The Always Sunny Podcast - Fool's Paradise and BlackBerry
Episode Date: May 8, 2023Go out to the goddamn theaters, you fuckin' creeps. Visit http://thealwayssunnypod.com Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at http://mintmobile.com/sunny Sign up for a one-dollar-per-mo...nth trial period at http://shopify.com/sunny Get a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase at http://athleticgreens.com/sunny Download the Gametime app, create an account, and use code SUNNY for $20 off your first purchase
Transcript
Discussion (0)
stubborn
very
Don't talk to me. I won't. Oh, that's the first sip. First sip of the day? It's the
first sip of the day. You didn't have a sip of coffee before we came in here? I don't drink.
Yeah, I don't know. Oh, dude, I can't get out of the house. I got to have my coffee.
Yeah, I've sort of trained myself to not have the first thing. Plus, I have my beans
that I like. I got my grinds that I like. Now, are you are you still making it in the in the
Keurig or the or the Nespresso machine? No, I'm grinding beans. Are you doing the whole thing?
Yeah. The Joshua Tree coffee. Love it. Joshua Tree coffee. Yeah, love it. I think I've had that
before. So good. Well, that's okay. There is a tasty. What's that? Oh, we're just chatting here,
buddy. We're chatting. Is Megan coming today or no? Oh, boy. That's where we're going to start.
Excellent start. We get to roast Megan. Now, Megan's not here. I'll say about Megan is she's
going to come in. She's not going to find it funny. She is going to be sweating. She's going to be
upset. So how are we going to navigate that? We're going to lean right into it. Like it's
an open moon and we're going to push on it as hard as we can. Absolutely. Because that's what
friends do. That's what friends do. That's what friends do. That's what friends do. They find
somebody who's in distress. They find the pressure point and they just go right. And here she is.
Well, she's on time. She's on time. She's on time. You are going to get it. You should see my parking
Java. Just full diagonal parking. We should have Glenn analyze it. We were like wolves who noticed
one of the wolves was like limping. We were about to just attack. But the problem is what happened
when you come over to the wolf, it's nine o'clock, so she's on time. I'm on time. The metaphor would
be you go over to the wolf and it turns out that she wasn't limping at all. She was trying to lure
you in so that she could find out. And there are other wolves behind you now and you're like,
ah, well, good job. She wanted to figure out who the wolves were that were going to come. Is
that what was happening, Meg? No, it's just that you guys have forgotten that the wolf can cut all
this. Yeah, that's true. This doesn't even have to exist in the episode. Yeah, but I think it's
more like the wolf just had a thorn in its foot and the other wolves are like, oh, maybe we'll get
to eat this one today. And then she was like, nah, nice. I got the thorn out. And then the other
wolves were like, oh, man, we weren't really going to eat you. No, that was a joke. That was a joke.
But the thorn is out. You're fine. A friendly ribbing. And
here we are. I don't even know how to do this. Well, I'm sure Meg's got some sort of a structure.
I do. Yeah, I do. Well, yeah, I was thinking that we could discuss Fool's Paradise first.
I've written down a bunch of questions. And then I thought we could get to Blackberry's second.
That's probably great. Because you're involved in both. So you won't be as bored in the first one.
Yeah, I was going to say I might find something. I would think. Okay. If that's all right with
you guys, does that work out for you? That seems good to me. I was really looking forward to this
episode because, and hope all the creeps out there will get to notice this because I don't know if
the listeners will, but it's going to be, I don't know if they thought about this, but it's going
to be very uncomfortable for them. You mean from a compliment standpoint? Yes, because it's very hard.
It's very hard to sit there and be complimented over and over and over again. I'm going to do it.
I'm going to do it anyway. But not because I want to make them feel uncomfortable,
because I'm so proud of them, both of them. And I can't wait to get into the specifics.
I mean, I think I'll be more comfortable with it than I was when we were in front of 9,000 people
in Dublin. And it was like, I don't want to sit here and take it. All right, let's get to it,
shall we? Let's talk movies. I want to talk about, because I do want to talk about your
movie. We've all watched each other's films, and we're here to talk about it. Go.
Take a look at this guy. What about him? He's a dead ringer for you. Man, don't look nothing
like me. I mean, look at him. He's too short. Get finished in day for you.
Action. Cut. Latte pronto. Excuse me, Mr. Pronto. Can I call you Latte?
Latte. Latte pronto. Latte pronto. Is that your name? Amazing. You and me are going to do big things
pal. And respect, bro. Move, move. Stars coming through. Do you want me to start off? Yeah, let's
have an instruction. Well, I wanted to start by asking Charlie, how did this film come about,
and it's sort of like a chicken egg situation, did you decide that you wanted to write and direct
something and then came up with an idea for what you wanted to write or direct? Or did you come
up with the idea first and then we're like, oh, I'm the person to write and direct this?
The funny thing about this thing is I've been tinkering with it as sort of like a passion thing
for a decade. So we were on season 10 of the show and I was starting to feel pretty confident and
my ability is write and execute something. And I'd done some rewrites on some feature films that
I'd been able to act in. But I'd also sort of realized I didn't have control over those films.
The way that we have total control over Sunny, we have the final say. So as I was writing this
movie, I thought, well, if I don't direct it, I might get in a situation where someone's making
it something I don't want it to be and that would suck. So it was kind of realizing that I had to
direct it. And then there was a piece of me that forgive the comparison because it's, you know,
everyone's all up in arms about it and I understand. But like, I loved Woody Allen movies. I loved
Albert Brooks. I loved things that seemed like they were a singular voice from a person. So I
think I always wanted to do that thing. And then I loved certain types of movies like being there,
which is obviously the closest relative to this movie. And I was like, I'm just never going to
get the opportunity to be in a movie like that. They're not going to make them. And then feeling
like a certain kind of style of movie was just not getting made or even like a Coen Brothers movie
or Paul Thomas Anderson or these sort of tour driven things being like, well, I don't know,
the phone might just may never ring. So a combination of just some confidence with what we
were doing at Sunny as a boot camp of how to do it. And then a desire to be in a certain type
of movie was the sort of initial like, well, let's just try to make one.
I imagine too with a type of movie where you're not speaking in the movie,
not having control over that thing would be doubly impossible because it would be like
you lost your voice in two different ways. Like to have somebody else tell you how you're supposed
to do a movie like that. Yeah. Well, I just want to start by saying I was so endlessly
entertained, but I've always been a big fan of this movie in its earliest iteration. You sent me
a script for this, for a version of this is different, but it had a lot of the same elements
that are sure. It was probably 60 to 70% of what you're actually going to see in the movie
was in that initial script. And certainly the style and the feel and the comedic sensibility,
the Hollywood satire aspect of it. So I've been a fan of every single iteration of this, even
when it was this thing of like, how do you make a movie with a protagonist that doesn't speak
and doesn't want anything, which was and doesn't want, but more even more importantly,
doesn't want anything. Yeah. And is literally, it literally breaks the number one rule of
screenwriting, which is having the main character get pushed around like forced into other things.
Yeah. Being just like a vessel of other people's motivations. Right. And yet somehow, like,
that was the, but that was also the thing I loved about it and that I still love about the movie.
So I just, I just want to, before we start getting to all the questions, I just want to say, like,
I just love the film. And man, it's so funny. I love, I love every single sequence. It's never
not totally entertaining from beginning to end, you know, and it's constantly like opening itself
up and you're meeting new characters and like exploring different sides of the business. And
until it really spirals out of control at the end, you know, and you get to meet like the people
behind it, you know, that was that. Yeah. It's like, I don't want to totally give away, but it's,
yeah, you kind of meet the, you know, the people that make the people, the people that make the
people. But what you just touched on, I think is what is a good kind of primer for people to
understand before they go into the movie. And it makes it that much more enjoyable
that I think the idea that the main character doesn't want anything is the point of the movie.
Because I think that you, and I'm taking this from the movie itself, not even conversations that
we've had, that I think the idea is that people will project what they want to on to the main
character. Right. And so the audience is doing that. Every character that's surrounding the
character is doing that. And they're creating something that is just a reflection of themselves,
not the person. Like, I've never seen that before. Even being there wasn't really quite that.
No, it's a slightly different thing. Right. Well, it seemed to apply to this town, right,
which is built on persona and ego. I remember sitting and thinking, I was reading an article
about The Rock. And then I switched over to some other entertainment article about Justin Bieber.
And I was thinking, what are these names? And how do we just accept them? And like,
you know, it was talking about like Bieber's and things. And I was like, it's a strange
sounding word. Now, I know that is that, that man's name. But like The Rock, we just started
calling a man an inanimate object. And we were just like, it was a wrestler. I mean, you know,
for sure. But like the wrestling world, there's a lot of that. We went for the ride, right?
You know, and he walks down the street, someone will go, there goes The Rock. And I was like,
what's strange sort of concept? Like, so the idea of a name and an identity and what that is,
just seemed like fertile ground for that. It's super effective, you know, because it creates
a mystique and a mystery and a conversation, you know, the edge, you know, the guitar player or
slash, you know, it creates like, wait, wait, this person goes Madonna even, you know, a one name
it doesn't compute because my name is Rob McElhenney, right? Which is like very...
What if somebody was like, I want to be called mushy. I mean, everyone call me mushy.
I'm sure someone's probably even tried that. But then also there was something interesting.
Remember the story that I think we were talking about, maybe you had overheard it, where Jack Black
was like in a casting office and he had just done like, what was his breakthrough movie? It was...
Which one? High Fidelity. Yeah. Oh yeah.
And he heard someone saying, get me the next Jack Black. Yeah, yeah. That's like the Hollywood
the Hollywood story. Yeah. Yeah. All right. This is the progression of a Hollywood actor,
right? Yeah. A Hollywood famous Hollywood actor. It's who's Jack Black? And then it's
get me Jack Black. And then it's get me the next Jack Black. And then it's who's Jack Black.
And then it's who's Jack Black. It comes full circle. So I thought in that already is an inherently
entertaining structure for just a story arc. Yes. Wait, wait, can you tell the creeps and
listeners what the inanimate object is? Well, I had an idea in writing this. This was in the
very first draft and it just stayed that like someone asked someone for a latte pronto. They
were just always yelling for a latte pronto. And then Ken, who really drives the story, Ken
Jong overhears Ray Liotta asking someone for a latte pronto and assumes he's talking to me
and assumes my name is latte pronto. And then everyone just starts calling me latte pronto,
which is actually a really cool name. It's a decent name. Yeah. Latte. I believe people would
go for that. But I think the introduction of Ken's character is where the satire really gets
so much deeper because, you know, as Rob was saying, like there's this projection that you
can do on a character with no wants or needs. And so you might, if it were just latte pronto,
you might watch this movie and say, oh, well, that's just the wrong way to go about things.
You actually should have these wants and needs. But then you have Ken Jong, who is a character of
nothing but needs. Desperate wants and needs. Desperate wants and needs. And it was a real
acting challenge for Ken because, you know, he's known as... Yeah, listen, well, that's one of
the things I wanted to talk about was his performance in the film. I think those emotional
moments are crucial to making the movie work. Me too. I love those moments in the movie.
Those really grounded it for me. Same. I think he gave a performance unlike anyone's
ever seen him give without doubt. And I think it caught me. It really caught me off guard.
It really caught me off guard because, again, I've seen the movie before, but I haven't seen
the newer stuff that you shot where you added more stuff with Ken and kind of doing the things.
I essentially made him the main character, you know, like or like split right down the middle
in a way. Yeah. But he's the protagonist, right? He's driving the action. And he goes on as much
of a rise and fall emotionally as my character does. But with Ken, I remember saying to him,
listen, people are used to you doing a very sort of... It's almost like a sarcastic,
sassy sense of comedy that he does. It's very funny when he does that. It's really funny.
And I was like, Ken, you can't do this for this character. You have to be
a thousand percent earnest. The character does some manipulation and some lying,
but he has to do it in a very earnest, very... What was his reaction to that? Like,
I don't know if... Was he worried that he wasn't going to be able to deliver that?
No, he is such a... He's a dream to work with because he wants to do a great job.
And that's everything, right? So he's willing to... Sometimes we would do many, many, many takes.
I pushed him hard. Sometimes I would feel like, Pat, I'm like, I don't want to break this guy.
He's like, we're jamming these scenes in and he's working, but he was just willing to do it and
willing to just be more honest. And I was learning to be more honest as a filmmaker where a lot of
the stuff in my second pass that I got was just sort of like Ken on the streets. And I just wanted
to put him in a natural environment and kind of hide the camera a little bit and make things feel
more alive and more honest. And he was willing to go for it. And I would not... The movie wouldn't
work without that. I just needed that humanity, that honesty from his character to have the
movie have a sense of purpose. It also like makes the satire so much more effective because
you guys do this all the time on Sunny, but I always think the best version of a satire doesn't
fall wholeheartedly onto one side or in the other. So if the movie just condemned Hollywood
and said that there's nothing good to come out of this sort of place, I think it would be less
effective than to say that this relationship between the two of you is this one bright spot of hope
within an otherwise kind of like bleak existence and therefore I think makes the satire land
a lot more. Well, I start the movie with Peter McKenzie who we all know as the doctor from
Sonny who tells you that Jackie... Jack DeNar's precedent obliterated. She's lucky to be alive.
She broke her arm, few ribs, punctured a lung, shattered her pelvis, compound fractures from
both legs. Her breasts. Excuse me. What about her breasts? I'm afraid that they were obliterated.
And he is such a comedic assassin because he plays things so honestly and I wanted a honest,
believable doctor sort of saying that my character, we meet him in a mental health facility at the
beginning of the movie and we don't know what his issue is. He's lost the ability to speak. We
don't know why and he's saying, you know, if he can have like one meaningful connection,
perhaps he can break free from this psychotic state and then of course he delivers a really
great line about like the state's not going to pay for any of that. We're going to put his ass on
the first bus downtown, which only he can do in that way. But then the entire movie becomes about
can both these men find a meaningful connection in Hollywood and that turns out to be a difficult
place to find any sort of real humanity. Those were all the things that I needed to discover
and it was just a hard path to find it. One thing it seems that you had a grasp on from
the very beginning is, you know, you mentioned some of the influences and I 100% could see them
in all the best ways. Woody Allen, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, P.T. Anderson, even the best of...
Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin influences. Well, so much of it to me felt like anachronistic,
where you don't know what time frame it actually exists in, so that makes it timeless. Because
it's clearly modern times, but there's a sensibility from both the 70s and the 30s.
You get the sensibility that it's like every year of Hollywood all mashed into a bus.
That was what I wanted to do with the design, with the costume design, with the cars that I
would pick for the characters. The bus at the very beginning that you get dropped off.
And then I got nervous for a while, like making it that like, oh, this is a mistake. You know,
people want to know what the hell time a movie is taking place in.
I disagree. I disagree. I think that's what makes it feel like a fairy tale.
I came full circle on it. Yeah.
But my initial instinct was that I wanted to sort of satirize Hollywood through the ages,
but I also knew that there were some unbelievable aspects and heightened aspects to the story.
So I thought maybe I should, from a design standpoint, I could get away with pushing
things a little further, but then it got scary. You know, I was like out lost in the woods in
the editing room being like, is this, have I gone too far? And then going back and finding
some stuff we can emotionally grounding that weirdly gave me more room to go further with
that stuff. Can we stop and talk for one second about John Bryan's score on his music?
I mean,
But that's what's so amazing about a composer of his talent and also experience that he can look
at that movie and say, okay, so this is seems timeless, which with the wrong score can be a
mess. But he was able to weave that in so that it feels like it all fits together.
Yeah. You know, there were things that he scored that in my 10 track were much more upbeat.
And he went, again, it was like learning how to try to find some kind of truth, even though
truth is like an elusive abstract concept. But in a movie that is where it's all fiction, right?
But he scored some things much more earnestly than I had initially done. And it was absolutely the
right choice. But I was kind of like, hey, where are your instincts taking you? Let's go explore
them. And I'm going to stay out of your way. You've made great score after great score after
great score. I'm not going to tell you how to do this. There was some temp track stuff that I had
in that he just loved, like these old sort of Les Baxter and Nelson Riddle tracks, which were
these really sort of full Hollywood scores, the type, the way they arrange the music they don't
do anymore. This is like some music theory nerd out stuff. But like, just the way the chords
are arranged, he had these things that we would call the Omni chords. And when you hear it has
like a throwback sound to it, where he would say, oh, you know, should we do this one a little more
Omni? And he would start to arrange the music. And I would just get more and more blown away
as he did it. And then to listen to the full orchestra, you know, I said, look, I'm going
to let you take the full orchestra. And as many musicians like what, you're not going to try to
cut corners and say, I got to like, double up sounds. And I'm like, no, just free reign, go.
And he was excited. So he was recording with old microphones and just all these tricks where he
said, make sure the French horns point the horns at the back wall so that the sound bounces off
the wall and back in. That was without him, I don't know, you know, you need everything to come together.
That's why I'm making a good movie so hard. Because you can literally get almost every single
element right. And then you screw up one thing like the score. The score doesn't work, ruins the
whole thing. Ruins the whole thing. Yeah. And it's interesting too, because there's a big sort of
like Hollywood idea of like, well, we can cut corners there. Like, let's not spend too much on
the score. Let's not, you know, give the composer too much or like, let's just throw in some and
then you think about all your favorite movies. Music is such a big part of why the movie works.
About John Williams, I mean, yeah, look at John Williams and take all the music out of Star Wars.
Yeah, you know, they've done that, right? People have done that when they pull all the music out
and watch it, you're like, it doesn't work. Jaws with the mechanical sharks not working. And then
he's like, well, what if you just hear, and now we just associate those two notes with sharks.
It was incredible. I do think that, I mean, talk about a man who doesn't want to hear a compliment.
I do think John Bryan is up there in terms of that level of talent. Yeah, no, he's so, so talented.
Oh guys, today the show was brought to you by our friends at Mint Mobile.
Well, from Rob's friends at Mint Mobile. Well, now hang on a second, Rob's friend
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you- And if you're not- Fuck off. Fuck off.
They're bingsy. Yeah, I come in. What the hell kind of hot food name is that? I answer the one
name of one name only. And that's Billy the Kid. All right. Billy the Kid. Well, hang up.
Don't drop the sir part now. Excuse me. Sir Billy the Kid. I think that gonna suit me just fine.
Got kind of a nice ring to it, don't it? How about you call me that from now on, all right? Yeah,
make an announcement to everybody else out there, right? It's Sir Billy the Kid from now on. Listen
to me, fuckface. You're either a sir and an actor from England or you're Billy the fucking Kid,
but you can't be both. Let's talk a little bit about Glenn's performance in the movie.
But that's the thing that honestly is the thing that made us laugh the most. And I
were on it and watched it again. And that just shows a few things. One, how much we love Glenn,
our sense of humor is very specific. And I don't know if the rest of the audience is gonna find
it the funniest scene. I thought it was the funniest scene. Well, I tell you what, I've screened the
movie a few times, not like with an audience in color stages and whatever. And you always get a
huge laugh whether people know Sunny or they don't because you're a great performer. And it's a funny
scene and you nailed it. And you did a choice that I was like, oh, this is what you want to do,
but let's go for it. Well, yeah, because the character wasn't written with an accent. And I
just had this funny idea of like, what? I was trying to identify the accent. You can't. The
whole thing was, what I was attempting was like the bra, what I was calling a European accent,
which, you know, isn't a thing, obviously. At one point, I was gonna, I don't think I
want to change your credit to European business manager, vaguely European. Yeah, it was like,
I wanted to do, I wanted it to be like, where is this person from? But, you know, it was great
because it really wound up playing into the tone of like identity. And you're like, it worked out
nicely. Yeah, what not, not what I was, I mean, I was just thinking, I don't know, it just kind
of struck me. It wasn't like I was making a choice based on what I felt like it would fit in with
the movie. Something that made it interesting to me was to just make him vaguely European.
Now you crushed in the movie and it was fun. It was fun. There's lots of sunny things that
there's so many sunny people. Easter eggs and things that will at any ones we might not catch.
Sunny fans are going to have lots to chew on. Well, Jillian Bell's not a sunny actor, but she
feels like one. She's amazing. She's amazing. The shit she's singing to you. Which wasn't in my first cut.
Leslie found that I somehow had missed that. I was like, oh, this is great. She's like singing
something about like being hungry. A beige banana. Yeah, a beige banana. It's so funny. Well, you
did a great job. Thanks guys. I'm excited for people to see this movie. I'm very excited. What's
the date again? The same day? May 12th. May 12th is the day. It's the same day. Go out to the goddamn
theaters, you fucking creeps. This is a movie I would personally want to see in the theater if I
wasn't doing or involved in it. I miss comedies in the theater. I miss laughing with a group of
people. Why do we think? Why does the industry think people don't want that anymore? Maybe
they don't want as much as they want a Marvel movie, but they still want it. Don't take it
away completely. Anyway, you have a chance to go see a theater. You also have a chance to go see
Blackberry starring Glenn Howard. Now, let's get into this. Okay, guys, here's what I'm going to do.
I will give you $20,000 cash today. I'll sell the phone. I'll work out this problem with USR,
but I want 50% of the company and I've got to be CEO.
Are you joking? No. Obviously. Obviously. No. No. Mike. Okay. Okay. Who is in charge here?
Well, let me set this up for the audience a little bit so the movies about the making of
the Blackberry, which was for our young audience, predated the iPhone as the device that really
put emails and internet on a phone and the breakthrough thing. And a fantastic device.
And a fantastic device, but just got crushed by the iPhone. But I always like a movie and Glenn
plays the businessman who helps the tech guys take this from just an idea to a successful
business. I always enjoy a movie about a real life event. It's inherently interesting because
you're looking at a time machine, you're getting to see the past, but it was so second to me
than the real magic trick of this film, which was a filmmaker finally giving Glenn Howerton
the chance to take on a rich and dynamic character and with the training wheels completely off,
I mean, the character starts at a 10. But we like seeing Glenn Howerton at a 10. Hello.
Hi. There are three reasons why people buy our phones. Do you know what they are?
They fucking work. But every inch of the movie, every frame that you are in is so compelling.
My only complaint is that you are not in every single second of the film. And by the way,
you're in the majority of the film. So no one's not going to get a full dose of you. But I could
have watched that guy brush his teeth. I could have watched the story of that guy from the
beginning to end. And I liked the other story too. I liked the movie a lot. The movie's great.
But holy shit, man, you're so fucking good. Oh, man, thank you. Yeah.
And I just want so much more of that. I want more movies like that. In fact, I was jealous
watching it be like, why didn't I make a Glenn Howerton movie where I have you in every scene
doing your thing? Let me sell the movie again just because I want people to go see the movie and
not just Glenn's performance. They end with a Chiron that's not giving anything away. Everybody
already knows this. It says, and this is considering at this point, there was a massive amount of
different cell phone companies that were out there, the razors and the Nokia's of the world,
and all sorts of different cellular companies that were coming out in carriers. And it was
the Wild West. It was before Android really came into existence. It was before the iPhone had come
into existence. And Blackberry had 45% of the market cap. I mean, almost half of everybody
in the world that had a mobile phone had a Blackberry in 2009 or eight or whatever it was.
And now that number is zero, zero. So this movie is tracking the beginning and the rise
of this massive company. And then it's inevitable crash. And to take a movie, that's like an
inherently exciting story, but you're not used to hearing about stories about a business being
fascinating. And this feels like a thriller almost. You're watching a thriller.
And even knowing that going in doesn't make it any less exciting to watch that happen.
No, you know, you know that in your pocket, you have an iPhone. And that so you're either
old enough to remember Blackberry or you're not. But to hear that they at one point had 50%
of the market. And now, and now everybody's walking around with these, that's what the story
is really about and how these disparate personalities were able to build that and then
not able to beat the iPhone. There was no bad guy. It seemed at one point
that Glenn's character was the bad guy. But in the end, they all had fallibility.
That was a really interesting aspect of that movie that each one of them,
there wasn't like a sort of redeeming ending. You're like, but, you know, well, maybe the,
the, what's the character with the headband dog? Maybe they said like, okay, he was sort of our
good guy. Sort of. Because without, but, but the argument could be made that without the other two,
Doug's success doesn't exist either. Unless the carriers rebuild their entire networks,
there's nothing we can do. The phone's used too much data. We can fucking shrink it.
Yeah. Okay. We looked into that. Uh-huh.
These guys can't do it.
Maybe they can't do it. You said they were the best engineers in the world.
I said they're the best engineers in Canada.
Okay. All right. Who could do it?
Maybe top guys from over roller, Microsoft or Google. Okay.
Wait, what? What are you doing? Who else? Where else?
John Carmack.
Get John Carmack from ID. Did you guys hear me? The guy who made Doom.
What's Doom? Have you played Wolfenstein?
Please just don't tell any more folks.
Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Oh, shit.
There's something about your performance that makes it very clear that you are right.
Even though you're unlikable, that there's something right about what you're watching.
You're really, really good at what he does. Because you want to watch, you're playing a guy
who's clearly, he's got anger issues and he's emotionally unstable, but he's good.
So it's a gunslinger, right? Like, you know he's the best gunslinger in town,
so you want to watch him. And that's always a really good sort of narrative to be like,
can I watch the expert do his, be an expert at it? And we want to see you manipulate people.
Well, you know what's funny is, I had the same fear going into this that I had in early days
of Sunny, where I was like, he's going to be so unlikable that you're not. And I was like,
I think you do need to be rooting for this guy. And yet, you know, he has to be so ruthless.
And you did hit the nail on the head. I mean, the main thing is he is incredibly competitive.
The real Jim is incredibly competitive. And I think he to a fault that destroys him.
Yes, it destroys him. And he had, but he had to be in order to build that company the way that
he did. But and he's not the reason that it fails. He's not really the reason they suggest
some of the shady dealing business dealings, which everybody was doing at that time. He's not
the reason he was not the visionary. There was a visionary who didn't see that there was a better
vision out there. Mike was not doing his job properly, right? He was the one who was meant
to see where the market was headed. That's what he did so well when he created the Blackberry.
And he was so enamored of his own invention that he didn't see that somebody was about
to take his lunch. And you're right, because my character the whole time is like, Mike,
are you doing your thing? You do your thing. I'm doing mine. I'm out here selling phones.
I'm doing my thing. Are you making the thing that we need to be selling? You know, yeah.
But you know, here's the thing about likability. It's the same thing with Sonny that we always
did, which is that if can I understand their want? And because we know your want, you know,
you've taken out your loan, your mortgage, your own house, and we know that you want and you're
not being taken seriously enough within your business when we meet your character. And we know
that, you know, you refer to the people, you're like, this is great lines like, why did they fire
you? You know, you nail it. You're like, because they're idiots, you know, with no sort of wink
to the line, just like pure, just like, that's a fact. But we know your want and we identify with
your want. So you can be an asshole, you can be a ruthless, but we know you want this thing. And
we know you're in some ways, you deserve it because you are good at what you do.
So there's no likeability is, it's just the wrong word to describe the thing that people.
Yeah. And it's, it is a character compelling or not. And what makes a person compelling and being
nice and polite and likable are social constructs that are fucking bullshit and don't belong in
narrative. It's not what makes people interested. What movies have that, you know?
Yeah. There's no inherent conflict. But you still, it's like, to me, it's less about likability,
more about rootability. Like I knew that you needed to be rooting for this guy. You didn't
need to necessarily like him, but you did need to be rooting for him on some level.
But the thing is, is like through my experience of, you know, playing such a horrible person on,
it's always sunny. I allowed myself to go to that place and to be right on the edge almost of
rootability just because in my experience, you're right. It is, it is, I was like, it just, it'll
be compelling, you know, it'll be interesting to watch. And I think you'll understand where he's
coming from if I do my job right. Like if you see, if you can see the thoughts that are going
through my head, the calculations that I'm making, but also like I had a tremendous amount of trust
in Matt Johnson, who's, who wrote and directed the movie. He wrote it with his producing partner,
Matt Miller. They wrote the movie together and he directed it. And of course, Accident plays Doug.
And he's just, yeah. I did not know that. Sorry. Yeah. The guy who played Doug direct. Oh my god.
He's such a dummy in the movie. Yeah. Oh, he's an assassin. Wow. So, we've been talking here.
And we, we, we would like to make a counter offer. You keep crawling back, like bugs, like grubs.
Yeah. So, we would like to offer you 10% for $500,000. Are you out of your fucking mind?
I look at 100,000 deals a day. I pick one. Is that the quote? No, I look at 100 deals a day. I pick
one. Wall Street. He's an incredibly smart guy. I mean, when I read the script, I was like, this,
this script is so, it's so smart. It's so well done. Yeah. You know, and then in talking to him
and seeing his previous films, I felt like I could trust that if I wasn't doing the right thing,
that with the thing that was going to make the best version of the movie,
that he would have told me. So, I just kind of, like you said, I took the training wheels off
and just was like, I'm going to, I'm going to do what I think is right here and let's, let's just
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But we're missing the hot takes of Rob Justice, I got to say. But moreover, I need clarity on
whether we're getting these tickets to the Rexham Manchester United game in July. I want those
tickets. I know. It's still like a ways away, but I feel like the tickets are going to go quickly.
And I don't want them to go without me having them. I want the good ones. You know what I mean?
The good ones, they go. If it comes out of the wire, you guys could always get them on game time.
Say what? Tell me more about game time. Oh, I've actually heard of that now that I'm thinking
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this is fantastic. Okay, so you don't have to wait for tickets to go on sale and try to hoard
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I also want to compliment you. I feel like two, three lines in.
There was no Dennis to me. There was no Glenn. You know, like,
obviously see your friend, you're bald. I know you're not bald. I know you're not a man in Canada.
So, you know, he was a man in Canada. I know you're not a man from Canada.
I don't care for hockey. Obviously, there's always that thing in a movie where you're like,
well, that's, you know, that's Sean Penn doing a limp and a wig. But like two,
two, three lines in and you're just in and you are that guy and you're consistent from beginning
to end. I have two questions. Can I speak to that? Can I speak to that? Because I think you
both, you guys both accomplished that, that I was most impressed with. To Charlie's point,
you do this long enough and your friends are acting in things and you see them
and it's hard to distance yourself because you're spending so much time with them off camera.
And you're seeing them pull out the tricks that we all use. We know all the moves.
Yes. And so I'm used to seeing every move that you have and every move that you have.
That's why I think, and we didn't talk about this at all, but how fascinating it is that one of the
defining characteristics of you as a performer and you as a person is your actual voice,
which is so distinct and fascinating and to Meg touched on this a little bit, but
to take that away from yourself, I think was very brave because it's a crutch that you can use.
And it's also a tool that you can use to express yourself, your voice. But it also was so smart
because it took, it took you as a performer and as a person and made you completely unrecognizable
to me as I'm watching it because I'm watching you going, well, that still looks like Charlie,
but it certainly doesn't sound like Charlie and he's doing something I've never seen you do before.
Oh, thanks, man. And, and with Glenn, yeah, the baldness like the, it wasn't the look.
It was the delivery and your eyes, dude, I was looking in your eyes and I'm like,
I've never seen Glenn make that expression before. Yeah. It was cold, calculated killer.
And Dennis is not, even though we joke that he is not like that. No, it's not Dennis Reynolds at
all. And it's not Glenn Howerton being angry. It's that character. Now, let me ask you this.
Did you meet with the guy? Did you base any stuff off him? Because you're playing a real person,
which is interesting. Yeah, no, actually, I only had, there's a couple of things. I really only
had about three, three and a half weeks to prep for that movie. So I knew I had to make a, I knew
I didn't have time to do all the research that you would want to do ultimately in most ideal
circumstances and also prepare the actual performance based on the material. So, you know,
Matt and I both felt very strongly that, you know, Jim, he's known a little bit. He's known in
Canada, but most people don't know him. He hasn't given a lot of on-camera interviews, but he doesn't
have a lot of like, yeah, people don't know what he's really like, what his tics are, what he sounds
like and, you know, what his, you know, body language is like. And most people just don't know
what that is. And we just felt like that was less important to focus on. I also knew that Matt and
Matt had done so much research, you know, they interviewed countless ex-employees and all these
things to really find out who these characters were and what they were like. You know, so I really
tried to just focus on the character that I was reading in the script and what I felt like that
character should come off as. But I did meet the real Jim recently in Toronto. Yeah, so he had been
sent the film. He watched it. He actually did an interview and kind of responded, you know. And for
the most part, it was like very, like, very complimentary of the film and, you know, had a
couple of gripes about the way things went down. He was like, that's not really how it went down,
you know, which is understandable. But then he came to the Toronto premiere and I met him
before the premiere and he was lovely. It was a super, I was nervous to meet him. Sure. You know
what I mean? Because I was like, because it's a ruthless performance. I don't want to meet the
man that I played. I don't want to meet the man, you know what I'm saying. I don't want to meet the
person that I was portraying because he was scary. He was kind of scary. Yeah. Yeah, he's kind of
scary. But he was, he was lovely. He was lovely. Yeah, he's very, he couldn't be a very charming
guy too. And then he watched the premiere with an audience and I think he really enjoyed it,
you know, seeing it with an audience, I think it really came alive for him more than watching it
by himself. And he told me he said that's the, he was like, going into it, he said, this will be
the only time I've ever seen a movie more than once. Wow. Yeah. How did you, did you and Mike
like work really closely on figuring out the levels because, you know, you make a movie,
you don't shoot it in sequence, right? Because of the locations, you might be shooting the
last scene first, you're bouncing all around. So was it difficult to track where to be with
this guy emotionally? Because, you know, you, I'm sure you wanted to be aware of how often you were
at a 10, you know, and when to play him down. How did you guys navigate that? It seems to me
like you were always, when the character walked into a room, he was at an eight. Yeah. Which
was really compelling. Really compelling because you don't know when it's going to go to a 10
at any moment. But it's an eight, not of anger, but of anxiety, like controlled anxiety and rage
that's just sitting right under the surface and ready and everybody around you. So the audience,
every character like sits up straighter and everybody in the audience is, can't wait to see
how Jim's going to react in this moment. Right. You know, for as much experience as we all have,
like on camera and acting with lights and a boom operator and makeup people all over you and all
this shit. Like I have a lot of, a lot of very comfortable on camera at this point. But what I
don't actually have a lot of experience with, almost no experience actually, is scoring a film
performance. Because in TV, your character doesn't really change. And after you've done two or three
episodes, you know the character so well, you know, I don't, I could slip into the Dennis like
that. Like it's just, it's just like the flip of a switch, you know. So the challenge becomes,
how do I get myself to the point where I feel the same way walking on set playing Jim as I do
playing Dennis, who I've played for 13 years. How can I maximize the three and a half weeks that I
have to prepare for this so that I feel just as comfortable playing Jim as I do playing Dennis.
And they're two completely different human beings and Jim's totally, both characters are totally
different than, than I am. There's aspects of course, there have to be, I'm pulling from my own
experience, my own life and all that kind of stuff. But, but scoring a performance, that was a real
challenge for me. I really, you know what I did? I took the, I'm really hearing a thing that Anthony
Hopkins said years and years and years ago. And I really was like, okay, I think that that's a really
good place to start, which is just read the script over and over and over and over and over.
Because unlike Sunny, we have, you know, you didn't write this one. So when we're writing Sunny,
the amount of weeks and months that have gone into writing that episode, you just know it.
So well, you might forget like some of the specific lines, but you know why the character
wants what they want in each moment. But your characters, our characters don't have an arc.
So either way, it doesn't matter as much, but you're right. Your character has to,
you know, start in one place and end in a different place. So I was just reading the
script over and over again and having a lot of conversations with Matt about,
Matt Johnson, about each scene and sort of what he was picturing and finding out that for the most
part, we were almost always on the same page about the way it would play. But you know, Matt
also shot it in a way where the coverage was very simple and we could play with it. So there were
a lot of variations of those scenes that, you know, that mostly handheld, right? Yeah, very
documentary. So what they did, they shot it on a, forgetting the name of this thing. Okay. So this
was, the way he shot the movie was super, super interesting. I almost never knew where the cameras
were. Wow. He would have a camera, like, it's a long lens. So like 100 feet away on a long lens.
And I was always asking him, like, where, where's the camera? He's like, he's like, it's over there.
I'd be like, what? It's like wildlife photography. That's exactly what it was. It was wildlife.
And what they did is they put it on, God, I'm forgetting the name of this thing. But basically,
it was on a tripod. But on the tripod, there was a ball, this ball, this like bouncy ball.
A gimbal. A gimbal. It was a gimbal. So they could, they could hold it and have it,
you know, because you don't want to be, you can't be that, you can't be handheld when you're on that
long of a lens. Yeah. Anyone who knows anything about cameras, it gets too shaky. But on a gimbal,
you can add just a little bit of a handheld feel to it and have it feel handheld, even though it,
it wasn't technically handheld. That gave it that thriller feel you're talking about.
And that's, that's one of the things that I really love about the movie, watching it too,
because I, is that it does, it's like a really interesting mix of like, you feel like you're
watching a thriller. And yet it is funny, but it's not overtly comedic, but it is funny. It's
just like a good example of, you know, how when you play it real, but the, the, the, it's so outrageous.
I think that's where a lot of the comedy was coming from for, for Matt. And for us, it was like,
the more outrageous this is, the, the, the funnier it is. And, and, but it was, it's all based on
real shit. But I mean, I, I, I definitely was not approaching this as a, as a comedy at all.
I'm so glad you did it. I think any wink to that character would have, you know, would have hurt
the movie. You know, the fact that you played it traumatic and serious, it's just, it drives the
story. I have a prediction. The prediction is this, within a month of this movie coming out,
the phone is going to be ringing for Glenn out. And I can tell you just anecdotally,
I've already told you this, but I was at a football game with Sean Levy, the director,
and he came up to me and said, I just have to tell you, I saw this movie called the Blackberry
Movie and your friend Glenn is amazing in it. Can you tell him? I said, he's amazing. And I said,
fuck you, you tell him, you tell him. And he's like, I want to cast him in something. I'm like,
definitely tell him that. So, so many times over the years, we feel like, I certainly feel like
our cast is overlooked when it comes to casting some of these movies. And I see some of these
jerk offs that get these movies. I'm like, what? How are these people being cast in this when we
have these people on our show? And I'm just glad. And I'm just glad that people are finally
recognizing that for both of you guys. And I'm telling you years, but we're getting there.
We're getting there. I hope the phone's ringing for you too, Paul. I mean, you deserve it for
sure. It does frustrate me. And it will frustrate me when people are like,
and Glenn is really good at this movie. Who knew? Who knew? Well, I think that that is shifting.
Yeah, I know. I do think that that is shifting. And I'm happy to see that happening. And I have a
theory about that, but we can't get into it now because we're out of time. But I appreciate
you guys watching the movie. And I'm glad that I felt like I was taking a big swing,
but I wouldn't have been able to take that big swing if I didn't know that if I failed miserably,
I wouldn't have this to fall back on. No, really, it does. It gives you the confidence.
Not just economically, but emotionally. Emotionally. Yes. And I was reminded of your trampoline
speech. But I wouldn't have had the confidence to take that back clip if you weren't there.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Which resulted in you talking about how you licked some of the asshole just a
little bit. Just a little bit. It wasn't great. It wasn't great, but it was fine. It was fine.
So you're licking somebody's asshole on a trampoline, and I'm wondering why you're not
getting cast in mainstream. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We're like, why are people like that?
May 12th, everybody go out and see Blackberry. Double feature.
Now, I will say that I wrote, directed, and financially engaged. It's been 10 years of my life.
Yeah. And Glenn is also in my movie. Yeah. So please see that one first. Please see that,
because it's a win-win for Glenn either way. I'm proud of you guys. Thanks, man.
I'm proud of you guys. Appreciate it. Let's make some more stuff together. Let's keep doing it.