Oh God to quick quick question for.

On hear your thoughts on know what's on your mind.

I've got a quick quick question for the answers, not a quote, and I'm just by the week, can talk tonight.

So what's your favorite did you get?

Daniel O.

Broy see Best Friends in Comedy writ.

If there's an answer.

That I cannot find it, I think you have.

A great time.

I think you have a great time.

You Hello again, We're back.

It's the quick question Pad Sore and Daniel.

I'm Daniel Sore and I've been been Uh, I can't.

Get it a thought out of my head.

Oh, it's just been rattling around in there.

We've we watched the nine part Beatles anthology documentary series.

I know it came out a long time ago, but but it just like popped up on Apple TV.

And it's very fast, it's very fun, it's fascinating.

Uh, there's some really dorky One of the one of the problems of uh doing a documentary with the Beatles, who lived an interesting life but I think are pretty boring people and not great interviewers with storytellers, is that like you will get the same story three times, especially in the beginning, they're.

Like and then we went to we went to Italy for the first we went to France for the first time, and we're expecting all these these French girls, you know, to come see these the French girls, see the Beatles play.

We get there, we were so surprised.

They were a bunch of there was a bunch of boys, a bunch of French boys.

Well, the first time we went to France, you know, we were excited, you know, the main French girls.

We get there on it's only balls And then here's where I would do an impression of George Harrison having a story.

I don't have that one in the pocket, but so like that those parts that are fun and dorky.

But the thing that's been rattling in.

My head is, uh, they're they're they're deep into being the Beatles at this point, they are starting to hate each other.

They either are being very bitchy or strung out on heroin in John's case.

So so like things are, tensions are are pretty high.

Their recording, let it be, they try to do it in one studio and that wasn't working out for them, and Paul was trying to make a documentary at the same time, and that pissed everybody off, and so they moved to a different studio and everyone's kind of at each other's throws and sniping at each other.

And I forget if it was George or John, but one of them very like, very lucidly, so probably not John.

Was people are on better behavior when there's someone else around, and I'd been hanging out with Billy Preston and so I just brought him.

To the studio.

And then not only does like Billy Preston play on let it be a lot, he is apparently just like around in the studio and he solved all problems, not in to like, oh, I'm gonna play keys on this and I'm gonna fix it.

You just you see him in the documentary show Up and this is the first time he's mentioned in the entire nine part anthology series, and he's just this like smiley, cool, happy guy and they're like and everybody likes Billy and it's it's it's maybe the smartest decision anyone has ever made.

That was just like, no one is, no one's in a bad mood when Billy Preston's around.

So even though we're the Beatles.

Even though everyone's pissed off for a bunch of of of tweaked out millionaires, Let's just bring Billy Preston in here, and it calms everything, like magically calms everything down, and it makes everyone just like happy to be there and happy to make music.

It's crazy what a switch flip it is.

And I've been in my head.

Yeah sorry, I never had quickly did they address race at all?

And that like not even that you just have somebody else there, but that you have somebody who is of a different ethnicity than you, because the dynamic immediately changes, not like they're gonna be shouting the N word without him there, but the fact that you suddenly start to feel a little bit like a representative of like a whole people, Like it's just like falls on you, but you don't do it consciously, but just like naturally, if if like when I lived in a neighborhood that was ninety eight percent black, I was like I was the model citizen there because I was like, I'm representative of another race here.

They didn't address it, but if you're watching the whole series, one after the other, the.

Subtext is very obvious.

To any viewer, not exactly what you're talking about, but like they're so clearly early Beatles are uh ripping off black American artists like that's their their, their, their whole thing.

Like even more even more than Elvis was doing.

There was like we're we were so charmed by this exact style of music and we're gonna do it.

And they got so fucking huge doing it, and then of course like brought other influences in.

But you can imagine for for guys who like, this is why they got into music, was what American black artists were doing, uh, and that's who they were trying to sound like and what they were trying to do.

And then they see Billy Preston in there, they must be like if any bit of them had like imposter syndrome, and then Billy Preston walks in, they must.

Be like, oh, I'm not yo, you should be the Beatles.

Oh, Billy, do you want to do?

Do you take the mic?

You do you want something.

From nothing?

I don't like, I don't do it?

Good?

It good?

It truly just seemed like like a cure all for everything that was going wrong with them in a way that I I It never would have occurred to me, you know, because you and I were sort of the beatles of internet comedy.

It never would have occurred to me when we were in like the the long year days of Cracked, or like on after Hours set at three o'clock in the morning, just be like, let's we need to we need to bring in someone.

Else right now.

But it would have been a real cure.

I guess after Hours isn't the right thing because because that was mostly just like sleep deprivation.

But when you would we were meeting trying to come up with videos and like trying to pitch new series every week because every single week it seemed like Verizon Go ninety wants to spend big bucks on original series and they can't be anything you've ever pitched before to anyone, and be like, Okay, let's get this group of people together and pitch.

Let's get eighteen original ideas for narrative and unscripted shows for Verizon Go ninety, and then next week we're gonna come back and we're gonna do it for Roku TV.

And the week after that, Virgin America wants an original web series pitch, So we got to do that and you do this week after week to no success with the same group of people, and you get to know, like, I know what Cody's gonna pitch, I know what Michael's gonna pitch.

I'm sick of hearing my own voice and I don't and I'm like all the frustrations.

How smart it would have been for us if it was like, we're going to get all these same fucking people together, and also, let's get Sam Richardson in here.

He's everyone likes Sam so much.

Yeah, we just get it.

He doesn't have to pitch anything, just like be in the room and we'll all be on our best behavior because Sam's here and we want Sam to.

Like us so much.

Did so this happened once our show's history, which is I think you're absolutely right.

On set, it wouldn't have made a difference because there are a bunch of new people on set, and a lot of these people are very accommodating and kind and nice.

But when it's just when it's just us and like in like some little conference room with no windows, and like we're just rinding it out, and we were getting kind of like testy and everything.

There was one time when we did it.

We did a show briefly, I was like the prelude to like news for us, which was we were gonna do a show during the election cycle, right before John Dalstrop got elected and everyone thought Hillary Clint Clinton was going to win, where we had a bunch of people in the room together and we had we had a researcher there with us, and then we had Ben Joseph.

And Ben Joseph is like fills that role perfectly.

He's somebody who's like easygoing, very cool, is gonna be a joke sniper, like he's gonna he's got a lot of good ideas, but he's mostly just like there to be like I'm a vibes guy.

Had We had a week where we were watching I remember it now.

We were watching the Republican National Convention.

There was a small team of us.

It was me and you and Rosie on the cracked side, and we got Natalie Sure as our researcher, who was also a funny writer in her own right.

We got Ben Joseph, and we got Leanna Maybe, and we just took over a room to watch the the RNC make jokes and develop this.

Show in real time.

And you're right, it was.

Ben is a Grade fives guy.

And I'm also sitting there and I'm thinking, like, I know, I've been writing for eight or nine years at this point, but Ben's like a writer, So I better a television writer at that time.

I'd better pretend that I'm a writer too.

I'd better.

I'd better be good today.

Not only was he a.

Television writer, he'd come from writing hit after hit at college.

Humor like anything he touched, turned to virality.

Yeah, yes, God bless Ben.

Yeah, I mean he's he's he's alive.

I don't know he's doing crazy.

I'm still writing for TV.

All bad he was.

He was a friend to us all and we're gonna miss him.

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We did, I know.

We said that that injecting after hours with some life wouldn't wouldn't change that, but it would.

We had no h you and I boots on the ground, people who had no control over like who was going.

To be on the crew.

And yeah, we we were very lucky that for the most part, everyone on all of our crews we've gotten to know all of them.

We were all around the same age, so like our our our dps, the guys who operate the camera, and the people who do sound, people who do hair and makeup.

We'd all become friends over this entire process.

But there were some that were more fun than others.

And we would get to after hours and I would look at like, all right, what's on what's on the craft services table?

What snacks do I have?

Okay, all right, a bunch of stuff I can have, So that's a dud.

And then I look around like, who's who's shooting us today?

What?

What?

What?

Poor what?

Poor mastard is hitting record on the camera.

And if it was uh, Michael Cox, I was like, hell fucking yeah, I love this guy.

Oh great, this is gonna be a good one.

He's just such a sweetie.

He had a real thankless like I mean, if you've you've seen after hours, there are two shots, two shots.

And so it's a pretty pretty thankless job for a DP.

So it's truly just like who is going to make a few hundred bucks and uh increase morale by three hundred percent.

Oh it's Michael Cox today?

All right?

Yeah that was always really nice.

There are also there are other things on those sets where I it would be it would be a bad day for a different reason, Like if I knew that Katie Stole was in charge of catering and or like whatever we're gonna get for dinner for lunch that day, I was like, Fuck, she can't eat anything.

She doesn't know what's good.

She can't eat anything.

She hasn't had a really shit.

She's like got all fans, she's got all your kinds of limitations what she did at the time, And I was like, oh, fuck, we're fucked.

She doesn't know what's good.

Give me somebody who is two hundred and fifty pounds and like, my my spiritual cousin, like, give me somebody who's gonna bring me nothing but pasta.

Just some two a m.

Pasta so we can get into the home stretch of after hours pasta and a doctor pepper please.

That's what I'm running on in every single one of those videos.

Yeah, that was.

It was always when you're on set, you've got you're surrounded by a bunch of people you don't totally know, and a lot of them are actually in the scenes with you, So like not After Hours is a different example, said there were some people who were like working as cashiers pretend, you know, like acting as cashiers or as waiters and stuff.

And so there are people on set who you are aware of.

So when you're fucking up and you're fucking up over and over again and you're starting to get really mad at yourself, you can't outwardly be that angry because you don't want them to not be the story of the of the day.

Where you're like, I went to her, I saw them do after Hours and Soren is a tyrant.

Yeah, he was slamming the table and swearing.

I brought someone I was dating to the set of After Hours once and got so sweaty and so bad at my lines that I was like, this was this was a mistake for a couple of reasons.

This is bad for the show, and this is not how I want to be.

This is not this is not where I take the New World to impress them, This is not the place, this is not me my best.

A couple of times, people like fans got invited and I can't remember what the circumstances were, but we shot up in Montrose once they got danger that we'd never been to before, so maybe it was a bakery or something like that, and we were like running up on the day so it was like there's a time crunch where they had to open and we had to get cleared out of there, and it's like we had to get our lines and somebody had invited, Like I don't know, there were people who had come who were excited to be there, which was rare, and they were watching and they're like watching us do our takes.

And it was so in the back of my head the whole time that yeah, like I could.

I was going up onlines constantly then, man, and I was like, there's no helping this.

I can't fix this and you can't.

Here's the thing with these are if you're not familiar with After Hours and you're listening, there's a show that we used to do in which you're like you're laying out an entire essay, you're memorizing.

We're doing three episodes at once, and so you're memorizing so much.

You're memorizing essays on Predator or whatever, and it has to come off naturally.

It has to feel good and it does right down.

Predator, for I don't think we did a Predator episode and we didn't.

We didn't.

We absolutely should have now that it's back in the zeit guys, but we it's so much to memorize.

It's like, it's so much to keep in your head for that period of time and then also try to make it look natural and everything like that, and keep in mind that it's three am and it's like and we were we're testing man, And but it depends different people, like it comes out differently in different people, Like for Daniel, it's very internal.

It's a lot of like he'll go up on a line, I go home, Please come on, Daniel, okay with this with the same voice as somebody at the gym being like, you're so fucking soft, you're so soft.

But yeah, it came out differently, but yeah, we all got on each other's nerves there.

Yeah, and you certainly can't.

I wish I could remember the thing the episode you're talking about where fans got there.

That is not landing in my brain.

But certainly I remember the bakery.

I just don't remember the fans.

But it's that's more than any other case.

You can't say, like these people need to leave now because they're the problem.

I could have done that with the woman I was dating at the time.

I could have been like, hey, why don't you, why don't you go home and get some sleep and I'll and I'll finish up here there, or you know, anyone else that we knew pretty well.

We could be mean to them and send them away.

But fans who are so excited to be there, you're gonna make the news if you're like, hey, everything's going fine, can you just get these two fucking kids out here?

Got just out of my eye line.

I don't want them in the building.

I want they need.

To go in a car, and the car moving please.

And and I'm being nice about this.

Also, there's so I was gonna say that.

There's a lot of times they give you that, Like an AD will come up and be like, if things aren't going great, everyone's being really cool about it, everyone's being really quiet, trying to give you the space to get it right.

But occasionally it's going so wrong that an AD will be like, do you want to take a couple of minutes?

Yeah, and then you But here's the trick of that, Like that is such a diabolical move because if you take minutes to go get settled, and you come back and it still happens.

Everyone's furious, what did you do?

Mad?

So you can't take that time.

No matter how much you want that time, you can't take it because if you come back from it and you still haven't got it, oh boy, yeah brother, oh brother.

And especially when it's when we're memorizing essays and it's two thirty in the morning, five minutes to yourself isn't going to solve the problem.

And you know on some level that it's not.

I mean because the the issue is not I didn't study this enough.

The issue is is half my brain has left my skull and the words don't sound like words anymore.

And so I'm just it's I'm I'm just hoping the fumes will push me there and like, give me three minutes to myself to stare at the script and I'm gonna watch letters dance off the page for a while.

It's not gonna do anything.

I'm gonna what I'm gonna actually do with those three minutes.

And you be like, all right, thanks, everybody, gonna step outside.

Piece of ship, piece of fucking ship, piece of fucking dirt.

Shit you're less than dirt.

You're worth worse than dirt.

People used to dig holes for their jobs, and you're just trying to say predator.

Just say predator.

Fuck stupid fuck.

All Right, I'm good, I'm good.

I think I got enough good, I got it.

I came up with a little like themonic memory trick that's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna go.

Now, you get it, you get it, you can get it on this one.

I'm gonna kill you.

Son.

Yeah, I've been thinking.

Sorry I interrupted your there's a lot of beetle stuff happening and I interrupted it.

But no, it's like you're gearing up with Beatles.

Well I was.

I've been.

I've been obsessed with the billy presson of it all, And like I was thinking, is there someone else that is so immediately a crowd pleaser that you could just drop them into a tense situation?

But I don't know, as a thought experiment, if that's even worthwhile to pursue.

I mean, I have somebody in mind, even like celebrity status.

Yeah, yeah, I have somebody in mind who I think is maybe the most charming person.

I've an affable and like humble, and every time that I've seen them in anything, not just like acting, by the way, it's an actor, not just as an actor, but I've also seen them just interviewed and stuff.

I'm always like, holy shit, this person's dripping with charisma and charm.

They're so there's so and they're like make everybody around them feel at ease.

And it's Ryan Gosling, really Ryan Gosling.

If you've ever seen him interviewed or anything.

Sometimes he does press junkets with like co star.

He's so good at being on the level of every single person there, both the person who's interviewing, who is deeply nervous every single time.

Yeah, and then also his co star who is not, who is sick of this shit, and watching him like thread that needle is it's so incredible.

It's a child who has grown up in this environment and has been like, I'm gonna learn how to negotiate this the best i can and dipped.

I think for the same, very different vibes, but also full disclosure, this is a person that I got to work with a tiny tiny bit.

Ben Schwartz film ender for us at last week tonight, and there is I can't think of anyone I'd rather have on any side.

It's one set that I've been on with him for a few hours, and I just think, like, this guy, it makes so much sense to me why you book him four or a day on parks and recreation and then you write his character back into that show for the next seven fucking years, because he is so professional, so funny, so like he's he knows everyone's name, he's kind to everyone, a none of it feels like bullshit.

It just seems like this guy is just so.

I don't know if he goes home and there's a lot of darkness there, if if this is easy for him, But this is a guy who seems acutely aware that he is a celebrity person and that there are a lot of people around him and he's gonna give all of them the best fucking day that they're having.

And she's like this, this is this is a Again, I don't know if it's like that.

My natural inclination with with people like that is to assume, boy, you are really good at this, you were really you really thought about how you're coming off, how you're how you're you're being received, and what your funk is on this set, not just as an actor, but like as a as a as an energy that's going to be here.

That's where my brain goes.

It's entirely possible that he is just an effortlessly joyful person like that.

That's a thing my brain can't like.

Anytime I see anyone who's like good somewhere, I'm like, boy, you're really good at being being likable.

Where did you study that?

I don't know that you're wrong, no, because it's like it's the job is bigger than just the job, like what you're hired to do, So you're hired to come because you're good at you on screen.

He is somebody who's who's very fun to watch on screen.

He's a good improviser.

He can add to whatever you bring him into and he's gonna make like the scene better.

But he's also like if the job is bigger than that, it's like knowing how to make everyone to ease around you while you're doing it, or like make everybody else in the scene even with you, feel better about like more comfortable with themselves.

Like that's like and if somebody's doing somebody's doing all of that, it means that everybody could do all of that.

It's not like an every actor who comes in is like who's who's a Daniel day Lewis and is like making it miserable for everybody else around them.

But you're getting the best performance possible on screen.

You're like, I get it.

I get why.

Maybe you're doing all your heavy lifting to be in the character.

And then you see somebody else doing that and being and being like like a pleasure to be around.

You're like, oh no, I think maybe you could do it all and it wouldn't be that hard.

I think maybe you could also do all the good acting and be nice.

Yeah, I do.

I brought him up earlier, but I do think Sam Wwichers didn't fitch that bill as well.

And we worked with him a cracked before.

He was the famous and beloved person that he is now.

He was just like new and doing sketches with us, and we loved him so much, and he is someone that was just like we didn't We didn't book him constantly, I think because without talking about it internally, we were like, we don't want him to stop liking us and stop because because we could tell early on like we are not really going we're not the only people who are going to notice.

This guy's the star.

So let's let's bring him in for like projects that we think are gonna be good, and he's he's gonna want to say yes because.

The script is good.

And let's bring him into like environments that are gonna be fun and not like a grueling shoot.

And let's not book him too much because if he spends more time around us, we will poison him.

And so we just work with him a few times a year, and it was always just like.

We were funnier being around him.

We were all happier.

It was just like a better time.

He was just like he's gonna show up.

He's gonna know all his lines and be professional and also just playful and do bits and be ready to to Like, you know, I would come to set with an energy sometimes, whether it's after hours or something else where, it was just like this is not this is not my day.

I'm good some days.

I'm bad today, like I have something going on in my personal life and so I'm gonna keep to myself.

I'm gonna read and then I'm gonna come out and do my line as the best I can.

And then I'm gonna go home.

He is someone he and Ben Schwartz both.

I feel like these are two guys that you don't see them on their bad days.

Again, maybe because they never have bad days, or maybe because they're they're they're acutely aware that.

Like part of the job of actors giving is not having bad days.

Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.

Sam would do a thing where he would go and like wherever we were sitting and hanging out is always ended up being wardrobe too, because that's you you double up space when you don't have any money.

And uh, he just like put on a jacket from wardrobe and on.

He'd be like kind of deciding on like a character.

It had nothing to do with the shoot.

It was just like he was doing it for us.

He was like put a wig on and decide like what does this character sound like?

What Sam with a wigs sound like, and then just start being that character and he.

Started finding it and it was always like perfect and it was flawless and it was so funny.

He'd be like, yeah, you put on they put on a wig once and he was just like he was a dad with a kid who he's like very excited that his kid was doing sports, except this kid was doing soccer, and the dead didn't quite understand soccer, and he was like he really trying to be supportive but didn't understand it.

It was so funny.

Yeah, a character.

I will not do the do the voice because it's his.

But it was.

In our our Western sketch that Soren wrote that we did where I sweat my mustache off.

I don't know how you would find it on YouTube, but it's like cracked Western if West's were honest.

Yeah, so old West was honest.

I think we all have wigs and facial hair and stuff, and uh, we're all doing characters in that sketch.

Before it happened, I think Sam just had like the cowboy outfit and this long brunette kind of flowy wig, and he didn't have facial hair put on yet.

I don't know if we ever got it on.

And like you can see in this ketch he's doing like a proper Western like now you get on out of here, like like a sementy Sam kind of voice.

But when it was just him with this like feathery wig, he did this.

There's no other way to say it.

Pimp cowboy character.

He just walked around doing it for hours.

While we're we're filling this stuff in the desert.

It's a million degrees.

I'm sweating my uh spirit, glue off my fucking face.

Something it can't happen.

Something that's physically possible to do in the costume.

Matt, You're tired, Like whoever's the costume and makeup is like, this can't happen, This can't happen, getting mad.

We can sue the company because they said this would never happen.

And as as like tense and frust as that is.

And then Sam would just start doing the little walk and doing the little voice of this cowboy pimp that just had us all rolling on the fucking ground.

Ah.

Yeah, He's a real treat.

He's a treat to have around.

Ben Schwartz is a great choice.

I think that's wonderful.

I've based on like people that I've actually worked with that have come on the show and like we've done records with, and when they come I get very excited because they are like they bring such a good energy and like they understand that the job is bigger, like they understand like how to make it more fun.

There's two people to immediately come of mind.

One is Paul Tompkins.

Every time he comes in, it's such a it's so fun, like the shot that you know it's gonna be we're gonna have a good time.

The other one is Is and I've only ever done him over the phone, but or like records, not in the actual booth, was a Jason man Zukis.

Jason Zukis comes in with such a good energy and like comes in like I don't want to say he's like ingratiating himself to you, but like he comes in, he's like, hey, I love this script or like he's like talking to the different people and he's like I think I remember you from this and this, and like he's trying to make it personal all the way around.

And then like he wants to do so well, he's like he's not somebody who's there who's getting like.

He does it.

And then you're like he's getting notes and he's getting notes again.

He's getting notes again, and people and some people knows circumstances aren't gonna be like what the fuck?

What just what do you want to give me a line?

Read?

What is it that you're asking for here?

And then but he he's just like he wants to do it to the point where you're like, Okay, we've got it, we can move away.

He's like, no, no, no, wait, I got hold on there.

Somebody else I want to try that.

I think you guys will like and like you get another one.

And he's so great.

Yeah.

You know what's what's a fun thing we can we can do right now is we're gonna tease.

We will do the opposite of this episode where we talk about people we've worked with who are fucking terrible exclusively on the Patreon Aha.

Yes, absolutely, Yeah.

The people who I'm now afraid of like that.

I feel like that it didn't go great and they were angry, and I don't I think maybe they burned that bridge, or they burn that bridge.

Honestly, people who are are the opposite of Ben Schwartz, where it's like, man, you really brought that whole fucking set down.

We were having a great day and then and then your energy changed everything.

That's gonna have to be man, I don't even know.

I think my job has to end before I can do that.

I can't even put that mine to pay.

Well, maybe I guess that's true.

I'm trying to think.

I'm thinking of like the people, and I'm like, well, the way, where are we gonna work with them again?

Yeah, that's true.

Someone easily could spend five dollars once and listen to that episode and then write down every name we say.

Yeah, and it's it's clear to me.

Every once in a while, it's say clear to me that people are listening to this where I'll catch somebody on even on staff we don't even like independent of me, will be like people are talking about American Dad for some reason on Twitter acts and generally it comes down to like somebody, some fan is like it's better than family guy, Like that usually ends up being the fight, and then like everybody wants to fight about that, like which is better because they can't just both exist.

They can't like be fans of both.

It's just as impossible for some people.

And as they're doing it, they're also like people are throwing in details that I know that they learned from this podcast, and I'm like, oh, oh man, I gotta watch what they say.

They'll like talk about the like just recently somebody was like they're just they trust their audience.

They know that they can have so they can introduce the characters trait that they should have been there the entire time and wasn't like when Steve goes to the watering hole with his friends not and like we just assume that that they've been going there every single summer even though we haven't seen them go once for the past fifteen years of the show.

And I was like, that's my episode.

I talked about that on the podcast.

Oh fuck, They're gonna get some people on Twitter asking about Roger on the bang Bus and it's got a lot of, I know, internal problems for you.

People are gonna be like, I don't think we ever did that.

I think we just talked about it over and over.

It is really funny.

I'll like in the room when something like bang Bus comes up, everyone will pitch on something and like something just catches fire right like all of a sudden, like there's a joke that everyone really loves and it's not like it they don't love it for the reason of like it's finished and we should put it in.

It just tickles them in the moment and they're like, I want to keep talking about this, and it's the funniest thing in the world.

When whoever's episode it is who is trying to break the episode, that means just like lay it out by the way, like just like get the get the episode done.

They everybody else is like get stuck on a thing.

And that person knows it's not going in their own episode.

They like they're gonna just sort of tolerate this for a little while, and it just keeps going and growing, and this person has to just sit there steaming, like being like, we need to work on my episode.

But people cannot help themselves.

They can't.

They just keep pitching on this Roger character that will never exist, Yeah, and like going crazy for it.

If you're not allowed to stop the fun in the writer's room, No, no, you are not.

That's a cardinal rule.

And then occasionally it does end up going in.

There was an episode, there's an episode of our show where Stan and Francine open a trophy shop I think it's called Trophy Wife Trophy Life, and they're like like Angelina and Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton kind of like hanging all over each other like dirty interviews, but they kissing each other on the neck and stuff like that, and like the trophy store has just like their relationship is ignited from this trophy store.

This is this is an episode of American Dad that aired in nineteen ninety eight.

It wasn't that long ago, but it probably might have been twenty eighteen.

And and there's at one point, like, for instance, like she can't run the store because Dan is so all over her, and so she asked him to stop, and he's so taken aback by that that he tries to open a rival trophy store across the street and buys out this pickle business rest and the place cross the street was like a giant pickle and it was the Pickle King, and he bought it out to try and sell trophies out of it.

But as we're like, when that idea came up, we were like pitching on the Pickle King so much, and like what the Pickle King was like, and like his whole backstory and everything, and we couldn't stop, and she did not want to do the pickle stuff, but it just kept going and going and going, and finally I had something clicked and she was like, I know how to do it, like I know how to put it in, and she did and it was so funny, really really wonderful.

Yeah, I self pitched.

We did an episode of the show a couple of years ago about this is gonna sound like parody prison heat, about how prisons are too hot and we got to do something about it.

It's it's it's a genuine problem.

Like I'm saying, it's it's it's parody and I'm I'm I'm using a jocular tone when discussing it.

But there are a lot of prisons in the South that like, like fully don't have air conditioning, and you've you've got states where they're like, hey, legally you have to have air conditioning in this prison, and the wardens are like, fucking make me, We're not going to do it.

It's very bad.

Uh.

It's an incredibly like one of the bleakest episodes I've ever worked on in the show, just because none of the raw material material that we're working with, by design, is going to lend itself to comedy or joy.

You know, you're getting interviews with prisoners who are talking about.

How hot it is and how it's like torture, and these are just like people who are like describing torture on camera, which is not as fun as your comedy writing job.

So yeah, no, I just I someone at at one point in one of the clips talked about feeling like they were being roasted like like a hot dog.

And I'm gonna say.

Forty five percent of my script was alts on different talking hot dog jokes.

It's they would I would start with a thing that I'll do a basterdization of it, but some kind of thing that was like, that's awful.

You never want someone to to feel what it's like to be roasted like a hot dog.

You only want hot dogs to go to feel that with one exception, and then it would cut to like an animated hot dog talking to John, and I wrote a thing about like how it was a bad boy hot dog.

And I had a hole back and forth.

I was like, that was really fun to write it back and forth between John and bad boy hot dog.

What are some other hot dog characters that it could be instead of a bad boy, Let's think outside the box.

And I wrote maybe five different spins on talking hot dog and John and talking hot dogs describing what it's like to be a hot dog who's cooking to death, and why a hot dog would be in prison in the first place, a lot of like very inventive spins on this as I'm writing.

It, and knowing like this isn't going in the episode.

We're gonna play the clip of the guys saying it felt like getting roasted like a hot dog, and John's gonna say that's awful, and then we're gonna move on to a new clip.

But I just kept doing it, and something I've never done before in a script because because the the silent agreement I have with my bosses is that I think everything I write and pitch is good and.

Should go on the show, no matter how silly or stupid it is.

And this is the one time I violated that bargain where I wrote two out of my eight hot dog jokes and then wrote a little note beneath it that was just like, hey, I got a lot more hot dog jokes.

I put them at the end of the script if you don't want to read them.

Just like that's where I violate our agreement.

It was like, I know you're not gonna do this, so here's here's the part of my script you don't need to read.

Sorry, A professional would just not hand in the part of the script that you don't need to read.

But I'm I'm just doing it.

I'm this is how I'm coping with watching four hundred hours of people roasting to death in prison.

Is I'm writing my protest jokes about talking hot dogs.

Oh man, I And do they say anything about it?

Like when you see it at the end, Okay, you get a little we are I'll say like something.

I'm like always hesitant to say how much I can actually know how much I can talk about with American Dead.

But we moved recently from TBS to Fox, and Fox says is broadcast television, so the rules are a little different in terms of what you can actually do.

And so like where we used to be able to get away with a shit, you can't do that anymore.

You can't get away with bleeping a fuck.

You can't see, oh, you can't see the mouth of the character, make the f like biting the bottom lip and then bleep it.

There's things that, yeah, there's it's much more.

It's harder than it used to be because.

You've you've been I guess you've been bleeping Fox for a while, right, I guess you've been on TBS for.

A very long time, for a very long time, and it's possible that these rules have changed since we've been back, like maybe this was not the case when we were previously on Fox.

I also don't know that everybody'd hires to the same rules.

I think that maybe Family Guy or Bosberger and stuff like, maybe they have more license than we do.

But we're brand new again, and so there's things that we can't do.

And it's always funny like you get these notes from standards and practices.

Do you guys ever get those the standards and practices notes from based on your script?

No?

My god?

No?

We oh great, okay, all right, only get legal notes.

We only get very like incredibly safe legal and they don't even come to We'll get like research flags that I will see while working on it, and we'll get legal notes that will go to John and Tim and the research team and we'll hear about them sometimes.

But yeah, standards and practices hbo.

Oh right, you're not TV.

Yeah, so we get we get notes from them we can't say certain certain swear words, and so we well, I don't know that we I will then put so many of them in my action lines.

Sure, the stuff that will never end up on air I'm I'm gonna just like litter that shit with swears so that somebody has to read it at a table.

It will get said at a table read, but it will never end up in the actual script.

And it really helps me a lot.

It makes me feel a lot better to put all that in there.

Now stands and practices.

We get a lot of notes.

We get a lot of notes that are like that seem at first maybe crazy, but it's because they're so protective and like I'll give you an example of one.

Recently, I've got an episode where Steve is riding his bike and he almost gets an accident with a truck, and one of the notes was, Steve needs to be wearing a helmet.

It would be nice if the trucker was wearing a helmet, and he should be wearing his seatbelt.

But part of the reason that they almost get an accident is that the trucker is like he's spilled his coffee and he's like all the way in the back of his cab, like digging through it, and he's he's steering with his foot and stuff like that, Like it ruins the whole scene.

If all that stuff is in there, and so The way that it was eventually solved was that because they nearly get into a nice Steve does get grievously injured, but with they almost get into an accident, is the consequence, like they weren't doing the safe things, and then we get to see the repercussions of them not having done the safe things, and so it's still it's a teaching moment and so we can still use it.

That's insane.

We can't even yeah, like like you didn't put a helmet on Steve, right, Nope.

Yeah, So it's so I'm I'm complaining about theoreticals and hypotheticals that don't matter, which I shouldn't do.

Like we'll get we'll get legal notes all the time.

That'll make me so mad, and then one of the other writers will be like, we're not doing it.

They don't like it.

We can't control you.

We were never gonna do it.

So so but I was like, yeah, I know, but like if the anger doesn't come out here, it's coming out at home, and we can't have that, so I've got to put it here at work and the but the thing that makes me mad about your situation is it it feels it feels like overreach.

It feels like standards like, put Steve's a helmet in a helmet is bullshit, stupid note that doesn't make any sense.

Put the truck driver in a helmet feels like standards is trying to get a joke in because because truck drivers don't wear helmets, but they do win cartoon shows, and that to me feels like, well, then well then you shouldn't be working in standards of practice.

You shouldn't you You are not being objective, and maybe none of you are.

Maybe everyone just wants to put their little fucking stamp on everything.

I think what it is is that they are that they treat it like a negotiation, because the same thing happens with nudity on our show.

Now, like pixelation, you're really not supposed to do pixelation.

You're supposed to have you're supposed to cover it in tasteful ways like the Austin Powers the way, yeah, where you're like there's always something.

In a way, but then there's like you can't see so.

You can't see bar hip either, Like bar hip is out even though it's not that it just because it indicates that somebody is completely naked and so like there's things like that, but you start there and then as you like, you produce new versions of the you're doing, like the an animatic, you're doing a color model, like you're doing all these different things, and along the way they're like, okay, you can have three scenes of pixelation, but everything else has to be covered and no, no buttocks or no hip, like you can't see any of that.

And you're like and so like they treat like they're starting from a starting point.

That's like, it's not, hey, this is the end, this is everything works to this line.

It's like, here's where we're going to start from.

We believe that all this should be taken out, and then you see your job to negotiate against that, basically, and then eventually they'll give a little You can't.

Just say Simpsons has been showing asses since the first episode.

So think about every time you've seen Peter, Yeah, every time you've seen Peter Griffin naked, and he's naked all the time.

Yeah, and because the joy is that he's so fat that you can't see his penis, but he's naked all at every angle, like naked constantly on the show.

We're not allowed to do it.

Yeah, you can't just like cite precedent.

That's so bizarre.

I don't know.

Maybe we can't.

I certainly can't.

I can't go get in touch with stands and practices and be like, hey, you're messing up.

But I'm surely there's somebody on our on our show who is like fighting these fights.

I think I actually know exactly who it is, and he's good.

But it's still like it is a negotiation.

So they're starting from such a staunch place because they know we're going to fight against it.

Right, it seems like it could make their job mostly irrelevant and make your job much easier if there was a list of things that you could do that was consistent.

Well, because writers are going to find loopholes around that, well, yeah, there's It is very interesting to see the things that they come back with.

I'm always excited to see other people's notes from stands and practices because it is always stuff that you did not anticipate, where you're like, oh, I didn't even realize that they would be upset by that.

Yeah, different uses of the word oh, like oh, brand names brand names are like huge, and that the specificity of a joke often relies on brand names.

So if if Principal Lewis is going through everybody's lockers and it turns out that he's not look, he's only looking for contraband because he wants he's going on like a trip to Cabo and like he's like he's looking for Swisher sweets in there.

You can't say he's looking for Swisher sweets.

But it's funny to say, I know I can't do it.

What a hoot.

I know we've gotten it's encourrng to me now, not standards and practices, but a few like sensitivity flags have made their way back to me, not through like not that anyone needs to run anything by me at all.

And this was was years ago, and it's not like it's I think becat we have a pretty open workplace where where like people are free to say, like, hey, this might be a little bit tone deaf, or this might be a little bit sensitive, and I think some people have had have had different thresholds for what.

Might be inappropriate.

And just one that sticks out.

Years and years ago, I wrote a joke about Pinocchio uh killing himself.

This was this was like a specific time capsule where.

I think it was the Washington Post who used to like rate the truthiness of certain claims by President Trump based on how many remember that, how many Pinocchios had got I don't know if there's still remember that fucking clown ship was the Post would be like, U he said that the Mexicans are sending their rapists.

We gave that five out of five Pinocchio's as like great excellent journalism.

But we it kept coming up that that the degree of Pocono's, the amount of Pocono Jesus, the amount of Pinocchio's.

Was uh like the arbiter of of truthiness, And.

I think I spun that into a joke about uh the Washington Post rated it.

Pinocchio was so left a note about having seen what you what your world does to people who are different, I have decided to leave it.

And there's an animation of like Pinocchio swinging as if hung by noose.

And Marionette strings cut into yeah.

And someone on staff, who I have no idea who it was, but I'm pretty sure they don't work there anymore, UH, flagged it to someone else as like this might be.

Just like a sensitivity flag.

It like people, people might think of suicide and it might make them sad, and like maybe the writer didn't know that when they wrote that, and I.

Was so mad.

That is not where I thought that was going.

I thought the news was going to be the issue.

No, it was just like, like, we can't let the audience think of suicide because suicide is a bad thing and it might make people.

It might make people sad.

And not only was I I like huffy and puffy as a writer who had written it.

It was not that it super matters, but it was that like a friend of mine had lost their battle to depression not too long ago, So it's not like I was, you know, writing in a fact, like I wasn't so detached from this that that I was like, Ah, everything's funny, I'm edgy.

Was like, no, I'm like, I'm I'm I'm aware of what the weapons of my hands are capable of.

I know what the words can do, and I'm choosing to do what I'm doing because like, I also know what comedy is and does.

I was mad about those things, and also.

Mad because I was new enough at the job that I was still pretty bad at it and not getting a lot of jokes in.

So when I got a joke in and I was like, good, this is this is like jokes, density of joke, volume of jokes is how I can like keep my job here.

I can at the end of the year point to the jokes.

Yeah, it's any metric you can grab onto.

And then some person with with in my opinion, too much time on their hands, was like, hmm, silicides kind of a down er.

I don't.

I think we should never mention things that might make people sad.

I was very upset about it, and this is the time that the other writers were like, this is the only reason you are aware that this note was given is because it had been passed.

Around as like, look at this silly.

No, you can't like it.

It's not going to change anything.

You can't get you have no right to be upset about it.

And yet yeah, and you found a way.

Yeah.

There are definitely times where I mean, I was just this morning thinking about old articles that I had written for the site, and I was like, at the time, someone would raise an issue or they'd be like, you use the word you use this word slut here, and at the time I was like, yeah, it's a funny sounding word.

Say it is, put it in your mouth and see how it feels, and like I would like balk it that kind of thing.

And now, like looking back on it.

I'm like.

They might have been right.

I think I used it as a punchline and it was like to hurt somebody who had been too promiscuous.

Like it's like, I don't think I was.

It is a fun word to say, but it is the way I was using it.

They were right, it was not the right thing to do.

It is, and we society has since like found new ways to use it that are that are fun.

Yes, yes, but we're all still trying to learn the rules about everything.

But I remember when the Jurassic Park Jurassic World Rebirth trailer came out and Jonathan Bailey was in it, and everyone was like, we're so happy to see Jonathan Bailey and his slutty little glasses and just like.

Oh, we're saying it again.

Okay, cool, great, But I understand it's different.

It doesn't mean we can say it all the time about everything.

Let me let me recalibrate.

I'm gonna I'm gonna keep not saying it.

I want to keep it.

I don't want to say I'm sorry you enjoying that you're all using the S word.

I will continue to not do it.

So yeah, I occasionally with those possible creeping in my mind when I get a stands in practices note where I'm like fuck them, fuck them, and then I'll like be like, well, think about you in twenty years.

Are you going to agree with this note?

Is it possible that you will agree with this note?

And sometimes that.

Helps me deal with it a little bit better.

Yeah, all right, everybody, this has been quick question with Soorren and Daniel.

We didn't even get to the topic that we wanted to talk about.

We talked about some.

Really fun behind the curtains stuff, both at Cracked and at our jobs.

I hope you enjoyed this episode.

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