Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert. Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Shepard, and I'm joined by Monica Padman.

This was fun.

Fuck, yes, this was fun. Right out of the gates, he arrived in the coolest car in an Ariel Adam in the off-road setup. And I was like, what the fuck is this?

It was really cool.

Yes. And I was in me like, okay, I see you, Jona, Nolan. I didn't know. I think of you as a very clever writer. Auteur. Probably smarter than me.

He was very smart.

He smarter than me, but we had the car thing, so that was helpful. But Jona, Nolan is a director, producer, and Academy Award nominated screenwriter. He is famously brothers with Christopher Nolen, and they have done so many of your favorite things together. The Prestige, Interstellar, The Dark Knight, Momento. Then, of course, Jona was the director of Westworld, which was one of my favorite shows ever. Yeah. And he has a new series out now. I hope people can tell when I'm truly insanely passionate for a show.

I hope they can't.

This is my show of 2024, Fall Out. Holy smokes, this show is so fucking awesome.

Based off the video game. Also, we talked about this when he left. This is like with Phineas and Billy Eilish. If I am the parents of these Nolan brothers, why don't they write a book?

They got to write a book.

The parents?

Yes, on what to do.

We need to get some of these parents together.

Some of these parents need to get off their ass and write books. So please check out, I don't even have to tell you to, you're going to hear about it so much. But Fall Out, which premieres on April 11th on Prime Video. Please enjoy. Jona Nolan.

He's an object's boy. He's an object's boy. He's an object's boy. He's an object's boy.

That has to be for my benefit, is it?

How are you?

That's great to meet you, brother. I'm good. I'm good to meet you, too.

But I thought you would appreciate it.

Oh, my God. Of course. I walked out and was like, Well, he's clearly here. Is it a nomad? What's it called?

It's a nomad, yeah.

There was just one on bring a trailer. This week, do you go on bring a trailer and sniff around?

I bought a car and bring a trailer two weeks ago.Oh, you did?I did.What did you buy?First time, I bought a 991 911 GTP toy.Oh, big. What year? 2018.oh, fuck.Slightly softer suspension. I bought it in Colorado. I paid too much money for it. Sure. I flew out and drove it home on summer tires, which is a very bad idea.

Did they even make it?

. I was going to say, now, when I had to wake up every day and look to see, I found an app that will tell you how cold it's going to be along your route.

There's an app already for that.

It's cool. It's called How to Get There or something like that.

So you You first get the car and you get in it and you're so excited to drive it, and then it's a long drive. I've done that drive 100 times. It's 1100 miles.

Add a little bit because I went down through the Ratone Pass, which I'd never done before. I didn't have the guts to take it on summer tires. Over the Rockies. Okay. I went through Santa Fe, Los Alamos, down across the top of northern New Mexico, Flagstaff, and back that way.

Oh, wow. So this is perfect because you're already hitting where this sounds reminiscent of I did a movie in New Mexico. I had been wanting to get a Cobra replica forever. I found one there that had the actual '68 FE big block. I buy this car. Which one? Lone Star. Okay. So then I decide... Well, not I decide. I have to drive it home from this movie in Albuquerque. But I'm quite excited about it. But again, I drive out Albuquerque, very excited. By the time I get into elevation, I'm like, these cars are not tuned for elevation. Then I get down in the desert, then it starts raining. There's no roof, there's no wipes, there's no windows. And by the time I pulled it into my place in Santa Monica, I was like, this was the biggest mistake of my life. Why the fuck did I do this? Did you have any moments? Well, I guess the Touring is probably not as bumpy.

It's pretty bumpy, but it's steering is so dialed in, so perfect. It's like driving a laser beam. You're enjoying the experience of driving it so much. Even though you're getting jostled around a fair bit, it's still great. Okay, great. And that manual transmission, six speed, one of the greatest engines ever made.

I did not expect this from you.

Okay, this is the point in the conversation. And Monica, I know you're a Goodwill hunting fan. Yes.

How do you know this? How do you know this?

It's way to I listened to you guys talking to Damon. Oh, okay. It's the moment where Ben Affleck goes in his place to the job interview, and they're like, who is... This is the moment where people start texting and they're like, who the fuck is this guy? Sure. Why doesn't he have an English accent? That's right. How did this imposter... They're like, he's supposed to be posh.

That has been this great allure of you guys, because I've never met either of you. I'm friends with Downey. Obviously, he just worked with your brother. So I got to hear Downey's impersonation. I I think he might even done it when we interviewed him. Did he do his Christopher? Oh, dear. But I've heard that these two are brothers, but one grew up more in Chicago, one grew up more in England, one has an American... You're so fucking Chicagoan. It's hysterical.

That's what happens when you move to Chicago, 11 years old with an English accent. If I've been 18, fantastic.

Girls would have loved it. Guys would have thought you were intriguing.

Amazing.

Yeah.

11 years old, that's not how it works out.

Yeah, that's fifth grade in your pariah.

A hundred Two years. My social interactions consisted of, say my name is Bond, James Bond. Oh, my God. And now go away. Now go away.

So he's shaken and unsturbed for us, and then get the fuck out of here. Just get out of here.

But what's the age difference?

Chris is way older than I. He's six years older.

We have some similarities. So my brother is five years older than me. We're reversed, though. He's a righty, I'm a lefty. Oh. Christopher is a lefty, you're a righty. That's right. And by the way, Jona or Jonathan?

Everyone calls me Jona. I was traveling when Memento came out. Chris doesn't like nicknames. I came back. I was like, Oh, okay. Birth names. No one ever called that dude, Christopher. Okay, we're going with legal names.

I see.

Okay. Then they published a short story in Esquire, which was super cool. I said, Can I go by Jona in Esquire? There. And then the copy editor called me back two weeks later and we were like, We'd really rather that it match the credits. And there it goes.

Okay. When did you adopt Jona? God, I don't even know where to start in the story. It's so twussy-tour. It's so fun. Also, I'm so distracted by how cute you look, Monica. Thank you. This is quite a yellow ensemble.

I am wearing a new outfit. I was thinking, I was going off on my own journey when you were talking about cars because I can't follow at all. But I thought, Man, what they're talking about is the way I feel about new outfits. There you go. I can't wait to wear it.

They're identical in that they become your identity. You infuse this thing and it helps your self-esteem. You now feel like a laser beam driving to you. You're like, You have athleticism that you in your real life don't have.

A hundred Yeah, it's a superpower.

It's all armor.

I feel a little judge there, Dax.

I apply that to myself. Let's just say an RS3 is a world-class car. And even if you're athletic, you didn't play in the NFL.

That's exactly right. It's funny, as you say, Monica, because my daughter was asking me the other day, I was getting dressed up to go to the Oscars. She said, Daddy, guys never get to wear anything interesting. I was like, It's true. It's getting a little better, but for the most part, we don't. Our car is like an outfit. You get to be a little flamboyant. You get to be a little fun.

Shows your personality.

Also, you can be cool. I saved up when I got a 1984 Mustang GT in high school, and I'm a year older than you. I'm 75 or 76. Is that a Foxbody? Foxbody. Sorry, Monica. One more thing. I'm building a Foxbody wagon right now. It's okay. I understand. Oh, are you serious? And 1980 Zepher with all the coyote motors, six-speed independent rear suspension. But that car, I fucking would peel out leaving high school. Monica, you can't imagine what my self-image was. It was delusional, but it worked for me.

That was it. Dorky kid, English accent, trying as fast as I could to get rid of it. I think the Chicago accent, Southern would have been tough, but Chicago is about as far a distance as you can travel. If you just look at the vowels, like an English A to a Chicago A It's so different. Years of that, and my dad at one point threatened to send me back to England for high school. He said, You go to Catholic school or you go to... I was like, I am not going back to England. I'm not doing this all over again. Then I got my driver's license, and that was it.New Jonas.100%..

What was your first machine?

First one was my grandmother's '79 Buick Skyhawk. It's a terrible car. Rear wheel drive, massive economy V6 in the front.

Okay, so it's shitty. But when it snowed, you're in the Duke's a hazard.

Didn't even have to snow. In Chicago in the summer. So summer after sophomore, I spent the whole summer waiting for my driver license to come. And then it turns out the driving school guy just hadn't filled in the paperwork and it didn't show up till the end. So then I've got all this pent-up energy. I'm like, I'm going driving. Chicago in the summer when it rains, if it hasn't rained in a while, the oil, it's ice-skating. I'm coming home, I got a buddy in the car, I'm cool, rear-wheel drive, getting the rear-end out a tiny little bit, as much as you can with that engine. I come around a corner and I start to lose it. I remember to steer in the direction of this kid, but I don't remember that you've got to unsteer. So I just fly off the road.

Oh, my God.

Into a ditch. Bunch of choked cherry trees. I think I hit eight or nine trees. Oh, boy.

This is a seminal moment for every young, aspiring Steve McQueen.

It was a learning moment. You learn to oversteer.

Yeah, I never forgot. You learn quick when you throw a car into the ditch.

You do. My parents made me dig it out. They're like, Okay, you can get it back out.

You guys don't look dissimilar.

I know. This is all- Are you realizing this? Are you seeing? Is everyone seeing this? There's a lot happening right now. This is crazy. I think we're the exact same size as well.

Whoa, Sam. Our mutual friend was like, You guys are either going to get along or it's going to be terrible.

Pete. I love Peter. I've told you about Peter in the past. He's living down in Austin, but they're moving back. They're coming back. Wait, so his wife, you work with his wife somehow?

Yeah, we're partners. Athena. Okay, wonderful.

I've not ever met her. Really? Weirdly. I've known Peter for, I guess, almost 20 years now.

No, you would remember. Athena is amazing.

Okay, great. She is one of your producers?

Yeah, we work together since I started working in television. She was a bad robot, and Then, Athena, myself and my wife Lisa.Stole her. Started her own...

Headhunt. It's okay. Dax stole me.

I stole her from my wife. I mean, I've jeopardized everything.

We started our own company, and we've been working together ever since.

You're at Amazon. You guys have a deal at Amazon?12 years. We do. Okay, Great. Let's start at the beginning. You're a little boy in England. Yeah. At one time, you did have a cute little English accent. Adorable. You're one of three. Who's the second?

Chris is our middle brother. I'm the baby. I was a happy accent. The whistle stop version of it is my dad's an English guy. He's a madman. He's a copywriter.

Ad executive.

Wins a competition, I think, and I'll get this all wrong, my mom be so mad at me. I think he winds up in Ogilvie in New York, and he hates it because it's the show. Before he passed away, I got him to watch two episodes. He's like, It wasn't like that. But I'm like, Well, it wasn't enough like It was enough like that that he hated it. Everyone in New York hated Chicago. He was like, Well, I hate you, and you hate Chicago.

Yeah, an enemy of my enemy is a friend of mine.

I'm going to try Chicago, where there was a healthy ad business, still a healthy ad business there. He moved there, somehow goes to play beach volleyball, which is a thing in Chicago.

Not super English. This is out of his comfort zone for sure.

The one time he ever went to play beach volleyball, and the one time my mom ever went to play beach volleyball, and they happened to pick the same random day to go play beach volleyball, and they met each other.

Okay, great. She was at the time a flight attendant? You got it. For what? Delta? United. United.we just flew it.We just flew it. There you go.

I still only fly United. Because loyalty. This is adorable.

Okay, so they meet in Chicago. I would have assumed the other way around.

They met in Chicago and about a month after they got married, he's like, We're going to move back to England.

This was in the '60s.

Late '60s, swing in London. Yeah. My mom, who's from Ohio, moves to London and has three kids. London was very different. You couldn't go shopping on the weekends. She'd go to the supermarket and get a bunch of stuff. The guy at the end is like, Have you bought any bags, madam? Very, very good.

Bring your own shopping cart. Kind of.

They still haven't been in a shopping cart.

So it wasn't for her?

Well, no. After my dad passed away, we were joking that she would move right back. She spent more of her life now, I think, in the UK than she has here. They argued for 42 happy years about where to live. Periodically, my mom would be like, I need a cheeseburger.

So they didn't divorce?

No. Half of them married the whole way through. Wait a minute.

So when you When you were living in Chicago, dad was still in England. So they would just have these long periods away?

We'd move together because he worked in the ad business. He had his own company. He could dance around.

So when you were 11 and your brother is now 17 or 18, you moved to Chicago, the whole family.

Well, the whole familyBeing the three of you. At this point, being the three of us. Chris is at boarding school. I had that weird thing of being a younger brother, but also an only kid for a while. Because of the boarding school thing. Chris started boarding school when he was 10. My mom had gotten fed up with England. So when I was four years old. We moved to Chicago for a year. And then Chris started going to boarding school. Which is this weird thing where we grew up together, but I think it's one of the reasons our relationship works is we had almost no points of comparison. We didn't go to the same schools. He didn't take the SATs. I didn't take the O levels. He didn't apply to the college as I applied to. It was only when we got here that there was a suddenly important comparison.

Well, that the world is putting on you guys for sure.

So then I guess you probably wouldn't have all of theisms I have from being a younger brother, five years younger. I would describe them as this, an insatiable in a hurry to prove I'm an adult at all times. I wanted to show him I was worthy of hanging out, some weird complex that I'm bad at everything. And then I get around my peers and I'm like, Oh, wait, I am strong. I've just been wrestling him my whole life. 100 %. Or skateboarding with him, and I sucked. But then I got to sixth grade, I'm like, They think I'm the greatest skateboarder. All these weird juxtapositions of my experience in life. Did you have that stuff?

I still have it because with directing, watching what he does, I'm like, I don't know if I could do what he does. Then I start working with other directors. I'm like, I know I can do with that guy.

Right.

But 100%, the little brother thing, even with him out of the house for a while, all the more, maybe, he'd come back and be like, No, I want to hang out. I want to be part of it. Yes.

Is it trippy to you that he is so English?

Yes.

Because you're so fucking American. It's hilarious.

On Momento, we worked together. I had written a story.

What was it called, Momento?Momento Mori.

Was a short story. I was still in college. I take some time off college because my mom had tried to convince me to get a real job. She's like, I got one shot left. Some of this family is going to have a real job. Dad at that point is self-employed. Chris always wanted to be a film director. She's like, I got this guy.

He's it. You got into Georgetown. I did. It was very promising.

Very good school. Catholic high school, so a bit of a feat, right? A bit of a boost.

Irmark Cooper was there when you were there, I'm sure.

Bradley Cooper and I rode together on the men's heavyweight crew team. No way.

No. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. There's too many things to talk about. Okay, I'm going to try to keep this linear.

We were the smallest guys on the boat.

You were not GT3 RSs.

Exactly.

The rest of the boat. You guys were Cameros.

Yes.

I'll You guys are doing just fine.

In the space of a foxbub. Good in a straight line.

Yes, entry-level speed.

Bradley and I met walking into the cafeteria first week of Georgetown. The coach, Dan Lyons, was recruiting. He'd come from Annapolis, and he wanted to build a good team. He's literally just picking big guys.

You have wide shoulders.

That's it. Come this way. Come on down. I never rode in a boat in my life. We went up becoming friends, and it's been amazing to watch.

How do I not know this either?

You don't know anything.

I really am astounded with what little I know. Okay, so you're at Georgetown, and then you decide you're going to bail out of there for a year to get a job?

I started at Georgetown in School of Foreign Service, which at the time, it had been Bill Clinton's alma mater. I thought I would work for the State Department. I think I was motivated to some degree. I had all theisms, the younger brother stuff, but I had this thing for my mom, who's lovely and has supported my career the whole way through. But in the beginning, it was like, How about you get a real job? I thought, What's a more stable salary than the government salary?

Yeah, you can even do a bad job and stick around forever. A hundred %. You're like 10 years from the second you sign your employment contract.

A hundred %. I was like, I'm going to work for the State Department. Maybe I'll work for the CIA. I'll do the Marine Corps for a couple of years after this. I went to a Marine Corps recruiting office. They knew. They're like, You're not a Marine. You're too artistic. I had long hair. They were like, No. They let me sit there for a while. I lived in DC for five years in the end. One of the requirements for getting that degree was competency in a foreign language. I like to describe my relationship with the English language as monogamous. Failed Japanese, failed Spanish.

Okay, now we're really similar. It's hard.

Not my wife's version of failure, which is a B plus It was like an actual F. I was like, this isn't working. I'm not doing well. I'm flunking out of classes. I had a scholarship. I lost it. What was the scholarship for? National Merit scholarship through United.

No wonder you're flying United. You got it. They brought you to the dance. You got to dance with them. A hundred %.

The whole dance. I was fighting. I felt like the English degree was the family curse. I'm like, I think the one thing I always had, the one thing that always bailed me out of not doing my homework, not reading the book, was I could make it look I could dress up my bullshit. This is like perfect training for Hollywood. Yeah, of course. Director. Dress up my bullshit in pretty language and do okay. I thought, well, maybe it's the actual writing of the thing is the thing that I'm actually talented at. What age? 20. Okay.

So two years in. I just want to relate to you so much. Multiple choice were fucked. You give me any opportunity to answer a question in writing, I've got a shot.

Exactly. I'm going to dress it up with, look over here, silly bullshit, and maybe I got a shot. I realized I was not heading in the right direction. It wasn't working. A lot of folks that I knew took a semester off. The girl I was dating took a semester abroad. My grades were not good enough for a semester abroad, so I took a sabbatical. We had recently gotten back in touch with the whole side of the family that had left the UK after World War II and settled in New Zealand. So I went down in New Zealand. Oh, wonderful. What part? The Northland. So north of Auckland. Do you know it?

Well, I shot a movie down there, my very first movie. We were based in Wellington, but we traveled for half of the movie through like Rotarua.

The Rotten Egg smell.

Yes, from the sulfur coming out of the geothermal pools.

First time I ever hitchhiked anywhere was out of Rotarua.

Great country to do that in.

It was. This is 20 plus years ago. But I worked on my cousin's had a dairy farm north of Auckland, 800 head of dairy cattle, 1,000 acres grass-fed. We had gone down with my dad and reconnected with them the previous year. I reached out and I was like, Can I just come live on the farm and help out? I did that for four months, and it was amazing. A lot of time to think. On a farm, every day you wake up and it's a different job. You'd be a cowboy one day, you're digging ditches the next day. All the regulations are different. This is one of the craziest things I remember from the time there. Butcher will come to the farm in a white coat with a mobile butchery. In the States, you can't do any of this stuff. They show up in a truck, and I swear to God, hide behind the barn with a gun. Oh, my God.

It's like a mob movie.

The farmer would lead the cow over the hill, and the guy steps out and shoots the cleaner.

Because this feels more humane or something that they're not scared before they get killed.

Exactly. It makes a certain amount of sense.

Sure. Although when a guy steps out with a lab coat from behind a van. I'd rather have a guy in a hockey mask with a chainsaw because some twisted shit's about to happen.

A hundred %. Getting some genocide vibe.

I'm still not a fan of drinking milk. In the farmhouse, they have one of those great classic libraries. When you send off and they send you a different book every month. Every time I pull a book out, the spine would crack. No one had ever read any of these things. Yeah. One of them was Moby Dick. I'm like, That's a book that you're supposed to read. I actually was so bored. Pre-internet, pre-smartphone, you just literally in the middle of nowhere, Northern New England, and I read it, and it was unbelievably cinematic. The other thing that occurred to me reading it, because I'm not a real American. I'm a fake American. I always feel like impostor, not a real American. Try and understand what America is. It occurred to me reading Moby Dick. One of our favorite stories is Americans, one of the essential stories is revenge. There's a country that's like, we stuck it to the British.

There's also that Scottish-Irish culture of pride, way of life, herder, all that shit is in the mix.

It started kicking around in my head. That is so filled with incredibly indelible images.

I'm so embarrassed I haven't read Moby Dick. Have you? I even wear a shirt. It's one of my favorite shirts.

I couldn't do it.

I did read Old Man in the Sea.

I hated Old Man in the Sea.

Yeah, I bet you did. Oh my God. Gails don't love Hemingway as much as boys do. Yeah, I wonder if it's a pretty gendered author. Yeah, it's like Bukowski.

A little bit. It feels indulgent or something.

Too masculine.

Yeah, a little bit.

My daughter is very precocious reader and has been reading ahead a little bit. So at least he gave her a copy of The Great Gatsby. That's a great book. She's 10. It's a little early, but you're reading it in high school, 15, 16- We both have 10-year-olds. Yeah. What is happening? We might just want to set the microphone aside and just walk away.

No, I actually want to walk towards you in Fuse. I feel like maybe we could walk at each other in just Fuse.

Let's do it. Imagine how powerful we could be.

Do you have any tattoos?

Sadly, no. I was going to get one during memento. My sister-in-law and I were going to get one, and then we just check them out.

Leave them to me. I've got that covered. I actually think we got to be greater than the sum of our parts. I like that. Okay, so you read Moby Dick, and you become obsessed with revenge. Yeah.

And so I started writing a short story. I wrote the first draft of a Manteau on an airplane vomit bag because I just got it stuck in my head. I was like, well, what if memory serves as a bomb for everything? And time, rather. You spend enough time, you can deal with anything. You can forgive anything. You move on from it. And I had taken a psych class the last semester before I took my little time off, and I got stuck on this idea of enter great amnesia. I got stuck on this idea of not the amnesia that works backwards, but the amnesia that essentially sticks with you. You can't hold on to anything forever. People have that? One of the crazy experiences of that movie was that we go to festivals. Eventually, we managed to get it out in the world. Almost every time we went to a festival, I would meet someone who knew someone or had had a motorcycle accident or could dramatic device so many different things can cause it.

Oh, yeah. I've had like 19 different script ideas based on starting with Amnesia.

Someone gave me a book once, and I was vaguely offended, but it made a lot of sense. It's like first time writers start with Amnesia because it reflects their blank page. Where do I start?

Oh, interesting. Interesting. They don't have any experience to draw on, i. E. They have no memory. Exactly. I had it for 14 hours from a head injury. Oh, wow. I mean, it's the most memorable experience in my life, ironically.

Ironically, yeah. What did it feel like?

Well, I'll try to do the four-second version because this is your interview and other people have heard it. But I had already fucked up my shoulder. I was waiting to get surgery. So I'm wakeboarding with one arm. I'm in Michigan. I fall pretty hard, but nothing crazy. My friend Dean pulls the boat around. He goes, Oh, that was a big hit. I go, Yeah, I just feel like I got punched in the face really hard. He's like, Okay, so I get in the boat. He has brought another dude that I had met that morning. Dean starts wakeboarding. The buddy's now driving. And at some point, I say to the guy, Where am I? Oh, wow. Because I live in California, but I'm visiting Michigan. He's like, What do you mean? I'm like, What fucking lake? There's no lakes in California. Who are you? And he realizes quickly, Oh, shit. So he stops the boat. Dean gets in the boat. He realizes this is bad. He takes me to shore. My mother and my then-girlfriend, Bri, are there. They say he hit his head. They take me to the hospital. On the ride to the hospital, I said, Why am I in Michigan?

And my mom goes, Well, it's my birthday. You came home for my birthday. I said, Why can't I remember that? Well, you were wakeboarding and you hit your head, but we're on the way to the hospital. And then I say, Okay, so it's just like that episode of Gillian's Island. I just need to get hit in the head with a coconut again. I make this joke, right? And then it's crickets. And I'm like, that's worthy of a chuckle. I knew intuitively that was worthy of a chucker.

At least a sympathy chuckle while you're hurt.

And it was just dead silent. And then there's a long beat and I go, Have I said that before? And my mom goes, Yes, honey, about 20 times. And I was like... And then I just started bawling because I'm like, Oh, I broke my brain. Fuck, that's the thing you can't break. I'm crying and I go, I'm just so glad the two people that love me the most are taking care of me. Balling, balling, balling. Look up, see another leg and go, Why am I in Michigan? And I was on this fucking two-minute loop for 14 hours.Oh.

My God.But you remember that?

Once my brain unswelled, I think a lot of that short term memory is on the outside, so it's just pressure on there. This surprised me. I was recording all that. So once the brain unswelled, I remembered all these loops. I have to tell you just one funny punchline of it. This happened exactly in 2002 or 2003. When we were checking into the hospital, the nurse said to us three, Where do you work? And I go, Oh, I don't have a job. And my mom goes, No, he works at MTV. And I go, I work at MTV? She goes, Yeah, you have a show on MTV called Punk. And I turned to Bri and I go, I have a fucking show on MTV? Then I go, What happened at the Groundlings? My girlfriend I was, You're in the Sunday Company. And I'm like, I'm in the Sunday Company? And then I asked about UCLA and found it. So I got to learn the three best things that had ever happened to me all in a minute. That sounds great. And I was ecstatic. But how did you know Bri? Because I had been with her for eight years.

It washed two years back.Weer.Wow.It.

Was very weird. We're so fragile. What we are is so…

Oh, my God, you're right.

It's absolutely terrifying.

What we are is so fucking fragile.

It's just this tiny little hallucination, and anything can knock it out. That was my experience writing on that movie, was talking to people that had an experience like yours and starting to understand that whether something is coming from the limbic system, it could be cancer, it could be alcohol withdrawal, it could be a head injury. There's so many different things that can basically knock you off of the little tiny construct.

The precarious identity. Yeah.

You've got your blanket and you've got your food and you're sitting there and that's you. Then the wind comes and blows it away and it's like, Wait, what am I again?

I know. We think it's so concrete and foundational, and then you end up in a different group of people as a social animal, and all of a sudden you're not that person. You can no longer be that person. Yeah, it's so fragile.

Well, if you're a showrunner director and you're outside of your milieu, no one laughs at your jokes. Maybe I'm not that funny.

We talk about this all the time.

We talk about that all the time.

When we're around billionaires. Yeah, people's-Not Bill. I just want to add not Bill. Bill is great. But we've been around some billionaires, tech founders.

People, obviously, around them inflate their egos.

That's not their fault. They have no way of knowing.

You can't help yourself.

There's No way. How are they supposed to correct for this? Oh, it's so corrosive and weird.

I think this is one of the key things that you can do as a brother. Chris is having a good run. He just wants someone in your life who remembers you when your shit did stink and can call you on.

You need a partner, probably, who's not too blown away with you. 100%. Yeah, very helpful. Critical. Okay, so what shocks me about your story is that you give this short story and or pitch it to Christopher. You're six years younger. You're a fucking cowherter I don't know that my brother would have read the thing. That's to me the big first shocker in your story is that he actually took you seriously.

What was interesting is because we had all this time apart, being in different countries, boarding school, all of it, I remember quite distinctly at one point, and it was when I was fairly young, it was before high school, he came back and he realized that I was funny. We shared a sense of humor. We shared this sharp, slightly rascly sense of humor, and a little bit of a bond formed there, which was great.

You weren't around enough to have annoyed him. That's helpful. A little bit. I was pretty annoying.

He didn't steal his shit, though. I got annoying fast enough.

You caught up.

I watch this with my kids now where I'm like, You understand, later you're going to think he's great. Yeah. But I think there was just enough distance that he would actually listen to my shit. So I get to the end of my run. I get to the summer. I know I'm going to go back to school. I transfer colleges within Georgetown. Family curse, English degree. Here we go. I don't know what I'm going to do with it.

I don't know why I fought this, but let's go. Why did I fight?

You just embraced the hell with it. I write up my notes for the story, and then I've got our dad's old Honda prelude. Favorite, favorite car. Yeah, lovely car. It's completely destroyed at this point. I've had it in DC. It gets towed once every two weeks.

But it'll never stop running. Never. It's still running somewhere.

Sadly, it did. That was my fault. Was it interference four I never changed the timing.

Timing Bell, and it blew all the valves out.

But we got it to California first. Chris grew up dual national, so America was always an option for him as well. Him and his girlfriend, now wife, Emma, were trying to figure out, we want to do this movie.

He's directed one feature.

Self-financed tiny feature that I was a grip on, friends and family coming in. I think he made it for about 5,000 bucks. Chris and I were trying to figure out if they could make a go of it in LA. She was working an assistant at a production company that had offices in LA. Trying to make the leap, and I was saying to Chris, I'm like, Look, if you're going to do it, one, you should it. Two, you got to take dad's car because I keep getting parking tickets for this thing, and I don't need it in DC. I think you're going to need... I've heard that you need a car to get around LA.

Cars come in handy in LA.

Apparently, quite important.

Jono, the only advice I give to young actors when they ask me is I say, buy a Honda. Us so that it'll run forever and you don't have to pour money into it.

We still have the same mechanic, Stacy, down on Melrose, affordable care. They only work on Hondas. It was not only the car, but the mechanic. That's a good tip. Get a Honda, you'll be okay. You can weather the storm. Chris still has a Honda. He has this '85 white Honda Civic Dx. Sadly not the prelude because I didn't change the time belt, and he still drives it, everywhere.

Oh, that's great.

He's fulfilling my fantasy. I had a '91 Dx that I have thought about chasing down and buying. It was so reliable through the lean years, which there were eight of.

You can't help but bond with that car. It's the horse that never leaves your side, especially in LA, all the PA jobs, all the craziness. I had an Accord that wasn't quite as reliable, but they're amazing.

We did so much drunk driving together back when I was an addict, and somehow it was such a boring car. I never got pulled over. Kept you alive.

A hundred %.

Chris eventually decides to make the leap, and I drive from DC, pick him up in Chicago, and we drive from Chicago to LA, and we go the northern way.

We went up Black Hills, South Dakota.

Did you stop at Mount Rushmore?

Mount Rushmore, we did. Got a couple of pictures there. Then looped down through Salt Lake City and across. It was my first time at Bonneville. I made Chris stop. He's like, What is this place? I'm like, It's important.

All the speed records exist here.

Everything. Mecca. We got to Minnesota, pulling out of Chicago. And as brothers do, ran out of shit to say. I had a Chris Isaac cassette tape that got stuck. Honors are great, but got stuck. So we're listening to Wicked Game. I think it was a Kasingle. Was it like 2000 miles with Wicked Game playing over and over.

That's a great song though.

I still love it.

For a few hundred miles, yeah.

Well, sure, yeah. I was like, Well, I have this idea. He made one movie, and he was talking about his ideas for the next movie, which I can't describe in case he ever wants to get back to them. They were very different. One of them was a comedy.

Unexpected.

Well, that's the thing about the guy. His public persona is so this. Reserved. But he's such a goofful. Odd for me to resolve the public version with the guy.

Of course, yeah. I can only imagine my brother was in public and I had to watch and put on his show.

And was so erradite. Yeah, there's a persona for sure.

He'd get very mad at this. I used to get fed up with having to answer why my accent was different. I'm like, We're in America. I'm not the unusual sounding one. It's true. I would say we'd both grown up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, but he knew that he'd get more work as a director if he affected. Sure. He would get mad because that's the thing that sticks. People hold on to it. That makes a headline. Did you know that he actually... It's a fake... No. It's a totally real accent. Even I'm like, Oh, it sounds so good.

When the argument is 50/50, moral high ground, logic-wise, and he's got that accent, it's going to tip a little smarter. You pitch him, I'm assuming.

To this day, I'll read his stuff, he reads mine, and you just get that unvarnished feedback. He knows if it's like, and I know. I knew I had him because he got really quiet. I was like, Hey, he's got this guy, and he can't remember anything, but he's figured out you can tattoo the information. And that was when I was like, Oh, I got him.

Well, he has such a visual component. I think that's why it's so sticky.

That was the thing. I'm like, this idea came to the wrong brother. Is he going to make a good short story? And I think it is a good short story, but I knew it would make a great movie. So I was like, I got to pass this along. That's big of you.

I mean, it would be hard.

It worked out okay in the end. He did a good job. He called me at one point. He's like, I figured out because one of the challenges was, how the hell do you tell that story?

His addition was going backwards, right?

He calls me up and he says, I figured out it going backwards. I was like, that's the dumbest idea I've heard. I wanted to tell the story as a deck of cards. You'd shuffle it and you just get fragments. But you can't do that with a movie. It's linear. That's it. Left to right. I thought it was a terrible idea. And then I read the script that he wrote and I was like, no, that works.

First of all, that movie, I don't need to tell you, it's so mind-blowing.

There's a handful of movies I don't ever forget seeing and just going like, Yeah, that broke all of my previous paradigms. Yeah, this is so out there. He's so great in it, too. A guy. Wow.

Amazing.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. But then this starts a partnership. You guys go on to write, and I'm not saying this because you're here. If you were to go through all those 700 episodes, I've probably said this on here a dozen times. Prestige for me. It's tied with Michael Clayton. It's my favorite movie, post-90s. You wrote Prestige?

I did.

That was my first paid gig.

Oh, my God. I love that movie.

It's so good.Thank you.

I never read the book. Is the book similar?

Book is super cool. It's one of these books, we've tried a couple of them. It's unadaptable. It had made the rounds.Oh, right. People could see that there was a potential there. It's a terrific book. It's quite different from the movie. It's wrapped in this contemporary framing mechanism, grandchildren of the magicians trying to piece together what happened, which is super cool. For a while, I tried to hold on to it. We made memento, we put it At first, no one wanted to release it. We got six months into it. I graduated school, worked slinging barbecue in DC for a summer, moved to California. We shot the movie. I worked as a PA on the movie. No one knew we were related for the first two weeks.

Of course not. If you guys were sitting here, I don't think I would know what you told me.

When I showed up late to work one day with the entire Cruise radios and I didn't get fired, people were like, Wait a second. We make the movie, Chris cuts the movie, and we're like, It was easy. We showed up, we had a good script, we cast good people. Why do people complain about this being hard? And then we tried to sell it.

It It turns out great.

And no one wanted to buy it. Everyone was like, This is great. We love this movie. It's terrific.

We have no clue how to market this.

The line was maybe more angry than that. People are too dumb. We get it. Bingo. That was it. That was a preventable rule. People won't get it. The audience won't get it. I remember thinking to myself, Well, I'm talking to you. You're pretty dumb.

That is the hilarious thing about that note is everyone excuses themselves from that. Well, I get it, but I can't imagine. I was like, Why do you guys consistently underestimate the audience?

Our whole career at first was based on the premise that it was a part of the audience that was bored and that wanted more complicated, weirder, challenging stuff.

This thread carries through to fall out, by the way. It's going to be one of the compliments I give you. Truly, you're almost uniquely comfortable letting us ask a bazillion questions and giving us other stuff that is satisfying story-wise, but just really dropping questions all over. I love it as a viewer. It's so stimulating. Thank you. So this starts at the beginning, basically.

I'm not sure we set out, but once that became the challenge, that was like, No, your movie is good, but we're never going to release it because we think the audience is dumb. At that point, we'd made one movie. We were fans. We were the audience. We're like, No, we're not dumb. And then when it worked, it felt like we found a niche.

Yeah, they made it for four and a half million dollars and made $40 million.

It's nice. On video, those are the housey-end days of DVD.

Where you would 2X your box office.

There was a year in which we made a movie and no one released the movie, and I was like, I got to get a job. And then it worked. And then Chris started talking to me about this book that someone had sent him about these magicians So that was my first paid gig. I wrote it for guild minimum, took two years. So I got paid $14,000 a year for two years. Just eating Jack in the box the whole time.

Yummy tacos. Oh, they're so nice with the buttermilk dipping sauce.

You could read the newspaper through the tacos.

They're deep fried or something. This is ridiculous. They're great when you're drunk. That Honda Civic had thousands of those in there.

We might be the same person. Certainly the same nutritional composition. What a movie, though.

I love that movie.

Yeah, so that's 2005. So you're right. So you guys make sent to in 2000. The prestige doesn't get made until 2005. Five years in a 20 something year old's life is an eternity.

It was a stress. So we were going to make it in 2003 with Jude Law. I think it was the original cast. And then, Warner had hired Chris to reboot the Batman franchise. The stories that led to that were the most crazy Hollywood stories ever. But it works out of the end. So he's on the Batman franchise.

You're not going to like that to bring this up, but I think it's so confusing. When they cast Jude Law, David O. Russell was mad because Jude dropped out of another thing and put a headlock.

Oh, my God. I wasn't there. I owe David a headlock at some point. He has a goal. Still on the look out. Don't mess with my brother. By the way, as the younger brother, you're living to protect your older brother.

This is like the dream of all dreams.

If I'd been, it was like a dinner party. The journalist, the whole thing was crazy.

One of many David or Russell dust us.

If I'd been there, it would have been the end of my career.

Do you like to fight?

In general?

Well, Dax wants to beat people up who hurt people in his life. Do you have that same instinct?

Complex. That impulse is there.

They grew up in Chicago. I'm presuming there were a lot of fights in school.

I learned how to talk like a Yankee, and I learned how to defend myself a little bit. But two older brothers, two, you're going to figure this out.

You're scrapping all the time. Suffice to say, David would have got probably knocked out that night if John was there.

Good thing you weren't there.

I'm not very good at fighting.

You're probably better than David.

Potentially. We don't know. We're not going to start anything.

I love David. Brilliant filmmaker. I don't know if he's much of a wrestler.

Exactly. In a history of these hilarious dust-ups, all this leaked footage of him screaming at actors and them screaming at him. It's wonderful. How he was getting so boring.

It has gotten a little boring.

Yeah, I love Tarantino punched out Don Simpson or Murphy, one of the Don. All this crazy shit that happened. I love it. The good old days. In that five years, though.

It's supposed to be Jude. We're going to make the prestige. I'm like, Here we go. Amazing. And then Warner got nervous about Batman, and they thought, it's not just a movie. You've got to build the car, the suit, the cave. There's all this stuff that comes along. Jeff Robinoff was running Warner at the time, and he was right.

He was the best there was in that role, don't you think? Incredible.

The formative part of our career was his belief. I didn't realize until later I learned more about Warner Brothers. I was 20 something. I had no idea what the hell I was doing. That there was an ancestral philosophy at Warner's that you would hire filmmakers and trust them and let them do things.

And keep them forever. Clint Eastwood.

When I finally got a parking spot on the Warner's lot. It came out of Eastwood's allotment. Oh, wow. It took five years. I had to write a billion dollar grossing movie before I was like, give the kid a parking spot. So Chris starts doing Batman Begins, and at a certain point in there, Robin off said, well, you like writing with your brother. Why don't we put him on the picture, too, and he can help? I had just moved to Boston with my girlfriend, now wife, who is getting a law degree. We moved into the apartment, and I took a phone call, and I was like, I'm going to go away. I didn't come back for six more months. Moved to England, and I was gone. We got pulled into the Bat universe and stayed there for 10 years.

Wow. Yes. So the first one's great, and it makes a great deal of money, totally resets the tone of all those movies. Do you have writing credit on the first one? I know you do on the second one. I don't.

I was a consultant.

Okay. And the second one you do, and that one hits a billion dollars, and it becomes the biggest superhero movie ever, only to be surpassed by Dark Knight Rising. You have to acknowledge this happens to 20 writers in the history of Hollywood. This franchise with the critical response, all of it, it's very storybooky. I don't know where we go from here.Television.Yes..

I worked on Batman Begins in this slightly arm's length capacity, but it was the one comic book my brother had ever given me as a kid, Batman Year One, for my 14 birthday.

It was also on TV when we were kids.

Oh, 100%. And 10 years later, I was on the set working with him. I was like, This is nuts.

You have a good role in the sim.

Yeah.

Congratulations.

Well, we tried to curry favor with AI as much as possible. If it's the AI running the sim, then that's why.

You want to be on their good side? 100%. They have a good side.

Most of my career is just trying to make sure that when they take over-Yeah, you're picked. Unless they have already taken over, to your point.

Oh, really quick, what is the mechanical process when you guys write something together? Is it basically you write a draft and he looks at it and he makes changes, then it goes back to you? Or do you guys ever sit together?

This period, it felt slow as hell because I was in my 20s. We look back at it now, it was an incredibly productive period for us. It was a movie every couple of years. Batman begins 2005, The Prestige, 2006, The Dark Knight, 2008. He made Inception 2010, pulled this old script out of a drawer, and I was like, Well, it'd be better if I had co-written it, but it's pretty good. Then The Dark Knight Rises, and then Interstellar. And it was just like, boom, boom, boom, boom. To me, that felt normal. I was like, Oh, this is what we're him, but it's Chris's incredible ability. The way it worked in that time was with some of these movies, I was able to write the next one while he was shooting the last one. It worked really nicely. We would sit and talk about the story and figure things out. Then he would go away and go shoot the last one. I would be stuck alone with this thing on the Warner's lot. I felt like the ghost haunted Warner Brothers. I'd go and talk for an inappropriate amount of time to the folks at the Starbucks.

Please talk to me because I'm trapped in this tiny office.

I hate this job.

I know. I don't understand. It's just me and Batman. I'm a fraud.

I'm not good at this.

I would crack away at it, and it was good, but I missed being on set. Both Batman Begins: The Dark Knight, we shot in Chicago. The Dark Knight, Chris was on the fence about making another one. I think he didn't want to become a superhero movie director. He was very proud of Batman Begins. To me, it was like we'd built Fox Body, we built a fox body wagon. We built this amazing sports car, and I'm like, let's take it for a drive. Don't you want to make one more? We made all this stuff. You did all the hard work.

You've established everything. You've got the tone.

You spent an hour doing the origin story, and it's great. But it's like, What can we do with this? Can we take the same characters and shift ever so slightly into a different genre. Can we go from an adventure film to a crime film, to a mob movie? Bring that feeling into it. I was literally sitting with Chuck Roven and Chris and being like, Dude, don't be a chicken ship. Let's do this. I knew with the script, and he developed the story with David Goyer with a little bit of input from me. It was like, first act, pretty detailed, second act, somewhat detailed, third act, he rides away at the end. Okay. Once we had the script on, I was like, This is going to be great. This is exciting. We got to make this movie. Eventually, he came He did manage to avoid being pigeonholed. But we went to go make that movie in Chicago, and they were there all summer. This was the moment in my life where I started to realize as a screenwriter, great job, and I'm lucky to be here, but it's a little like being a chef where you have to write the recipe in a bubble and they never let you touch the ingredients and you never actually get to cook the meal.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. With Chris and with Emma, they're such a unit. They do their thing. There was nothing for me to do. I didn't need to go back to set.

It's a very solitary endeavor. Painful.

I'm a little more extroverted than Chris.

I was about to say, you don't seem like the type that's just super happy being really bad fit.

I want to crawl out of my skin. Then if I do three days of that, then I start to work.

Do you collect funny sayings about writing? I like to collect them. One is Lawrence Cazden's, Writers are people who have agreed to do homework for the rest of their lives. There's so many times where I have three different things that were sold, places that I owed rewrites. We'd be on vacation, I'm like, yes, she's on vacation. I'm never free.

Oh, I'm kidding. Angina just thinking about it. When we were going to a high school buddy's wedding in wine country, I was running my first TV show. Basically, we get through a series of different things. Spielberg hired me to write Interstellar. I'm writing The Dark Knight Rises at the same time. And then Steven leaves Paramount, and the script was a Paramount. And I'd spent three years going to Caltech trying to learn-Oh, my God.relativity. With Kipp. Kipp Thorne. One of the greatest human beings.

He wins the Nobel after all this.

He did. He wins the Nobel after it's all said and done. But he basically invented the field of gravitational astronomy. So me and Kipp go up to Hanford, Washington, and fly in a tiny Cessna, and he shows me this crazy thing he's built on the desert, the two vacuum tubes that measure vibrations in space-time itself. This is how we look at black holes. Amazing project, but Spielberg leaves, and I'm holding the bag. I've got a script that I've spent three years on. I'm sitting there saying, I can't put three years of my life into this thing and not make it. Well, I know a director, so I'm going to get going on that.

But do you think that it's going to be a hard pitch? Because no one really loves taking over a project that another director had worked on, especially if the person Spielberg. I don't think that helps.

100%. But I was in Chicago tech scouting with Chris on the Dark Knight when I got the call that I had the gig. With Steven, and we had a glass of champagne together. I was like, That's a big deal. I would try out some of the ideas with him. So he was with me through the development of it. I would pitch it to Chris before pitching it to Steven. Just get a sense for like-So you were super familiar with it. That was the process. We pitch each other's stuff. So I started trying to invigor Chris into the script because I'm like, No, I want to make this movie. But at the same time, I was watching my wife's experience in television. Back in the early 2000s, there was this TV versus movie, this snobbery about like, Well, if you're writing movies-Yeah, it didn't have cachet quite yet.

We only had Soprano I was at that point. That was it.

Just the one thing. I remember when the executive of Warner was like, Why are you working in television? I was like, Because it's good and it's fun and it's immediate.

You can tell much longer stories. There's so many things.

You're not going to spend three years learning relativity and then have nothing to show for it. You might make a pilot and have nothing to show for it. That was terrifying. But I got lucky there, too. I went in to meet with JJ Abrams. We were at the same agency for about four minutes, and they put us together. We had one of those conversations where you just immediately like, oh, building and building and building. Immediately got along with each other. He was trying to get me to write a movie. At the end of it, I was like, well, you're a terrific TV producer, I have an idea for a show, person of interest, and away we went.

Well, let's also add, in film, the writer is the red-headed stepchild. They're the shitty dog you kick and then you send away, and this sucks. No one said that a month ago. In television, the writer decides everything. The directors are guests that come in and execute the writer's vision down to the letter of the law. So there's also a humongous power shift as a writer in television.

I like to say it's rational because if you think of movies, big screen, short story. Tv, small screen, big story. So it makes sense. Okay, my career plan, brilliant. I was a writer in a director's medium, and now I'm a director in a media medium. It's very curious. I enjoy the directing television. No one cares. I love it. But yeah, that was it. I was like, I want to be back on set. I missed set. Chris and I would be like, Come hang out instead if you want to. I'm like, I have nothing to do. The Dark Knight was a script where I wrote what I was like, this is what I think a Batman movie should be. Chris took a pass and we went and shot it. I kept waiting for them be like, you can't put a bomb in a guy's stomach. You get all these things. I was like, they're not going to let us do any of these things. And it gave us no notes. That's a movie that has no notes. They were like, it's cool. Go. Which is incredible. That doesn't ever happen.

It never happens. Now, you must acknowledge your brother is part of a lot of maybe even apocryphal stories, Hollywood stories. I remember I was doing Chips at Warner Brothers, and I was going through a process that is what I deserve to go through. Endless, you got to get Brad Pitt as the bad guy or we want Green light, just preposterous hurdles. And at that time he had brought in, oh, fuck, what movie would it have been? But basically, he told them, I'm bringing the script down. You guys have three hours to sit in a room and read it, and then I'm taking the script away. Everyone showed up, and then at the end of the meeting, again, this is all rumored, what I've heard, they've read it. He goes, I need this budget. I'll take the scripts now. And then he leaves, and that's how it is. Now, I'm not talented enough to do that. I don't deserve that, but wow, what a fantasy.

That's still how he does it.

Good for him.

I mean, he's earned it. But what was cool about it was even before he earned it, that's how he did it. I look at this and be like, Is it Dax?

How does this work? How's he getting away with this?

I'm not getting away with this shit.

That happened while I was fighting to get a green light. I was just like, God, this it wouldn't be a more different experience.

I remember going in with him at one point, we went in to do, I can't remember which project it was. We go in and it was a studio head, and assorted muckety-mucks, and someone starts asking a question. He's like, Let's just be clear. We're not pitching you here. We're just going to explain what we're going to do.

Here's the product you have an opportunity to make.

I was like, You can't say that. Man, you can. It turns out.

You can. Okay, Interstellar, let's stop in on it for a second.

What a movie.

It's so... I mean, talking about the audience isn't going to understand. I don't know that there's a better example of a movie that, God bless everyone for taking the leap. It's so complicated. I think of myself as pretty savvy in this space. Like, astronomy was one of my favorite classes in college. I really think I understand how it's going. And of course, even with what I already think is a pretty good grasp of it, there's a good 30 minutes of the movie where I just have to tell myself this will somehow through osmosis start making sense, and I have to let go of chasing down every logic twist. But what makes the movie work, what's so powerful about it, why I ended up crying in that movie, is it's anchored to the notion of a father missing his child's entire life. And I just had these little girls. And then I was like, Oh, fuck. Now, forget all the Xs and Ys of it all. That's the notion I need to give this stakes in an emotional resonance. It's so powerful. I'm just curious at what point that was a part of the story.

Right out of the gate, it was part of the first pitch to Spielberg. Here's why. I got fascinated by Einstein. One of the things about Einstein is he didn't use any instruments. He didn't even do a lot of math. He had a chalkboard. He would sit and think about things. And so it would take years. I remember they had to wait because of World War I to prove the theory of of special relativity because they need to go out and observe the transit of Mercury, the transit of a planet in front of their astral body.

They watched Gravity Warp light.

Bingo. There were limited opportunities.

They were going to go up to the North Polish area.

They went down to sub-Saharan Africa. They had to wait for hostilities to end. So there's this amazing newspaper, 1918, that's like, he was right. But one of the things I love about Einstein is in a lot of his thought experiments, there would be twin brothers, weird family relationship. You'd send one twin off around sun at the speed of light and come back.

He'd be three minutes older.

There's this human drama at the center of all these thought experiments.

Yeah, he was very smart at anchoring these analogies. There's a woman on a train and she's looking backwards on the train. Exactly.

I kept thinking about the woman on the train. I kept thinking of the brother in space. I was like, no, that's it. It's about the distance between these people.

It only matters if it's affecting humans. That's it.

That's the only lens we have in these events. I write the movie, and the kid is called Murf, because in my version, it was a son. Chris is first born as a daughter. He goes off takes the script, starts doing his thing with it. I'm in TV land. In the interim, we have our first child, and it's a daughter, and he changes the kid to a little girl. I watch the movie, and I'm crying in my own movie. I'm so angry.

That was embarrassed.

How could you do this to me? You ambushed me.

It feels indulgent, right? To cry at your own movie.

I did this to myself.

Oh, what a movie. What a fucking movie. Okay, so you do person of interest, and you do that for five seasons. Now, I did not see that, but the first directing of yours I see is Westworld. I can't tell you, I wish my wife was here to confirm this. I bet you once a month, sincerely, I say out loud, I wish we could watch the first season of Westworld for the first time. I miss the world so much. I miss the tone. I miss that show more than any other, or I just want to have that experience. Me too.

The experience of making the show, we've had so much fun. I've been so lucky and worked on so many amazing projects. That one was very special. It was the first collaboration that my wife and I did together. We wrote the pilot together. We produced it. I directed the pilot. She directed on subsequent seasons. And the cast that we put together.

Oh, it's preposterous. I had to write it down today. Ed Harris, all these actors, Evan, Hopkins, James, Tany Way, Jeffrey, Ed.

We got our first choice with every role. And it was that moment we cast the pilot in 2014. And it was the point where TV was at its absolute most powerful.

Breaking Bad was already out. Mad Men was already Game of Thrones.

We're very close with Dan and Dave, lovely guys. The reason why we felt comfortable trying to make Westworld was Game of Thrones. And they were shooting in all the same places that we had shot things like Batman Begins. I was like, Oh, HBO is going for it. They're not just doing complicated storytelling. They're doing filmmaking. They're doing the real thing.

Yeah, they have $200 million budgets.

Not at first. Dan and Dave, very wisely from the beginning, fought for on location, practical photography. They knew how to make these things really well. I think in 2014, when we look back at it, all of my friends in TV always joke about all the golden ages of television. There's been like six of them. There was the ER golden age of television. There was the Hill Street Blues golden age of television. It's like a durable medium. It's been around for a while. But 2014 was probably the moment in which it powers-The eclipsed movies at that point, in my opinion. For a couple of years, and my brother was pissed about it, we had these arguments. Sure, sure, sure. I knew I knew your television. When we went out to Hopkins, people literally were like, Why even bother? Let's move on. I was like, No, he's going to say yes. Because I've been watching interviews with him. We talk about being on these movies where they make him sit in his trailer for 14 hours because they were doing green screen shots and they weren't ready for him. I'm like, That is an actor who's being wasted in movies right now.

He loved Breaking Bad, and I said, we're going to go out to him. He's going to say yes.

In a show like Westworld, you're making 10 movies in the time span of two features. Totally bonkers. Yeah. So if you like to act, you're doing it at probably 5X.

First day with Hopkins was him and Jeffrey on set. And these are two actors that I absolutely adored. These are two greats. We put them on set together, give them a six-page scene where they're about how coding is like an incantation, how it's summing things to life with words. And here's all this stuff that Lisa and I have written, and here are these two masters just crushing it with a bunch of crazy robots in the background moving around. A guy, a programmer, trying to keep up with the acting. The experience of making that show, we knew we were blessed in the moment. Sometimes you have this feeling, and I don't know if you ever have this feeling, when you're doing a project, you're like, Oh, the stars are all aligning right here. It's going my way. Now, it wasn't always the case. That show got extremely difficult. The rest of the first season was an absolute combat. It It was insane.

What were the challenges?

Hbo had never made science fiction before, and they lost faith. About halfway through the season-They started getting scared. Well, they started giving notes. Giving a note is hard, but the best notes are the ones where they figure out what's the movie that the filmmaker is trying to make, and let's give them notes in line with that. Let's not try to make the movie I would make as a producer or as an executive. That's a key distinction to be able to look past the movie you would make.

By the way, when you pitch it, what was your comp? Did you use some comps? That's a very good question. It's a Western-Yeah, well, the Western part, JJ called us about the project. And it's a Crichton book?

Weirdly, it was an original gameplay that he directed himself. It was the first thing he ever directed. And the original movie is bonkers. It's great.

I've never seen it.

It's got some flaws. Namely, Crichton was brilliant. The guy understood everything, and he's trying to cram all of that into 92 minutes.

Everything he knows. Breath.

But there's a couple of moments in there that haunted me that we tried to weave into the show that I still hold on to. So there's one moment the robots start to malfunction in the movie. The head scientist became the Hopkins character in the show. He's trying to figure out what's going on. He's looking at them. He's like, it's spreading from one to the other, almost like a sickness or an illness. We're like, we're a virus. It's one of those clunky moments. We're like, computer virus. Then I got curious and I looked it up. Their first computer virus appeared in the wild the year after the movie came out.

So he had predicted it.

He had intuited it. In that same scene, he goes on to say, in some cases, these machines have been designed by other machines, and we don't really know how they work. That's the moment we're in right now.

Yes, AI building, coding.

Gpt code, LLM-based coding. We're fully there. We'll never understand our world.

From this point on. Yeah, exactly.

That's right. They talk about who's the last man in history who fully understood his world?

In what year did humans become the second smartest thing on planet Earth? It's a fascinating time. Six months from now. We're it. We're the generation in history. Yeah, we'll watch that. That will be the last of the smartest primates to occupy. It's so fucking wild.

It's a wild moment. I wind up obsessed with it. A lot of the projects then start Westworld and person of interest. And Interstellar, the AI, there's more in the Star Wars role of supporting figures. That's where it started for me. I was like, this is the story of our age. If you're around during the 15th century of the age of expiration, this is the story of our age. This is what we're going to witness that is distinct and different from everything else at any other generation. This is an inflection point. With Hopkins, they took too long to make his deal, and then he started to get cold feet about it, and I'd write him a letter.

Can I ask you a quick question as a sidebar? Yeah. Do you fear that you present not as smart as you are? Because I think this is another thing we might share in common. I'm picturing Hopkins He's looking at you and going, Can this guy have really written Interstellar? Who is this guy?

Why does he not have an English accent?

He's not wearing a suit.

Where's his three-piece suit?

Do you feel like that at all? A little bit. I was telling Monica this the other day. I even wrote under a pen named Darren Wolf because I thought, Well, that'll shake this Jack Shepard, dumb comedian in the idiocracy. Big dude.

I mean, 100%.

Big dumb dumb. Big dumb dumb.

You played-A lot of dumb dumb.

Right.

That gets confusing. You're not in that same position.

But also, he just looks like a regular You do. You look like a handsome regular guy. We play softball on the weekends.

But then it's much better when you show that you're smart when you also seem regular.

A little bit of the Will hunting vibe.

Exactly. I think it's a good combination. I just got I'm struck by the outfit, by the way. Oh, thank you. Yeah, I was listening, listening. I was like, It really is a Dynamite outfit. Thank you. It's like a banana.

It's a terrific outfit. I'm struggling a little with the color because like my brother, I'm colorblind. Oh, you are? Red, green, color blind.

What do you think she's in? If I hadn't said yellow, banana, what do you see over here?

Chartrous.

You're reading more green than it is.

Is Chartrous green?

It's like a yellow-green.

Halfway between yellow and green.

How about this? Does she match that chair right there?

Oh, that's a salmon.

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I do think there's something here. I don't want to make too much of a meal of this, but I do think me being dyslexic is helpful. It does something. It's a cue out of- I'm obsessed with color. The main... Yes. I think if you're seeing everything wrong, you're We're in a different reality than other people. It opens up a whole different point of view.

Yeah, I had therapy this morning. We were talking about India. We've just gone to India with Bill Gates.

I'm going tonight. No. Oh my God. I'm going to go to a deli tonight at Mumbai next week. What? I haven't been in 20 years. I'm excited. I'm also a little nervous.

Are you staying at the Oberon? Oberoy?

Oberoy? I don't think so. Meeting a buddy in Deli who's an architect and he's very specific about where we stay. Oh, I bet you'll stay summer. Great. I hope. Something like that. You already have a guide? No, not yet. If you have a recommendation, please.

Listen, this is the guy the Gates team uses for anyone who comes. This woman is Indian. She's a historian, has a master's in history, and we learned so- She's so fun.

She's so cool. Wait, we'll I can only give you her information.

She's phenomenal.

No, my last trip to Delhi, I was in my mid-20s, airline Brett, and I was going to lose my tickets when I turned 25. United at the time had flight number one, which went this way, and flight number two, which went this way all the way around the world.

You're doing counterclockwise and clockwise.

Exactly. I went to deli in the middle of the summer by myself. Don't recommend it. It was like 110 degrees and humid like Chicago.

And 20 years ago, which is also a different deli. I've heard.

My wife went last year. She heard for years my stories about my brief time in India. I was like, You got to take a friend. You need to be able to talk to someone about the experience you're having. She gets there and she's like, I'm at the Starbucks. I was like, Oh, it's gone. I was stuck in a traffic jam because there was a monkey riding an ox.

The arrow was like, no one's going anywhere. We stumbled upon a monkey We're in a shopping district and we turn a corner and there's just monkeys. We're like, is this thing going to jump up at us and scratch us?

That's exciting to me, though, because it means there's still a little bit...

Sure, there's some activity, especially you'll go to Old Delhi on this tour and you get in a rickshaw. There's dudes cleaning each other's ears out.

Yeah. There's still a ton of poverty, a ton of stuff, but it's vibrant. It's very, very cool. But anyway, we went and we were discussing on the trip, Dax and I, we were having different experiences, obviously. I'm an Indian person, person going to India for essentially the first time. Oh, wow. And I have a lot of baggage with-Growing up in a white world. Yes. I have a lot of stuff with it. So of course, it's going to be different. And my therapist was like, Yeah, you guys obviously are going to have different experiences. Like you do always. Oh, wow. She's like, It was just extra apparent when you're there because it's so heightened and you can really see it. She's like, That's always. Always you two are having different experiences. Everyone is.

That's astute.

It was so smart.

Very true. Smart.

Yeah, it was very on display in India. Yeah, we couldn't ignore it. It had such tangible things. How was it?

It was incredible. I feel like it was so helpful for me. It was life-changing for me.

I'll tell you the moment I cried. It was a very privileged trip because we were with Bill Gates. We're going to meetings with billionaires and presidents of States and all this stuff. And we're there, and we don't know why we're there. We look ridiculous. It says podcasters on our name, placard, and we're like, oh, my God, it's so embarrassing. We left this meeting, and Monica goes, You know that's the first time I've ever been in a room with the majority were Brown people, and they had the power. And she goes, I'm so proud to be from India. That's cool. Oh, buddy. I want that for you.

It was very cool. That's so cool.

It was the first time I've ever felt it. Growing up here. It's always reversed. It's always, I'm the only Brown person at the table, and to have Dax be the only white person. It was so bizarre. It was so interesting.

And I didn't have the power. I mean, I could have beat anyone's ass in there. Let's make no mistakes.

I I don't watch some Bollywood movies. I got moves.

I had appointed myself Bill's Security because I'm like, This is the only thing that justifies me sitting here. I'm in a suit. What am I doing next to him?

I do this with Chris sometimes when I'm out and about. I'm like, I'll take the picture.

Oh, that's great. It's good. You feel useful. You feel useful. Yeah, sure. Anyway, sorry, we went off on a tangent. What a sidebar. It's going to get me every fucking time, Monica. It's going to get me every time. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, If You Dare. Do you cry a lot more now that you're getting older?Oh God, it's terrible.And you have children. I know.

Especially I'm watching bad movies on planes. Too much oxygen. I think about my kids. Is the line that we gave Damon in Interstellar, where it's the last thing you see before you die is your children.

I've held on to that more than anything.Oh God.Yeah. Yeah, your life is a total success if you get to look at your kids as you die.

But they've enfeebled me. I'm now an emotional wreck. They're wonderful. They're the best thing that ever happened to me.

Yeah, you guys needed it. I'm glad it happened to both of you.

It's bonkers. We just had Cooper on, too, who I've known forever, and now we know you know him as well. Half the interview is us talking about how frequently we're crying now and how we're crying differently. It's getting embarrassing. I'm not able to do the job a lot of the time.

You don't want it to seem like you're doing it on purpose, but you're not.

I hate sentimentality. I can't stand it. I'm all about irreverence, and now here I am. I'm so sentimental.

Embarrassingly, publicly crying. Oscar Sunday Night, and the director of 20 Days in Mario Pol says, I'm the first Ukrainian to ever get an Oscar, and I wish I didn't get it. It's really terrible. I do the thing where you hit audible choke. I go like that, and the seat filter is next to me, turned like, what's going on? Okay. My mom was next to me and she felt it, too. It was like, I know exactly what he's about to say, and I cannot handle this right now. I cannot do this right now. I just had to someone all of my...

I didn't watch it. What are you saying?

His documentary is about the siege of Mario It's rough, but it's incredible. He's like, I wish I'd never had to make this movie. I wish I wasn't here accepting this award because I wish this had never happened. Tough moment. Amazing movie.

Wow. Okay, fall out. So full, full transparency disclosure. I often have to watch stuff before I interview somebody. And my wife and I are on a viewing schedule. So what am I interrupting? I'm interrupting something that we're into right now. That's hard.

Love on the Spectrum.

We're watching that the kids.

I was going to say, if it's Love Island, I might have a shot.

If it's something great. Oh, I know. Murder at the end of the Earth.

We're supposed to be terrific.

It's really good. And we're only two in, and we're pretty smitten with it. So Monday night, I go, I got to watch something. And she's like, okay, I I go, But it's no one, so this could be good. She's like, Okay, I was looking forward to murder at the end of the Earth. This is the honest to God's truth. Seven minutes in, she goes, Holy fuck. I go, I know. This might be the best pilot I've ever seen in my life.

You're very kind.

I wish she was here. The fucking superlatives we've been using the last three days, A, all day Tuesday, I got a text from her. I'm like, Cannot wait to get home and watch episode 2. Me, too. I got to get through this day, so watch episode 2. It's so fucking good. It's insane how much stuff is going on in this show. A, I didn't know it was a video game. I've never seen the video game. But weirdly, Gauggen's character does trigger some image I've had without the nos. Gooles.

Yeah, there are characters in all the These are the folks who are super irradiated. It's the game's way of dealing with otherness and the idea that you have this community, posthuman, and they don't get along very well with the normies, with the smoothies, as they call them.

So I was having a hard time parsing now what's you and what's this video game. But what I love immediately is, and I don't think I'm spoiling too much, but the show opens and we're at a birthday party and we're at a house, and we're at a very prototypical Hollywood house, and the cities in the background were up high. And inside, they're watching like a '50s TV, and the little boys are all obsessed with cowboys. It's all '50s. But in the deep background, we can see LA as a super futuristic city. And I loved it immediately. I loved the juxtaposition. And then the music is '50s. To me, it felt very similar to the Westworld tone. I felt that weird mix of futuristic and retro-ness, which then I assumed, Oh, this is Jona's vibe. But then I learned the game also had some retro, futuristic vibe.

Very much. It makes me so happy because we're now in a place we're just starting to show it to people, and we've been working on this for a couple of years. There were 4,000 vis effects shots in the season. We've been sitting on it for a minute trying to get it all done. So it's super exciting to be talking to you about it.

No, it's going to be a fucking blockbuster. This show is going to make Amazon.

We're super excited. So that was my experience of the game. So it was right around, I think, Fallout 3. Fallout had been a series, six or seven games.

When did it start?

In in the late '90s. From the beginning, the game could have been written by adbusters. It's so political. It has such a point of view. I started to notice in the late 2000s that games were getting a little braver than film, especially politically. And you don't expect that from games at all. So you place it on like Bioshock or you play something like Father, you're like, Oh, this is doing things that movies are scared to do. Interesting. Lisa was not a gamer, so when we were researching Westworld, we played a lot of games. Gaming mechanic is a big part of how the park works. You had to figure out how does this work. We played a bunch of games as research. She'd be like, Oh, we're doing research again.

Yeah.cellars of Catan?Oh, love it. What a game. I'll ruin the best friendships ever.

It's true. Oh, it's almost-No friendship strong enough to understand.

We just stopped playing with the kids because I'm like, it's going to fracture the family.

We're going to be careful though. We just taught ours.

But somewhere in the late 2000s, I think I was in between the Dark Knight, Dark Knight Rises. Video games for a while before I had kids, it'd be like the brain cleanse. I'm going to get the whole movie out of my head. I'm going to play Halo for four days. And someone recommended Fallout 3, which is the first one under the supervision of Todd Howard, who is the creative director, essentially the showrunner of all of these games. An incredible, lovely human being. And it was the first game that Todd had worked on, and I knew nothing about it other than it was highly recommended by people I like. I put it in and I started playing it. I'm like, What is this? What is the tone of this thing? What is happening here? It's dark, it's emotional, it's funny, it's subversive, it's political. Right out of the gate, this is all about not our America, but a version of America that's this Eisenhower era America that never has a Watergate, never has a Vietnam, never has a moment of national reflection, just swaggers on for another 100 years. That opening scene is in 2077, but it looks like the 1950s.

Nuclear power tosters. It was like the dream, the Jetsoni in America. And then it ends.

Yeah, we got to say it. It's a bummer because it's such an impactful scene, but I think it's prerequisite to then talk about all the different dynamics of the show. But at this birthday party, they're looking out over the city and just one after another atomic bomb starts falling. Yeah.

I would hasten to point out that I had a conversation with Todd Harrod in 2019. We started developing the show in 2019. My brother started developing Oppenheimer the next year. But he works quickly. And so I got to watch his movie where you have this moment. It was one of the things I was struck by, looking at all the testing footage, because we knew we had to show the world beforehand, and we knew we had to show the bombs dropping. And we looked at all the test footage. The thing I was struck by, Most of them don't have sound. And we eventually found a couple that do have sound. And the shocking thing about it is this whole thing plays out and you hear nothing.

Of course, because speed of light is 86,000 miles per second and speed of sound is 700 miles.

700 miles an hour. We timed it. We watched the two minutes to watch the world end. This is now my deepest heart is that I'm with my kids and this happens.

We wrote it in-Also, maybe a blessing because you get to turn and say, I love you so much. That's right.

Your kids would hear you as you explain to them how you felt before it's over. You'd watch the blast wave come towards you. So then Chris gets to put in his movie first. But... Yours is better.

I'm sorry.Oh, boy.I.

Said it. That moment is much more emotional. It's emotional in Oppenheimer. It's a brilliant moment in Oppenheimer, but it's emotional in ours because it's, again... Family.

But here's what you're uniquely great at. You pack in because things come really rapid in this show. So it's like we meet this guy with his daughter. We already know he's somehow been besmirched by his peers. He's got a history. We don't really know what. I love it. Again, leave a lot of questions. But when that goes off, within the first two-minute opening, I'm heartbroken this is happening to this man and his daughter. We fast forward 200 years, and now we meet a whole new group of people, and they're living subterráne. And this now becomes the metaphor between the wealth and income inequality.

We started in 2019, and then every year, the project got more relevant. Then when Russia invaded Ukraine, I was like, Okay, you can be less relevant. This is helpful to a point. Enough relevance.

But yeah, we meet these people, and they're in an idyllic situation. It's 200 years later. They're waiting up the radiation that's above ground. Then again, we meet another hero. We meet another father-daughter relationship. We establish all this stuff so quickly, and then there's upheaval there. Now we go and we go to this military base.

No one's ever happy in the projects I work. I want to do one product review.

No, no, no, no, keep going. Keep killing all the people we just met. It's working for you. I think that was Game of Thrones's big proprietary thing is like just getting you to fall in love with people and then fucking murdering them. And you watch with such ease forever because you know everyone's fair game.

Everyone is fair game. That was what was revelatory about that show.

It really was. Because you can say as a writer, the hardest thing to do really is to establish people, to get you to care about them.

Interstellar. I love the movie, but when I watch first hour, I'm struggling because it was the three-year struggle of how on earth am I packing all this in? Always feels too long. Not on Chris's finished movie. I think he did a masterful job pulling all together. But I just feel the three years of how are we going to build this world and how these relationships matter.

But what's Titanic about what you tackled is we are in three completely different shows. Our new bit is how we're going to explain this show to people. It's like Westworld and The Last Of Us, and it's all happening. You could live in any one of them as their own show. You quickly establish these different groups of people. They all need the same thing, and we're off to the races. I mean, it's an incredible... I mean, again, I'm going to get in big trouble for this. If I had to pick- You don't have to pick. I want to because I need to make it relative to something. If on my death, but they said you either have to erase your memory of seeing Oppenheimer, erase your memory of seeing the first episode of Fall Out, I'm picking Fall Out. I'm picking Fall Out. You don't have to comment? And I read American Prometheus, I'm obsessed.

I'm going to sit here as quiet as I can.

Yeah, you're not allowed to see a thing. It could be a headline.

No, I forget that. I'm the younger brother.

Exactly. Come on. Yeah, you're allowed to enjoy that. I crushed it. I'm so excited to see. I actively didn't see it. I was saying to Donna before, I was like, I'm waiting till this is over.

But you can tell him I was raving to you yesterday, right? So on fire for it. Yeah.

And last time I was like, Oh, I want to watch that, but I shouldn't. I have seen Oppenheimer at this point four or five times because I watched it on the plane. I'd already seen it. Then I watched it on the plane a couple of times. It's such a good movie. It's a masterpiece. And I was I don't think I'm going to like it in this Barbenheimer world. It was position. Oh, my gosh, just this feminist movie, and then there's this movie about men making bombs. I'm probably not going to like that. And then I love it.

It's so good. You have now watched Oppenheimer as many times as I have watched Barbie. This is a really funny reversal. I'm on viewing four of Barbie. I cannot get enough of that movie.

As the Barbenheimer thing was happening last summer, I was excited because I knew that it would help. That movie was a big risk for Chris. It's physicists talking about physics, but it's made like an action movie, and he puts it out in the My sole contribution to that movie was just encouraging Chris to the degree he needed encouragement. Looking at that, looking at other projects, I was like, that, that, that.

Had you read American Promethe?

No, but I was obsessed with Oppenheimer and the mythos of it and Los Alamos in that Promethean moment and referenced it in other projects. How many two or three-year periods in groups of people can you point to and say they changed the whole world?

And with a gun to their head, it's very uniquely biblical. That's where we're at with AI. I mean, we're also at that juncture. We don't have the option to sit this out.

There's a lot to the analogy there in terms of the thoughtfulness with which we've approached nuclear fission and the recklessness with which we've approached AI, frankly. But you have to redefine what big commercial movie means. Often I made a billion dollars. What can a big commercial movie do? But it was more in that, it was like a smaller mode of storytelling, and I just wanted them to see it make it because I didn't imagine Chris would ever make a biopic, but he'd written a script about Howard Hughes 20 years ago.

Yes, that he was going to make and then Aviator.

I think he said publicly that he just took too long to write. That script is one of the best scripts I've ever read.

We're due. There's been time.

Well, some of the storytelling, Breau went into Oppenheimer. Frankly, Howard Hughes is a fascinating subject, but Oppenheimer's life was more consequential and just as fascinating as Hughes, and I think more of an impact on history.

Although here's a deep irony. I was obsessed with Howard Hughes in college. I wrote a paper on him. What he was accused of is he had tried to sell a certain airplane to the Air Force that they rejected. Rumor has it, the Mitsubishi's that bombed Pearl Harbor were his design that he sold it to the Japanese. So, weirdly, the bombing It's connected. As a result as his history. It's all traceable.

I never thought Chris would make a movie about a person because real people's lives don't tend to be dramatic. They don't tend to have that satisfying, or it's hard to find someone who's life is worthy of that treatment, or we'll be entertaining that way. Some are blockbuster. I thought with Oppenheimer, Chris plus that subject.

No, Chris is occupying a space that nobody occupies, which is he doesn't do existing IP, and yet he has blockbusters.

We did it with Batman a little bit. That was as close as we got to it.

Post-batman, man to do Inception, that's a huge blockbuster. That shouldn't work. Interstellar should not work.

We tended to do for a while, 50/50, for my career. Adaptation can be fun, but making original things is really fun, too. The ability to bounce back and forth, it's a different writing.

He's just one of the few people that a studio is going to give a couple of hundred million dollars to do that doesn't have an existing IP. We all need to treasure the fact that your brother is on planet Earth because without him, yeah, I don't know who they trust that to.

It's one of the reasons I was drawn to television is that when I started in television, there was very IP. I'm very proud of what we made with Fallout. I love the games. It's exciting. But one of the things I loved about TV from the beginning was all the broadcast was very seldom based on anything. It was you had a pitch. Person of interest was a pitch. It was about AI, and it was about a vigilante. I was not quite done with the Dark Knight stuff. We found a venue to do that. I miss those days.

So this show is tackling. There's some metaphors there, obviously, the one I just mentioned, which is there's these underground dwellers, and people pretty much hate them, the vault people. Yes. Because they're up at E. They're me. They're in a gated community.

By the time we were done in the pandemic, and Geneva and Graham are showrunners, amazing, thoughtful, brilliant. He is from the comedy world. He cut his teeth in American television on The Office, worked on Silicon Valley, Portlandia. She wrote Marvel movies. The combination of the two of them, incredible. They were able to capture this gonzo tone of, and one of the things we liked from the beginning, it's hilarious to watch people now arguing online about. They made it woke. Then someone who actually knows the game is like, Are you a fucking idiot? From the beginning, it was woke. What are you talking about? The politics were seated into this thing from the beginning. But in a way that I love, it's less about being didactic about the things that I believe. This is a circular firing squad. Everyone comes in for a beating on this one, whether it's the blue state in essential folks who sat home and had other people deliver their food, us, or whether it's the red state folks.

Everyone-who are hearkening back to a nighthood and a brotherhood and some of these relic concepts that no one really knows how they worked.

This is what I loved about the project is that playing a game the first time, you're there, I'm post-apocalyptic. I love the George Miller Mad Max. I think they're brilliant. Not a world I want to live in. You can live in those movies. This is the difference between a movie and a TV show. A movie is like a one-night stand, right? You can do anything for two hours. Tv shows are like an extended family. I'd have these conversations with the DPRs. I've been lucky to work with some incredibly talented people, often come in and we try out a look and they'd go for a skip bleach look. It's beautiful. But the reason why Westworld wasn't skip bleach, it was saturated beautiful color. This is me and Paul Cameron going back and forth about how this thing should look is because you want to live in it.

You're going to spend a lot of time there. I wanted desperately to go to Westworld. Yeah, me too.

A little bit of a love affair with film because we shot Fall Out on Film, Westworld on Film.

I didn't know that.

Yeah. We have actors that sometimes would come on set, and after a take, be like, What's wrong with the camera? It's a real camera. It's making a funny noise.It's mechanical.Slap the mag. It's mechanical. Slap the mag, it's a real camera.

Yeah, this thing. When they hit both sides of the mag to get it to shut up.

All the time. It's a bit of a secret weapon for us. Chris is out there talking about it all the time. When we shot the pilot for Westworld, that was the year when the factory in New York was going to close. Chris and Spielberg and E. J. And Tarantino had to get all the studios to commit to buy the film because it was going to be done. We were the only pilot that year that shot on film.

You're still shooting on film?

Still shooting on film.

Does that complicate your digital stuff? No.

Everyone loves our set. Like Chris, everyone leaves their cell phone in the trailer. For me, it's a safety thing. I'm obsessed with the safety of the crew.

This is where we differ. So we found it, one thing. My motto is safety third. Oh, my God. If I can do the stuns, you can do the stuns.

Well, we want to do wild shit. The scene in Philly in episode two, I don't know if you got there yet, where the power armour- He's in the suit. Flies down. I remember saying the line producer, he laughed, and I was like, No, I'm dead serious. We got a guy with a jet pack to come out and do the stunt because I'm like, Well, the CG, the suit, it's hard metal, shiny surface. That's easy. But the particulate dust blowing off the ground. The physics. That's super hard. The contact points, where it touches the ground, where it interacts with it's hard.

When shit's got to move in the laws of physics, we actually intuitively know.

That's where it breaks down. Exactly. I'd seen this guy demonstrate this jet pack, new design, very Ironman. On the arm instead of the back. Yeah. A few tense conversations with a line producer, figured out how to get him there, and we dangled him from a crane, so there's no way he could fall on our side. He's like, I'm on a jet pack. I'm like, Yeah, just bear with me.

You're in a prototype jet pack.

Good point. They were in a D-flat.

Hummer didn't make this thing.

Yeah, exactly. Something I learned with Chris coming up was if you can do it for real with a video game adaptation. I was saying it taught him, like most adaptations, you're adding things. With a video game, you're removing things. We're removing freedom, interactivity, moral choices, all these things that games can do that are incredible. What I felt like we could add is reality. Yeah. So from the beginning, we said, We're going to do the stunts for real. We're going to go down to Namibia. I'd seen this incredible location when we were doing Westworld, this mining town on the skeleton Coast of Namibia. And we'd set the pictures aside because Mason reconstruction, which didn't fit in the West. There's no brick construction in the West until the 20th century. So I just filed it away. And I had this lunch with Todd, and we decided we were going to make this show. And on the drive home, I was like, Well, I got nothing, but I got one location. So we dragged the crew down to Lutteritz. And so you always feel like a bit of a chump when you've asked people to fly 30 hours.

You fly to Johannesburg and then back to Lutteritz. And then we went down to this abandoned diamond factory. It was one of those places where they don't want you to film there. We had to consent to a body cavity search on behalf of the entire crew because there are still loose diamonds on the sand.

Oh, wow. Talk about getting the intimacy coach involved.

Yeah, 100%. There's this weird shed that you had to walk in and out of.

Carol, are you ready? They need to check your rectum here after this shot.

As these things do, it made its way to crew that there were loose diamonds on the set. So I would call action and turn around and you just see everyone else in the crew is bent over looking at rocks. Don't do it, guys. Don't do it. Trust me. You don't want to walk back through that shed on the way out. But we had this moment the second day we were shooting down there. You feel like a bit of an asshole dragging everyone out there. And then you get there, as with Castle Valley in Utah for Westworld, gets the Skeleton Coast and the actor show. And these are great actors. There's Walton and Ella and Aaron, and you can put them in front of a green screen and they do just great. But if you can bring them somewhere spectacular, you're making their lives easier. The awe is real. We do this slightly asshole thing of leaving them in the trailer, and they haven't seen it yet, and we'd roll the camera and bring them out. The look in her face when she gets the outside world, in Ella's face, pretty real.

It's very real. I said out loud, Oh, she's enjoying being outside. You can feel that. Yeah, you're remembering she He's not been outside. We've brought them to set with the bags over their heads.

Not quite that level of sadism. But we went and scattered for the first time. I'm looking at it, I'm like, It's the Santa Monica Harbor. It's exactly the same. That drone shot of the outside of the vault is 90% real. The only thing we've added is the ferris wheel for the Monica pier and the mountains in the background. We were shooting there for the second day, and someone wandered over to me. An experience I'd never had. They wandered over and said, no one's ever shot here.

Oh, wow. Ever.

Yeah, that's rare. We shoot in New York. I literally one day accidentally ate in the Gossip Girl commissary. Walked the wrong direction, coming out of the company I set to be in a place where no one had ever shot, and they resumed diamond mining operations the day after we left. No one will ever shoot there again. Yeah.

That's cool. It's so lucky. That was fun. That was fun. Well, Jona, this has been a goddamn blast. Yeah. Thanks for joining us. I could not be more excited for you about this show. It's just going to be so massive. It's so fucking good. Cannot wait for today to be over so I can watch episode three. Go home. Go away. I think they only sent four. We could fix it. Well, this has been a blast. I hope you had a good time.

I had a fantastic time. Thank you guys so much.

Fallout is on Prime Video, April 11th, and all eight come out at once.

First time we're binging. I'm a little scared.

No, it's so the way to do it. I would have shot myself if I had seen that first episode and didn't think I could watch another one the following night. There was a hell to pay in our house. All right, well, thanks for coming. This was a blast, and good luck with everything.

Thank you so much.

Stay tuned for the fact check so you can hear all the facts that were wrong.

Welcome home. Thank you. You were on vacation. I was. How was it?

It was great. We went to Nashville for three days and looked at the progress on the house, which was- Exciting. Outrageously exciting.

Oh, so fun.

Had dinner at my favorite, Sperry's, on Friday night, home of my favorite salad bar. Salad bar. It's that blue cheese dressing with the red oil all over. I don't know what's going on with it. But is it so good? In fact, I bumped into a guy at the Salad Bar who lives in Nashville, and he said, Oh, my God, I can't believe you're here. I've heard you talk about Sperry's on the podcast. And I said, Oh, is this your favorite? And he goes, No, this is my first time. And I Where are you visiting from? And he said, No, I live here. And then I told him, Let me give you the shortcut. That's the dressing. Ignore all those other dressings. He never did report back whether or not he enjoyed it as much as... But I basically forced him to use that. Which is risky. But I swear by it.

Not everyone's a blue cheese person. In fact, I'd say it's fairly polarizing.

Well, I think if you hate blue cheese, you'd be like, Well, I hate blue cheese. There's two different blue cheeses there. If you're open to blue cheese, then you must with this red, oily one.

I think if he is there because you recommended to come and then you're there and you're saying you have to eat this, he's going to, even if he hates blue cheese. Yeah, I'm surprised he didn't think me. That's on him. I mean, that's on him if he doesn't listen to his heart.

I like to think more that he was like, Oh, man, this is the greatest blue cheese. And I probably wouldn't have picked it unless he was standing there. I'm so grateful. I'd way rather that be the outcome.

Well, sure. We want what we want.

That's what I hope happened. And then had a cookout at Huey and Hayes' house Saturday night. Huey and I teamed up on that grill. I did the ribis. He did the filets. Really good. Their whole family came over. And then Sunday morning, we went over to Huey and Hayes. Well, Hayes, Mother Rhonda and Doug. And again, we did this two years ago, as you may remember.

Oh, yeah. Egg hunt.

Egg hunt. Beautiful spread. Plates made with people's names on them. It's the nicest Southern Easter you can imagine.

Southern Christian gals.

Yeah. And once again, Huey, thank the Lord for bringing these wayward heathens into their fold so they can educate us. That was, again, he had another spin on it, but it was great. And how do I say this without hurting my family's feelings? Family is so fun when you're not triggered. Sure. Does that make sense? Yeah, of course. Chris and I were enjoying ourselves so much at this family Easter, and it was so much fun and gaiety and inside jokes and laughing and just having a blast. I'm like, Yeah, these family holidays are so lovely. But I know I would be rubbed the wrong way by this. I'd be nervous about that interaction. Of course. So maybe every once you just hop scotch, you should rotate through other families on the big day.

I mean, that's what a lot of kids do. That's why they go to sleepovers. Right.

And they love the family dinner at their sleepover. And then their own family dinner, they're like, Oh, dad, stop.

Well, that's good. Did Kristin get the golden egg again?

She did not. Did you? I did not. I barely collect them. I myself came away with $11, though, which I was delighted about.

Yeah, that's great. What is the Scrooge equivalent to Easter? Devil because it's a Jesus holiday?

It's the ultimate. Right. I I don't know what a bahumbug Easter person is. Yeah. I don't know. I'm that. You're that. You've never had a good time at an Easter party.

I wore this outfit yesterday. All black. I'm wearing all black.

Okay. You're mad at Easter.

I'm not mad at it at all. I love anything that people are happy in. But you know how I get around holidays? I love holidays. I love events. I love- Halloween, Christmas. Halloween, Thanksgiving, I love. Of. Pig Day, Christmas. What's Pig Day? Pig Day is the Friday after Thanksgiving where Jess and I get my tree.

Oh, that's your own holiday. Yeah, I made it.

All of it. But sorry, guys, I don't get Easter. It's Because I didn't grow up with it. My parents didn't do it. They didn't know about it, I guess, early. And then they kept up that. There was no Easter baskets.

You never went to an egg hunt or anything?

No. I mean, at my daycare, there was eggs.

Little light egg hunting?

Yeah, but it never- Your parents never got you an Easter basket or your grandparents?

No. We got one. My mother got us an Easter basket. It was very fun. It was only the second time in the year. You got candy at Halloween, like candy bar chocolate. You got it at Halloween, and then Sayonara Suck Ass all the way till April.

What about Valentine's Day? She didn't get you- Oh, she did.

You're right. See? Good, good, good. You've definitely I only poked a hole in it. And what am I talking about? It's not like we never had chocolate, but let's just say this is a chocolate holiday. It's like Halloween. Interesting. Very fun, very colorful. Coloring eggs is really fun. My mom was just here right before we left for Nashville, and she colored eggs with the girls, brought a little machine. You can do like a lathe.

What's that mean?

A lathe is what you put a chunk of wood on it, it spins, and then you carve it into a leg of a table. You put the egg on a spinner, and then you take a marker and make very specific-Oh, that's cool. I think they're on the island inside. You should take a look. They're very beautiful. It's a whole contraption. That was fun for them. I like contraptions. Listen, Easter egg hunts. It's second to trick or treating in that. It's an activity where you're on the, you're on the prowl, you're looking everywhere. It's active. Kids are running around. I got to solve our life.

Yeah. Maybe the competition, actually, now that you're saying that. You could find your way in. No. Well, actually, you're right. That seems more like my personality. But I bet as a kid, that stressed me out. One time, I went to a girls' birthday party. It was a sleepover, fifth grade, I think. So the girls were at that like- Starting to get catty? Yeah. And the mom had set up a little store in the basement, which was really my dream. She set up a little mall. And then we got to take a couple of things.

Oh, my God.

And so I took this necklace, and then the necklace became a devil necklace.

Everyone wanted it?

Yes. And then I was bad because I got it. Okay.

This is a theme. This is like the White Elephant party.

I know.

This resurfaces.

The white elephant, though, is different. At that age, I didn't have a leg up.

No, but it is a pattern of, I'm I'm going to get myself excluded by picking a thing that I should pick.

I know. I just picked it because I liked it. Turned out everyone liked it.

Now, do you believe we manifest patterns to confirm our narrative?

In some ways, yes, but I don't think in this case. Yeah, I think emotionally we do.

Well, this could be the inciting incident. This could be the genesis of the whole story. Narratives, you just get stuck in something that happens. You I'm not suggesting that's what's going. Well, I am suggesting it, but it's a 1%.

It could be. I don't think in general, though. Well, okay, so with the necklace, it blew up. I was in a group of four or five girls. They turned on me, and they were really mean. Then I couldn't sit with them at lunch.

They carried on way past the sleepover.

Yes. And they would look at me and talk to each other, stare at me so that I would know they were talking about. Really No. She- Mean girls stuff. Mean girls shit. I was so distraught because the new thing was that the birthday girl wanted it, but she didn't. But then she did, I guess, once they decided that that's what had happened. So then I tried to give it to her. Okay. She refused it? It didn't work. I don't know. It didn't work. They were still all mad. I wrote individual letters to all these bitches.

Oh, no, Monies.

Really had to get them back.

To apologize.

Oh, yeah. I'm so bad, and I can't believe I did that.

No wonder you have a fucking chip on your shoulder, just like me.

Yeah, and it worked. They eventually let me back in.

Is that Calleigh was the birthday girl?

No, no, no, no, no, I got over that, I guess, and I took the money at White Elephant and look it.

Look at me now. A beautiful black outfit on. But Easter, you hate it?

I don't want to say that. I don't want to say hate it. I'm just the scrooge of it. I'm the Easter Devil.

Right. Easter Devil. Well, maybe we should pick something that eats rabbits, like Easter Fox. That's not as blatant- I like that because foxes are sexy. Well, and they're witty and clever. They're known for their cleverness.

I was I was supposed to go to an Easter thing yesterday, and I was feeling antisocial, so I didn't go.

Oh, no. Who had an Easter thing?

The Hansons.

Okay.

And you skipped it. And he was making yummy food. In theory, it would have been so fun. It was sunny out. It was nice. Oh, my God. Kind of.

Didn't it rain yesterday?

Yeah, I just remember that.

When I landed, the ground was pretty wet. It was cloudy.

But I just couldn't do it. I talked about this in therapy. I'm keeping an eye out. I'm wondering if I'm a tiny bit depressed.

Oh, my God.

So I'm just keeping an eye out. Right now, I'm about to start my period now. Oh, Jesus Christ.

This thing's going to blow. Listen, you're wearing all black. You didn't go to the Easter party.

I'm feeling a little reclusive.

Yeah, sweetie, you're a little depressed, I think.

Well, wait, I should never have told you. Why? Because now you're going to think Everything is that.

No, just you're wearing black eye shadow and you're in a full black outfit and you go to the Easter party, I said, and say, I'm not wearing black eye shadow.

I'm wearing mascara regular. Okay.

What's your goth era?

What if I'm becoming goth?

It looks like you're into Screamo a little bit right now.

I also look like a row model. This is what they look like.

Yes, hair on cheek, depressed. I think there is a type of guy who wants a sexy girl who's always crying.

Are you sure they do? Yeah, I think that...

Well, look, I don't know the percentage, but men want to fix a broken bird just like women want to fix a broken bird. I mean, I think it's natural. I think especially if you get a mom who needed a lot of caretaking and stuff. Yeah, I've had lots of friends. They are deeply attracted to people who clearly are very sad and depressed a lot.

No, everything's great. I have depression, so I take an antidepressant. I know who I am when I'm depressed, and I can just feel small pieces of it, mainly the feeling reclusive and not the makeup. That's a fun hobby. Oh, good.

Do I find because, again, I don't have depression. I have had it, but I don't have it. But I get sad.

Yeah, that's different.

I get moody, and I have spells where I'm really pessimistic and I have a lot of anxiety. But A, there's generally things, real material things, surrounding those. The not being able to enjoy anything. That, to me, is what depression is. For me, that's when I've been like, This is really weird. I'm watching my children play. That's the example I always give. I'm watching them play very kindly to one another. That generally makes me so happy, and I don't care. That's so scary to me. So how do you delineate between when I'm in a bad mood or I have anxiety about this thing versus Because I am in a depressive phase right now.

Yeah. For me, everything's a bit dulled.

Are you a little disassociated? Because that was the thing my mom's last spell where I observed it, it was very clear to me, and she didn't tell me. She feels like she's at places with people, but she's in a bubble. They're all participating, and she's watching it, but it's having none of the mirror neuronic effects for her.

Sure. I think that's very common. Yeah, I can relate to that a little bit as probably being part of mine. Also, mine manifestsates a lot, and I just stop caring at all about anything. Something good is happening, and I understand it's good. Right. But you don't care. But I don't feel it.

Yeah.

And there's been some overwhelming... My therapist was saying, you've also been really... Maybe you're just recharging.

I think... Okay, so I am sick.

Oh, no.

Delta got me. We snuggle like crazy snuggle bugs, which is totally worth it. It did occur to me this last week. So this last week, I, too, have been just a little under the weather, a little sad, a little anxiety ridden. And I did have to acknowledge, you and I were on this incredible tornado of stimuli. We were, yeah. Like fucking India straight into Austin. So fun. Yes. Part of me was like, you were up for two two weeks. Totally. And the body is searching for homeostasis, so it's dropped you a bit, and you're just going to have to weather this, and then it'll level off. So part of me thinks that's what's going on with me.

Yeah, that probably is right. And there's stressors. There's real stressors right now. So, yeah, I think- So I fucking skipped Easter, okay?

Sue me. Yeah, so sue me. So sue me.

I also... I don't think I want to say. Okay. I don't want to say because everyone jumps on this when I say, and I don't like it. Okay. I do feel like I'm self-medicating a little bit.

With booze? Yes.

So Yeah. So it's probably time for me to... I am going to New York. I planned that trip, and I feel like when I get back from that, I need a break.

Okay. So similarly, I've been Having way more caffeine than I should. Which, of course, then fucks up my sleep even worse. So then it becomes the same, probably cycle urine just on the opposite.

Exactly.

Then I'm tired, so then I drink more caffeine. I drink it later, and then I wake up twelve times in the night, and then the next day, yes. So I, weirdly, flying home yesterday, I was like, Okay, you're going to have one Diet Coke on that airplane, and then we're done for the day.

Did you do it?

Yeah, I succeeded that. But then today, I went, I've already gone nuts.

It's hard. God.

What if this whole thing was an April Fool's joke? Oh, that'd be great. What if we were like, just kidding. We're so happy. We're so happy. Anyway, so Manny was at the Easter party. She found the golden egg.

No one got mad. No. Yeah, it's fine. It's life. There's ups and downs. Yeah. That's the way it is. Nothing bad is happening.

We had some What is happening? When you get some highs, you get some lows.

Anywho. So I, this weekend, went to Anthony and Allison's. Well, and then this is why I don't think I'm that depressed, because I did not really want to go because I was feeling reclusive. .

Grouchy?

I wasn't grouchy.

I was just like... Lethargic?

What it is, is it takes so much mental energy for me to do a thing that normally I to do. Right. Yeah, Anthony, Allison, Rachel, our friend, Brooks. It was so fun. We were laughing so hard. We played this new game Well, I don't think it's new, but it's called MTV something. Okay. You have cards with artists on them, song artists, musical artists. Musicians. Yeah, musicians. You have And you have to put them in categories and get your team to guess. Kind of like Humdinger on the Ellen game, on that game. But one of them is like one word. One is you say the lyrics, and then the other is humming. Anyway, it was so funny. I did an actual spit take. You did? But it wasn't really a spit take. It was more like I had to just spit the water on the floor. Okay. Because it was- It was going to be a big spray. Yes. It was happening, but I just opened my mouth and the water flound.

It was more of a spit drool or a drool take. What was the joke? It was- Someone's performance? Yes.

But it was so... What a weird sensation to know you can't swallow the water.

Have you ever peed your pants laughing? No. I know. I'm going to envy that.

Yeah, I bet it's a similar thing where you're shocked it's happening.

My mom will pee her pants once, twice a year laughing.

And how much pee?

Oh, boy, I didn't ask. Yeah, I don't know if it's some spotting or if it's a full- Is it just like incontinence, like a little comes out? Or a full urination, like a pint glass.

I bet it's more like a full because you have no control. So it's just clotting.

Look, and I've pooped my pants a hundred times at this point in my life, and for whatever reason that feels so familiar to me, the notion of peeing a pint glass in my pants seems crazy. I think I'd rather poop my pants. How about you, Rob? I don't pee. What would you rather do?

Is he in public?

He's mowing the grass. I think I'd rather pee still. Okay.

Yeah. It's less toxins. Actually, probably not. But everyone knows it's less gross. It's less of a cleanup. But not really. You can wash your pants. You can change your pants either way. It's so visible. You don't have to throw out the underwear.

Right. It's so visible, though. That's what The whole front is just- I'll be like, I might pick- Poody. Although you got smell to contend with.

Smell, yeah. Absolutely not.

Full pint is a lot, though. It's a lot, yeah.

But I don't pee a full pint.

Oh, my God. I hate to put her on blast. But I sat next to Lincoln on the airplane. Something the moon, Aries is in, Pisces, something. They started going to Disneyland on her birthday on Wednesday. She has been spilling water several times a day on herself, and not intentionally. She's just become butterfingers.

But she is Pisces, and that is a water sign. I don't know. I was just teasing. Mercury is about to be in retrograde. Oh my gosh. Or is, I forget. Okay.

Wow. She spilled on the plane ride yesterday. She spilled the Diet Coke all over me, the brand new one, ice everything. I'm wearing Searsucker pants and a white shirt. Oh my God. I'm just covered in brown Diet Coke. She then spilled three waters on herself. What? She also She went to the bathroom nine times. I think she's doing coke.

No, no. You know what it is?

Hormones. I was like, What is going on? I had to get up so many times, let her out to the bathroom, plus all the spilling. Oh, my God. It was a wild ride home.

It was wild. It is that because clumsiness can happen before periods. Oh, boy. Maybe she's about to start a period.

Don't.

You hate that?

I feel like it's early.

I started- I'm not weirded out by her having her period, obviously.

But from what I can hear from every woman I know, they don't enjoy their periods. Oh, it's not fun, no. I would, of course, wish for it to happen as late as possible.

But you also don't want to be... I mean, you can be whatever you want. Well, you can't, actually. You can't pick this. But whenever it happens is great. I do think people who start so late, they have a ton of anxiety. They get self-conscious.

Yes. So then the middle for her.

You want 12 or 13?

Yeah, eighth grade, maybe. Yeah, 13, 14. Okay. Obviously, when you go into high school, I feel like that would be the bigger deal, socially. She'll be going to an all-girls school.

Even more.

You think?

Yeah. Okay. Because then it's like, all you have are the girls in their periods, and you have to be like- And everyone's talking about it. And you bring your tampon even though you don't need it.

You have people have their tampons on their desk. They're changing tampons in the classroom. All girls. Yeah.

At all girls school, they do that.

This is the freedom of it.

I I would say I think something's brewing. That's fun. She did give me a tiny bit of attitude in there. I actually thought it. You clocked it. I was like, Lincoln has a little bit of an attitude today, but I met her with a little bit of a two back, so it was fine.

Okay, great. She and I are in an interesting phase. It's really challenging. Because we're so similar.

And maybe this, though. She's probably Yeah.

Getting angsty. Yeah. It's so heartbreaking. It really bums me out. Lincoln, it's just so easy for so long, your best friends, and then... And I get it. I was so unforgiving of my dad because we were so similar. And when you put two people whose reaction to being overwhelmed by emotions is the same, like a retreat, I just want to get out of here. It's just a bad combo. And I'm like, how do I not be my dad in this situation? But I actually get hurt.

I know, it It hurts your feelings.

Which is new.

I know.

I didn't have that when they were little, but I'm starting to have it where I'm hurt.

I know. I understand. I really, really do understand And you got to be an adult. I think you are going to have to adjust your expectation on it.

I know. I know. I know. By day three of this, I'm starting to really consider, Fuck, man, she's going to write me off just I wrote my dad off. We're going to have this unavoidable thing my dad and I had, and I guess I'm getting really depressed about that. And then after three days of thinking that way, to your point, I was like, You're going to have to grow. One of you is going to have to do something miraculous in this situation in your 49, so it's going to be you. And in a weird way, that's one- And she's not doing anything- No.

That everyone else isn't doing. She's doing exactly whatever when her age is doing.

I'm not at all angry at her. No, I'm saying for- I'm just hurt by the dynamic.

I think I'm just trying to ease your... It's not like- I shouldn't take it personal. Exactly. It's not that she's going to write you off at all. She's just being a normal pre-team.

Yes. And it just so happens that she and Kristin have a very good symbiotic geometry to their personality types that really- Works. Kristin is the perfect fit for that. As Kristin Austin is so good with me when I'm starting to retreat because my reaction is when I get overwhelmed, I just will disappear. I'll be like, you know what? I'll be happier sitting by myself in a room. Sound canceling headphones. Yeah. So two people that that's their nature. It's tricky.

It is. But also, can you try to reframe it in that, sometimes you have to wear a sound canceling headphones and two days later, you're fine? Yes. Maybe just let her do that because She'll come out of it the way you do. Yeah.

So I'm going to have to, I guess, maybe you get to an age where, and I don't think this, I don't think I'm perfect. I think I have a lot of stuff to work on. Everyone does. But at the same time, you do get to 49. I'm like, I've figured out most of my big demons. I know how to be at peace with most people pretty easily now, and I'm not having to call and apologize when I leave parties the next day. You know, whatever. I had not anticipated we still another big... We're going to have to change yet again pretty profoundly. And I'm going to have to do that, and I have to learn how to do that. And it's interesting. But you will. And I will do it for her, just like you would do it for anyone you love.

Yeah, you will. So it's probably a good thing.

Yeah. I also think it's made me go back and play out some of these things I had with my dad over the years, big blowouts we had, because he and I had periods where we didn't talk for a a year when I was an adult. And even like, I lived with him in ninth and 10th grade, and then we got in this huge fight midway through 10th grade. And then I moved out, and I didn't talk to him for maybe a year in 10th grade. But going back in my mind, I'm starting to imagine... Well, A, I'm starting to realize I was way more difficult than I think I acknowledged, and that he was way more patient for some duration. I think he was patient patient with me. And then he just reached a point like I do, where I get so hurt that I go, well, then fuck you and fuck everyone. You're hurting me too much, so now I'm going to go protect myself. Interesting. And it's interesting. I'm now replaying a lot of these memories I have that were so cut and dry, clear for me that he was an asshole and I was in the right.

And now I think, no, he and I are both very sensitive. Yeah. And the way we would feel hurt was very similar. And in so many ways- But you do wish, I mean, maybe you don't, but I do when I hear this story, it's sad that his feelings were hurt and that he is hypersensitive, but I wish he could have been a dad then.

Being a dad is not just being fun. It's, well, I don't care if you're mad. I'm your dad. I'm not like, that's it.

I'm not going to speak for her, but for me, I think the reality, this is terrible, the reality of how hard it is for me to not get my way or do things the way I think they're supposed to be done is so embarrassing.

You mean you think it's embarrassing to her?

For me, I'm just saying when I go through my life, she's just showing me a lot about myself.

Oh, okay.

And it's really important to me that people think my ideas are good. And then I'm an adult and I'm grown up. And then I'm thinking back on all the times. And I think like, yeah, I think when I didn't get my way or things didn't, I think I was like- Tough.

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think I still am. Yeah.

We all have our things.

I know. You just think you do the four-step in the program. You think you get a handle on all your character defects. Here they are. I always got to work on these. And then, no. As life goes on, you're like, no, I have more. Yeah.

I mean, it's good to be aware of it and not give up on. I'm old, so who cares? Right. Also, I got in horrific fights with my mom, and I have no We were just talking about one on synced that I just barely remembered. You don't remember.

Yeah.

Unless, I mean, I think the parent is the defining factor in whether or not that's It's lasting.

Yes, I agree. As we just said, I'm going to have to figure this out. I can't do what my dad didn't allow years to go by sometimes without talking to Lincoln. That would be...

But also it's so weird to be a grown up and know that grownups are just actually just kids. It's so scary. I know. But all to say, I think you guys are going to be just fine.

We had a beautiful heart-to-heart in the middle of the trip.

Also, yeah, You guys are such good communicators. I don't think anyone is going to have big problems. What does Krista do?

She's got a lot on her plate.

Well, I know. That's what I'm saying. How does she handle it?

Oh, my God. I feel so bad for her. She's got these two people that they've hurt each other's feelings, and they both are the type to then just retreat for good. We're both so defensive and sensitive that she's got to gently tell Lincoln how to do better, and she's got gently tell me how to do better.

And not make everyone defense. She's pretty masterful in that. God bless her.

Yeah. So, yeah, she comes in at some point. She's like, I talked to Lincoln, this and this, and I think perhaps she should... She just gently lays out, and then I get defensive, and then she leaves. And then about a half hour later, I hear what she said.

Yeah.

And then I acknowledge that, yeah, that's true. Yeah. And then I've got to... But it's back to that Super Communicator's book, Duhigg. I'm in a zone of my brain that has nothing to do with logic. I'm not getting an emotionally hurt. I know.

It's hard. I struggle with how to think about this because I think you want your kids to understand that their words, actions have repercussions. You want them to know that when they are saying something, doing something horrible to you, that it hurts. So they shouldn't do that. But also I'm a very strong believer in kids should never, ever, ever have to regulate their parents' emotions. Agreed. So it's strange. I don't even know how... I don't know.

Well, I think it is the tight rope that all these things are, which is they're not black or white. It's not that the parent has to be stoic and not human. I don't know that that's either great. I know. And you're right. She Children shouldn't be regulating adults. So there's some zone in there that you're aiming for, and you fuck up. You go on one side of the line, and then...

Yeah, it's hard.

It is.

Okay, couple of facts for Jona.

Jona Nolen, my favorite show. So fun. Favorite show, truly. I only got four, and I'm dying to get the other four. He told me he was going to get me the other four, and then he went to India. He got busy.

I liked him so much. Me, too. So funny how different. Well, we don't know Chris, so maybe they aren't different, but their personas are so different.

Yes, their exteriors.

Okay, let's see. So the Mitsubishi that bombed Pearl Harbor, the Zero fighter. As you said, there's a rumor that it's Howard Hughes's design. There's a lot saying that's not true. Oh, really? Yeah. Okay. But it is a rumor.

Okay. I read it in a Howard Hughes book.

I'm seeing a lot that says that's not true. That's bullshit. And that there's also an English plane that also says was the zero. Oh, okay. There's a few that take credit for it. Okay. Anywho. Okay, we were talking about when you had short term amnesia, and you said you think short term is in a different area than long term. I think the short term is in the hippocampus, I'm pretty sure. Okay. And then, wait, now this says short term working memory relies mostly on the prefrontal cortex.

Which to me would make sense because my theory was just like the brain swells, that's part of the concussion, and now it's pushing up against your cranium. Yeah. And so my thought is just like, whatever's on the exterior, the posterior most part of your brain is getting pushed and manipulated. So maybe as opposed to if your short term is in the middle of your brain.

Right. Now this is the emotional aspects of memories are stored separately in the amygdala. That's the problem.

Memories are like, they're drawing from a bunch of different locations, I think. I should know this inside now because that book I'm reading.

Oh, yeah. They're talking about it.

It's just so fascinating why and how we're intelligent.

I know. I do want to read it. That wasn't great, factually. But the prefrontal cortex is at the front, so I guess that would make sense.

And I hit the front of my face. Oh, right. Is where the concussion stemmed from. Yeah.

It's just so weird that it was long enough-A few years. Yeah.

I know. It's really weird. And yet I knew some things that might go to the point of the memories are emotional. So the weird part of that story to me, the most inexplicable part, is that I didn't know I had graduated of UCLA, got into the Sunday Company or was unpunked. But I knew that I was supposed to be sober. Oh, really? Yeah. I had at that point had quit drinking for a year, but I was doing drugs, but I knew I shouldn't drink. So I had this big thing I shouldn't drink. And I kept trying to get Bre's attention separately from my mom who was driving. And I'm like, did I drink? I'm trying to find out if I drink, and that's why my brain's fucked up. Isn't that weird? I knew I wasn't supposed to drink, and my assumption was this was drinking related, yet I hadn't tried to quit drinking back.

Two years before or whatever.

Although I guess I started really trying to quit drinking my senior year of college in 2000. I didn't drink my last semester, and then I drank just when I went to Italy with Aaron and those guys.

Well, also maybe just because drinking had been in your life.

So you knew- I already knew it was no good for me.

You knew you were drinking excessively.

Yeah, and I got hurt a lot when I But I knew I wasn't... I knew I had quit.

It was so weird. But one time, are you sure you knew you had quit? Because Jess tells a story of you guys early days where you told him, Well, no, I'm going to have to quit this at some point. You had already known for a long time, but way before you decided to get sober, that sobriety was going to be in your future.

For sure. But what I'm saying is I knew in that amnesia that I was sober, not that I was going to get sober. When I was asking, I was like, Did I drink again? Did I break my sobriety? It's weird. It's very weird.

Okay. One thing I thought was fun is that Christopher Nolan has said, The Line in the Dark Night, you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain. He says he's plagued by that because he didn't write it because Jona wrote it.

Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's cute that he gives him credit for that. Yeah. I guess he gets enough credit, doesn't he?

I mean, he should get credit if he wrote the big line from the movie.

Oh, yeah, I'm just saying. I was saying it was very generous to Say that. Go out in public and just clear that up. Yeah, for sure. But then I was remembering that Christopher Nolling gets quite a bit of praise.

He does. Yeah.

His cup's probably full.

That's true.

I've certainly gotten more generous as my cup has gotten fuller.

Yeah, me too. Okay, Oppenheimer, we said change the world. Then I was looking at who else. Who else could we say change the world? And there's a list of 100. Oh, wow.

I don't know if- Want to do the top 10? Sure.

But I don't think they're in order.

Are they alphabetical?

They're just random. But Johann Gutenberg.

Oh, the Bible. Printing the Bible.

Printing. Newton.

Isaac Newton. Physics.

Martin Luther. Regular Martin. Which one? Martin Luther. Okay. Protestant Reformation. Darwin. Shakespeare.

Okay, sure.

Bill. Columbus. Christopher Columbus.

Discovering the New World. Asterix.

Exactly. Karl Marx, which that's interesting that he's on here.

I mean, he did. Big time. The whole Cold War as a result of one book.

Yeah, you're right. Yeah, that's nuts.

Did you watch The Octopus Murders: Conspiracy Show on Netflix. Anyone watch that?

My Octopus Teacher?

No, but that is also on Netflix. I think there's maybe even a series called American Conspiracies, and this is The Octopus Murders.

No, what is it?

It's four parts, and it's a great demonstration of how tricky this stuff is because some of it's true and some of it's not. These really complex conspiracy theories where there is a lot of it that's true. And then figuring out what parts are not true. It's driven a couple of different journalists mad, this case. What is it? So it starts with a man Bill Something, who created software, and he was going to digitize- Bill Something that created software.

Not Gates.

He created this software that was going to allow some law enforcement agency to digitize all their records, and then they were going to be able to cross-reference stuff. And it was a three-year contract, and a year into it, The Department of Defense stopped paying him. They owed him like $3 million. He sued to get the money. They would not pay. There were many court cases, then some conspiracy theories. Then some people came out and said, That software that he created was actually stolen by the Department of Defense, given to this other company because it was great software, and they figured out how to make a back door to it, and they sold it to all the people around on the world, the governments. Now, again, this stuff is totally substantiated, and there's records of Israel running this software, both allies and enemies, so that when they digitized everything, the CIA would be able to go in through this back door and read all of their records. So that makes total sense why they stopped paying him. And then they actually won the court case. The judge awarded them $6.8 million. Then that's episode one. And then you come to find out the person who ended up owning that software was good friends with Ronald Reagan, and they were trying to get this back door into all their Cold War enemies.

And then it was called an Indian reservation, Cabrizone, here in California, where because they have immunity, the CIA was running all these programs out of there with gangsters, with drugs, the Contra affair, selling guns to fighters against all these communist regimes. And then so this thing that starts with just this software thing grows into this enormous octopus theory and all these different people that were killed and all these different things that were happening in the '80s for the Cold War.

As a result of that.

Yes, but of course, some of it is bullshit, and some of it's real, and the journalist ends up dying. Spoiler. That's right away, you find that out. And really, you're trying to figure out throughout the whole thing, did this person really kill themselves as the police said, or were they murdered as they were getting close? It's so wild. And I was thinking how tricky these things are when you get really into them. They do change your worldview. So for some of them on the outside, I'm looking at it going like, that's completely implausible. Then the other stuff, I'm like, wow, they definitely did that. And of course, they did it. When they thought that the future depended on them beating the communists, of course, they would do anything. And in some weird way, they should.

No, not anything. There was so much panic around communism.

I don't think it was panic. If you look at all these regimes, the Kémaraoos, Stalin. Stalin killed 80 million people.

A lot of it's real, and it was obviously like McCarthyism and all that. That was so crazy. Even in Oppenheimer, ding, ding, ding.

Yeah. The problem is- That was insane. Inherent in a Marxist system or a Communist system, you have centralized control of all things.

Yeah.

Right. And when you have centralized control of all things, you have people with enormous power. Sure. They control the media. Unfortunately, we don't have a successful example of a Communist experiment that's been running. Yeah.

I'm not saying we should adopt that. But I think the fear around it- I just think we were righteous in fighting that because all it did is empower very few people, and they became increasingly less democratic.

Most of them all became totalitarian regimes. So I think we were right to fight it. And it was an existential threat. And so when you're talking about someone has a decision to kill 10 people, let's just say, to prevent this thing that's spreading around the world and will end in a totalitarian regime. I can see where you're like, yeah, some nasty work has to be done for the greater good.

But you don't think that about preventing Trump from becoming President?

Well, what I I think is that, yeah, this is where you and I disagree a little bit, which is I believe in democracy. That's my highest principle. And I can also acknowledge that I'm not always going to be in the majority of a democracy, but I think a democracy is the best option, and it has to be pure. So I think, unfortunate for me, if the majority of the country wants a president I don't want, I don't think I should be able to cheat to prevent that from happening. I think it's a democracy. You can't say that- A full-blown...

There is an existential crisis when it's him.

Well, we had him for four years, and it didn't- And do you want to go back to that?

It was a fucking nightmare every day, every day. And this would be worse.

All I'm saying is I believe in democracy above all my own personal things. And unfortunately, if the majority of the people want a certain person to be President, I respect that. I don't like it, but I respect it. And I don't think you can dismantle a democracy because you disagree with the outcome. That's where you and I differ a little bit, because I remember last election, I said, if you can cheat, would you? And you said, yeah, which I'm not judgmental of. You and I have different priorities of our principles. I would never cheat the election. I would respect what the majority of people think. I think that's how a democracy has to work.

Even if that person is a threat to the democracy, you still- Yeah.

I think if the majority of the people vote for somebody, that has to be honored.

We also don't have a system where it's about the majority.

I'm just saying, forget the specifics that we're mired in. I'm saying I believe in democracy, and I believe when the majority votes, that that has to be honored, whether I hate the person or not.

But the specifics matter here. It's not the majority of people voting that create the outcome. So cheating, quote, cheating, if it mirrors the actual majority of people, is that a problem?

Well, we're getting into the Electoral College versus the popular vote. So do I think that system is flawed? Absolutely. I don't think we had the technology at the beginning of the formation of this country to do a direct vote, but we do now. So I think it should be a direct vote. But what I'm saying is that in come November, if 65 % of the people who live in America vote for a person, I honor that. And it might not be my person, but I believe in democracy more than I believe in any of my other principles.

No, I hear you.

And then it's on me. If I want to live somewhere where I'm a part of the majority, then I got to go there. Because the people that were storming the capital, they were saying what you're saying, which is like, I don't really care about that vote. I reject it. I don't believe it because I know that he's chosen for him to not win would be an existential threat to the country. And so they have the exact same principle at work. And what I'm saying is that those people need to move to a country that's not a democracy.

No, but that's when the popular vote in the Electoral College, that's when this is an actual problem, because Biden won the popular vote and the Electoral College. He did. Yeah. But Hillary won the popular vote.

And not the Electoral College.

So we ended up with a President who did not reflect the majority of this country.

Right.

When I'm saying we should cheat in order to represent the actual majority. I'm not saying... Let's say, if, and this might happen, the popular vote goes to Trump, I'm with you. It's like, Look, this is the way the country is right now.

We live in a democracy.

Yeah. And whether I want to live in a place where this is the majority of the country, that's on me to decide. But that wasn't the case in 2016. With Hillary. And in 2020, it was both.

I'm He's really pointing out that there were some people that thought it was time to reject the popular vote on January sixth. Those people were rejecting the popular vote.

But I'm not saying that. Right. But it also if we won, let's just say that your candidate won the Electoral College and not the popular vote, you'd be totally fine with it.

Yeah. I'm only asking that everyone play it the same way on both sides. We have to grant our opponent the same rules we play by. So if we would have no reservation in accepting an Electoral College victory, even though we lost the popular vote, which we wouldn't have a problem with, I don't think we can be critical of them for doing the same thing.

But they lost both.

I know. We're We're dipping in and out of a lot of stuff. So your first issue is with Hillary.

Yeah.

And so I'm addressing that one. But I didn't- Which is she won the popular vote and not the Electoral College.

Yeah, which I think is a big problem.

It is a problem. But again, if the reverse was true and she had won the Electoral College and not the popular, we would be delighted that she had become President. So because we're not outraged when it happens and benefits us, we can't be outraged when it benefits them. I just think it's a little murky. Which has never happened. It hasn't happened. You're right. But we wouldn't care. We can acknowledge we wouldn't care. So I don't think we can be holier than now and say that they somehow lack morals because they won the Electoral College vote and not the popular vote.

No, I'm not saying they lack morals because they're upset or not upset about the President. You lack morals when you storm a capital.

So tabling Hillary and Trump, 16, now going to rewind to the conversation of would you cheat or would you reject something? And you said if it poses an existential threat to democracy itself, you would reject it.

I don't think killing people to prevent him is appropriate. I'm not for that.

Yes. I'm only saying that you said, which is Fine. I totally respect it. If the person who, one, poses an existential threat to democracy in and of itself, you would have no problem cheating.

Yeah.

And so those people on January sixth, I just want to acknowledge that they had that exact same feeling.

But do you think cheating and killing people are the same thing?

No, I don't think anyone should kill anyone. I'm only trying to latch on to the conviction.

But my conviction is not the same as theirs.

But you would betray You would betray fairness if you thought the person posed an existential threat to democracy. You would betray fairness. And human life. Sure. You would betray fairness. Yes. Those people, too, decided to betray fairness. We're going to reject these results. We're not going to accept these results. And I think what they did is completely wrong. But I also think it'd be completely wrong for our side to cheat in any manner whatsoever because we decided that person was an existential I don't think anyone has the right to determine who's an existential threat and then circumnavigate the system that's been working for 300 years.

Well, do you think it's cheating to gerrymander? And do you think it's cheating to prevent black people from voting?

I mean, they're doing all of it. Yeah, and we fight those. We try. And we're on total moral high ground to do so because it's actually cheating the laws of our democracy.

I guess when I say- It's above my left-rightness. I get it. But when I say I would cheat in a practical example of this person, it's in context. It's not theory, right? It's a very real question about a specific person and the world we live in where they are cheating. They are cheating. So, yeah, I'm okay to cheat in an environment where I feel like maybe we have no shot because other people are cheating. It's like the steroids, Lance Armstrong. If everyone is doping, I'm going to have to.

Right.

Yeah. I don't know. It's very depressing. Anyway, okay, back to the list. Einstein, Copernicus, and Galileo. But those were in Da Vinci's Honorable Mention 11. But there's 100 on here. There's some good ones. People can look it up. Oh, the Beatles are on here. This is from, I think, Western Michigan University. But it's A&E biographies, 100 Most Influential People of the Millenium.

Of the Millenium.

Oh, so I guess it's not up to date.

A thousand to 2000?

Yeah, not up to date. In the last 20 years, has there been anyone, I would say, changed the world? Obama?

I think you'd have to say Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, because I think the Facebook is a foundational beginning to the polarization of the country.

And just social. A hundred % he is. Bill on it, obviously.

Oh, yes.

Yeah. Okay, I'm going to see Dune 2 now.

Oh, you are? Are you going to see it today? Imax?

I think regs. I think regs, but good sound. David said it has good sound. Where are you seeing it at? Americana.

Why not Man's Chinese? You just don't like the area.

I don't like the area.

The area is rough.

Yeah. The Americana is so cozy.

Yeah, and there's other shopping to do. I can go to Sephora. Yeah. Okay, well, have a blast. It's such a good movie. I'm so excited for you. I'm excited. All right, love you.

I love you.