The Always Sunny Podcast - Marder & Rosell
Episode Date: May 22, 2023We shared a bank account like Ben and Matt. Visit http://www.thealwayssunnypod.com Watch episodes here ►► https://youtube.com/TheAlwaysSunnyPodcast Follow The Always Sunny Podcast on socials: I...nstagram: https://instagram.com/thesunnypodcast Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesunnypodcast TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@thesunnypodcast Facebook: https://facebook.com/thealwayssunnypodcast Learn more and save 10% off your first month at http://BetterHelp.com/sunny. Thank you BetterHelp for sponsoring the show! Get yourself some of the most comfortable and versatile clothing on the planet at http://vuori.com/sunnypod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
So if this were the writer's room, yeah,
Martyr would be pacing and Roselle would be lying under the table.
Yeah.
He'd be shredding paper.
Shredding paper of some sort, like into tiny pieces.
Rob would be lifting, Glenn would be getting a blood transfusion.
Glenn would be drinking 100 raw egg yolks.
Yeah.
All right.
You sit down so you can hear the mic.
Damn it.
All this great content.
I haven't seen Martin in a while.
I know.
We're gonna have to catch up.
Feel free to, like, prod.
Oh, yeah.
We're gonna dig in.
We're gonna get in some stuff.
I listened to one on the way over here.
You did?
One of these?
Yes.
The gang sells out.
And so you're like, oh, that's what it sounds like when Rob and Charlie and Glenn talk
to one another.
I turned it off pretty quickly.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I'm not used to that.
I have never listened to a single podcast ever across anything.
I've never listened to it.
Why?
Just because I'm rigid.
You are missing out, man, on a lot of quality entertainment.
What do I have playing?
I don't know.
Music?
Well, let me tell you something.
I used to listen to Only Stern, and I fell off of that with Pandemic.
I don't know.
Just music?
Just music?
But it's kind of like me with candy and fruit and stuff.
I've just decided I'm not going to dip into podcasts at all, which isn't smart.
I hear like I'm missing out.
Yeah, you're missing out, because if there's someone you really are interested in and admire,
here's an example.
I love Paul Thomas Anderson.
I love his movies.
I think he's a brilliant guy.
There's some great, like, Marin sits and talks with him for two hours, and you just get,
you know, outside the podcast, you just get little bits of things, so you never really
get into any sort of quality entertainment.
I work from home all the time, so I feel like there's no commute anywhere, so I've got no
drive time anymore.
That's true.
We got to get you driving more.
I haven't driven in quite some time to a destination, and this was a nice change of pace.
I did it.
Get the fuck out.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's go.
Let's start at the beginning.
Let's start at the beginning.
All right.
This is the podcast round plan of decline to show up.
Not because of you, guys.
It would have been cool if you weren't here either, and it was just a problem.
Oh.
I feel like we were kind of bamboozled there.
The red carpet.
It's like you guys showed up in the right room, but not there either.
There's a rewrite that we owe in the last season, like, oh, so there's a complete trick.
They're excited about us being on, though, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
They're really happy.
They're super happy.
I can feel that.
I'm not going to be bummed to miss this.
We just only have four chairs, so.
Yeah, we only have four chairs.
I get that.
I can get behind that.
Where do I begin?
Okay.
Well, first of all, how many seasons did you guys write on?
It's always sunny in Philadelphia.
I think I was there for 13.
13?
No, 11.
11.
I was there for 11 seasons.
I'd have to calculate it.
I'd probably 11, 10 or 11, because you left for a few seasons, and I came on for a few seasons.
So oftentimes they'll hear us talking about Martyr and Roselle.
So on the podcast we have here for our listeners at home, Rob Roselle and Scott Martyr.
And you guys came on at season three, and I would say made a huge impact on the show
in terms of your tone of comedy and what you guys brought to the show.
I really sort of changed the direction and the tone of the show, made it so much better.
And we held on to you for as long as we possibly could until your careers were just taking off
and we couldn't pin you down anymore.
But.
Then got you back.
You came crawling back.
We got you guys crawling back a lot in the last two seasons, thank God.
But I want to go all the way back to the beginning.
Had you guys been staffed up on a television show before you worked with us,
or was ours your first show?
No.
We'd only, we'd done one thing, right?
The camp movie that was.
American Summer.
Some sort of, from the American Pie franchise.
We met with a guy who had, he had, I'm no joke, five cell phones on a table.
We met him at the Grand Havana Room?
Yes, at a cigar cart.
The Cigar Club in Beverly Hills.
When we met him, he was at a table with all of his medication on the table,
as if he had dumped his medicine cabinet on the table.
And he was like, sorry, baby, I'm trying to regulate my pills.
Like, what a crazy red flag.
We still ignored that, got into business with him.
Oh my God, this is Hollywood.
And then it was a nightmare.
People do.
This is Hollywood.
He would call it all hours of the day.
Like, he'd call it 4 p.m.
I love it, baby.
I love what you're doing.
He'd call it 4 a.m.
I'm terrified.
I think the movie's going under.
Like, we're like, god damn it.
Did he pay you guys?
Very little.
It broke down to like a nickel an hour.
Yeah, so he sort of had drummed up his own kind of contract.
He had some cock, I mean, he was a, I won't say his name,
but he was a successful producer who had made a few hits.
Yeah.
So it seemed like.
We were big time.
So he seemed legitimate.
He seemed legitimate.
The cigar bar was a red flag being paid sort of like out of his pocket,
was a bit of a red flag.
No one really asking for the,
it was unclear what the plan for the movie was,
but he seemed to have a plan and we didn't know anything.
Yeah.
And we didn't have jobs.
So.
Wait, can I back up even further?
So you guys were a writing team when you started.
See, I always thought you just were paired up on sunny,
but you were.
We went to Syracuse together.
Oh, I didn't know that.
We came out to LA ready to write.
We were roommates.
So you were two funny guys who went to Syracuse,
came to LA, got teamed up with a man full of pills and cell phones,
and wrote a feature for this man.
Was it a feature?
It was a feature.
So now a good example of the way the impact you guys had on the show is
even you telling me that story right now,
we would be like, okay, right,
we have to do something where Frank is pitching someone a thing
and he's got five cell phones on the table and a pile of pills.
Like just the very sort of idiosyncratic sense of humor
in the way you guys look at the world,
change what we were doing.
So we started doing things like rum hams and milk steaks,
but before we get into that, okay,
so you've done that and it had gone over poorly.
It kind of petered out.
It was unclear what happened.
It overlapped with our first season at Sunny.
We had an agent who was sending us out.
We would meet on shows.
We were just like, we would have worked on anything,
but no one wanted to hire us.
And we got a lot of maybe next season
and then Sunny popped up as our agent told us that they were hiring.
We were taking a swing that long.
I mean, we wrote a Golden Girls spec.
It just creates more drama.
We were one day away from being broke.
We shared a bank account like Ben and Matt.
Oh, yeah.
Well, you said, like you said,
we wrote this Golden Girls spec that was called Golden Girls Gone Wild.
That was like a crazy episode
and it got a lot really positive response
and we were feeling like the momentum of like,
we're going to get staff soon and then Sunny popped up
and we're like, that's our favorite show.
This is the perfect spec for it.
We sent it to you guys and you guys didn't like it.
I don't even remember reading the Golden Girls spec.
Do you remember what Barry said he did?
I mean, that's what our agent claimed he did
because you guys were like, it's too crazy.
So Barry claims our agent back in the day,
a claim that he tore the page off of another sample we had
and it was like, if you don't like those guys, check out these guys.
And you're like, these guys got the stuff.
And it was a Reno 911 we had written.
And that got us, Sunny.
Unlikely, you know, here's what I do remember.
So this was our first season hiring writers.
We'd done season one and we'd done season two
and we were going into season three
and in season two, Hornsby wrote an episode.
But outside of that, we worked with another guy named,
I think his name was Rich Dom who wrote an episode.
But we ended up not using it.
And so this was our first time staffing up.
We didn't really know how to do it.
So we were just meeting people,
maybe we were reading spec scripts,
but I think it was more, okay,
who do the agents think we should meet with
from all sorts of levels, like high level guys
and young writers, you know,
men and women all over the spectrum
of where they're at with their career.
And we had asked for people to pitch us
potential episodes of Sunny.
And you guys came in and you pitched us the thing
about Frank being in a street gang
called the Yellow Jackets with a bunch of old guys.
Well, I have an addendum to that
because I just listened to the gang cells out
on the way over here.
The Yellow Jackets and hockey, hockey was Martyr's dad.
Yeah.
And he was in the Yellow Jackets gang, right?
He was the fastest thing on two feet.
That's why everyone called him hockey.
The actor was your father?
No, the actor was based on my father.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, so I think you guys came in,
you pitched us that, which we thought was hilarious.
You probably told us stories about your father
and we were like, these two guys are brilliant.
Maybe I remember reading in Reno 911,
but it was, it never really had much to do
with the spec script.
It usually had to do with, do we feel like we're going
to get funny ideas from these guys
so they get what we're trying to make?
You know, sometimes people would come,
oftentimes they would pitch us things
and they were all just about like STDs.
And Dan gets herpes.
We were warned to not do that going and like,
don't pitch a STD stuff.
No, no.
Yeah, we were.
Like 11th hour, like, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.
No sex, no sex.
You're like, shit.
That's definitely like five ideas.
Well, I think people were,
they were thinking it was just a gross out show.
Yes.
And so they were pitching like,
bottom of the barrel kind of gross out humor.
And we didn't want that.
We wanted something like, yeah,
Danny used to be in a street gang.
And like, and that they street gangs used to sing
and the humor in that.
So I remember, yeah, I remember it was a no brainer
to hire you guys.
Do you guys remember your interview with them?
I remember, I remember it.
Yeah.
I don't remember all of the ideas we pitched.
I remember a few of them.
We definitely pitched the flipping, flipping the Coke.
That was when we pitched on that first day.
That became an episode.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
Two or three of the ones we pitched in our interview
became episodes.
Peter Ning.
Which was cool.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know what we were.
Yeah, something cocaine, you mean?
Yeah.
Then we had this crappy, crappy building in Manhattan Beach.
Sort of.
No, in Playa del Rey.
Yeah.
Playa del Rey, right.
It was like an industrial warehouse that looked like you would,
if you wanted a set for like a gang fight, you would do it.
It was on a street called Beatrix, I think.
Oh yeah.
Wow.
Good memory.
I remember pulling in and seeing like a pickup truck,
a little Audi and a really old Lexus.
And being like, I wonder who's who's who's who.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I had that Audi then.
All right, cool.
And then that was, that was the first time we had an office.
So I don't know if you guys thought you were coming into like a thing
that was more of like, this is a show and we,
but like none of, like Rob Glenn and I,
we didn't know what we were doing either still.
You know, we just had kind of spit out two seasons somehow.
This is our first time even having an office building.
We didn't know if we should have computers
and it was our first time having a staff.
Do you remember who else was on that staff?
Well, David Hornsby would have been, right?
Hornsby for sure, Lisa Parsons.
Adam Stein was the writer's assistant.
Adam Stein was a writer's assistant.
He got a couple of good jokes in that season too.
He did.
I can go for some wood.
I remember that first, I remember that first day.
We were writer's assistants.
So we were used to being in rooms,
but we were like, so what's the menu for today?
Like what's the lunch?
And Macklinay was like, what do you mean lunch?
We're like, you don't get free lunch.
We're like, you don't get free lunch.
And then Macklinay like stormed down the hall
and he could hear him barking at someone at FX
and he came back.
He's like, we got free lunch now.
What else are we supposed to be getting
that we never got before?
Okay, so wait.
So you have been writer's assistants in a room?
Oh yeah.
We had both been writer's assistants on various shows.
Okay.
So you'd had some experience.
Yeah.
So we were kind of looking to you guys a little bit
to be like, what does a writer's room do?
And we were very much from like network shows
that were like so different than how somebody
would function at its best.
Okay.
Okay.
So this is interesting.
So you had had the experience of being going to like the lot
and going into like a nice building
and everyone's got like a computer that's paid for.
Everyone's got a computer.
Yeah.
There's a lot of like just things that you just expect
to be there.
Like your computer, your office, the lunch,
McElhaney's reaction to the lunch was our first exposure
to Rob McElhaney's iconoclassom.
It was awesome.
Rob Justice got lunch for you guys.
Rob Justice.
We call him here.
I'm thinking I'm remembering now that we learned from you guys
that the studio was supposed to supply computers
to the writers.
Yes.
Stuff like that we definitely like brought to the table.
So we got on our line producer about like,
hey, we're supposed to have computers.
And that was when I got my first computer.
Yeah.
I think like Sonny almost didn't exist really.
But the three of you had really put computers that were like,
can I see scripts from season one?
You're like, I don't know if we're going to be able to find those.
Everyone was like digging through like broken computers
to find scripts and stuff.
I remember at my desk, I did have some sort of desk,
but it was makeshift.
We made a nook in a room filled with chairs.
It was awesome.
An office in a facility that was like manufacturing things sometimes.
It was like very much not an office.
But I, the script or part of the script for Mac Bangs Dennis's mom
was on like a yellow notepad scribbled out.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
And should have kept it.
I have, I have a few notepads from,
I have the gang wants an abortion or whatever that the abortion episode.
I have the legal pad still.
That's cool.
Which was fun.
Were you guys tempted to tell them extra things that you used to get just to see
like we get cars and like.
We are so nervous.
Yeah.
I'm not like that at all.
So nervous.
Yeah.
What were you nervous about?
Nervous that like Rob Glenn and I would be like,
oh, we don't like these guys writing or their jokes or.
That you wouldn't like this.
I thought this was like the greatest show.
Like getting this job was like winning the lottery.
I mean, when I saw Mac Bangs Dennis's mom,
like our agent gave it to us on like DVD or something.
Yeah.
I remember watching it and then just watching it like over and over and over.
I just, I still think it's like the best.
It got a little bit weird with what he was watching.
That was that.
That was the episode that got me too.
Really?
Yeah.
Like kind of unlocked the show for me.
Well, yeah.
That's one of my favorites for sure.
So I mean, then that third season we had to do 15 episodes was the most we ever did.
I don't know how.
Costume department.
It was a lot.
Very busy that year.
Yeah.
Like taking some bigger, broader swings that season.
Oh yeah.
And then like it's been interesting watching them back because the fourth season we start
to find something and the fifth season we really hit our stride in terms of the tone.
I agree.
All right.
Well, let's get into a little bit more about the two of you guys.
First of all, your dad, speaking of hockey,
you would tell us so many stories about your dad.
And I ran into you at a party and you told me a story about your dad eating this canned
meat, which I was saying, it wound up not working his way into signing the season, but
so many stories about your dad would find their way into like stories about Frank.
For sure.
They line up, they line up really close to each other.
And Mack, right?
Shooting himself in the belly with the insulin.
Yep.
Yeah.
That's something your dad thinks.
What was the story about the canned meat?
My dad was really thrilled by this beef stew that he got at the flea market and he was
digging into it and had a couple cans of it and my mom saw how much he enjoyed it.
So she opened one up to have for dinner and then till she turned around and saw that it
was dog food that he had been eating, which was just like very him.
I guess it was dog food.
I didn't remember it was dog food.
So like, you know, you see that little meager food section at like an Exxon, like that type
of food.
You know, you could buy food at a flea market.
Who's ever done that?
I mean, my father would like to buy anything at the flea market.
And this is how a story starts.
Because then we're like, okay, great.
So like Frank really wants to get the gang to go out on the flea market because that's
where you get the best meat.
Yeah.
You know, and then they realize that they're, then we'd be like, okay, then maybe they're
like, they realize it's dog food, but then they're like, what else does a dog do that
I'm missing out on?
Some connection with the flea market and dog food.
There's some conspiracy here.
Yeah.
There's some conspiracy.
I think we could all agree it tastes good, right?
So if we're willing to look past who it's intended for, I'll keep eating it.
Where's your dad eating now?
Is he same stuff?
Same stuff.
I mean, my dad's like live action Homer Simpson.
He just eats such garbage, like sleeves of Oreos right before bed, like Mountain Dew
all day.
He doesn't drink water.
He doesn't like the taste of it.
All he drinks is soda, which is, he's 80.
I mean, to make it to 80 and all you drink is soda.
It's pretty remarkable.
Don't stop now.
Yeah, don't stop now.
In the room, you showed us a funny picture of your dad in bed, like surrounded by, what
was that?
He was like covered up.
He sleeps like a vampire.
I do too, so I can't throw stones.
I was not going to bring it up, but yeah.
He sleeps completely under the covers.
Just see the mass of a body underneath.
Covers over.
There's a Mac playing on a Oreo.
Pillow over face covers over a pillow.
Pillows, right?
Pillow over face.
I sleep with my head between two pillows, like a taco cover over me, completely entombed.
And now one of my sons does that too.
So it's now generational.
Yeah.
Wow.
So then you feel contained and hot packed in.
Yeah.
Like a sardine.
Well, you have one story about temping and having a little bit of a stomach issue.
Oh, yes.
Oh, that's.
Which is one of my favorite.
We told the story about the poor young man who auditioned for the show and had horrible diarrhea
and then went behind the dumpster to wipe his own butt with his own head shots.
I didn't hear.
Yeah.
It's his first ever audition and he realizes he's going to have diarrhea and someone's in
the bathroom and he can hear them running their lines and it's taking forever.
And he goes behind the dumpster and he shits in his pants and he's trying to clean it up
with his own head shots.
And he gives up and he throws his pants out his window driving home because they smell
so bad and he rear end somebody.
And that man was James Marston.
It's my favorite poop story of all time.
Second is your temping story.
I was temping at my dad's insurance company in New York and wearing a dress shirt that
was way too big.
And when I went to use the bathroom probably after lunch, I didn't realize that once I
sat down on the toilet that the shirt was so big that it had created a hammock that
completely didn't allow anything to reach the water.
So when I finished pooping, I looked down and saw my dress shirt was just perfectly
cradling of shit, which was a real situation.
Because I was in New York.
I live in New Jersey.
I didn't have like a different pair of clothes.
Then you went to a store so you went and bought a new shirt, right?
That would have been the smart thing to do.
No, I took off my shirt and was probably just bare chested, just scrubbing poop out
of my shirt and then wore it for the rest of the day.
I remember you telling me that you took off your shirt and then you gave up and you
walked shirtless through the office and you said that you quit.
I didn't quit now, but I definitely wore it the rest of the day and probably should have
been fired.
Oh, OK.
Oh, my God.
That is a great story.
That is a good one.
Well, I've got some questions for you guys, but just to say a little thing about Scott
is that Scott was responsible for me ending up on the show.
That is true.
Because I met Scott first before I met any of yous.
Really?
Yeah, because I hired Scott onto a failed project of mine that I was developing for
FX, and he was great.
And I believe the first time we met, I cried at our first meeting.
We did.
We met at a bar or something and I'm like, let's go another drink.
I ordered a drink and then I cried in front of him at our first meeting because it was
a bad development situation.
But he was so nice about it.
And I was like, this is the sort of person that I need because I needed a number two.
So I hired Scott on and then he was great, but the project died.
And then probably because I spent most of the time talking to you about how much I love
and how you're responsible for most of my favorite episodes, including the game Gives
Frank an Invention, which we just talked about, which is my number one favorite.
That's cool.
That's one of my favorites too.
Yeah, it's very strong.
Yeah, I just watched it recently.
Holds up.
And that's where Nightcrawlers came in for the first time, which you guys were responsible
before.
That's right.
You guys were responsible for the lyrics for Dayman.
Yeah.
That was one of the first things we ever wrote.
That was the first script we wrote for the show.
It was the first script. And I remember the day, man, one of the things that was unique
about Sunny was how little you had on breaks sometimes.
Like sometimes you guys would see it, but it wouldn't be the amount of information that
the writer would have.
Would there be a lot less?
The flip side to that is there's a lot of freedom and you could fix things and sort
of experiment.
It became something I grew to really love.
You hated it.
You like a more detailed outline.
A little bit more anal.
I don't remember what we had for that.
It was like they sing Dayman and then we just wrote the lyrics kind of quickly assuming
we would like rewrite them or something.
Yeah.
And then just that remained.
Yeah.
And it became this whole thing.
It came together real quick.
Yeah.
The fighter of the Nightman champion.
Where did all that come from?
Karate and all that.
I don't know.
We just like wrote it out.
It was very short.
And then it caught on somehow.
Just wrote out Master of Karate and Friendship.
Well, yeah.
I don't know where that came from.
Just randomly.
Well, I have a list here actually that I wanted to go through with you guys to do a sort of
lightning round, which I'm going to call, are you responsible for this?
Which are things that have been claimed on this podcast that maybe you guys are responsible
for.
Time to set the record straight.
Okay.
The Melting Dog in the Alley from Sweet D gets audited.
That one's you, Roselle.
That's based on your dad story, yeah?
Yes.
My dad had a Melting Dog.
He worked for this guy who had this big house and all these dogs.
And my dad, I won't get into the specifics of his job.
It was a real estate thing.
But sometimes he'd be over at this house kind of like helping them with whatever they were
doing.
And he was watching their dogs while they were away.
And one day he went over to feed the dogs and one dog was dead.
So he dug a hole and give the dog a burial.
And I guess it had been out in the sun for so long that he said that when they put the
dog, they had to pick the dog up with a bucket because it was so soupy and loose from the
heat.
And he poured it into a hole and it was like pouring in like a noodle soup or something.
Yeah.
And that stuck in my brain.
Yeah, yeah.
I remember you pitched that and everyone's like, yes.
Dog soup.
Put it on the board.
Yeah, yeah, sure.
Of course.
Okay.
The dick flyer from Dennis and Dee's mom is dead.
I didn't pitch the dick flyer.
That it looks like a bicep, wasn't you guys?
We were there for it.
I don't remember being, Hornsby wrote the script for that.
I don't remember how.
I remember definitely being there for that.
I remember us sketching it on paper together.
Yeah.
It may have been Hornsby or you guys.
Yeah.
All right.
Nightcrawlers.
I don't remember.
That feels very much like us.
Nightcrawlers feels like the two of you guys.
Yeah.
Crawl around like worms in the night.
Yeah.
Frank's doo-wop group we've already established.
My dad was in a group.
My dad's actual group name was called Vito and the Salutations.
Which he got kicked out of.
He got booted out of Vito and the Salutations.
Yeah, they didn't think he had the stuff.
Now did your dad sing as a part of that group?
He tried.
I would love to see.
Yeah, they have an album.
I think you can find their album.
Vito and the Salutations.
He's not on it though, right?
No.
But would they also kind of run the streets and their leather coats?
He separately was in that sort of squad.
There used to be a club called the 123 Club.
And my dad loved the 123 Club.
Because you could go in there and you could walk in,
kick the jukebox and 123 you're in a fight.
That's how he would always say it.
That was the best part of the 123 Club.
123 you're in a fight was not where I was expecting that to go.
He liked it, yeah.
A singing fight because the jukebox was on?
No, I think like throwing it to garbage hails.
Alley fight, yeah.
The Rococo bang.
Did you guys come up with that?
The gang dances their asses off?
I guarantee Rococo came from us because that's just like a drum,
like a play on a word that we found.
Dennis does the Rococo bang with the woman and the gang dances
their asses off and then like drops her, right?
I think that was a challenging episode dances the rest off.
From that same episode karate snow machine chops it,
which Charlie has attributed to you guys.
I think you guys wrote that lyric, that line.
I was like, that is bad.
That's why Charlie's really fucked up on the pills and he's...
That whole writing experience is a fever dream.
Because I remember we didn't have a lot of time.
What we had to go on was the Jane Fonda movie,
They Shoot Horses Don't.
You know that classic?
And I think it was Rob who was like, we want to do this.
You guys, I think we're maybe already in production or something.
It was like this, do an episode based on this.
I remember we three watched it.
I'm like, ooh.
Yeah.
It was tough to see, but we ended up staying up like three days
in those little offices.
At one point someone walked into our kitchen and we were like,
who is that?
It was Lisa Bonet and I don't know where she was going.
I remember we...
In that building?
In that building.
I remember we also wrote a piece of it at Hornsby's,
like original apartment where he had that neighbor
that would bathe in the garbage pail.
Yes.
Oh, I was there for that.
So, you know, David and I, we had these really good friends,
Si and Genevieve, who live right next door to David.
And Si was at the Williamstown Theatre Festival with David and I.
And they had like a little bit of rooftop on this apartment building
and just off of Melrose.
And so we're having like dinner out there.
Like they're fancy.
They would put together a nice dinner for us.
They invited David over and Mary Elizabeth and I were there.
And we, we hear from downstairs like,
ah, you guys, you want to go for a swim?
And like, and like what?
And we're like, look over the side of the roof.
It's like a one story building.
So not like a hybrid.
And their neighbor is standing in his garbage can,
which he's filled with water.
He's just wasted.
And he's like, he's like, come on, this pool's great.
And he was like, they're like, we're so sorry about him.
And, and he just had filled his garbage can and sort of, you know,
I can't believe no one ever thought about this.
Can't believe people aren't doing this.
Anyways.
I remember that.
In Max Big Break, when they come,
when Dennis and D are having a podcast,
Cricket wanting a rotisserie chicken and getting lemons instead.
Was that you guys?
100%.
100%.
What is it about rotisserie chickens?
I don't know.
It's something.
Yeah.
I can't explain it, but I do find it funny.
What about milk steak?
Was that you guys?
Or was it, as I remember it was like,
did someone miss here or someone in the room?
I think I pitched milk steak.
You pitched milk steak?
Yes.
That's funny.
Why?
Where?
I mean, now we're getting into like, we need to dig.
We need to get real deep down.
Why?
Yes, why?
I don't know.
I'm so anal that I bet I could find why.
I feel like I have everything that we ever did.
He has all the records.
Do you have all the records?
I held on to everything.
Impeccable records.
I have every season labeled by season with everything that we've ever did for everyone.
I will still hit him up once in a blue moon like,
do you have this script?
Because I have no records.
Like you asked me about the Gale Stale thing.
I didn't remember it, but I was able to access my stuff.
Not quite right Robin.
Yeah, not quite right Robin.
Not quite right Robin.
Never made it to the screen.
Did you guys pitch Gale the snail?
Did you guys pitch collective brainstorming for that?
Sure.
How about the lyrics to the Frank's Little Beauties song?
The magic's in the air.
Probably.
That was a fun one.
Definitely because I remember that was based on a real song, right?
Wasn't there a video of it?
I think there were the YouTubes that we were obsessed with around that time.
Yeah, there was a YouTube of some pageant where it was either an adult pageant or a
kid pageant I don't remember.
I think it was like Miss America or something.
Yeah, it was like Miss America.
And the guy sang a song about like magic and light.
Yeah.
That mortician character was really funny.
Oh my God.
There's certain things too where you just don't know.
You're like, we're going to have a mortician and he's going to do Frank's makeup.
And you just don't know until you see Danny come out looking like that.
How funny it's going to be.
You just don't know.
Okay.
So you wrote Who Pooped the Bed?
Did you come up with the stuff that they found in the poop?
They're like wolf hair and credit cards.
Wolf hair is certainly signature of Martyr Roselle.
I feel like Glenn came up with wolf hair in the room.
I remember flashes of things.
Did you bring that idea?
Who pooped the bed?
I think so.
I don't remember.
I remember writing the speech.
You guys came in like caught off the press I feel like with like this idea.
Might have been.
Well, we talked about how Charlie wrote out the monologue at the end, like on the board
very.
Every now and then like the interesting thing is like someone gets inspiration, right?
And then just goes on a tear when someone, when that's happening, you sort of stay out
of their way.
Right?
Just like let them go.
It happens to everybody, but.
Well, that brings up the next possibly most famous monologue from sunny, which is the
Pepe Silvia monologue.
Yep.
Did you guys wrote that?
We wrote, we definitely wrote the.
We did.
You guys did a pass at some point, but we wrote it.
I can't remember what I pulled Pepe Silvia from, but I pulled it from things.
I feel like on a board in my bedroom.
Similarly, I was like Pepe Silvia.
Right.
The guys were saying that it was Silva and I was mispronouncing it.
Silva.
Silva.
And I kept saying Silvia.
Which was funnier.
Poor reading on my part, but.
And often people will say, was he trying to say Pennsylvania?
But that's not what it was, right?
It was just too funny.
It was just a funny name.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
No, it was just a funny name.
Yeah.
You guys nailed that monologue.
Just being like, oh, this is going to be so fun to do.
And then part of the success of that too is what Matt Jackman did from a directing standpoint
where he'd built these things with the letters.
We're just dropping down constantly.
So we had someone on a ladder dropping letters and letters.
It seems so funny, man.
It's so funny.
Yeah.
He used to get director.
It's a shame.
Does he still work?
Fortunately, he does stuff that nobody really cares about, you know, superheroes and dragons.
Game of Thrones and everything.
Game of Thrones and Marvel and...
How about from the Nightman cometh, boys' hole and boys' soul?
Were you guys...
I think that was me.
I got a set.
I think that was you.
I think that...
Yeah, I feel like you guys really took off with that one.
Hole and soul.
I'm saying that.
I got this one, guys.
I'll take it.
Well, we talked about how from the gang hits the road, the whole thing about Charlie
having never eaten a pear was based on martyr, never eating blueberries or something.
I never had any fruit.
I never had any fruit and I never had any candy bar growing up.
So that season, lunch every day, the tree...
How did you not have a candy bar?
I just didn't have a sweet tooth.
My parents eat every...
So you were allowed to have them.
You were just like, no, I don't want that.
No, thanks.
All I ate was salad.
That's so weird.
I'm a strange person.
No, wait a second.
Have you since had a blueberry and...
I have had a blueberry.
I filled in fruit.
I'd say there's...
I like them.
Yeah.
Hey, Megan, guess what?
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Well, you know, it would have been easier for him to find time in his busy schedule for
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He probably would have saved a little bit of dough.
That's good.
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And then he just might have just like chilled out a little bit and, you know, maybe picked
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Not good for the show, though.
It might have been much more boring of a show.
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This year was really fun to be in the room with both of you and to see your little, like,
quirks, like, truly, martyr just paces the entire time.
You're like laying on the floor.
This year you got into a whole thing where you were creating Telemundo shows for David
to star in.
Do you remember?
Yes.
I was drawing things and with starring David Hornsby.
Different Telemundo shows that were all in Spanish.
I've worked the best if I'm not working on what I'm supposed to be working on, and then
I'll be able to, like, pitch more things.
I don't know.
Really?
Yeah.
If you're thinking about something completely different.
To try to, like, low-level distract myself.
Well, there's a method to all of it.
There's a very thought out.
So, okay, so that first season you guys wrote with us, we're out in Playa del Rey.
We get through it.
It all comes together.
You're happy with what happens.
And then we call you up and we say, hey, good news.
We got picked up for another season.
I remember.
We were probably season by season at that point.
The first feedback that I had gotten that made me relax a little bit.
I didn't tell you about it.
Well, McElhaney called me.
I remember I was in H&M buying, like, Christmas presents.
And we had just handed in our first script, like, a week before.
And McElhaney called me to say how much you guys had loved it.
And I remember big weight being lifted.
That was sort of a pivotal moment in the emotional trajectory.
And then we just started writing.
We wrote a lot of the episodes in season three.
And clearly there was, like, we got, we had a good thing going on creatively, all of us.
So we worked on another show in between the first season,
or the third season and the fourth season.
Really?
Cavemen show.
Oh, yeah.
Based on the Geico Cavemen.
Oh, that's right.
Yeah.
One of the worst shows of all time on television.
Based off the ads, but then a call came down from the president of ABC,
like, early into pre-production,
meaning, like, it can't be anything like the commercials,
which is a weird, a weird thing to come up with.
Like, huh, that's going to be a...
Based on the commercials,
but make sure you don't reference them at all.
So no cavemen.
No, keep the cavemen.
All right.
Okay.
So then, so we finished that third season.
You guys go to cavemen.
Yeah.
You get staffed on cavemen.
Yes.
And that coincided with the writer strike, too.
And then the writer strike.
And then there was a strike.
Yeah.
What was the experience going from sunny to cavemen,
like, from our, you know, warehouse on a shady road to back to a network thing?
I mean, I don't think any part of...
No part of me liked anything better about being on cavemen than sunny.
And like, even though it was, I don't know,
it was on the Sony lot and the dad offices and whatnot.
We had such a good thing going on at sunny.
Yeah.
Which didn't make it back.
I just remember it just, it being hard to write other stuff
because I just, I felt like I wanted to write more sunny
because we really got in the groove.
So...
We met Love Rocky there.
Exactly.
He joined us because we met him at cavemen.
I want to say he came in five, maybe five.
Maybe five, I think.
Yeah, that's right.
Great influential sunny writer.
Yeah.
I have found that for my two cents,
the most rewarding part of this business, this career,
is getting a group of people that you click with creatively
and making something in a bubble,
sort of outside the result of it, outside.
Obviously, it's very nice when it reaches people
and people have a nice reaction to it.
But for, that's completely out of our control.
So the best part of the experience for me is finding something
that we're all dug in on, that we don't know how to do it.
So the early seasons of sunny where we don't know what it,
even an episode of sunny really is still,
is the most rewarding part of this experience.
I am sad we can't ever go back to that place with this show.
I agree.
I agree.
That we can't ever just be like...
In a little bubble.
In a little bubble.
Yeah, because we were just making ourselves laugh.
Like, nothing was more rewarding than like,
we'd be cracking ourselves up and then it would hit the airwaves
and people would feel the same.
Like, what's a better gift than that?
I mean, it's awesome.
Yeah.
And we can do a different thing.
And still, having you guys there this year was great.
And I think the episodes are really good this year as a result.
But never that, we can never be as lost as we were.
And there's something really amazing about that.
So even going into season four,
we still don't totally know like what an episode of the show is.
But now we're in a different warehouse.
We're in Culver City.
So we've moved a little more...
Moved warehouses.
It was a slightly nicer warehouse, but still pretty crappy.
Now we're a team, right?
Now we're like, all right, we did this thing.
We're feeling good about it.
It was a good season.
Had some new writers.
Had some new writers.
Well, I think a funny thing in season four was that
you guys felt like Rob and I worked out so well
that when we came back for season four,
there were three other writing teams.
You guys like this writing team thing is where it's at.
So it was the biggest room the show had ever had.
We came back and it was like Jordan and Elijah,
Becky and Audra, Pat and Sonny.
Like the room was huge.
I forgot that.
Because you guys were like writing teams.
That's the bang for the buck.
I forgot Sonny Lee and Pat Walsh were a team.
Oh yeah.
That's right.
And they were a good team.
They were a funny team.
That was a funny thing with Pat with,
he was pitching something and did you do it?
I did it.
He was wearing a hoodie and he was pitching something
and Roselle just reached over and unzipped the hoodie
and we saw that he wasn't wearing a shirt.
He was just wearing a hoodie and he was suddenly
just bare-chested and completely deflated the pitch
and everyone's like, who wears just a hoodie, man?
Not unlike Glenn with the cereal in the car.
Dug in that there was nothing weird about wearing a zip-up hoodie.
Baby, he crapped in his shirt.
Right, oh man.
Oh, but that was, do that in a writer's room.
Dug in on, why is this weird?
It just is.
You don't wear a zipper with no fabric underneath of it.
Yeah.
That derailed the room for like an hour.
Like you came to a writer's room.
We're not a nice crowd.
Like, you know, you do something off kilter
you're going to get picked apart.
I think something that is important for the audience
to know is that it's such a group effort
writing a television series that, you know,
just because you guys are credited for certain episodes
doesn't mean you're not writing on all the episodes.
And it doesn't mean we wrote the episodes we were writing.
Now I lose track, like I could, I have good memories
of writing the ones we like really had to dig in on.
But like a lot of the other ones are cloudy
because I remember bits and pieces of us in all of them.
Yeah, and the more people that you have in the room
that are really contributing, the better the show becomes.
Because I think around that season four, season five,
season six, we had to really...
We were in sync.
Everyone was in sync and different people were providing
different sort of perspectives that were all sort of
jailing into the show.
And, you know, the differences I think was for us
for who sort of stayed, how much someone contributes
and then how much their sort of stamp goes on the show.
And then their ability to execute something
if we're not there, you know,
which you guys and Hornsby really had down back,
when you came on, you had that talent as well
or could run the room or sort of push story forward.
Yeah, I was jealous though of these guys
because Rob, he talks about you guys,
like the funniest people that I've ever worked,
you know, the best writers I've ever worked with
and I'm always sitting there like, well...
But it is like specifically, I think what's so amazing
is you guys just like, I would never in a million years
be able to think of like boiled denims, you know.
Boiled denims I know are you guys.
It's just a weird particular thing that is just like...
Or Charlie's Dreams, I think maybe you guys do that
with the denim chickens and like the weird...
Like I can't think that way, my brain...
Yeah, but brain will not...
Did you guys come up with...
Can I offer you a nice egg in this trying time?
Of a hundred percent, yeah.
An egg in this trying time is definitely your guess.
I've been poisoned by my constituents
like that whole specificity of stuff like that.
I just like, yeah.
Mine is...
My contributions are mostly good handwriting
for the dry erase board.
This is not true at all.
Everyone brings a different thing, right?
Absolutely.
Whatever season has been brought Megan on,
I feel like that season actually started
and we didn't bring anyone new on
and we felt like we needed to shake it up.
So everyone's like, who do you got?
And I was like, Gans, we gotta get her over.
I feel like that particular season,
we didn't even read specs.
Maybe we even met with you.
I feel like you came in...
No, I met with you in Hornsby.
Okay, because I was just like, we just get her in here.
But that season worked out great.
Like that influx of energy.
Yeah, that was a great season.
Yeah, the better the energy is in that room,
the better the season is.
There's no doubt about it.
Season five was certainly a high watermark
of just us all being...
Feeling and confident in what we were doing.
In a flow.
I think so, I think we had sort of figured out
what makes the show work,
but didn't know it so well
that we were boxed into a structure or anything.
One of the episodes that you wrote in season five
was The Dennis System,
which is such an amazing one.
Also one of my favorites.
Yeah, it was just, do you remember
how that came up and that he had a system and...
It was off of that book, The Game, being a thing at the time.
Which our roommate was obsessed with.
Yeah, that's a whole lot of that.
All right, so you had a roommate who was obsessed with the game.
Learning the game, trying to...
Studying it like you would read an automotive manual.
Methods for picking up women.
Yes, for tricking women into.
Negging was a big thing.
You'd go and you'd insult a woman.
Yeah, your breath stinks.
Peacocking was the thing that you wear ridiculous like purple hat.
I have to say, I was living in New York
and heavily dating during this time
and had the effect of the game presented upon me.
Peacocking specifically.
He would wear a tie like a bandana.
Like wear just a tie on it.
Did the game work on you?
Never, because it was just awkward
and it was like always, yeah, go for it.
It was always awkward.
He's nagging me right now by using the bathroom.
Charlie, this is really good use of the game.
Did it ever work for your friend?
Did you bring home women like confused and...
No, nothing nefarious.
I don't think it worked for him.
When you're so clearly adhering to a system
that can be off-putting to a woman.
You don't want to feel like she's prey.
Hey, floss or no floss.
You don't like being asked that as an opening salvo
with a conversation at a park.
Just so odd.
But so you were like, oh, well,
what if somebody had a very specific...
We kind of started talking about that
in season four, I remember.
And it may have even gotten written on the board.
I definitely remember it being written on the board.
Room riffing kind of like, oh, this could be a thing.
The Dennis system, what would that be?
And putting the letters up.
I think we had the words for the Dennis.
We had what it did and that held.
What is an acronym?
Yeah, an acronym.
I feel like we had that acronym the previous season
and then we finally wrote it the following.
Yes, we didn't do it for whatever reason.
We explored it the next season
and it just came together in that one.
Yeah.
It's just such a great episode.
And that started also Mantis Toboggan.
Mantis Toboggan.
Yes.
Mantis Toboggan.
The Magnum Constance.
For my monster dog.
Gladys made it back in that episode.
She was such a fine thing.
Fines came back for that one.
Yes.
RIP Gladys.
And what other ones?
Oh, the gang wrestles for the troops was in that episode.
In jean shorts.
Yes.
The jean shorts were weird.
We had over the years we did the splits thing with jean shorts.
That became like a something that was referenced often.
We had a jean short obsession.
Yes, weird use of jean shorts.
I still find them fascinating.
I saw a guy the other day biking down the street
in those jean shorts that get like stop at the knee
and thinking what an uncomfortable short go for a bike ride in.
Why not wear another short?
We're a different, don't wear regular shorts.
Like the jean shorts, they kind of look funny
but they're not really comfortable
and they're hotter than a normal short.
Yeah.
It was like we jammed a lot in that one.
Yeah.
That's right.
Desert Rose.
Oh, yes.
Birds of War in that one as well.
The Birds of War song.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Birds of War.
I remember you guys pitching though a bucket of chestnuts
and being like, oh, that's so funny.
He's got chestnuts.
And then, and then I was being trying to decide like,
how did he get, is he foraging for them?
Yes.
And then something that Roddy Roddy did in that episode,
which I remember trying to pitch him on the day,
was the drifting off when we asked him if he's got kids.
Oh, yeah.
And he stops and he drifts off and he looks into space
and he goes, nah, not no more.
Hey, guys.
Well, guys like you, you know what?
I love you guys, man.
You know what?
You remind me of my kids.
Oh, you got kids Maniac?
Nah, not anymore.
What does that mean?
Well, that, so the gang wrestlers troops has lots of big ideas,
but some of my favorite sunny episodes are like really small ideas
like Mac and Dennis break up,
which is such a like simple, small story about them feeling
like they've gotten into a rut and they need to go,
but also is coupled with the cat in the wall story.
Did that come from you guys?
Do you remember where that idea came from?
I think you may have pitched the cat in the wall in the room.
I don't know.
I don't recall.
Who came up with smoke?
Some cigarettes.
They'll snuff out the apple seeds.
I think I did.
Yeah.
Not being allowed to eat the cigarettes.
Cigarettes are another running thing.
Yeah.
Like weird uses of cigarettes.
That episode I love and like you guys are such great actors together
and when sometimes when you get out of the way
and just let it be a small scene.
And we're, I find we would often be striving for things like that,
but the reality is like you just can't do too many of them.
You need both, right?
You need to wrestle for the troops
and then you need those guys trying to get me on a dating website.
Yeah.
And if it's all one or the other, the show gets dull.
I mean, that's the other thing you're always trying to surprise the audience, right?
So much of comedy is just dropping something that no one expects.
And that's what's so great about you guys is your sort of idiosyncratic sense of humor
that's so unpredictable in these terms and ideas that you thought up
that no one's thought of before.
Like things like milk steak where like, well, what is that?
But then that balance, finding that balance
and then trying to maintain it throughout a season is so hard.
Definitely tricky.
I mean, what I loved about this show is it felt like it was always doing things
like doing one other thing.
So when someone would throw out the idea of like a baby funeral,
I'm like, we have to strive for it.
Yeah.
Like because you're not going to see that on anything else,
but we have the ability to do that.
So we got to try to stick it.
We were in that sweet spot too of like coming from starting at a time
where television was pretty controlled by, you know, network television
where you only are allowed to do a certain type of humor
because you're trying to reach the broadest audience possible.
Yeah.
Now there's so much television.
There's so much.
Content.
Content that, you know, it makes Sonny less unique in that regard
of like the extremes that we were going to.
But at the time, you know, we were kind of really getting away with something
that a lot of shows weren't.
That was the craziest thing now that you say that about Sonny
and you asked like kind of the difference between rooms.
It was shocking how little constrictions we had
other than the ones that we wanted to put on ourselves
and that we could really come, whatever we kind of came up with
could be on television.
And that, that was so unique.
It was, yeah, because it was very cool about you guys
that like we could write something and make it to air
because like 99% of most shows get rewritten a million times over
from the writer's draft to blah, blah, blah.
But if you guys found something funny, you let it live, which was cool.
I'm always amazed at stuff that works and stuff that doesn't work.
And it's just not what you think.
You kind of, you have to just, it's a process
that is continually evolving.
So the idea that there is like finite answers
at the, an early stage of it
as just the script before it's performed and blah, blah, blah.
Yeah.
A great script isn't a guaranteed great episode.
Yeah.
And vice versa.
No, but it's a good start.
I tell you what, you know.
Yeah.
I mean, it's so much harder to make a bad script, you know,
work and then clean it up in the editing room
versus something that on the page beginning to end is really singing.
And you're like, ah, this one just came together.
But you're right.
It's very unpredictable what is and isn't a good script of Sunny specifically.
I can't, I'm not speaking to other shows.
I can't speak to that, but like of Sunny, when you write something,
you're like, well, it just, it seems like this one should work.
And then you get in the editing room and you're like,
we got to, we got to come up with something to fix this.
Or like this storyline doesn't work.
And we have to take that out of the episode now.
Or like the things get tangled a different way.
It's, you know, the way something's been filmed.
Sometimes it's, it's the music we've chosen.
A good example was two episodes that just did not work at all
until the editing room were the suburbs episode.
And, and the gang dines out, which we had to just come up with.
Two great ones.
Yeah.
Different musical sort of theme.
The suburbs one, we went sort of with the shining and played it dark
versus what was originally in there,
which was like Sunny music sort of transitioning.
And it just didn't work at all.
And then, and same with the sort of Italian theme that we have playing in that,
for whatever reason.
Yeah.
It was like a Godfather feel or something.
It needed that.
So it's, yeah, the whole process beginning and end is pretty crazy.
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So now you guys are off working on other shows.
You just came off of Dave?
Yes.
Just came off of Dave.
You were like doing Dave at the same time.
Yeah, it got a bit crazy.
Yeah, you were doing so many and Dave at the same time.
Yes, no one seemed to consider that on the other end of conversations.
I wasn't a part of that.
Maybe there could be some communication.
It's the same network.
Love FX wouldn't work anywhere else.
You've been doing Rick and Morty for how many seasons now?
I've been on it since middle of season four and we're writing season nine right now.
But yeah, I've been running it the last five seasons or so.
When I heard you were going over there, I was like, oh, that's good because you're
just so like even keel.
I've been called Human Xanax before.
It's worked out.
I'm the whisper.
I always forget this about you because I'd run into you, your initial kind of like gear
is you're in speed one and you're very calm and steady and reserved.
But unlike most people in cars that go up to like five, you have like an 11.
And every now and then we start to unleash you and ramp you up.
And when you get going, man, I feel like I had to pull you out of a refrigerator at
a convenience store.
Like because I try to climb into the back freezer section.
I try to climb through where the beer.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're like stuck under and we have like pulling legs out.
There's a switch.
Once the switch has been flipped, I'm capable of anything, which is exciting.
Yeah.
He doesn't come out as often as he used to because I'm a dad now and I need to be more
shout out to Griffin and Reagan.
It comes out in the writer's room too when the idea gets cooking, right?
So then like, so we're talking and you're very analytical and you're talking about it
and then you stumble on something and then we start pitching something.
You start getting.
Under a chair somewhere.
You start getting excited and then you just become unleashed, which is.
I think we pile a lot of life in.
I think we've got a ton of stories from our 20s and 30s that just be able to pull from.
I feel like done a lot.
Do you guys ever feel like, I feel like this sometimes where I'm like, I need to stop
working and do some more living.
So I have some more.
Yes.
Maybe every day I have that thought.
I think about that.
As I'm writing documents.
In the writer's perspective, it's sort of.
I don't know what I'm writing from.
That is the hardest.
One of the hardest things of our very difficult jobs as writers in Hollywood.
Shout out to writers.
Just the, yeah.
Once you find some success and are able to be working, it can be all consuming
and you aren't, there's no, it's all output and no input.
Yeah, they add so much output and you need to.
Well, if we strike, let's go out and live guys.
Yeah.
And then we can bring it all to the room.
In 2007, when we struck, I tried to get construction jobs because I just wanted to be with people
that I wasn't working with and they were like, no.
They're like flatly rejected.
This is a career.
We know what we're doing.
You can't just walk in and start.
You're going to die out here.
What's final draft?
I ended up getting a job at a shit pill place, like a place that sold colon cleanses.
Great.
I worked at a sign ordering.
Why are you so looking at what your experience is?
I worked at a sign manufacturing shop and then I worked at a newspaper in Santa Monica.
You were telling us during the strike you were a restaurant reviewer.
A restaurant reviewer.
I wrote one review.
Yeah, yeah.
I remember you used to call a restaurant from sunny, you used to call LaDijanese
and you would ask them what their soup of the day was, which they would give.
And then you would ask them what their smell of the day was
and the person would lose their minds because you would do it every day to them.
And they'd be like, God damn it.
He got me again.
Don't call it anymore.
And you smell of the day.
I hear the person go crazy.
Any final thoughts, any parting thoughts?
When we began doing this show, what kind of cell phone did you guys have?
Was it a flip phone?
Nokia.
A Nokia flip phone?
Yeah, I was trying to think.
Definitely a Nokia.
We had to, him and I bought cell phones.
He was in LA before I was and I landed and neither of us had cell phones
and we couldn't find each other at the airport.
It's a real moment.
And I don't remember why, but I feel like I got busted out into a...
I don't want to know how I found you.
I got busted out into a distant parking lot that you came off a bus
and everyone was calling you turtle or made up name you had.
But we couldn't find each other for like two hours.
And it was terrible.
And then the first place we went was to get cell phones because we're like,
never again, that sucked.
We should buy one of these cellular cell phones.
Right to a singular.
To a singular wireless.
That juggernaut.
Let's go to the T-Mobile store.
Have Rob and Glenn and I changed a lot?
Is it different?
Oh, that's a great question.
I mean, Rob still drives that pickup truck.
Rob, yeah, there's been a lot of changes.
I would say you have changed the least by far.
Everyone remains the same person and the same person you're talking to.
So that's great.
Rob has, you know, he's gotten into science.
He's gotten into companies.
Glenn is on the forefront of nutrition and houses.
And I still just want to tell good jokes.
I just want to...
You're a simple man.
You show up, you want to make him laugh and go home.
I want to make him laugh.
I might want to play a little golf.
Yeah, exactly.
I just want to make a good episode of TV.
Have we changed?
No, not at all.
You're just older.
A little gray.
A little grayer.
A little gray.
But you've only changed in so far that I don't get to see you guys as much as I'd like to.
Yeah, it bums me up.
Yeah.
Let's end on that kind of a lamentful note.
Yeah, let's go find a little dive bar and let's just go nuts.
We only have the kids.
Not to make it like, not to get too squishy right now, but that's like the thing that
I miss the most is the time that we all used to spend together.
Well, this is my point about, which is that what's so exciting about doing what we got
to do was that it was time well spent just making a thing.
We didn't have the kids, so maybe there was a little like time on the side where we could
kind of tool around, but just kind of lost in the weeds and trying to come up with something
and hoping, you know, people respond to it.
And not even really knowing how, speaking for myself, not knowing how I wrote yet and
like, how do, like, what am I throwing into the trench?
I mean, you know, largely informed by a lot of this, you know, your sensibilities.
And back, back at you.
I mean, I think you guys changed the way I looked at writing too.
And so, oh, you know, there's, I can go even further into sort of things that might appeal
to me, but, you know, don't exist out in the world and that people will connect with it.
Really is the fastest script to write.
Oh, I know.
I mean, I think the show succeeded out of the early gates because you and Rob had a special
sauce that I don't think you guys realized you had and that both you could go off and
write excellent scripts like as fast as anyone that I've worked with and we've worked for
a while now.
Like, really weighs on me how fast you guess, right?
Me too.
Well, I mean, I think there's just, you know, because it's falling on our shoulders.
There's no time to waste.
Like, if we don't get the scripts in, there's no one to blame except us, right?
Yeah.
So I think we just developed a skill to be like, well, just got to pick an idea and go with
it because there's, time is ticking for me.
That speed has a lot to do with trying to get out of, out of my head.
Yeah.
You're great at stream of consciousness.
Trying to get into that stream of consciousness, trying to tap into that.
You know, I don't know where it's coming from.
Get into a flow and just honestly start just talking as the characters.
Yeah.
And that talking, just be like, okay, they're having a conversation.
They're saying this, that and the other thing.
And know me in it.
Like, what are the characters saying?
Yeah.
How do you guys feel about those sort of writing books and structures and models?
Are you like, well, I think it's good and really useful and you should do it or you're
like, I think it's blown in.
I think it, for me, just speaking personally, it was good to read them and sort of see different
ways that people are thinking about it and, but then sort of leaving it behind as not
using it as like a manual for like, no, it has to go like this.
It's just, I'm a story nerd.
So I'm into all different types.
Like it was awesome being at sunny forever and just kind of being able to go for broke
and not being really confined.
And then we slowed over to network with the mic and that was way more, you know, by the
book and Rick and Morty works on the story circle, which is Dan Harmon's thing.
And that's, it's an awesome cheat sheet.
I mean, that's the only way that show goes.
And it's been fun in my career just to keep changing it up in different ways.
Yeah.
Like some structure is really invaluable in terms of just getting the work done.
Right.
With sunny, we know usually it's 12 scenes.
So just right.
Yeah.
They're always standards.
Yeah.
If we, if we have that, we have an episode.
I've heard a David Lynch saying like, he's like, if you want to write a movie, you know,
get note cards, write 90 or 70 scenes, you know, each card is a scene, then fill those
cards out with what the scene is, then you got a movie.
But to some extent it's true, you know, then drop all the cards, shuffle them in an order
that makes sense to even yourself, shoot it in that order.
And the fans will call it my own right.
Make something indecipherable to an audience.
Yeah.
Love it.
Get those cards lost in the wind, then make your move.
I mean, I still don't feel like I know how to break a story.
And at this point.
You do.
I know that I do, but I feel like I don't.
What I like about it is like, cause I'm a story nerd as well.
It puts names on what is actually an instinctual like a story feels like it's done when it
feels satisfying.
And that's like an instinct that you have, but knowing why it feels satisfying can sometimes
help, you know, like what are the turns?
What are the inversions?
What should some, what kind of things should be happening in the first act?
How should that relate to the end of the second act?
Those sorts of things.
Cause I did the opposite.
Where does the dog melt?
Yeah.
Where does the dog melt?
Where does the cat get lost in the wall?
Where's the egg come out?
But I think like anything else, if you just get so fixated on it, just cause it fits the
story structure, it doesn't mean it's a good story.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, that's writing.
So Scott, this is what a podcast is.
Has anyone been on a podcast before listening to a podcast?
You're the first person ever.
That's how I normally operate.
Yeah.
Will you listen to this?
Well, you don't have to.
You live now.
I certainly wouldn't listen to myself.
No.
Yeah.
If you listen to some podcasts here and there, you might, you might find.
I hear a lot of good things about this one.
From people that are just, that just like it.
I mean.
You listen to music like when you work out or like, when are you listening to anything?
I feel like I'm still writing to like Thundering Techno that we listen to.
You write to like the most aggressive like German techno music.
Dude, that's my kid, man.
He's all just, he's like, I listen to his music when I drive to school and it's all
just like German techno, like crazy.
They used to like joke on the mic, like that Facebook movie when those programmers are
working, like he's wired in, like you just hear Thundering Techno coming out of headphones
and I'm just writing.
Takes me to a weird place.
It's like the song at the beginning of the movie, Blade.
Love that.
Smarter sweet spot for writing.
Bloodrave music.
There it is.
I think people would do like lots of drugs too.
He's in an office sober writing.
It calms you down.
Yes.
I guess so.
Oh man.
Well.
We've done it.
We've done it guys.
This is it.
This is what it is.
That's podcast.
Podcast there is no writing.
You just talking, talking, talking, talking, talking.
Just catching up.
And then it just sort of ends.
Podcast there is no writing.