from. You realize that might have been not the full treatment.

Yeah.

I don't know. It doesn't take much.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, that's fair.

Use medicine.

That's good.

Is that you and Kaylie?

I mean, she's definitely medicinal, but I.

Wouldn'T say who sends you into a laugh riot. Jess.

Jess.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the laugh medicine.

Yeah.

It's powerful.

Yeah.

You have a good. Our breakfast was 1 hour in 45 minutes of it. Was laughing really, really hard.

Yeah.

It was like, yeah, but better than any drug.

But I don't. I mean, I. Obviously, I love laughing, but in certain relationships, I don't have as much of that, but they have other things, right? Like, I don't think one's better than the other. I love to laugh, but I get.

It'S not your number one priority.

I think I used to think that.

Yes. When you were an aspiring comedian and at the UCB.

Yeah. But also, even when I think about partnership.

Uh huh.

I do think you used to think.

Like, well, my husband would have to be hilarious.

Have to be so funny.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I still kind of think that. I don't think I could be with someone who does not have a sense of humor.

Right. I bet you would say, like, the person has to get humor.

Yes.

It's not necessarily that they have to deliver it, but it would suck watching tv with somebody and they're not getting what's so funny about somebody.

I'm wrong.

Okay, you're. But you're taking it back. You're walking it back.

I'm taking it all back.

Listen, he loves her. He, like, you know, he's like, they're. You know, they're. He's. They're committed, and he's a good. He's a good husband.

He's a good companion.

Yeah.

No, I. Now I'm remembering that when I had gone on a few dates with this person. Yeah. And he was great.

Totally fine.

Like, he was. I did not like, he was great. And I couldn't really figure out what was happening with me. I mean, of course I was like, what is wrong with me? What is wrong with me? This person's, like, great and nice and why. Why don't I like him? And when I was in therapy, we had talked a lot about it.

And she's the one she gave you permission to.

Well, she was like, well, tell me about the dates. Yeah, we were talking about the dates, and she was like, are you laughing?

Yeah.

I was like, yeah, yeah, it's not serious, but it's not funny. And she was like, yeah, well, maybe you need funny. And I was like, yeah, I think it's true that every relationship I do prioritize does have a fair amount of laughter.

Yes. And I think maybe more specifically, you don't need someone who's funny who, like, their outward presenting identity is a funny person. Like, that's not Bree's presenting first foot forward. Yeah, but she and I had so many inside jokes. Like, we did live for inside jokes, and she was super funny to me. Right.

Yeah.

I think you want that thing whether they're out, like, whether the person party making jokes.

No, no, no. It doesn't need to be. They don't need to be a comedian.

Right. But you need to have a lot of playful banter, and it was a ding, ding ding because I also had it last night. Cause Josh Lawson came over.

Oh, he did?

Cause he's back in town working. He has my number. Oh, my God. Josh Lawson makes me laugh so hard. And there was a moment where we were at first we were. We saunaed, then we're in the hot tub together, then we're eating dinner with the girls. And he was making the girls laugh, which is really funny. Cause there's not a lot of adults that make them laugh really hard, other than me, which is my main hobby in life.

Sure.

But he was really making them laugh. And then Delta at one point, and it wasn't even, like, presentational, it was just, to me, it was an aside. And she goes, you know, Lincoln and I always were afraid if you and mom ever got divorced or you guys married different people, or if you married another woman. And I think the person we should be afraid of is him.

Wow.

That I would leave Mommy for Josh Lawson. Oh, that you would.

Oh, that's funny.

Yeah. And Lincoln goes, my dad doesn't laugh this much normal around people. To him.

Well, that's. Wow, that's a high compliment to Josh.

Well, it is, and he deserves it. But then I got defensive of Aaron. I was about to say, so what about Aaron?

That's literally why. Yeah, it's not true. No one laughs.

But it was a very sweet compliment to give Joe.

That is sweet.

Yeah, he asked about you.

I said, I'd like to see him while he's here. Anyway, what else has been going on?

The anxiety still again, listen to December 15 episode. I discussed my been waking up in the middle of the night with about an hour of anxiety.

December 15.

Remember our fact check from six weeks?

Oh, six weeks in the future.

Yeah. Last night was woke up up and I had an image of my. What my face looked like in the close up. And I was like, oh, my God, I gotta. How do I fix this? Like, I had some very specific problem areas I was seeing. I'm like, what am I gonna do? I gotta get some lighting underneath. I gotta get nose reduction. Oh, my God. Maybe. I think maybe we're just too tight. And then I'm thinking of other people's shows. I'm like, are they as tight as we? But this goes on for, I don't know, 75, 80 minutes. I go back to sleep for about 45 minutes, then I wake up for the morning at six, and then I go look at the footage that I had watched right before I went to bed.

Yeah.

The image I had in my head is not what it is. I'm almost 50, Monica.

I know, but you're still. You're still. And we're all insecure, but it just.

Goes to show, like, how lopsided and irrational and non factual my midnight ruminations are. They're like. They're so.

Can you tell yourself, can you write a piece of paper on your nightstand that says whatever you're thinking right now, you will not be thinking in the morning?

I said to myself last night, I said, this is going to be a very tiny problem in the morning. You already know that. It might not even be a problem in the morning.

Did it work?

But if. No, it's just one little detail of something from the day that I can't stop, just totally powerless. You don't do much of that version. Yeah, I do a lot of rumination, but in the. Do you wake up in the middle of the night and have it.

No, I don't wake up.

It's before bed.

It's to get to sleep.

Right.

So it often takes me a very long time to get to sleep because of all the chatter.

Yeah, I take a lot of sleep aids. And so, you know, I take melatonin and I take trazodone and occasionally a leaf pm. So three. No one's gonna like that.

No one's gonna like that.

One's gonna like a lot of sleep experts that are saying it's not good regardless, that I can fall asleep pretty nicely with my book on tape, I can fall asleep within ten minutes on that cocktail. And I've thought about this. Now, what happens is, clearly those all wear off around 04:00 a.m. yeah. I need, like, a time release of all those things, or I need a. An intravenous setup of this that trickles it all night.

I think you need to learn how, and as do I, to turn off our brain before bed, sleep through the night one p max.

Yeah.

And then wake up rested.

That would be the dream, but that's ideal. And I used to be so angry at myself and hard on myself that I can't figure it out. Right. Or that I can't do all the things you just listed.

Sure.

But I have been a little bit relieved by the fact that, like, one of my children is identical.

Mm hmm.

She clearly is just genetically. And also, don't forget, on the 23 andme, it did say you're someone who would struggle with sleep. Remember? That was one of the things that comes up. And I was like, well, that's kind of a relief. I'm predisposed to be this way. But seeing it in her stop me like self flagellation a little bit. I'm like, yeah, you can be born as not a great sleeper.

Yeah. But it doesn't have to be either or. It can be. You have some sort of predisposition to right anxiety. But you can. You can do things to counter that.

Yes. And if you have a range, you could be on the best end of the range. I concede to that for sure. So I'm in the cycle of like mass caffeine all day long to compensate for the shitty night's sleep. Definitely. That's part of the problem. There's no question.

That's interesting. Yeah.

Sleep aids are wearing off. Also the caffeine still in my system, it's like, you know, it's fighting.

Yeah, I get that. Yeah, it's been. This has been interesting for me because I decided a while ago that once we started in the new space and things were ramping up, that I would get really healthy.

Okay. Which is an interesting time to choose to do that. Well, it's gonna be harder anyways.

Well, that's why.

Okay.

Like, this is gonna require a lot more of me.

You mean you started before getting help? Oh, on day one of. Okay, yeah.

Cuz I didn't want to waste those days. I want to be unhealthy until I have to be.

That makes sense. Like if you know you're gonna get pregnant.

Yeah. Or you know you're gonna get off of drink it, you know you're gonna become sober, you go all out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was like, this whole thing, this new life of ours, is going to require a lot more of me. And it's gonna require more energy and more alertness, stamina. Speaking of, I can't believe I didn't start with this on this episode.

Yeah.

I look so bad. Wait, I look so tired. And guess what? What? I am so tired. It was my birthday the night before. It was Sunday. We were.

It was a weekend record. Yeah.

I had three martinis, as we've already discussed over the course of 6 hours.

Very responsible.

One is not enough. Three is too many. I had three.

Yeah.

And you can see it. You can see it.

Well, maybe. Do you think you can see it?

I'm not gonna read the comments, but I have a feeling people will be able to see it and that's fine.

Are you tired? Is an incredible question to ask people. You know, that's one that's like somehow socially acceptable, but it's so.

Well, this is our whole. Did you get a good night's sleep last night, but that was different.

I defend that because that was a mood. You look so tired. People feel like they're allowed to say that to other people. Like, oh, you look so tired. Like it's somehow compassionate. I know, but you go, like. You mean I look like shit, right?

That's my mom. Mom's go to.

She says you look tired all the time.

Every time I'm home, she's like, you look tired. Like, okay, I am.

That might be because she just wants you to go take a nappy because she wants her baby sleeping in her house.

Yeah, that could have a different sleep in our house every night. I'll make you sandwiches.

You're too tired to go home.

So I decided to get healthy. Yeah. Which means. Well, I'm gonna start working out. Strength training. I told you that I'm not starting that for another week.

Okay. Kicking that down the road.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I'm gonna start strength training. I'm gonna drink less.

What does that look like? I. That's how I know.

It's a very nebulous thing to say. Drink less.

I guess it would. The easiest would be less days a week.

Yeah.

Right. I don't know how much you're gonna be able to, like, fine tune the amount. The amount when you're doing it.

Yeah, that's fair. That's fair.

Because a different version of Monica will be making decisions than the one worst sitting here with right now.

Yeah, you're right.

Yeah.

So less days, I guess. Yeah. And.

And what would be that? What's the number that's not terrifying? Weekends. We got drink Friday and Saturday.

Ideally. Ideally, I'm not drinking Monday through Thursday.

Sunday. We got it.

I know, but.

Okay.

Now with my new strength training, I have to wake up early to go do that. That's on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Okay.

And then Monday, Wednesday and Friday I want to do my walks. This is part of my new health plan.

Yeah. Yeah. Regime.

Yeah. Call. But these are all things happening in the morning, so I have to be able to wake up.

Yeah. What about. What about Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? That's four days a week.

You think I can on Wednesday?

Yeah, I think you're gonna need a drink once during the week. What I think would be most achievable would be start there. That's still the majority of the days you're drinking. God.

And you know what's crazy?

That's scary.

Sounds like nothing.

Yeah, of course. Of course. So the majority of the days you're drinking. So that's great. You're drinking more than you're not sure. That's the dream. And then once you're doing that for a minute.

Yeah.

I think you lob Sunday off.

I know.

Because then you're, you give yourself the best shot for starting the week on Monday.

Yeah, I know.

That would be.

But what about like, or Sunday brunch? No, that's bad.

I mean, then your whole day. I don't know. You tell me. You're like, what about morning drinking on Sundays? What if I do only drink in the morning?

Oh God. Do you think brunch, do you think brunch drinking is akin to like, shower drinking?

Tell me about shower drinking.

Like, didn't you used to drink beer in the shower?

Oh, sure, sure.

Yeah. To me that's so extreme.

Right.

And. But to you, brunch is extreme.

Well, no no no. I'm in no position to be judgmental of Sonny. What I think.

I don't think you're being judgemental. I'm just asking you.

I do think we label things and we're pretending. What? That it's not what it really is. Which, which is like, yeah, I drink in the morning on Sunday, but I call it brunch drinking, which is fun and playful.

Yeah.

In an event, and blah, blah, blah. But it's drinking when you wake up in the morning on Sundays, which I don't care about. And then there was different rules when you'd go camping, which I loved. When you go camping, you start drinking as soon as you wake up. And it's part of it. It's fun.

I know.

You have a little bite to eat and then you crack open a beer and then you drink all day.

And that's bad.

Well, I don't, you know, I know.

You'Re not saying it's objectively bad. You're not judging. But we are just talking about my health routine.

Well, that's why I asked.

You're talking about me.

Well, I am. I have an opinion about if you're gonna do it, when should you do it? And I do think ideally it'd be Friday, Saturday and Wednesday.

Okay. But Wednesday seems hard because of the Thursday strengthen training. So I actually think maybe then it should be Tuesday.

Okay. Yeah, that's fine.

Okay.

Yeah. Cause then you have two days off. And then two days off. Wednesday, Thursday. That's great.

Okay, so Tuesday I'm gonna get hampered.

Yeah.

Get whatever we record on Wednesdays, everyone will be able to tell. They'll be like, is this Wednesday recording?

Yes. I also have a bit of self consciousness and insecurity that people are very worried we're never gonna stop talking about video. But I would rest assure we're gonna. So you're just listening? As so many people will still do. Like, oh, my God. Now when I'm listening, I gotta hear them talk about video all the time. And I just want to say that I'm aware of it and we're. We're just processing our new experience.

Yeah.

Do you have that fear?

No, I guess I. I guess I do. But I've sort of, like.

It's what's really going on in our lives.

This is a new thing.

Yeah, yeah. Right.

And, yeah, we're gonna do that.

Those are taking up a lot of our brain space right now.

Yeah, exactly. Anyway, actually, the whole reason I brought this up is because I want to be healthier. Blah, blah, blah. This week is a huge week for us. We're working a ton.

Yeah.

And I've been working till between 930 and ten. Since Sunday.

Yes.

And I've been waking up early because we've been starting early. But also.

And even appointments throughout all this.

That's why then I've had appointments and I've had to throw them at, like, the early, early top of day because there's no other time.

Yeah.

So I've been waking up early, but I'm tired at night now.

Oh, so you're falling asleep.

I am falling asleep. And that's interesting.

It is. And it's how I, a little bit, counteract my panic. Because I have to believe the same thing I tell Lincoln, which is like, your body will take care of itself. So how many hours did you get last night? You think? You know, just occurred to me. People have heard about your eye roll forever.

Yeah.

And they could see it.

Now, I know we talked about that when we talked about it upstairs when we were leading up to this that people are gonna start seeing it.

Oh. Can you do one on command?

I could, but will you do one for me? Well, why don't you. Why don't you instigate one?

Okay, I will.

Okay.

You spent way too much on those pants.

Okay. I think you need to drop it in at a time where I'm not expecting it.

Okay. So later.

Yeah, later.

Okay. Easter egg.

Okay.

Foreshadowing.

Even though you also just said that we don't want to make this about video.

And now, you know, you have a very legendary eye roll that we've talked about.

I'm sure people have. I'm sure it's. I'm sure people have seen it by now.

How.

I'm sure I've done it.

I don't think you've eye rolled.

I'm sure I have.

Have not your nuclear option eye roll that you gave the gal in the parking lot at the preschool.

There are levels to the eye roll. But you know that in theater, in my 9th grade theater class, my teacher told me, like, you have an eye roll. It's so distinct.

Oh, really?

And basically, like, get rid of it.

Get rid of it. Because you would do it in scenes. That's how you would express, I think, that emotion.

It was. It was coming out so involuntarily.

Yeah.

That I didn't. It was. It's a tick. Really? It's a tick. It's. I don't even know if it's that indicative of my feelings.

Well, it is in the parking lot of the preschool.

Sure.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, she was such a bitch.

Right? And when people would walk away from the counter at Soulcycle, certainly they were such a bitch. They were such a bitch and a dick, too.

Yeah, they were. I don't do it at niceness.

No, I know. I know. Generally it's, um. It's a fuck you.

I think it's warranted.

Right? Personally, I don't know how I'm gonna earn it, but I guess I'll try.

You'll figure it out.

How much hours did you sleep last night?

I think I got like seven and a half to 8 hours.

That's solid.

It is. Except I. I work best at nine.

Yeah. And do you think. You know, one of my reservations about these sleep monitoring devices is that you wake up and you get a score and I just don't know how you have a good day if your score is like 40 or you go to the gym, because then you're like, well, probably my body doesn't want me to. Exciting. Getting sleep. I just don't know how that doesn't become a self fulfilling prophecy.

I agree. And that's the Easter egg for Thursday's episode. Because we discussed that on Thursday's episode and I. Yes. I think, like, people get victimy about when they. When they wear these things. They're like, oh, I'm just like, really bad at sleeping.

Yeah. But the thing I was going to ask you about is it similarly learning recently this is making the rounds that women need more sleep than men? No, that didn't have any impact on you because I could imagine hearing that and being like, well, Jesus Christ, now I need 10 hours of sleep. I felt bad when I wasn't getting eight, and now I've learned my sex dictates I should be getting ten.

All it did was confirm what I needed.

That you need more sleep.

That I need at least 9 hours.

Okay. Right, right.

I can sleep till eleven.

Right. That's so ambivalent.

I can just go and go and go. Yeah.

Yeah. I never wake up. That'd be a title of your biography, though.

I do. No member. It's coffee. Makes me sleepy. But I do think part of that is because I don't sleep restfully.

Right.

So I need a little bit longer of time to make up for not sleeping very well.

Yes.

So if I start sleeping better, I think I will need less.

Yeah, that's a good theory. I remember being able to sleep late, and I felt like my best sleep came between, like, 06:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. i know. Like, I'm done wrestling with all my demons. I've processed all my anxieties, and now I'm just like, oh, yeah, nothing. I'm not stressed anymore.

Yeah, yeah.

Last thought. Maybe there'll be a technology. Probably not. But the dream for me would be I could hook my brain up to a machine an hour before sleep, and it would accelerate all that processing that I know has to happen. Right. And then that would just be done. That's the problem.

And then you could actually sleep.

Update. I didn't take my antidepressant acutely last night.

Not an update. But I think I'm gonna use an Easter egg.

I know. For January 6. January 18, through my birthday episode.

I'm glad to. I'm kind of glad to hear that. Not. I mean, not.

I regretted it in the middle of the night.

I was like.

I just forgot. I didn't decide not to. I just forgot. Okay, so maybe I will in a couple hours.

There's a brunch.

Ssri.

Well, that's the other piece. That's the other piece. As much as I love drink, I love to drink.

Yeah. Drinking.

That sound. I don't. That sentence is bad, but I. Look, I have to be able to say it if it's true. And it is.

But also, of course you love to drink. It's fun.

I know. It just sounds.

You don't like how it sounds.

I don't think it sounds. You don't like the branding when you say the truths.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You have to hear the truths, you know, and that's a hard thing for all of us. I think. I think it's important when you're struggling with anything or you're just, like, evaluating anything.

Yeah.

That's why people have pros and cons list, so they can literally see in front of them the realities.

But let me ask you this, because that might also be more about the implicit shaming and judgment. Let me just say this. No one feels guilty saying, I love pizza. And you go, of course you love pizza. Everyone loves pizza. And as I'm saying, like, yeah, of course you love drinking. Yeah, it's really great. If I transition from not judgmental to enabler, maybe. Has that happened?

No, I love pizza. I love pizza is one thing, but I love pizza so much that I eat pizza every day or that you're.

Like, I'm thinking, I gotta go down to eating pizza four days a week, and I'm nervous about it. Yeah, that's, and can I have pizza for breakfast?

The answer is yes, you can have pizza for breakfast.

Yeah.

Cold, cold pizza's great. And hot pizza's great.

I don't like cold pizza, but, yeah.

I mean, me either, but I don't really understand that. But that's fine.

Pizza in the shower, that's a red flag.

You think, but what if you're in a hurry?

That's efficient. But if in general, you have to have a piece of pizza.

I know. And then we're doing this thing where it's like, I'm, well, I'm fine because I don't have that weird shower thing.

Equivocating.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yes, yes.

Justifying people.

I think, you know, you know, you know when you have passed your limits and when you haven't.

Yeah, yeah.

I think people, if you really are doing an evaluation of yourself, you does.

The question, the one that I think is most salient is, like, does it take more than it gives? Yeah, I think that's the kind of quintessential question.

Mm hmm.

Now, whether people can evaluate that and answer that honestly is tricky.

That's not, I think that's actually hard to evaluate.

It is, because when you want to do it, the positives are overweighted, and all you can think about is losing those positives, and then you're not maybe remembering every little part of it. That's nothing. Not beneficial or ideal. Yeah. The taking part.

Do you think they'll ever invent a drug that after you drink, if you take it, there's like, no repercussions, no hangover at all?

Oh, right. I mean, it seems feasible. This is my same, this is my billion dollar pharmaceutical that I have invented that I don't know how to bring to market. Okay, which is the caffeine one? You take a pill at 09:00 p.m. and it metabolizes every caffeine molecule in your body, so there's none left.

Yeah, that's great.

That would be incredible if people could bang coffee, like, up to 09:00 after dinner. Like, I would love to drink coffee after dinner. Me too.

I always wonder at italian restaurants, they always offer coffee at the end, and I don't understand how people are doing.

This, but when you're in Italy, have you done it? Because I cannot sleep if I drink coffee after four. And when I am in Italy, I will have a cappuccino after a meal. And then I go right to bed and I'm like, oh, this is all psychosomatic. And then I eat pasta the whole time I'm there, and I don't have any gluten issues. And then they go, it's because it's heirloom gluten and there's heirloom flour and.

There'S no gluten in it.

I'm like, maybe. Maybe it's just all psychosomatic. But, yeah, they got a whole. That's the power of culture.

It really is.

Yeah. We drink a caffeine at night, no problem. Sometimes the baby get a diarrhea from a caffeine. But in general, it's a nice.

Oh, I thought you might get an eye roll, but I don't think you did.

No, that was a good.

That was a good move to try to get one. It was, but okay.

I was walking. Where are your pants?

I can't find them.

I never did know where pants begin and ends on a woman. Good to see your throw up face and your eye roll. Face.

I don't think.

Throw up everywhere. I don't care. I like a mess. I'm messing myself. Don't tell anybody. My room's die.

Stop. Okay, stop.

Caffeine. Oh, the pill to metabolize alcohol.

Yeah, that would be fantastic. But in a way, because you don't want it. It can't just be a pill that metabolizes alcohol because then you'd feel really bad while that's happening.

Yeah. That's the weird thing about alcohol, is I do think you'd feel a little withdrawal. I think that's what a hang over is.

Yeah, it is. So we'd have to invent something where it just fully negates.

Well, that would be the kabillion dollar invention, because there's all these over that. You'll see them at gas stations. Like hangover care.

Exactly.

And even those are selling. And they don't do a damn thing.

No, they don't. Unless they're sponsored.

Yeah. Unless they're good. Yeah. Is that the only downside for me? Yeah, because there's a philosophical downside.

Okay, tell me.

Which is. It's a passive. So it allows the mundane to be exciting and novel.

Yeah.

And potentially you're not pursuing things that really are novel and growth inducing. I mean, that's like a philosophical.

I know, but growth inducing, that's also a construct. Like, what's. What's growth inducing for one person is not necessarily growth inducing for another. Like, I do. I. I do get so much joy out of just being cocooned with people I love and I feel safe around.

Right. And I don't. I'm in no position to say getting around and being social and chatting is not productive or good or philosophically great. But when I drank, my life was very repetitious. I got together with the same people, we got drunk, we talked about the same thing. We planned. It was like this vaguely overly optimistic things we're going to do in the future that we're not really going to do. And trips were planning and parties were planning, and it was just this cycle. And it really could have just gone on forever. And even when I wasn't evaluating the many downsides that were clearly present, just philosophically, I was alike. I felt like it was a Ruthen.

Yeah.

This is all I needed to do is I needed to pick up a twelve pack on the way to Scotty's and my night was handled.

Yeah.

And that's nice. It's convenient, but also, I'm not putting much effort into it. And it's just the same thing over and over again. And I would like to. I'd like to get bored with a group of five people and figure out what we're gonna fucking do and maybe let's go drive go karts next time and let's do this thing. And I just. When I reflect on my life, I'm personally and I. It's not for everyone.

Yeah.

I. The story of my life that involves having done a bunch of activities and tried new things and gone places is more satisfying to me than sitting in someone's living room or sitting in the same bar and having the same conversation 10,000 times right. Over the course of a lifetime. From the story I'm telling about myself.

Yeah.

Like, wreckage aside.

Yeah, I understand that.

Yeah. I just remember thinking as I approached 30, like, well, we've done this. We've done this for a decade. We've gone out and gotten drunk. And is that that. Is that what I'm gonna now repeat for the next five decades? Like a lot of people, and I kind of want more than that.

Yeah. But let me ask you this. Let's say every day after work, I go and I hang out with people. Same people. Let's say same people every day. And we have drinks and we chitchat.

Yeah, come in.

I go home.

Yeah.

What? Like, and I mean, really, like, philosophically, what's the difference between, we finish work, you go into your house with the same people, you go sauna like you do every day with the same person.

Yeah.

And that period of time takes up the equivalent amount of time that I'm like, we're all doing the same thing over and over again.

But you are illuminating the challenge of marriage, which is, it is so easy for it to be just that. And you have to kind of actively, like, yes, right now we're sauna. But if you rewind a year and a half ago, before that, it was another thing. And before that, it was another thing. Because you do tire of repetition of booze isn't involved. Like, even if we're on vacation with the Richardsons, we can play spades and hang and chat for four nights in a row, but we're going to have to do something else. We're going to have to go find a sauna, and then we're going to have to go on a sightseeing thing. We're going to have to blah, blah. If we just drank, we would be able to just get to our hotel, we'd go out for drinks in the evening, and then we'd have dinner, and that would be it. But we get bored after a few days of just playing space or just doing this, and I. And this family gets bored. It's like, well, let's go to. At least, let's go to Bob's big boy and look at old car night before we have dinner.

We're not going to eat at cafe 101 every single night, where it does get boring without alcohol in the mix. And we do have to change a lot, and we've had a bazillion different little patterns and hobbies, but I was in one that was ten years long when I drank, with very little difference. Yeah, the bars would change, right?

You know, there were years where every night, the three of us, or the four of us would hang out and play the same game or watch the tv show would change, but we would.

Watch movies and tv's booze, for sure. Sure. Like, tv is booze. I love it. I use it just like booze. I know how I'm gonna feel when I watch it. If it's good and it's gonna be 2 hours, it handles that 2 hours after bed, you know, the girl's bedtime before mine. And even that, I'll go like, okay, we've been watching tv for 13 days straight. It's time to mix it up. But I never was like, we need to mix it up. When I drink.

Rank, right?

As long as we. I had a twelve pack. Like, I didn't really. Yeah, I was fine.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Well, let's do some fakies. There's not too many.

Oh.

I really loved his idea of coffee and clips. I thought that was such a cute game. Can you guess what I. I wanted to ask. Okay, raising your guess.

That's a great guess. Yes. It wasn't raised in Arizona.

Okay. It was heat.

Really? No. Much closer.

Okay.

Same director.

It was.

You probably have just forgotten the name of my favorite movie of all time that I watched. Again, back to being drunk. That I watched every night. I was drunk.

Not roadhouse thief.

Thief.

That's right.

Michael Mann's thief.

Okay.

So I brought thief and I showed him the opening sequences, which is my favorite.

Okay.

Him cracking into a safe in committing a robbery. So cool and stylized.

What did you say? Why it was important to you?

I can't remember even when, as he was describing how it worked, I do remember I had to, like, talk about it for a couple minutes, but I can't remember what my take was. I don't know if I admitted, like, I used to watch this movie. Addictive. I think I talked about that was the first time. And it created a whole genre. Prior to thief in Miami Vice, there weren't these elongated montages done to really cool music. They were almost the precursor of music videos where, like, the music was at the front and center of this sequence. The sequence was designed around the music.

Yeah.

And it was very surreal. It, like, gave birth to this really cool, surreal feeling that was even, like, movies were already a dream and then this was even a dream beyond that. It was like a surreal. You know, I think people can relate to that. Wishing there was theme music when they walked around. Like, when you're walking on the street and you're feeling it and you want a certain song to be playing. It was that feeling. And it was the first time I ever saw it and I was like, oh, this is so cool and surreal, and I want to live in this montage. I wish life was this montage.

Yeah, I get that. That's cool.

What would you have played? Episode of Friends?

Yes. No.

It'S not your fault. Yeah, it's not my fault.

It's not your fault.

It's not your fault.

Yeah, that would have been.

And that exact.

While hunting that scene. Yeah. Or up flying on the play or the scene between Ben and Matt. Ben is telling Matt, like, don't. Don't squander this. And all I want is to show up to your apartment one day and you not be there. Yeah, that's a great scene.

Very sweet.

Oof.

Self sacrifice. Gift from the magi. We're not gossipy. We try to really not be gossipy.

Yeah.

But it would also seem crazy to not check in with how you feel about Matt, or rather Ben getting divorced.

I feel really sad for them.

No excitement that he's available?

No.

Okay. You really love him. It's like the speech in the movie. You're like, as much as I want to come here and pick you up for dinner, I want to come here and have you tell me you must leave. I'm married.

That's right. That's right. No, I just feel like it must suck so much to have all eyes on you over and over again while you're going through your shit.

All I have thought is, like, I largely think paparazzi have gone away. And when I see things pop up, by the way, it just finds you this information in clips and it's like, I'm on instagram. It's like I'm seeing video of Ben walking from his car somewhere. Yeah, constantly. Right? And I'm just like, when I see that, selfishly, I'm like, I am so fucking glad I don't get filmed everywhere I go. Would, oh, my God. But fuck, that's still a thing. Where everywhere he drives, presumably there's six or seven cars following him and he's got to act kind of normal.

And then, but then, and then people.

Are like, it's impossible.

Or he has arresting bitch face. Whatever. It's like, duh.

Yeah. Because there's seven men who, you have no control. You have no recourse, nothing. There's nothing you can do. Do you ever just deal with these six guys shouting shit at you?

Oh, I know.

Very triggering.

Yeah. And I don't know him. I hate to admit that, but I don't know him.

I mean, you know his soul.

I do. I know his heart.

Yeah.

But I know the real him. Yes. But I have a sense he's sort of like you. And I imagine it's probably extra hard for him to let of this go.

Yeah.

Like being followed.

I bet he's battling not to fight these guys with every bit of willpower he has.

Yeah.

And then also. Then trying to tell your face not to telegraph that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And in general, I just think it's sad if a relationship doesn't work out.

Yeah.

Okay. You mentioned the drug pee. Uh oh.

I would love if a riding lawnmower just crashed through the garage door right now and drove into frame and then did a 360 and then drove.

Yeah. Sound could be better in here.

Oh, that's nice.

You talked about pee, the drug. Oh, yes, it is. Meth. Yes, I confirmed that.

Okay, great. You looked it up. Where was it at? What website tells you the kiwi name for.

Well, if you type in.

I knew it was math for sure.

Yeah. If you type in New Zealand street drug p, methamphetamine comes.

And did you just put the letter p or p? E or p. Eternity letter p. Nice.

And it is that, according to this speed. Pure p. Oh, pure burn. Gooey. Crank. And he was saying crank. Seth was squire.

Yeah. That was the most popular name for meth in the late nineties. Early two thousands.

Yeah.

Okay.

In California, by the way, I think I've said this before. That drug was. There was no such thing as that drug in Michigan.

Meth.

Meth. We did not have meth.

Really?

No. When I left in 95.

Huh?

I left in 94. Got here in 95. As soon as I got here, everyone did meth.

Whoa.

It's always been huge on the west coast.

Weird.

Yes. And it wasn't a thing in Michigan. When I brought it back a couple different times to Michigan and people were like, what is it? I've heard of this. I'm like, yeah, they have this stuff. It's kind of like coke, but way cheaper and way worse.

Oh, my God. It's like fashion, how it starts on. On the coast and then makes its way.

Yeah. Something to do with the biker gangs and the proximity to Mexico. Whatever. It was just huge on the west coast.

Okay. Gooey crank, meth, crystal, ice and yabba.

In Hawaii, it's ice. So I've bought this locally in enough places that I've had to use. I had to be respectful of the local culture and ask if anyone knew where to get ice, if I would have been in Hawaiian. As for pee, they would. What the fuck is this? This guy's a narc.

Oh, God.

You gotta make sure no one thinks you're a narc.

Okay? Tom Arnold's book title is how I.

Lost seven pounds in eight years.

It is how I lost five pounds in six years.

Still the best title.

That's a great title. He. We talked about Friday night. I'm sorry. Five nights at Freddy's, which was the movie that Matt was in. That was huge.

Oh, yeah. I was ashamed. I didn't know what that was.

I had heard of it from the youth.

Okay.

The video game was released in 2014.

Okay, so it's a movie based on a video game, but he plays Voldemort.

What?

Yeah.

Wait, what? No. Really?

Yeah. This is the one that he's just filmed the sequel to up in Toronto.

I don't know.

We're talking about the same movie.

I don't know. I don't think so. Maybe. Hold on.

Yeah, he's in a movie that just did, like, $300 million. Yeah, he plays Voldemort. Wait, you better look up. Cass, are you allowed to say it?

Yeah, we say things here. We don't keep things quiet.

And Harry says, voldemort.

We don't believe in not saying. Oh, we do believe in not saying words that are offensive, but we.

Unless they're towards white people. Again, guinea tea. I have my guinea tea here, ready to work out in.

Okay. Matthew lowered five nights at Freddy's. No, he plays William Afton.

So he plays two characters at looks.

Like tough acting to Nakton.

It says american actor and film director who portrays William Afton in the five nights at Freddy's film. I mean, it seems like.

Do you think maybe he was telling me he plays, like, a Voldemort character?

Probably. Probably?

Okay, because I did think, what is the intellectual property?

Yeah, that would be insane.

Yeah.

I just think he's the villainous also.

Steve Raglan.

Okay, he also plays Steve Raglan, aka Voldemort.

No. Do you remember? Quiz. Pop quiz. Do you know Voldemort's real name?

Do you remember Harry Ragland? What was that?

Tom Riddle.

Oh, I do know that, yeah. And he's. Is he Terrence's dad?

No, uncle. He's Voldemort. Well, there is a. Like, they're connected, you know? But they're not. No.

His mom's brothers.

No, they're just connected spiritually. But his dad is James, and his mom is Lily. You need to reread.

Yeah.

Okay.

Now, for whatever reason, my retention of that material is low. I have gone through the books.

It is interesting because you generally have a high retention for nonfiction. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

I think my mind's like, this is fake. I'm not gonna use the hard drive space for something that's fake.

Wow.

Yeah.

Fake is all relative. Everything's fake.

Okay. Oh, wait. Say that again.

Fake is all relative. Everything's fake.

That was my setup for an eye roll.

Yeah, that wasn't very good first time. It wasn't very good.

I think that might have been my first time.

Can you do it again? Yeah. That was better.

It's quicker. Yeah, I milked the first one, didn't I? Well, also, I was like, I went around the moon.

You didn't even know. You went up, and then you just moved your head. That's how you self has to move. No, it's like this.

It's like, take three. Tell me everything. Ooh. Oh, that was nice.

Yeah. See, the eye itself moves, not your head.

And you did, like, 270. Oh. All right, now say it. Last time, third take.

Okay.

Everything's fake.

I mean, really, everything's fake.

It's pretty powerful. You should try to work that into your repertoire, your arsenal of nonverbal insult.

Okay. Is the Burt Reynolds going over the railing slash wood pile stunt in the movie? I don't know, because I didn't rewatch.

It, and I didn't know watch it the first time.

I was excited to watch it.

Okay, so how embarrassed were you for me? Zero to ten. Be. Please be honest. I can handle it. Yeah.

I wasn't embarrassed for you at all.

You weren't?

No. And that's sort of what I was telling you when I was expecting to be very embarrassed. Not to be embarrassed, but to. To feel like it's gonna be really different than what I'm used to give them.

Parenthood.

Exactly.

Yeah.

But. But no, that's why I was sort of surprised, okay. When you were very much the same. Except, look, I will.

Yeah, we go.

I will give you that. It's. It's. It's you at a ten.

Forced.

A little more forced. Not as much as I think you saw.

Right. Okay. Yeah.

I don't think most people would think that. But I do know, like, your sweet spot.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I. It did feel. It did feel a little.

It was redlining, as we'd say in racing.

Oh, what's that?

Well, on your tachometer, you have, like, an ideal range that the motor is supposed to rotate in the engine, and after a certain point, if starts rotating, it's not making more power, and now it's getting in jeopardy of exploding.

I see.

So I was like. I was definitely redlined.

Uh huh. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But it was still funny. Like, it wasn't. It wasn't like, oh, he. That's not funny.

Well, except for the Indian.

You're not gonna like this, because I did take a shower in the middle, and I was sort of in, and so I think maybe I had to shower. We were recording.

We were recording, and it was after minutes.

I did a hair. No, no, no. I don't think I missed a lot, but I was. I was a little in and out.

Okay, so you missed that?

I missed it. And I think that was. That was. My dad does the gave us that.

The only problem is, is that part does happen in one of the funner parts of the movie, which is we're running from bad guys.

Right.

This marijuana field has caught on fire. So we're running as fast as we can, and we're inhaling tons of weed, and we're running, running, running, and then all of a sudden, we're laughing, laughing, laughing. And that's a very funny idea.

That is a very funny idea. I'll watch it again.

No, I wasn't all forward to that.

Scene, and I'll make sure.

Watch the beginning of the scene.

I'm gonna watch it, but that's it.

All right. Well, that was a very heartwarming episode for me.

Yeah, that was lovely. I'm glad we did that. And, you know, when I was. When I was editing it, I was like, oh, this is like, commentary.

Dvd commentary.

Dvd commentary, which I used to love.

So much, and I don't remember if we did that. I have a dvd copy, obviously, of the movie. I wonder if there is a commentary. I know that Kutcher and I did a commentary on, like, 8 hours of punkt or whatever. Eight episodes. Not a smart idea.

Because you were on drugs.

No, it wasn't. It just. You're just riffing for hours. You're saying a lot of stuff, and no one's protecting you, and you're trying to make each other laugh, and then you're forgetting your. I mean, again, there's no different time also totally different time. Like, I've. I've not gone back to listen to that, nor would I ever. But I can't imagine, you know, that that aged well.

I see. Okay, let's not.

We're probably talking like two horny 20 year olds.

Yeah. Well, you.

And.

Which is. Was your identity at the time quite horny. Yeah.

We shared that in common.

Sure, sure. I think maybe don't go back. No, guys, all of us, we don't.

Need to keep going forward.

Yeah, that's right. Let's just keep time to go back.

It goes forward. Don't run from the pain. Run toward it. You love. There it is. All. Alright. I love you.

Love you.

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