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And the Ringer podcast network, which is combined to do David Fincher week, bunch of great pieces on the website, we did seven on the watchable as we have more stuff coming. Check all that out. You should also check out. Out to Sea two with CC Sabathia and Ryan Rukia, which is an excellent podcast and essentialist thing right now, because we have baseball playoffs coming up, we're in the heart of the NBA and the NFL is a gigantic sports fan.

I went on there. I think we're going to put it up Wednesday night. I went on there and we just did a whole deep sports part. It was really, really fun. Check that out. A bunch of directions, bunch of topics. And I had a blast. I love those guys. So check that out. Subscribe to that podcast if you're not listening to it already. Coming up, I'm going to talk about Lakers Nuggets at the top and then our old old old friends, DS and Métro, who just continue to get more and more famous.

I have it. They sit on their bandwagon and we kind of like fifth row, but we talked about a whole bunch of things. And then Jeff Daniels, who I had never had on before and who was a delight. This is a great podcast. I'm jealous. I'm jealous of you that you get to listen to this whole podcast right now. You should you should just feel lucky. Here's Pearl Jam.

All right, I said the top of this podcast because I wanted to react to the Lakers Nuggets game, the Nuggets won by eight taping this. Now it's a little after 9:00 Pacific Time on Tuesday night, had a feeling the Nuggets would show up tonight.

This is a backs to the wall team that came back from three one in both rounds before this one, as you know, to nothing is nothing to them. They should have won game two if not for just Abominable Brain fired by Miles Plumlee. And just in general, that was just a travesty and they're a little bit of a situation like the Celtics were last round where they're down to one, but it feels like they should be up to one and they know that they probably have to win five games of the series now.

Could they do it? Well, all right. What they do tonight, one thing they got Jamal Murray going at twenty twelve, but they were running him off the ball a little bit more. He was more aggressive. I think he's started to figure out the size of this Lakers team and where he can kind of pick his spots and attack and things like that. Jokic was not great tonight twenty to twenty five anybody was sloppy five turnovers and just seemed a little bit out of sorts.

Made some, made a couple of crazy shots. One of them actually went in but in general I wouldn't say this was like a spectacular Yokich game. Jerami Grant was unbelievable though. He had twenty six, twelve free throws which I love. I love that he gets to the line. He was really active and when you think like they're basically just swept them away from Oklahoma City for nothing, you know, a protected first round pick. OK, ok, so he's trying to cut cost and that happens and that's ridiculous.

But whatever. Thanks OKC. L.A. tried to play a zone to get back into it. They made a huge comeback near the end. And Rondo, who is abominable in the first half, actually had a little energy and started making plays in the second half. And LeBron, who has faded in some of these fourth quarters but in this game, was was really strong and and they made it a game. But then Jamal took care of business. The only thing I notice you know, I think this Nugget's team definitely figures out the opponent as each series goes along.

And in this series, they've figured out finally how to get Jamal going a little bit. They've figured out that they really need Jerami Grant and they figured out how to exploit the Howard minutes because when Howard was in there, they're just running, you know, and he's not somebody that really wants to run that much anymore. My least favorite part of the twenty first century, Dwight Howard always rooting against him, SportsNet. But but for the most part, Murray was, I guess, the big difference.

But if I'm a Laker fan, here's what would concern me. You know, even just looking at this box score in the last box score, which are just completely different from one another. Right. Danny Green was getting game two. In game two, he had. Well, he wasn't good in game two, but he played twenty eight minutes, 11 points, he had three threes in this game, just kind of a mere 20 minutes, one for for Rondo, as am I.

The last game. This game, he played 30 minutes, which is just a lot of Rondo. They can't really figure out the supporting cast thing and who they're going to get night tonight, which puts an incredible amount of pressure on Davis and LeBron. And here's the thing. We're going every other night now. You know, they're playing Thursday, their point Saturday playing Monday, they're playing Wednesday. This is this is now where we're going. Davis played forty three minutes tonight.

LeBron played thirty seven. And this is going to favor the Nuggets as we keep going. They're younger. They're going to be able to handle it. They're much better. Three point shooting team. Look at the Lakers tonight, six for twenty six from three. That's a disaster. All right. What were there where were they in the last game? Thirteen four. Thirty six. They're not a great three point shooting team in general. And what they need to do is they need to ride Davis on LeBron and get their 60 points from those guys, but also put the other team in foul trouble.

Tonight, the Lakers had twenty six fouls. Nuggets had twenty one. I feel like this is going to be a long series. I never felt like the series was over after game two. And. The longer this goes, the more you have. At least one of these old guys on the Lakers, you have some injury potential, and I was saying that there is one moment with four minutes left in this game when Davis couldn't even run up the court like they're putting real miles on these guys.

And LeBron, same thing. Rondo is a guy who gets hurt over and over again. Dwight only played 40 minutes and it doesn't really matter. But he's old. Danny Green's older.

It's just a red flag, and that was why when they got it to within two tonight, it was like, man, if they could sweep this and, you know, just basically take a week off until the Celtics heater's is over, that would be phenomenal for them. So I would be concerned if I was Lakers fan, because you're writing to guys, none of the other guys have really stepped up like even the game Jerami Grant had tonight. Nobody in the Lakers is even capable of that game.

Let's be honest. Rondo is is. Weirdly important, and especially when they're playing that zone and that kind of unleashed him and he's you're able to hide some of the stuff that is wrong with him defensively and do the whole thing. But I think this is going to be a long series. I think both series are going to be at least six games and one of them will go seven possibly. But I wanted to talk about the dynamic duo thing with LeBron and Davis.

If you read my basketball book, you know that I had a thing called the 42 Club, which actually started with an ESPN column that I wrote about Dirk Nowitzki. And the theory is. If you add up some of these points, rebounds and assists. For a season or for playoffs or both. And the number adds up to 42 points, rebounds and assists, you know, something special is happening. So you look at. You know, once you get to the playoffs, it becomes so much harder to join the forty two club and I'm just going for guys since nineteen eighty here, LeBron has done it.

One, two, three, four, five. And this will be his sixth time this year. Six times. He's in the forty two club. That's a record. Larry Bird. One, two, three, four times Jordan four times. Shaq three. Moses two. Hakeem one. Kareem one magic one. Barkley one. Kobe one Iverson one. Duncan once and then Kawhi did it last year in nineteen forty three and a half. That's the entire list of guys have forty to club.

Also played in a finals. Of the last 40 years, LeBron, five times Bird, Jordan, Shaq, Moses, Hakeem, Kareem, Magic, Barkley, Kobe, Iverson, Duncan, Kawhi, it's a pretty great list.

Well, when you start talking about. Two guys on the same team. And the 42 club. It's only happened once and it happened in 2001. Here's what I wrote in my basketball book, quote, We haven't seen anything approaching should Kobe in the 2001 playoffs. That's the only time in NBA history that to top 20 pyramid guys joined forces as an inside outside sitcom, both with their approach in their crimes or enjoying their primes. Check out Jacobi's regular season and playoff numbers and I put the numbers in for the playoffs.

Shaq was thirty point four points, twelve fifteen point four rebounds and three point two assists. And Kobe was twenty nine point four points, seven point three rebounds, six point one assists. Shaq was a forty nine as a forty two club guy. Forty. That is ridiculous. Kobe was a forty two point eight. And as I wrote, it's the one and only time it's ever happened. But I try to figure out if you combine the top two on a team with at least one of those guys being a 40 two club or what was the highest average together, Wilt Chamberlain and how grear.

Nineteen sixty seven combined for a jaw dropping forty nine point three. And then when you're just talking about combination, Shaq and Kobe combined, we're forty five point nine, Kareem and Magic in 1980 combined, we're forty two point three Honda and Russell and nineteen sixty eight or forty two point two will in West 1969, forty one point seven. So they didn't make it. And then then the list of guys who came close, MJ Pippen in 92, Shaq and Kobe go to Hakeem and Clyde in ninety five, MJ and Pippen in 93, Kareem and Oscar and seventy one Bird and McHale and eighty six or thirty nine point nine.

So those are some of the great players in the history of basketball. Pretty much all of them actually. Well, LeBron and Davis heading into this game. LeBron was twenty five point six, ten and eight point seven, he's forty four point three, Davis was twenty eight point seven, ten point seven rebounds, three point and says he was forty three point three tonight. LeBron was thirty ten and eleven. Davis was twenty seven, two and one.

So I didn't do all the math. I was promised there would be no math on this podcast. But LeBron is at about forty four point five and Davis is at about forty three point one. If you combine them together, that's forty three point nine as a combo, which is the second best. By my calculations. Since Chamberlain and Greer see have Shaq and Kobe had two thousand one hundred forty five point nine and then LeBron and Davis, who are just a hair under 40 for.

My point is this. I think because it's been in our face the whole time. With since the trade, Davis goes there, it's the Lakers, it's LeBron, we talk about these teams constantly. I actually think it's been weirdly lost. What an incredible historic combo these two guys are together. Like we've really seen this a handful of times in the history of basketball. And if you're talking about, like the great dynamic duos ever, I still feel like Shaq and Kobe in two thousand won for the last thirty five years of basketball is number one for me, Kareem and Magic, you know, probably.

You know, in 80, magic's pretty young and the eighty five Kareem's older, even though he did win finals MVP, that's way up there, MJM Pippen, obviously Pippen was never like a monster statistically. But if you add them together, it was pretty good. And then I think Bird and McHale was a great one. And then you have Curry and KD seven to 17. Curry was a forty one, Kadivar the thirty nine seven. So neither of them made the forty two club.

I think part of the problem was they were killing teams and a lot of those playoff games that year. So they were forty point four combined, but neither of them made it. The forty two club is special. You know, that's one of the things with Dirk. In 2006 when I wrote that column and I created that club, I was like, man, this guy's on a forty two club pace here. And then if you remember in the finals he tailed off a little and I think he ended up being like a forty one point nine.

He just missed it. One of the reasons I love the forty two club was Karl Malone. It was the number that I came up with that left Karl Malone out the most times in the regular season because he was, I always thought, the the most overrated superstar. He was definitely more stats than substance. But but this LeBron Davis thing. When you think about where we were after that trade and you think LeBron is the age he is at age thirty five.

Heading into the 17th year never gets injured, you think like, well, you know, he's going to tail off a little bit here. It just it has to happen. This is the rule of the land and maybe this will become daviss team. They've been able to navigate this two man superstar thing. About as well as I can ever remember seeing it, even when you had Shaq and Kobe in 2001 and Jeff Pearlman just wrote a book about that, that Lakers era from 96 to 04, he was on Ryan Rasselas podcast that's going up tomorrow.

And I actually popped on for the second half of it. And a lot of that book is just about how hard it was for Shaq and Kobe to coexist, which we knew. But this is painstaking detail about how rocky that was and and just what a forced partnership that was in so many ways, Kareem and Magic, which Perlman actually covered in his last book. But as part of NBA lore, Kareem famously distant magic shows a big smile. He's hugging everybody and they ended up teaming up in a great way in 1980.

I think the thing that's missing with that was Kareem sprained his ankle during the best game of the most famous game of his career, sprained his ankle series is tied two two against Phil in 1980 finals, Kareem sprained his ankle, leaves lips off, comes back and basically wins the game for them, puts up like a forty in fifteen, something like that. And he should have been the finals MVP even though Magic had the iconic six game. Kareem was the best player in that series by far and was the best player in the league.

And I would have given him the finals MVP anyway. Look, if you've ever read anything from your career was my least favorite non Celtic, my favorite basketball player to root against my favorite part of sports hate. But the guy was fucking unbelievable. I mean, you could really make a case he was the greatest player of all time. You really could you could actually make a statistical case for it. I think he's either third or fourth. But you could make the case he won six MVP.

He won all the titles, best college premier, all that stuff. But Kareem and Magic as a combo, it they they never peaked at the same time. Even though both of them are two of the six best players ever and then MJ and Pippin, Pippin was just never on that superstar level. Really, there's only. You know. Three or four times when you had top twenty five guys that were even playing together, where they were kind of close to you being great, like Kareem and Oscar in 1971, it was that was like post prime Oscar.

He was still really good, but he wasn't like a superstar anymore. You'd Hondo and Russell in nineteen sixty eight. Where they were a forty two point two together and the forty two club, that's an older version of Russell, you know, he was all savvy and smarts and all that stuff. At that point, it was vintage Hondo. Havlicek was like, that is absolutely private, that this Davis LeBron thing is interesting because you could argue, Davis, is that in his actual prime right now, you know, he's been in the league since 2012.

He's. I don't think we'll ever be better offensively. We will never have more of a package.

I mean, he might get more game experience, but this is, I think, about as good as he's ever going to be. And then LeBron has just figured out how to extend his prime in ways that make no sense.

So, you know, was talking to somebody today who's who's been the best part of the bubble. And it's like, wait a second, it's been LeBron. Oh, well, we argue about this. The brand's been unbelievable. He he's just been able to adjust to the way basketball has evolved over the last seven years in a particularly devastating way. And it's really driven at this point because he can smell it. Now, once the Clippers went out, he knows this is you know, now is a chance for four for.

Puts him on a different plane, you know, because now now that's one more than bird. That's three three titles with three different franchises where he's the alpha dog and the team that's never happened before, winning a title at his age where you're still this good, really no precedent other than Kareem and Russell. So he knows he smells it. And the combo of them, if we're going to remember the bubble pass for the bubble. And just how weird and cool it was and just the kind of basketball that we got to see, which is basically like pickup basketball across the playoff basketball is just fucking cool.

I love. We're going to remember for all the social justice stuff and all the other great stuff that these guys did and all the awareness they raised and all the voting initiatives. And we're just really, really phenomenal stuff. And, you know, potentially we're going to remember for LeBron and Addy's and this trade where they gave up an incredible amount. To get this guy hoping it would pay off and now they're six months away if they could stay healthy, but I think the legacy of this team we love talking about legacies is media people.

The legacy of this team is going to be just one, an awesome combo. This was just for basketball and for people who like basketball, just these two incredibly gifted. All around players, but really offensive players who figured out how to coexist in a really cool way, which is its own, you know, its own battle, and you saw it with Shaq and Kobe, where it was just a constant towards covered for hundreds of pages in the promo book was a tug of war.

The entire time Kareem and Magic became a lot easier. Hondo and Russell, that was super easy because Russell didn't care about offense. All he wanted to do is take care of defense. MJ and Pippen fit together perfectly. Pippen wasn't a superstar bird and Michael McHale was first team NBA in 1987 when the league was stacked like that guy was great. They figured out how to coexist because Bird was the, you know, he's the legend. He was three times in a row.

MVP LeBron and Davis, I feel like, have figured out how to make each other better and a lot of different ways. And they're on the same page. Doesn't seem like there's any ego stuff with them. And if they end up winning the title, I think we're going to remember them as one of the all time great duos. And LeBron has a million things to remember him as this guy was the greatest, this greatest that one of the greatest or one of the greatest that.

But he never had this with Wade. You know, 2011, Wade was unbelievable, I still think he was the best player in the league that year, but LeBron was was kind of half broken from all the decision stuff and then completely wilted in the finals. And then in 2012, when he took charge of the league and, you know, became the guy that we've now seen for the last eight, nine years, Wade was banged up and he just wasn't the same guy anymore.

So then LeBron with Kyrie. You know, you would say 12, 16, 17 range chiri, as as talented as he is and how impactful as he can be, was never a reliable superstar like Daviss. So I still believe Wade is the 21 Wade. I still think is the best player LeBron ever played with. But if Davis in that and LeBron win the title, then then now you have an argument. But but the dynamic duo thing, it's been pretty cool.

And I think I've certainly taking it for granted, partly because there's been so much basketball and this story has been in our face all the time. And also, like, you know, I'm Celtics fan. I hate the Lakers, but you've got to hand it to these two dudes for the production they're putting up and how much fun it's been to watch. We will see. You know, every other day against this young Nugget's team that just will not quit and is as tough as nails.

We'll see if they can get through these next next four games and we'll see who's waiting for them in the finals. But yet another awesome bubble playoff subplot. All right. We're going to take a break that I'm bringing in. This is Amir.

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All right, this is the mayor here. It's been a while. You we're doing this zoom, which is weird. I usually like when we're in the same room together. You guys got a book coming out. We're going to talk about that in a second. Tell me about New York, because I haven't been back east for really 20, 20. And I've heard these conflicting reports about what New York is like. It's a ghost town. No, no.

It's actually interesting. People are eating outdoors. Now, you tell me, what's it like?

New York is done. New York is New York is a relic of what it used to be. It looks like, you know, at the end of Planet of the Apes when they're looking at the Statue of Liberty on the beach and also not that Statue of New York is fun. It's fun. There's like if you miss New York, if you go to places like in Times Square on 34th Street, that we're near, like a lot of mass transportation, those places have kind of closed down because there's no one there.

There's nobody selling coffee to the office workers in the daytime because there's no more office workers. But if you remove yourself from that, when you get back into the outer boroughs, if you just go a little North Harlem pop, the Upper West Side is pop in the restaurants. They're not selling out the way they used to be because they can't do full capacity. But New York is finding a way to get restarted. You have businesses opening at twenty five percent that a lot of outdoor dining does like outdoor concerts and stuff.

Now, New York is not dead. And all those New York Times article is about everyone's leaving the city and buying houses in upstate and Westchester and Jersey. Those are those are misleading because it's like statistically a lot of those sales were stopped because of coronavirus. They were halted once they restarted. Now it looks like there's an exodus of the city. People are not leaving the city. New York is still here and it's not going anywhere.

Anything to admire? I mean, yeah, no, that's really like it's funny because, like the people that are let go, New York is dead, moved here from like, you know, Minneapolis, like two years ago.

So it was just like, do you do do you really know that New York is that can you really say that? Are you an actual New Yorker? There's a level of privilege to make a statement like that where you're just like, OK, I'm going to go to my second house upstate. It's like a lot of New Yorkers do not have a second house. A lot of New Yorkers barely have a first house. So you're just telling us about your relationship with New York and how it basically was parasitic.

Like you just use New York for whatever it could do for you. You didn't add anything to the value of New York. Therefore, New York is done to you, but you never add anything to New York. So as New Yorkers don't need you in New York, I'm buying New York Stock.

I have a lot of friends that live in New York and they're talking about how the rent has gone way down in certain neighborhoods and stuff like that. Not like the city might be done. This might be it. It's, I guess, what's never going to be done in New York.

You're New York is the cockroach of the United States, right? It will never die.

A friend of mine was saying in World War Two, like London, had the ship bombed out of it. Yeah. Guess what? London came back because it's still there. Yeah. York City's New York City. It's not going anywhere where it's going to be fine in our short lifetimes.

We I can I'm I can honestly say I've heard New York is dead at least five times after 9/11, after the transit strike. You know, after all these events happened, no one's ever coming to New York. Remember, after 9/11, people were like no one would ever work below 14th Street again. That's those days are done. Oh, come on. Come on. You go and see. The seventies was another one when when they had, like, the blackouts, the police strike, all that stuff.

It's like New York is cratering on itself.

I was going to be in New York. At what point in New York do without it. They had a sanitation strike in the seventies that was so bad, people in the outer boroughs had to push their garbage onto the Metro North tracks in order to get the city to pick up garbage. If that's how bad New York was at that point. And we've gone back, we've recovered from that. Listen, anything is possible. It's like in nineteen eighty one they made well, in 1981, they made escape from New York, where New York was turned into a maximum security prison.

And people are like, yes, yeah. All right. I could see if, you know, that's how bad New York was forty years ago in between that between that and Fort Apache, like the views people had in New York, like that's what they thought.

They thought it was like babies walking around with box cutters. And that's not what it was.

Kurt Russell, making a full court reporter is more believable than your dog.

But fortunately for you guys, the sports scene has has gone south. Now, that's one where I'm like, I'm not sure if the sports ever comes back, you know, I know it's coming back. I might add that one actually might be dead. It might be it might be that. You know, I'm wondering because you're seeing others. Well, not to use other states as examples, but you're seeing other events where they're having people in the audience like other like, oh, no, I'm talking about the success of your teams.

Oh. Because you well, you might have the two worst NFL teams, or at least two of the worst for you has the matter. The Mets are just curse. You're my friends, guys. Everyone gets hurt. They're pulling quads. They're pulling hamstring. The next or the next. Like where where are the winds?

The way the winds are going to come, the winds are going to come, the winds are going to come. You know what it's look pre recorded you it's we were just talking about Cam Newton, you know. I mean and you know, that little, you know, situation that happened on the Rams, I know you hate to see it is a moral victory.

Right. But like Jazy, moral victories for minor league coaches, we win the majors over here. But we have to we have to ask, is Korona the reason why your Red Sox are where they're at right now?

There's a variety of reasons that I don't think koruna cracked the top five.

Yeah, I think I think my Yankees will be OK. I think my Yankees will be all right.

Well, it all started when we got rid of Mookie Betts is the best player of my lifetime. That was tough. That hurt. And I'm not even a Red Sox fan, but that was just like that. The hard to watch man. Like he was such he's such a good player.

Listen, I'm going to say this right now. There's no hyperbole. He was your Derek Jeter. And I'm saying that happened to all the guys you had, Pedro, Manny, Papi, all those guys. He was your Derek Jeter. That guy was going to be the face of the franchise for the next 15 or 20 years.

And, yeah, whoever is in the front office was just like, oh, no, let's get him to the Dodgers.

Yeah, well, they got worried he might not stay. But I said this to C.C. that it was the equivalent of giving up Jeter in nineteen ninety eight. You know, it wasn't even 20, I think he had just turned twenty seven and they traded him, but it's like his best years were ahead of them and is such an incredible guy off the field.

It's like if you're not building around this guy, what are we doing? What are you doing?

You know, you're building around Devers. Get out of here. I got to say, I've never watched less baseball and I haven't missed it that much, mainly because I know what I'm missing, which is just carnage, what the Yankees have been like for you guys. You know what? I'm to be honest with you, it's been like what you just said. It's different. It's not even the passion of watching is not the same because the games feel weird.

You know, that there's no audience like even the Red Sox Yankees series that just happened was so anticlimactic at one point. The game is tied at the 12th inning, usually even if it was I mean, even with those standings and the game doesn't matter. Red Sox, Yankees are still must watch, especially on a Friday. This is like an extra inning game. I turn the channel. I was like, who cares? It's just not the same.

It just doesn't have that same gravitas to it. And that doesn't take anything away from the players, the players out there trying. But it's just we you know, as fans, we are that sixth man. We are that missing element on the field. And if we can't be there, the game feels so weird. Like it's even like I said, I miss Nick games. I don't miss watching the next play, but I miss going to Madison Square Garden.

I watch Brevetti around it, you know, watching them lose. But just the whole passion and just everything that goes with it, that's what hurts.

I know I was watching the Giants just screaming at my TV and the Giants are doing very sneaky things, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, giving you hope and late in the third or fourth quarter and then blowing it like at the perfect time, like your Shot of the Day to Jones.

You are like your eyes mellow and football for well they five seconds out now. So yeah. So that was bad. You know, it's very Nixey to just looking at your guy to a knee injury early in the early season.

And I said it when they drafted Jones, I was like, if you guys don't approve this whole line, you are drafting Barry Sanders and you're going to watch him erode and waste his prime years. I'm saying you could go check it on my Twitch channel. It's a great clip.

It's it's a bummer where you were saying about the baseball crowd's totally agree. I didn't realize how much I needed it just as a home viewer that that. Yeah. And I felt this with the U.S. Open to tennis where they're playing in these empty arenas. And it's like in tennis, it's not like the crowds making noises, like they'll make noises between points and stuff. But. Right. You're using the crowd is like this que for how you should feel about the match and the momentum and stuff like that.

And without it, it's just empty. And I feel the same way with baseball where there's no there's no emotion to the game. It's just cold and weird. It's like that.

A minority report with Tom Cruise Siboldi Bush has been stripped away.

I don't like it. My father is a lifelong my father is a lifelong Yankee fan. He's down in Florida and he's like trying to watch the games. He said without the audience there, you really it really exposes the fact that you're watching a bunch of multimillionaires play baseball. And I was like, wow, that is a hot ticket. But that's on it seems like there's no emotion in it. You don't really feel the same for it. Like he said, even if the Yankees were to get a ring this year, it's going to be the you know, Yankee fans will be jerks.

Twenty eight rings. But that ring is not going to feel like all the other rings. It's going to be is it's going to be a mental asterisk ring.

God, I'm Dominican. I can't say that on the record. I'm saying my dad will fly in and punch me in the face if I say I don't enjoy baseball in any formal form or fashion.

You know, I'm saying but like, you know, like I kind of still enjoy it, you know what I mean? But gambling is legal in Jersey, so maybe that has something to do with it.

You don't know. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. So if you got money in the game, you know, you don't give a shit. If you know the Texas versus the Texas State Tech versus, you know, whoever you're in, you're locked in.

So but I do think that the NBA is doing a good job. Yeah. Like having a fabulous environment where, like the other sports are kind of flopping because like them, it's actually interesting because it's like they're talking a lot and you can hear shit like you hear Kemba Curse are going to be like, oops. I said, oh shit, you know what I mean. Are like the motherfucker. I wish Melo was still in the playoffs. I would have like all the shit motherfucker.

I would enjoy all of that, you know what I mean.

There's a lot more gamesmanship with the No fans. Yeah. I even noticed last night with the Lakers and they've been doing this. The Lakers are definitely turning in a capecchi during this bubble playoffs. But you see, I look like they what's his face? The backup point guard, Dozier was shooting free throws at the tail end. It was on the Lakers side and their whole bench was heckling him. Like plenty of fans. I was like, that's definitely never seen that in an NBA game before the bench riding a guy like that during free throws.

But it doesn't. There's a gamesmanship that did not exist in the same way. It doesn't feel like professional basketball anymore. Now it feels like you're watching like high school basketball, the way guys, they're playing with that young, passionate enthusiasm now. And then you see it, they're getting a little scrappy when they're getting into it. Oh, yeah. Yo, you guys are. In the same hotel, there's no way you're going to fight, but these guys are like, know, I am going to leave it all out on the court, they're playing with a passion that you did not see or maybe you couldn't see because the fan noise was drowning it out.

But you were seeing who really loves and lives and dies for that. Were there or they're wary of the fans because they're being watched by everybody.

And maybe you're on guard like a tiny bit with how you behave now. They just seem like it really feels like a basketball game. I actually I think it's great.

And that's why I love it. I love it. And I love LeBron. So he'll turn will you just, like, yell like he's just like, go on the fucking MVP brawl you gave this guy the MVP two years in a row. Fuck that. I'm LeBron James. I'm the best in the world. And I'm saying you need to you need to give me my flowers now. You know what I mean? Stop playing. I am. I imagined me to freight train.

All right.

You know, I'm saying like, although you may not be the best guy in is to. Listen, he's he's taking it easy, he's a smart guy, that's what I hear about people like the LeBron naysayers. But this is what's happening right now. LeBron knows that he can he can like, you know, how what was this guy's name?

You know, in football, when they call a guy, he's not going to win you the game, but he's going to. He's a game game quarterback. Yeah, game manager. Quarterback. He's a game manager. That doesn't need to be a game manager. He can be, you know, forty, fifteen and twelve LeBron whenever he wants.

That's the shit that people would understand and feel like he's not gassed like he's he's still got it, you know. I mean like this guy is he's a freak and is a machine. So it's just like he's just like yo I could chill because now this is like I could be the point guard and I could like, you know, bring the ball up the floor until these guys what to do. Because let's be honest, Frank Vogel is just a piece of furniture on the Lakers bench.

You know, I'm saying like LeBron, his coaching that team, you know what I mean? And it is what it is. The guy's a he's a he's a he's a complete player. He's not he's not Jordan, you know. I mean, he's not just like there to get buckets. He's there to fucking win the game. And that's what he does. You know, he's like, yo, you are cooking, I'm going to get you.

I'm going to get you a ball.

So if LeBron wins this title, which indications are we're heading that way and they're pretty heavy favorites now. They're like three to one favorites. Yeah.

It's the Lakers final legacy. Laker Kemba Walker from from the Bronx. Kemba Walker. You get that? I said I said it on Twitter. I said It hurts my heart because Kemba is the pride of the Bronx all day, cardiac sebelia all day. But it's going to be Lakers man like I tell you, like the NBA. Adam Silver would love for it to be Celtics Lakers, but it's not going to happen.

But we got of Gordon Hayward back, you and everybody. He's a fucking winter soldier. But tell me this as a basketball fan and as a Celtics fan, do you really want Gordon Hayward taking touches away from Jayson Tatum, who is our guy? He's he's the occupants of the Celtics.

You're not looking at this correctly. Every minute he plays is a minute that Semicircular and Brad Wannamaker aren't playing by subtraction.

If he's a C plus, that's a huge fucking win for us because he knows he knows how to move around on the court. He knows how to move in space. He can pass a little, he can shoot a little that he's not like removing things from the game for us. He's not hurting us. That's the difference. So I actually think he's I thought he really helped the game three. I was encouraged.

Oh, well, you know, we shall see. My prediction was he in five, you know what I mean? You got your one. So then when they lose the next two, you can be like damn Merrills, right?

Well, the heat is a very a team that's in your wheelhouse a lot.

But a lot of the way they carry themselves a lot. It's not like basically this is like a team you would like. I'm not surprised. Yeah. Yeah. Jimmy Butler is a dog, man. He doesn't care. He's out there to win like you see it on his face. He's like kind of like Jordan Westbrook Kobe mentality. Like he's just like, I am going to win this fucking game.

I don't think I'd be devastated at the Celtics. Did it make it? Because I do think they're really good. But if I had made it, the funniest subplot would be Jimmy Butler being like, finally, it's me and LeBron, the two best players in the league, the league finally by rival, that I get to be the only one who thinks that.

But that's one of the reasons he's great. He really does think he's one of the best players in the league you got. That's how you gotta live your life. You got to live your life like that. You can't come into the league. I remember I was talking to a basketball player and he was just like, oh, you come into the league, you have two decisions to make. You could either be like, yo, LeBron is the best player in the league.

And I have to, you know, you know, I'm always going to be LeBron or you come into the league like I'm better than LeBron. LeBron is better than me. And I think you have to that secondary you cannot come out like Davis mentality. You got to be like, yo, I'm better than LeBron and I'm going to try to show LeBron my dunk it on you and embarrass you and put you on a poster. That's all. You got that mentality.

You're never going to be LeBron James bitch. And that's the problem with some people in NBA.

Well, we have irrational confidence. We have irrational confidence. Stars like or even like role players like Ricky Davis. You mentioned Dion Waiters was a great example of these guys who come up with.

Yeah, Lou Williams is like this. I think it's usually not somebody who's the best player in the team. Jimmy might be the only irrational, confident superstar. Right? Yeah, but you know what? People said that when he went to Miami, but I already know his how his brain worked, what he did, that he was just like I'm like he's what every old basketball fan complains about.

Go back to the day back in March. Do you know you wanted to be the best or the best? So you win and build your own team, you to join up with your friends and create a super team. Jimmy Butler is like the old herd mentality guy. He's yeah. I'm going to go to Miami, be the guy in Miami, even even though everybody thinks we're. To suck and I'm going to turn Takahiro into a backwoods smoking like, you know, basketball hero, you know, I mean, so that's what he did.

He went there, Dollo, and made it happen, you know, meanwhile you got Westbrook and Harden teaming up. Look, Paul, George is the logical guy, you know, like it didn't work out for him. But Jimmy Butler is like, you know, proving all the old heads right.

Paul George is just jumping Cruz every every year two years ago.

Is there another superstar out there. He was Katie before Katie. Wow. Oh.

Shots fired. Shots fired. Came back to answer back from his regular. OK, the text now he's coming at you.

He called. He called it Tommy right now.

What have you guys said stuff on the on the Showtime show that activated people and had people going at you on social. Is that happen this year? You know, it's not even it's not even like so on social like now, because I think what the thing in the past was like any time, any time we have beef or anything. In the past, someone waited to be on our show, the. So we're people waited to be on our show to approach us now, people can just text message us or whatever, but most people realize at this point we're comedians, we're joking around.

So people yeah, people don't take it seriously. He's like there's been players we have cooked. And then when they see us as a nickname, we'll see me in the stadium. And I think, oh, my God, my God, you cooked me one time. You cooked me one time. And we don't even remember. And I was like, yeah, it was this episode that you said I got. I had like a mushroom. And these guys are cracking up or have tears in their eyes.

I think it was Gary Sheffield, what he was talking about, how we always make it. He called to show the chuckle, show his wife it the chuckle show because he watches it at night and he chuckles not an idea. A guest, Gary. Gary Sheffield in bed, probably smoking a cigar, watching us. A chuckle in this. It don't get better than that. It'll get a miracle. Mentioned it a couple of times and we ran into him again.

He's like, yep, it's my Chuco guys. So he brought his wife over here. These are the.

Chuckles So these are the guys that would have had a good alternate title show.

By the way, Gary Sheffield was out at Yankee Stadium. We did see somebody on the celebrity softball game.

He's out there hitting bombs, of course, is buttoned up and slacks and like hard bottom shoes. He's just like, let me take a couple of swings. Byung Moon shot by moon shot.

I'm like, why aren't you like, so where's the best? I think the best swing of the last twenty five.

Thirty years. So aggressive and violent, aggressive. And I love it like a good lifestyle.

And so he was when he went to the Yankees, every time he was up, I thought he was going to have a double or triple or a home run that not a single win. I just assumed he was going to hit a bob somewhere. I was on the ball. It's like the ball had done something wrong to him, just the anger and the look on his face like he was trying to kill that ball.

It's like when I see now when he's up, I'm so afraid that he's going to pull a hamstring.

I'm afraid his plan is going to tighten up. I just I'm worried about him physically. You know, you never know if that's true. And so you see a game where he goes for before and he hits the ball and the ball's coming off the bat. A hundred and eighty thousand miles an hour like this is actually this is a cruise missile plan to my guy might stand.

All right, Mike. All right, everybody stand out because of my I have I have judged by fantasy team. He hurt his calf. I had to read all the rehab updates and then he came back and he hurt the calf. Forget it. They're like, oh, that was too soon. It's like, what is this? Are his muscles too big for his body? Do we need acid in his legs? What do we need?

This is what happens with the Yankees. But then the judge will go down and then you get somebody mad, random, like Luke. Right.

You have to smash it. Yeah. You know what I mean. Like. What do you guys feel about the baseball playoffs with all the extra teams you like this I don't like. I do. I just like I like more. Give me more. Like I said, gambling is legal in Jersey, you know what I mean? I'm stuck in the house. Give me more. I want to bet on the Blue Jays. Who cares? Like, I don't know.

How do you how do you feel about the extra innings change with. I'm putting the runners on base. That's weird, that's really weird. I don't know if I'm in that demo, though, like I'm out of the 18 40, not because I turned 50 last September. So I'm I'm in that demo now that the advertisers hate because it's like, well, that guy won't change products. He's just used to what he likes. So it's just anything we change.

I find myself now, I think just because I'm old, like, oh, man, I don't know. But that seems weird.

There's some changes that are like you're like, OK, maybe we'll give the extra playoff football teams I like because I got another game to gamble on on Saturday. I think that's each I get two more games instead of my first being at six.

I like that I might need to move because I'm missing out on a new point of sports with the gambling I need to get on because you guys seem to be having a lot of fun with this now as they keep spending money on the sneakers.

I think you're Fogger. Yeah, let us worry about the gambling stuff.

Let's take a quick break to talk about Gatorade. For over 50 years, Gatorade has fueled the best athletes to rise to the occasion during their biggest moments. I mean, they've had so many good ones. It's hard to separate MJ from Gatorade. Gatorade was the first time with with with MJ that I really felt like a drink and an athlete was synonymous. And as somebody who played a lot of sports back then, I just remember thinking I need to get Gatorade before I play three hours of pickup basketball, because that's what Michael Jordan would do.

And it's delicious to all kinds of different flavors. Great history with with the Super Bowl. You can bet on it because it's all bets on what flavor of of Gatorade is going to be dumped on the coach every year. Listen, one of the great drinks, it's hard to it's hard to be a good athlete, but just a great athlete without being properly hydrated and fueled. And Gatorade does it the best from young athletes just starting to turn heads to some of the best athletes to ever play their games.

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Back to the bodega, boys.

How did the last three plus months change your show? I just we learned to be like computer wizards, you know what I mean, and set up mikes and do all types of stuff, you know, other than that, it's just like if you're the computer whiz is an understatement. We learn to be full crew members. We're like, guys, we're we're running audio cables. Before I enter the room, I pull down my pants and show my butt crack so people know I'm union.

While here with Gasteyer, I don't have I know how someone else works. We set it up terror dextra setting up HDR, HDMI and preamps and all types of SC stations.

But in all honesty we have such a newfound respect for everyone that does production on our show is like now and what people do. So now it's just like now that you have to do it, you put more effort into it and you know, talking to the sound guys or making jokes about like so the mics pre like shutting off and all that stuff. But the beauty of the show is the show is a show was the show was a show we could have done the show anywhere and has continued the same nature it had before we did the quarantine and shout out to zoom.

It still works. It still feels like me. And we're in the same room and you haven't really lost any energy is one of the few shows on TV that's probably gotten better in the quarantine because you realize the surroundings and what we're working with and we're trying to make the best show we can possible. And we've heard nothing but good things from people like this.

Like the shows is literally a version of this. It's like the whole premise of the show is just like you're hanging out with us, you know what I mean? Right. So like the the viewer is is you right now.

It's like, you know, we're on your show, but, you know, you get the idea, like the third person in the room has always been, you know, our audience and we're not used to having an audience until showtime. So we did three hundred episodes of a show with one audience. So it's just like we don't depend on that. Like we're not playing to the audience, we're playing to each other.

So, you know, being out of studio, it removed your biggest advantage, which I don't think I don't know what you put in the guest in the middle.

So you guys are in the two power seats on the left and that gets to do this turn back and forth and you have that discombobulated and then you can do whatever you want that has equal footing. It's just three people in the room now. Now that people in the zone. And I hope your wi fi keeps up.

Yeah, I've noticed that. You know, we've been this is like midway through months. I haven't done a lot of pods. Obviously, people are getting better at Zoome. Oh yeah. That that first month or so, it's terrible people that and they said the lighting was bad and people didn't know and that they just didn't have the rhythm of it. And now I've noticed that people are really good.

Now it's, it's actually pretty good to do these on Zoome. I got to say it wasn't our fault.

The fault was no one knew what the hell zone was before coronaviruses. No. Right. Zoome We all send emails we must be using like Google Hangout or Kronosaurus. We got the lockdown over there and people sent an email around like Yo Users Protocol, Zoom, even Zoom was like, Yo, relax, we're not ready for you guys. Zoom, Zoom is a robust product. Now they finally added two way authentication now, which we needed back in April.

They're starting to roll out new features on the low that we don't know about. Like just a month ago, we found out about the doorbell feature where if you're muted, you get the space to talk and then when you take off your finger on the spacebar, a mute you again so you can use it like a walkie talkie. If you go into like the setting features, if you go on the green screen, you can go to the visual features and you can add like CGI sunglasses.

I follow you on the whole BAPAT.

Listen, there are there are things on some brave new world not know about. It's a brand new world. I'm working on Zune for Dummies. It's going to be available on Amazon.com soon to get someone else to ghostwrite it.

It's going to be great as well. And the wildest thing about this whole thing is this is like, you know, people using Google Hangouts on a list of your Skype, Sky-Blue, a three one lead in the finals with this one.

Oh, maybe a three oh oh, because this was like Skype. This was your moment. This was this was this was your time to shine the come back. It really was. And they just blew it. I don't know what they were doing over it.

I was embarrassed. You know, we obviously had an audible on the fly when everything started going down like March 10th, March 11th range is like, well, how are we going to do podcasts? And we had never even considered the Zen thing in the recording at home with good equipment thing. We always tried to do pods where people are in the same room, like when you guys were in L.A. That's where we were when I was in Newark. That's where we do something.

And then after like two weeks, it's like, what the fuck are we doing? How did we not realize that, you know, we had all these options. We could put people in different places. You put three people, four people in different places. So it's frustrating. I mean, just that it was this stuff was sitting here and nobody really thought of it.

And I wanted to come and sit on your big comfy couch, though, and life. And I'm saying, what shout out to our sound guys is out to Victor Hassan, because when we were doing the podcast, we didn't have the Showtime budget to figure out things. So we started. We I think we the first. We try to use was Twitch, and then we were trying to use Zoom and Twitch and and recording a separate audio file and then sending an audio file over it.

You've got to you've got to synchronize that using atomic clock and all the stuff that you weren't even thinking about last year because you were like, absolutely no reason we wouldn't be able to do a podcast in the same room. Somehow we figured it out. Shortcuts on the workflow is pretty massive, but people are saying the podcast sounds the same as it did before. Korona But it's a lot more work. But listen, you know, it's worth it.

It's worth it.

Well, and I'm saying the best thing that tech. Yeah, look at that. You know, John Sterling, the best thing that happened to you guys, just not as boring.

Let's go back to interrupt you. But the other day like this, it's getting it's getting out of hand. If you're not gambling on baseball and you're watching a full baseball game, you might be a sociopath because Paul O'Neill talked about his wallpaper for four innings the other day.

Well, the announcers, the announcers honestly don't know how to fill the time, and they don't. It's illuminating a problem that's been a problem forever. Is that why our baseball. That's not entertaining. Why do we care about this? Why do they had these conversations that aren't good conversations?

Why can't we have, like, a serious guy like the Knicks? Do the Knicks have the perfect combo? They got Mike Breen, who's like a golf ball downloader, Barry Bonds, and then you got Clide with the supan and hooping.

And, you know, he gives you gives you that energy. That's what baseball needs. They need a fun guy and a serious guy.

And I was like, but you need you're going to need professional comedians for right now with baseball, because baseball right now is devoid of any content. There's like there's not an audience you can rip off. You can't do crowd action shots. It's getting to the point even with Yankee games. Remember, David Cohen has Paul O'Neill. You guess what state most of the metal in the bridges in New York City where the metal comes from. And they talked about this for half an inning to try and and it was just like, yo, it was like you felt bad for them because they were trying they were trying to knock down Yankee games and other baseball games.

You will just have a long stretch of just silence. The announcers will not say anything. And it's just the at bat. And you never had that and the other games. But they have nothing to talk about. They have nothing to talk about.

Would they love relatives? They love when somebody is playing with the father.

The nephew. Yeah. And they can do like a son of Paul Quantrell. He was had a really good, good run here with the Yankees. And Paul's living in Wichita now.

And when they start talking about like an older player and I can recognize the older player because I watched them play and I'm saying, wow, any young person watching this has to be bored out of their mind. God, what it's like now, I know it's like when I was younger and they'd be like, oh, do you remember Mickey Mantle? Like, I hear about this is like the other day you're talking about Richie Sexton. I was like, Oh yeah, Richie Sexton, Big Sexy.

And I was like, wait a minute, nobody wants to hear this sexy. Does he want to hear about this while we talk about Richie sex you touched. So you were just sitting there like to talk about, you know, Scott Brochure's was the only other like you to do that. So I want to and, you know, the Yankee fans are going to kill me for this. But it's a fact the Mets announcers are far and away better than the Yankees announcers.

Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling, he's good. Keith is entertainment. You know, like and it's I think it's I think it's the eighty six match thing. Like imagine like you imagine he just goes off and starts talking about, like, you know, I was talking with Kevin Mitchell about one time and did play ball centerfield at the target and it's cool. And yeah. So then he hit the cut and it was a wild time. The Mets have better announcers because they're like the best workers.

They've seen more carnage. So they have better stories to talk about. And you listen to they watch the Mets every day. You're going to see so they can have some things to talk about.

We talked about in the past another time, Aaron, we talked about those two types of New York fans. And one of them is that Mets, Islanders, the Mets, Islanders, Jets, Mets, Mets, Islanders, Jets, it's just a gauntlet. And then the islanders actually had some success and then connected the dots and lost the game seven to Tampa Bay.

Yeah.

Which I keep repeating this. I'm like, is there ice in Tampa Bay? Why are they so good? And they've been sequestered for a while. Is there like Eastern Europe block the pipeline running? Like what's going on?

I don't know. Then since the last time I saw you guys, something really important happened to both of you. You had David Letterman on your show.

Yeah, bro, that's amazing.

I just want to know everything that happened on this. So he reaches out or do you reach out? First of all, how do you even make contact with him? First of all, David Letterman doesn't do shit like no, I swear I'm aware you do this podcast, but he was like, yo, he was like, I, I fucking love this show.

Like, he was he was dead serious. Like, we thought it was like a goof, like he's fucking with us is David Letterman, like he's always had like that kind of like edge where he's like, you know, he takes you down a peg or whatever. So it was just like, OK, what are we going to do? And we like we were thinking of, like, all these things that we could do with David Letterman. And it was just like, no, we don't have to do shit.

We just have to sit down and talk to them and write exactly what we did. And he was so complimentary and he was so gracious and whatever that we were just like, you can see it on our faces in the interview. We're like kind of like shocked. And we did see Sunday morning and there's like a quote in there where I was just like David Letterman telling you, you're the future of late night is like Michael Jordan telling you, you know, you're pretty good at basketball.

You're really good. Right.

You know what I mean? So, like, he's a real fan. Like he didn't want to leave the set after his death. Do you do the interview and you basically hung around backstage with talking to us?

He asked for some of the merch and he was talking to stuff, though not like for sale on the Internet merch, like crew shirts, like I want that Cruger. He was just so comfortable. He was just like even when it was time to wrap up the interview, he wanted to keep going. So he just rock with us. And that moment was just like no one could really tell you anything after that. You're just like, oh, if this guy says you're doing a good job on the show, then the network says, you know, it's you like, suck my dick.

I know what I'm doing was working well. It's working well. Don't listen. Don't don't rock the don't rock the boat, OK? We know what we're doing. We do what we do.

Well, I think the Jordan thing's a good analogy. Yeah. Jordan reached out to Jason Tatum is like, hey man, just want to tell you I'm a huge fan.

I think you're huge fan. The piece of debris. Yes. Is the greatest day of my life. Yeah, I see it for Tatum.

You know, when when the Celtics front office implodes and they traded him to the Knicks for a second down, come out here to talk about like, what am I for my children right now, if ever I can't.

They're seven Mookie Betts of the same century.

Yeah, that's that's who would you rather who would you rather lose, though, on the Celtics? Tatum Brown or smart, if you had to lose one. I need all three. I don't want to lose any of those guys, I like that they fight, too. I think that gets so overblown by people who have never played sports is like, oh, my God, look at each other in the locker room. It's like, yeah, because it's a fucking basketball team.

You get mad because that's what happens. That's actually a good thing. Better than, like, the fucking Clippers where it's like, oh, passive aggressive, silent stuff, like some 1950s family that doesn't actually talk about anything. Who was just silent. It's like, what's wrong with Dad? I don't know.

I don't know except the locker room. Yeah, but I'd rather the team that's yelling at each other and then go figure it out in the coaches hotel room at 1:00 in the morning. That to me is how that's passion. I mean, if it turns into like Toni Braxton, Jason Kidd, Jamal Mashburn, whatever the fuck happened with that whole thing, that was the room love triangle.

Like, that's a good start. That's different. We're talking about pick it up on defense. So who's question who over here?

If you smash in the same whoever that down nervous like it. There's a lack of respect on that.

But yeah, I love that Tatum thing. I mean, he's only that he's still twenty two. The thing he's doing in these playoffs, he's rebounding, he has a 10 and half rebounds a game like he's rebounding like he's Karl Malone or somebody and that allows them to play small. That's, that's why I think this Miami series is going to, it's going to go so well. I can't believe you guys said Letterman. That's unbelievable. I can't believe you were able to function during the interview and like, do your thing.

I would have been, like, just in complete the whole time. That's the other thing everyone knows. Everybody was like, yo, why are you guys so nervous? Are you in your interviews? And we're just like, no, like interviewing Letterman was while cool, it was just like, oh, shit, you're Dave Letterman. All right, that's cool. Come on, let's go have a drink, the smoke, some weed, super chill, because and we don't there's never been a guest.

We were just like, yeah, oh my God, we're interviewing this person. It's always the same. We're just in the back chillin, maybe smoking some weed or something. Well, back when we had the studio and sometimes would be times where the guest would come in to the studio and they were like, do you want to meet the guest before you go on stage? We're like, nah, we're good. We'll meet them on stage, whatever.

And sometimes the guests are like, they're so they want to meet us. So they come into our greenroom to talk to us. But other than that, we're like, hey, baby, we'll talk to you on stage. So that's I think that helps keep the interviews cool because we're never a fan blowing it up. We're never like, oh, like we've Letterman. It's like, oh, this is cool. We watch you. But it's never like we're scared to talk to Dave Letterman.

It's like not Letterman. Like, listen, we're doing what you're doing, baby. Let's just go shoot the shit, baby. I only had to where I handled it. Well, I was proud of myself, but interviewing Larry Bird, who is my favorite athlete of all time, and make sure I wasn't nervous when I did it.

But the day before, I'm like, Jesus Christ, if I can talk to this guy who is my hero when I was a kid, it's just weird.

That's that's our Derek Jeter, I guess. You mean like I'd like to truthfully, the night before, I might have a little like ghosts. It's about be D.J. Manjeet streets to captain, you know, I'm saying. But then once you get in there, you're like, OK, you you kind of settle in. That's got to be me.

If we ever get the chance to interview Ron Baker, I'll be like, wow, wow, wow.

That's major, major, major. It's always a nick. Yeah, I saw I had I had Bird and the other one was Charly's, which I didn't know until she walked in. And she's just like the the you just don't know how to act. She comes and she's tall. She's just unbelievable. And you're just like, oh my God, I have to talk to you, but I can't interact. And we did that. It was just like, yo, what's up?

And mean we're doing an interview with her. And you can see at one moment like she is overwhelmed. She has no idea what is going on in the interview. And so just going back and forth between us because we're just going so fast and we've had celebrities like you guys need to slow down. I can not follow what you're saying. And we're just like we're like this is our normal talking speed. But she's good because she was like she had been with us on Jimmy Fallon a couple of weeks before that.

So when she came on our show, she had already know how we operate and everything. She was like, I watched some of your stuff. I think she's sarcastic, which is a bonus that those are the best kind of guests and she has to take us so seriously either. Yeah, I mean, like the way that moment Tommy said Tommy was like, oh, she's your people.

I could definitely see you guys hanging out off camera. And it's true. She got that vibe. She got that energy. So that's what makes the interview even better. When it's like someone super famous and you talk to them, you're like, yo, you're low key. A scumbag like me, we get along.

Yeah, there's no. Tell me about the book. The book coming out today with this podcast goes up Tuesday night. The book will be out. You could get it on Amazon wherever you get your books and knowledge, life lessons from the Bronx or some some. It's The Canterbury Tales for this generation of two young heroes, two young figures from the Bronx as they make their way across America as the Grapes of Wrath targeting not just just talking, just talking crap, talking about our lives.

Before we got famous lessons we learned in the Bronx, some stuff about shoplifting, some stuff about selling drugs and stuff about making meals with potatoes. It's all in there. It's literally anything you could find, like relationship advice like this, surviving hot potatoes, you know, what do you do when you are broke and you need to pay rent, stuff like that, like little nuggets of advice, you know? And the my favorite thing about the book as a former educator is it's it's we do do this thing called chunking, you know, and read in chunks.

And the book is so chunky because it's great because as big chunks, as little chunks, as medium chunks. So depending on the length of your dump, you know what I mean?

Like, you can choose what you want to read and it's you don't have to read an order either, you know, I mean, so you can pick it up.

There's a wonderful chapter about the heartbreak I experienced to the Red Sox in two thousand and four. Oh, my God. I write it. It's a boner. That's it. I remember I will never forget that series. And I write it in there. And you can feel my pain if you are a Boston fan, no matter how bad this year is, you will reread that chapter. Yeah. Take that young Jesus. Yeah. In your face.

How are you Jabateh?

We broke Rivera. People said it couldn't be done. You broke and you broke me. You broke me. Listen, I would be way more upset about it, but at the time I was dating a transplant from Dorchester who lived in Staten Island. So every time I went to her house, I had to stay there. So I watched the entire series in her apartment in Staten Island. She's a Red Sox fan. I was the Yankees fan, but I didn't care because after every game I got laid, no matter what.

So you get a little toppy, takes this thing away from a loss after, you know, very fair that for not for these.

There does seem to be taking a game seven. It was raining when the Yankees lost game seven. And I'm walking back to the subway. I slip. I basically open up my knee. It's ripped to my favorite pair of jeans. Now I have a bloody knee, a repair of G-Star jeans. I get on the two train going uptown. Everyone in New York is crushed. No one's talking. Everyone is in like Yankees gear. But they got caught in the rain.

It's just the most depressing train ride ever. This lady gets on the train at ninety six street, makes eye contact with me, goes so that the Yankees win and I just go back to her. I was like, oh my God, the Yankees win. Did he look like the Yankees won. This is a curse out the city for no reason at just go home. I just go home and just flop starts the. It sucks. This is great.

I can't. Let's keep going. Let's do another half hour on this.

This is it wasn't it wasn't it wasn't that bad because I got laid, I flipped over, I went to sleep. I was like, this is bad. I woke up the next day. I felt worse. But, you know, can we talk about can we talk about Mero having four kids at home and also trying to work from home and like how you haven't sold that whole thing to a network for as a sitcom pilot?

Listen, it's you. I'm putting it into the universe, you know what I mean? If you want to do it, put GoPro all over my house. You can watch me have sex in the shower. My wife, we have to have to have covert operation, Navy SEALs, sex, you know what I mean? Like, you know you know the vibes, you know?

I mean, when you got the kids in the house and now it's like four, three different schools, one remote learning, every everything is all over the place. The basement is no longer my chamber of silence. It is a TV studio.

And you need Wi-Fi. You need unbelievable Wi-Fi at all times for everybody at all times because it's six iPads. Go in this this one's twenty four tonight. This one's like, oh, I want to watch this dribbling drill on YouTube. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba. My wife head is spinning 720 degrees trying to teach a kid math.

It's it's out of control. But you know what? It's what I signed up for. So, you know, it's like it's like signing up for Tough Mudder and being like, oh this song, this is hard. It sounds like it's hard.

It sounds like you should be selling this as a show to ABC.

But in I say at the end, I don't know what that that'll be, but something else, because if you say anything with an issue to sell immediately, you say you do that and watch how fast you get that cease and desist from Kenya versus, you know, playing around with that parent. Do it.

Yeah. All right. This is fun, guys. I'm glad you're well.

Thank you. Good luck with it. It was good to see you. Good luck with the book. Hi.

How are you doing out there in California? Because California is. Literally on fire. The smoke was horrible, yeah, and it just felt like it was compounding with everything else that was going on out here and there definitely is like an end of the world vibe. We've handled coroner the most poorly out of probably any state other than Arizona and Texas. And we still don't have youth sports yet. Like, it's everybody's just trapped indoors, virtual learning. And it's it's pretty nuts with no leadership at all in the state.

And it's not going as well because like people for California, like yo know or earthquakes are no big deal. Like my cousin lives in San Diego, she's like, oh, earthquakes are no big deal. You know, don't saying they happen like it's the ground shakes. I'm like, yo, the earth is literally moving. Like, that's not I'm not a big deal. But we just had one over the weekend.

We just kind of look at each other. I was looking at my wife and she was kind of doing this. And I'm like, we are. And you kind of realize we haven't had a bad one since I moved here. But when I moved here, that was the thing I was the most afraid of. I had no idea the fires would be the thing that would be the scariest thing about being out here, because climbing on that stuff every every year now we have this massive fire that rips through the state.

And it's it's terrible.

The weird thing about the earthquake, because, like, I'm an insomniac now. I was on a timeline when it happened. And you just see every person from L.A. or from the West Coast is to be at the same time, earthquake, earthquake, earthquake, earthquake.

But everyone's reaction was kind of just like, oh, that was that was kind of a rougher earthquake than usual. So I was like, yo, what's up?

I was like, yeah, right.

I know there's a scale for like, yeah, this is this is this is a little like a little drizzle, you know, like, no, the plates are shifting under your foundation of your building. My God, this is serious.

Yeah. That the weirdest thing about earthquakes is you feel this, you're scared. Then there's like this great relief that it wasn't bad. Right. And then deep down, you're kind of like, I want to know what it would be like to be in a bad one, to have something to compare it with. But and then you're like, no, no, no.

Don't think that. Nothing. No, no, no, no, no, stay with this.

But it is I tell you, it's pretty disorienting, like you feel weird for the next six, eight hours. OK, imagine, because it's like it's almost like your brain gets rattled in your head.

It's like you're boxing and just everything's moving. We had one bad semi bad one when I was here in the mid 2000s. I didn't feel ready for like a day. Oh.

But I might just be a loser that unless we have a baby like mini baby tremor in New York like years years ago. And I've I've read about it on Twitter before. I actually felt it. It was the one that came up like the East, the East Coast or whatever, and like hit North Carolina and whatever. And there was like a tremor in New York. And I was like earthquake in New York. I was like, what are you talking about?

And then I look up and like a little picture falls off my wall. And I was just like, was that it? All right, we're going to go who who who haven't you had on the on the show yet that that's on your list? Who's your number one draft pick against LeBron yet?

Not having you on.

You haven't had LeBron, haven't had Obama, haven't had Baron Trump on yet. You know, those are the big gets.

The mayor and Trump would be a good one.

Now he is almost 80, although he's going to he's going to replace he's going to playing second base for the Sox next year.

All right. Good luck with the book. It was great seeing you guys. So good. You will take great pleasure as always, sir. Lakers of five.

All right. We're going to bring in Jeff Daniels in one second. I wanted to tell you about many. If you're looking for a car that could take you anywhere from Dalian's to new adventures, every car and every car drives off. Yeah, we get we get that, I'm sure, to varying degrees. But not every car is for the drive. Mini makes different kind of car for a different kind of drive. Let me introduce you to the drive you deserve.

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Have some fun. What else are you doing? It's a pandemic. Head to many USA dotcom to learn more or design a model. All right, it is time for Jeff Daniels. All right, Jeff Daniels is here. I wish we were doing this in person. You've never been on my podcast. I've had so many great actors, you know, has been on the radar and never know with you. Sometimes you're doing press.

Other times you aren't. Are you? Are you like a media friendly guy?

Would you say, good, I confuse you like that. I like where you're at right now. You're an enigma. Perfect. Wonderful. I would have loved to have had you my studio.

You're saying sometimes you'll get Jeff Bridges, who has to get confused with for a while it was William Hurt Bill Pullman and I have the same problem. You know, Bridges.

You know, I, I remember I talked to Jeff once and I saw him at somewhere in L.A. and would love to work with him. I've been a fan of his since Texas. The Last Picture Show, right. Yeah.

And I, I get confused with him. But I know that people go up to Jeff Bridges and say, my God, Dumb and Dumber.

That might be your vote. Might have been your best word. I apologize to him for that, though. I know I am very proud of that movie.

I must say that's like a Jeff Beatty thing. People just getting the Jeff and the Bee and then that. Then people are it.

It's whatever. It's the Jeff and then their brains stop.

What is the movie people mentioned to you the most? Because you've made so many good ones. And, you know, I feel like you've been in my life ever since I saw Terms of Endearment, which I was a teenager, and that was such an impactful movie. And then, you know, four days, four decades later, still crankin. Yeah, I certainly Dumb and Dumber, yeah, reached a wide variety of people. And excessively watchable, too.

It was and all the time, which is what for a comedy, for the jokes to still hold up, even though, you know, it's coming, that's I don't know how you do that. But the Farrelly brothers, you know, struggled with that. Gettysburg comes back the TV stuff.

Now, NEWSROOM would probably be the other one that really just people jump on before, which is good. It's all good stuff. You want you want one movie or one TV show in your career that outlives you, right? I've got I'm lucky I got a few.

Well, going way back to Terms of Endearment, you're in that movie and it's just completely loaded. And it's the most Oscar Beedi movie of all time. Right. It's got an iconic necklaced performance. James L. Brooks, Shirley MacLaine, Debra Winger, who's like an A plus list star at the at the time.

And you're like the new guy at it, the 20 year old. Who are you? Yeah. Yeah, I was I was I took the part that no one else in Hollywood would take because he was so unlikable. Yeah. You cheat on Debra Winger of all people when she has cancer, if not good for my brand.

My client's going to pass on that. You could just hear it. And I was like, oh, and I'll do it. I'll do it. I'm off Broadway. I'll do it. I learned so much on that movie, so much watching Jack work. And I remember Jim Brooks came up to Jack and said, Jack, I want to try something and we're going to go out on a limb a little bit with this idea. And Jack said, I like going out on a limb.

And so I get in trouble out there, you know, and I I was I would go to the set, not work and watch Jack. Wow. And it was a great education on that kind of freeness. That film acting allows you that Jack doesn't know what he's going to do on Take Three. And it's it was like, oh, wow, the freedom of that. Now you got to be Jack to be able to do that. But I also got to sit there and watch dailies.

Jim Brooks would let me come in and watch Jack's dailies or any dailies not he wouldn't let me watch it, my stuff, which was fine. But I remember seeing the two shot of Jack and Shirley in the kitchen where he tells her I'm one of a hundred and six astronauts, you know, and he does this thing and they did like ten takes of it. And I saw him when he wasn't good. The first few tapes, he didn't quite know it.

He didn't. He wasn't. It just wasn't. And then about take six, it happened. And then seven and then eight was different than seven. And then nine. And then ten. And now ten. Shirley doesn't know what's going to happen. Right. And after that, Jim Brooks turned to me and said, which one do I use? You know, and it was just such an education on on in front of the camera film acting.

Your guy, Aaron Sorkin, had him on the podcast a few years ago and was asking about the famous few good bad story about Jack, where he does the colonel just subscene, and then he's supposed to leave so they can get the shots of. All right. All right, Tom Cruise, you're going to do your stuff, Jack. You can go over there. Then we got to get Kevin Pollak's. And Jack's like, no, no, I'm going to stay here and I'm going to I'm going to do it every single time.

I love this. I don't want to leave and is in all the takes. And and so we're going to say that it was such like a window into why that guy has been such a success. You wouldn't have thought of leaving. Like, why would I leave? I get to keep acting. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a great lesson. There's a great especially courtroom scenes and dinner scenes. They're just death. They take weeks to shoot because you got to go so many different things, right? You sit there forever that you finally get around, are you? And you don't know what you're saying anymore.

Yeah. You know, I've had so many actors and actresses on here at this point, and a recurring theme seems to be, yeah, obviously the talent is a huge piece of it, but, you know, some sort of luck early along the way, like some role you got or somebody who passed through your life, stuff like that. Terms of endearment. Looking back, it's kind of insane that you that that's your first movie. You think of all the first movies you could have had, like first big movie.

I mean, there was one I mean, I was in ragtime, but I had like two or three scenes. Yeah. I mean, like real part. Yeah. I think the biggest part was true. Yes. And and again it was because nobody else wanted it. Yeah. And I was, I was cheap. I worked for the minimum. So it was it. And Deborah, I met with Debra, she okayed me.

So she had power at that point. Oh yeah. Oh sure.

Sure. And showed up. Right. But yeah I remember. And then it came out and. It came out in Thanksgiving at Thanksgiving and Raiders of the Lost Ark was kind of the big thing and a lot of those kind of movies. So there really wasn't a well written character driven with smart, funny dialogue. We haven't seen one of those in a while. So we plus we had those three megastars, so we jumped right out. Right. And then the Oscar nominations came out.

And as a friend of mine said, even the guy who combed your hair got nominated.

And I didn't I didn't know you guys, OK? There was no bias. No, I was OK. I was 28. And it was it was I had to watch the Oscars at home and and I was OK. You know, you're going what? But you're it was good. It was good. And then right after that, I got the purple rose of Cairo with Woody Allen. And that was a big break. A huge break.

Right. You know, it's funny you mention how people hate that character. There are actors that have trouble shaking that, like I would say that Tony Goldwyn and Ghost, which is the go goes for this podcast called the Re Watchable. And he's so hateful in that movie because basically he got Sweezy killed and it was hard to see him in other movies without thinking he was the guy from Ghost. Like, you take this baggage, you're the audience to the next movie with this person and you're able to shed that, obviously.

But I remember that at the time, hating your character so much in terms of endearment.

That was yeah, that was the running I'd get in a cab in New York because you were in terms of endearment. I said, yeah, God, I hated you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. You know, you get that, you know, Redford said when he did Sundance, I mean, he's gorgeous anyway, but that's kind of what he got, were those quiet, silent, great, handsome leading man roles. And I certainly got the either the cheating husband or the flawed hero or the the secondary character who wasn't up to the qualities of the leading man, something.

That's kind of what I got stuck with. And, you know, it took something like Dumb and Dumber to blow that all up, which is one of the reasons I did that.

I would say something wild for me that was that kind of opened the ceiling in my brain for you, where I was like, oh, the guy from terms of damage, look at this stuff.

And it was kind of like, I don't know what to expect from him now. Yeah.

And it really that was me ripping off Jack Lemmon and Dick Van Dyke. Right. I had a baby. That's who Charlie Drew was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was the kind of movie that when I as I was growing up, they made those movies and that that movie was kind of an omeje to those movies. Now that those movies don't get made anymore like that, we just think two stars and you just kind of unleashed them.

Now, you'd be wearing like a comic book suit, comic book suit in front of a green screen talking to a tennis ball.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I guess now that it's just kind of morphed into TV and stuff like that.

Well, what's happened is and Jim Gandolfini started it with The Sopranos, he and David Chase, the all the writing's gone, gone there to the cable side, you know, HBO, Netflix, Showtime, Hulu, you name it. There's 20 of them now. That's where all the writers went. They were they were respected there. They didn't, like, hire you to write three drafts and then fire you and have somebody come in and punch up the jokes.

And next thing you know, you're on a set and you realize that seven people have had their hands on this and it looks like it. Right. And so that that's where all the writing went, which is which is where all those movies like Something Wild or Jane told me that Jane Fonda said the movies I made they would make now. But the writers have gone on the other side of the dial, so to speak. And that's that's good for guys like me.

That's good.

You know, I had a couple of years ago, Paul Thomas Anderson was on here and we were talking about Boogie Nights, which was this, you know, the second thing he ever made. And at that point nineteen ninety five, ninety six, your dream is to make a giant big movie with a bunch of stars. And I was like, nowadays, wouldn't that be like an eight episode, I don't know, Amazon show or HBO show? And you get more money, you get to explore the characters further.

And he was and he probably would have done that. You have the production value. You have the money to do it right. And as an actor, you get to you get to shoot the novel. You're not shooting the short story, the 90 the 100 page, 100 minute script with you know, you've got you've got you get more to do. And the writing is better. And they with Godless, with Netflix, you know, they it's got Frank had that Western for I.

We shot the look out in Winnipeg in two thousand and three or something and it's just I've got this to our western. Nobody will make it. Yeah. And he kept trying for ten years and then he finally went to Netflix and they'll go, can you make it seven hours, you know, and it just, it just changed. For guys like me, it's gold. It's why I'm still in the business.

Well, you you've you I don't want to say you've reinvented yourself, but I like how you've always moved in different directions. And I think that started in the eighties where not really ever knowing what to expect from me. I mean, in ninety four I think it was ninety four, you made Speed and Dumb and Dumber in the same year. Yeah. And those are two of the most very watchable movies of the last thirty years. Speed is iconic.

I mean that, that basically created the summer blockbuster, you could say Jaws and the movies like that, but I remember watching that happen. Before it came out, because that was the height of the premier magazine and the whole movie culture and kind of knowing what was coming and the speed is like this movie's getting such insane buzz, they're moving it up. It's like, well, they're moving up speed. I didn't know what speed was. So they're moving it up.

Yeah, they want to get a jump on the summer. What does that mean?

It's a story about a bus.

Can't go under 55, you know, but you're in it. And spoiler alert, I say everyone's seen it. But, you know, that was a great gimmick of like, your guy dies halfway through. That wasn't like a common movie thing. Now they try to swerve us like that all the time. But in the mid 90s when you died, it was like, holy shit, they killed Jeff Daniels. How did they do that?

When I got that script, the career wasn't in a great place at that point. And I got that script and. I died on page 22, I died in the elevator shaft. Kiona and I were in the elevator looking for whoever and I fall down and I die. I'm going the is in trouble, but it's not in that much trouble past. And they go, no, no, no. We got another draft. You die later. Oh, how many pages later?

Like page eighty five or something out of hundred and twenty. And in the House I said all right I'm in and and I got to work with Keanu who was at the height of his fame or while pre pre matrix. And I remember the scene where I go into the house. And then I turn and look at the thermostat and I realize it's hooked up to the bomb, and then a second later the house blows up with me in it and I'm going, how am I going to do this?

And I remember an interview that Roy Scheider did. And they asked Roy Roy, when you saw that shark in the water and you were standing at the end of the boat, the look on your face, oh my God, what acting Roy said, I just looked down. Scrunched my cheeks up and then when I saw the shark, I let him drop, it was just a cheek thing. So I did that. And it's the most memorable face had critics say that moment, that moment.

Still, many students are studying that moment. I'm going just dropping some cheek muscles.

I think it's almost a perfect action movie. It's exhilarating the whole time, it's got a huge star, it's got a great sidekick, and then Sandra Bullock had an awesome point in her career when she's not a star yet. But you could tell she is great being on the bus. Totally watchable. You can happen at any point. It's you know, it's perfect. And it's been funny that he's been able to three different times kind of rejuvenate. That kind of action, he does it with The Matrix and then he comes back as John Wick and this decade the same kind of thing, these very watchable action things.

I'm surprised that he was in an action movie in ninety four. You see you see that coming. It would speed just Quijano is the lead as like this, you know, superhero type, because he hadn't played anybody like that before.

I mean, you know, I never thought about it. I'm going on, you know, Kiyono of course he fits that kind of, you know, come in. Yeah. And, and look at the fact that he's still going. I admire anybody who can last decades, you know, and that's, that's an achievement in this, you know, business where you find out you're over on Tuesday.

Right. So you're in with him. He becomes the super duper star. Same here with Jim Carrey. Yeah. Who has one of the great years of all time. He said that movie is Dumb and Dumber, is that they spent years in the mask on the same year. He rips, rips out three megahits, and by the end of it, he's a plus plus less superstar who can make every movie he wants. But when you film Dumb and Dumber with them, he wasn't famous like that, right?

No.

And you're right. It was it was Jim Carrey became Jim Carrey. Yeah. When we were shooting Dumb and Dumber, he had he had shot and released Ace Ventura. Which did well, but was what it was. And he had shot mask and the word was it was good. But they were still cutting it, so we're starting to shoot down the number, so we're into we're halfway through, we're in the spring, so we're halfway shooting. It's early May.

Jim leaves on a Friday night, flies to Cannes to do the premiere of Mask on Saturday, and then flies back to shoot on Monday back in Salt Lake City, where we were. And when he came back from the premiere of Mascotte at the Cannes Film Festival, it was starting to happen. And Jim was the same way we finished shooting. And then six months later, when we were doing Press for Dumb and Dumber, it was it had happened and Jim was still there.

I mean, we were still still friends and good friends, but there were ten people around him and it was just vom. I saw it happen to Chris Reeve. I saw it happen to Bill hurt Keanu a little bit indirectly. Yeah. I've been to Emma Stone, Ryan Reynolds. I did a little independent movie with them before. They were you know, they blew up. Yeah, I'm kind of that guy you stand next to if you want to blow it.

I didn't see that on your IMDB, but that's that's that's a good quality. You know, it's people always say when that happens, the person doesn't change right away, but everything around them changes. And how they they're the same person, everything around them is different. And how they deal with that ends up shaping what happens next.

It's whether it happens to Jim Carrey or someone like me. The people around you change. Yeah. And and. Just little things, you know, their voices get higher, they talk faster, just some of that stuff happens that throws you off. You know, everybody wants something, they want their peace. Yeah, they're entitled to part of what your success is. They're entitled to some of that. What do you mean no? Why are you telling me no?

Right. So they don't teach you how to deal with that and start school. You know, you got to kind of have to learn how to deal with that.

You mentioned Chris Reeve and William Hurt. Is that like a like a Broadway thing? We were we were attacked at that stage actor.

We were in an off Broadway play together in 77, I think called My Life at Circle Rep. And we shared a dressing room. Bill hurt Chris Reeve and me. Holy shit. I was twenty two. Bill was trying to decide whether he was going to take a love story to. If they couldn't make a deal with Ryan O'Neal, Ryan wanted more money than they were willing to pay. And Bill was kind of on standby and he was wrestling with the decision.

And then Chris Reeve came in with a week to go in the run of this play that had been killed. We were playing to 20 people a night and said I got to fly to London after Sunday's matinee and screen test for Superman on Monday. But, oh, don't worry, I'll be back on Tuesday to finish the run. And Bill, Bill tried to talk him out of it, said, you can't do that, you cannot do that, you're an artist, you cannot do that.

All the reasons I'm over there sitting, eating Eminem is going, wow, can I go?

You know? And then he came back and he got it. He got it. Was it? They were in there. I just read of a whole thing about this movie and they're trying to cast that. They're trying to cast all these stars. And no stars wanted to wear the suit and they realized they had to get somebody who is relatively anonymous because like Warren Beatty was supposed to be Sabban at one point. And it's all about you have to look incredible in that suit.

And it's not like Batman where you can stack it up in the chest and add some things. It's like you're pretty naked in there. So they realized they had to go with the unknown, but that makes sense.

Got to get nobody will do it. All right. Let's get the best unknown we can get and let's break somebody in. And Chris Reeve broke with that role.

Well, then use use the supporting actors to put your star power around the other. William Hurt. He comes out of the gate and he's in like seven famous movies in a row and I think got nominated for like Oscars like three, four years in a row. But it was always like a famously intense guy was. He'd like that in the 70s. Well, I've always been fascinated by. Oh, yeah.

And Bill's always he's always been really focused, really intense. He's an artist, man. He's an artist. And and if if it's not right for him, he doesn't do it. He's one of those guys. Debra was never winger's like that as well. But yeah, Bill Bill's really intense, really intense. He's a good guy and a good guy. I got along with him. Fine. When when Bill would get too intense, I'd go bill about them.

Yankees, come on.

Did you audition for Big Joe? No, no. Have you been in a movie with him? No, have I been I been I don't think so. Well, I did a TV thing with Bill for Fifth of July. No, that was Richard Thomas. Bill had done the original one, the a play I did in 1978, a circle rep off Broadway, Bill Hurt played the lead role and I was played his lover in a play called Fourth of July by Lincoln Wilson.

That's where we worked together. So we needed Dumb and Dumber.

How much ad libbing was in that? Oh, what how much ad libbing, how much did they let you loose on that one? I wouldn't say there was a lot, there was some. But Jim would kind of let me know, yeah, I'm going to riff on the song The Mockingbird song, OK, and you just go with them, but it's almost like stage acting well before it's like rolling off somebody's performance.

But you don't know what quirk they might throw into it.

Yeah, but it should be on. It should also be film acting. You know, it's act. React. Spencer Tracy is one of the best reactors we've ever had and but people are so busy acting in front of a mirror that that it looks like it and it feels like it. But when you start to go play ping pong back and forth with somebody like Jim Carrey or Meryl Streep, my God, you're in there doing half your work for you with Dumb and Dumber two.

It was. You know, the studio wanted a comedian to go next to Jim, yeah, Jim, Jim wanted an actor because I need somebody who's going to react and make me listen. And it's a buddy buddy movie. I'm a solo performer. I need someone who's going to make me listen. It's two guys, not one. And so he really insisted on the actor. And and when you go in and one of the reasons that he didn't want a comedian was that they would try to top each other.

Yeah. Like comedians do it is this is this is this that's not what we're doing here. And so so how do I fit in? And I made the decision, I think, on day two of shooting where the light bulb went off. I'm going, oh, my God. I'm on the puppy on a leash. Lloyd is tugging the leash. You know, Lloyd is the leader because Jim's going to lead anyway. It's instinct. So you just follow you go wherever Lloyd wants you to.

And so when he pulls you, you know, just put yourself on a one second delay. Harry, what? You know, just put yourself just let him pull you through the scene. And then it worked. Then it worked. You know, they make that mistake sometimes with comedies where they'll put the big ass comedians together. And you're right. They when they try to start topping each other and competing with each other, you can kind of feel it in the move and it is going to do it.

I mean, improv has a place, you know, like the most annoying sound in the world and Dumb and Dumber that was just throwing something there. Dumb and Dumber two. And there was more ad libbing. Would you try and more stuff? And I would just roll with them. But I you know, I stuck to the script. You know, I haven't taken any improv classes. So, you know, I know there's a whole you got to learn how to do that and.

And I just never did. And so it was there wasn't that much ad libbing on the first one. It was pretty there was a lot of precision. Yeah. You know, you got to get the set up, right, to get the joke. And if you fuck the setup up or if you are trying to top his joke or something else, then we didn't get the first joke. And it's so there was a there was kind of a not a scientific approach, but a one and a two and a three and then hide that there was a lot of technique going on so that we could get the jokes that that the Farrelly brothers wanted.

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Back to Jeff Daniels. So I'm a child of divorce. You made one of the iconic divorce movies, The Squid and the Whale.

It's. I don't know what the with the pantheon is, but it's on there with Kramer vs. Kramer and a couple others. It's. It's not a feel good movie. It's painful, but you must get a ton of reaction to that one from from kids of divorce rate, I would assume. Yeah, I mean, a little bit.

It's one of those that not everyone has seen, but it's yeah, it certainly was an honest portrayal. Noah Baumbach. And, you know, he wrote it and he directed it. And that was another one of those singular voice, there weren't three writers on it, it was one writer. They had just enough money to make it. We shot that thing. And I remember on the day we wrapped the movie, it was like, nobody's going to see this.

We're not going to get we had no distribution. This is well, it was fun working with Laura. And then the Toronto Film Festival got it, then the New York Festival got it. And then it was off to the races. Yeah, to me, he was like Soderbergh, where, you know, his his early movie was so good, you just knew, you know, sometimes the go in a couple of different directions, but you just knew he was going to be involved in some big movies.

So any time he had anything. I was always excited because I love kicking and screaming, it's one of my favorite movies. And when I was like, oh, he's making a divorce movie, I was like, oh, no. And now he just did it again. It's almost like in a weird way he made it, did he? May I don't even know if it's a sequel. It's like a cousin. Yeah, but same one like and that's probably in the pantheon too.

But so I mean, it's a topic it's so funny.

So many people get divorced and. Yeah, it's not in that many movies. It's not that many movies successful either.

Yes, I. And then he cast Anna Paquin as my love interest. Which, you know, Anna and I had been done to fly away home, and she was, I think, 12 at the time, along with now she was early 20s. I said, no. He goes, yes, I just Kastor, you know, for those playing along at home and go, Oh, nice, nice. I remember we were shooting a scene where Jesse Eisenberg opens the door and I'm in a bedroom and I'm standing there and I got my hands up and his shirt and my hands on her breasts.

And and we're getting ready to shoot in Anna standing there and I'm standing there and, you know, the cinematographer's is one second I got to change imag something and I'm going to look out the window. Oh, my God. And I said, Anna, she knows what I said. Look at the geese.

To the newsroom, yeah. Was it two years or three, I can't remember three, two and a half, but three, two and a half.

Yeah, Sirkin's been on this podcast. We did a watchable to a friend of the program. What was your your your voyage, your first voyage with them on a TV show like that in a route where you're the lead. Was it going into that?

You're like, first of all, this is the closest you can come to actually being on stage, but actually be on TV with the amount of words you probably had to memorize. But what were your expectations versus how it played out?

I looked at that as. The project that would keep me in the business. I was I was I had had enough and I wasn't going to play the asshole father of some twenty eight year old who was going to make 10 million and couldn't remember his lines, I wasn't going to be that actor. And so I was going to get out. I could be done. And and then. We heard about it, and so we pitched me and Aaron and Scott Rudin, it's gotten to me from from Broadway, God of Carnage, I think, and.

Colonel Scott Neumi from the hours, anyway, they met with me at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York, I went right to the top of the list. Erin had seen apparently Purple Rose of Cairo and had really liked me since then. As so I was, oh, my God, let's meet him. And the only thing that I had to show him was he wasn't sure I could be angry enough to be Will McAvoy. Outraged and so you go, OK, and I got tipped to that, the agent said, Ruden says he needs to be angry.

Oh, OK. So we were sitting in the breakfast room of the Four Seasons Hotel and all that. And so I just told a story about something that had happened and I ended up slamming the table. And, you know, people are turning around and looking at Aaron's go, OK, all right, OK.

Just, you know, that's not good. Good, good. And and I said, look, you know, I'd love to do this, Aaron. And ever since West Wing and I told him and I said I watched West Wing to watch the right. Yeah, I watch that writing coming down the hall. I watch that writing in the room. You know, you watch you watch network with Paddy. That's Paddy Chayefsky Row. And you want Paddy Chayefsky in that room when you're watching it, you want to know that that was written by somebody like Paddy Chayefsky.

It's not just William Holden and Faye Dunaway. Great performances, but there's a third person in there. It's the same thing. When you read a great novel, you want to know that it's been written by somebody who knows what they're doing. And West Wing showed me that. And so I was I looked at it as a great opportunity to get me interested in being an actor again. So when I got the gig. You know, it was they only had to tell me once, no ad libbing and memorize it exactly as he wrote it, don't add or subtract a word she would, you know, how to do, right?

Well, that's one of your best skills.

That's the theater, you know. I mean, that goes from back to circle rep off Broadway, Lanford Wilson. Why are you saying it that way? That's not what I wrote. Yes, sir. So you're you know, and it's also respect for the writer. Yeah. It's only when you get scripts that like three or four writers and with notes from a junior executive that are shoved into there, that's when you got to start ad libbing and improvising to fucking make it sound like you're a human being right now.

Something was set in that so were there. And you get to, oh, I'm all I have to do is write it. So. So that was the deal. And and I told him to tell all the directors because I'd have a different director every week. And that was a different experience. You know, you do a movie, it's one director, you do TV show nine episodes. It's usually at least seven directors. Right. I said, you tell every director that with me it's five words or less.

If they come to me, I mean, I'll memorize every word and you'll never hear anything you didn't write and I'll try to hit what you intended, plus add some other stuff to make it lift. But five words or less if they if they can't explain it to me and what they want me to do in five words and less tell them to stay in the chair. That was the deal. That's a good word. And they did. It just stops directors from becoming Orson Welles.

And, you know, and it's the thing of it's just tell me what time it is.

Don't tell me how the watch works. So and that worked faster, slower, sadder, more angry. I remember the second take of the greatest Americans. America's not the greatest country in the world. Speech Greg Mottola came over and just in the second half of it, a little more melancholy. Got it. And that's the take they used the first take. I was angry all the way to the end. The second take. MacAvoy sits back and wishes the country could be that.

That was Greg Matola. Probably coming from Aaron or Greg doesn't matter. But it was like, what, five words or less? Just give me that and 16 things will happen based on that.

That was such a polarizing show. Some people loved it.

Other people became one of the first real Twitter argument shows like as as Twitter started to gain a real voice, which is now has way too much of a voice, way too much of a voice.

Could you feel that happening even as you were making the show? How polarizing was?

No, we remember, Aaron, I think we did nine episodes, maybe ten and near the seventh or eighth, I remember Aaron. Bringing us all together in the newsroom and just saying we've been in a bubble for seven or eight episodes and we're almost done. When this is aired, we are no longer going to be in a bubble, so just enjoy this now. Yeah, because when this comes out, not everybody's going to agree with what I've done.

Right. And sure enough. And we took it, we took aim, we took aim at some people, at the media, we you know, some of them listened, some of them didn't. It's an interesting show now, given everything that's happened over the last few years, I almost wonder, like, was that show too early? Was it the perfect time? What would it look like if that show was created in twenty nineteen is it would have been impossible to even do that?

I don't know. What do you what do you think? What would have been the perfect year to launch that show? I don't know, I think it would be more or less either. I think it would be ignored now. I don't think it causes too much noise, too much noise. And you're not going to stop the media from covering Trump in the first five minutes of every single newscast. That certainly has been the case in the primary leading up to the 2016 election.

When? When. You know, on Meet the Press. When he gets to call in. You have to come in to Meet the Press. You have to sit across the table from Tim Russert. Now and then you can call in and the reason we're going to let him call in is because more people will watch the show in the first 10 minutes if he calls in. So we're going to allow that. And I think Aaron and I certainly had an issue with that.

It's just stuff like that, just like don't make it easy for these guys right now. Make America and Trump would have had to sit across from Chuck Todd or whomever and and, you know, answer some questions. You know, that's what you want. And I and I think we've got people out there doing that. I think they're doing a great job of trying to inform the public in a way that they made that maybe weren't able to do so before Trump came into, you know, came into our consciousness as a presidential candidate.

They certainly are aware of their responsibility now. And I don't think NEWSROOM had much to do with that. I think they they get it.

Now, the Comey thing that you're doing now for Showtime, September 27th, the Komarow, did you what did you just like the project or did you feel like you wanted to be part of a project that was tied into something that was happening in the last five years?

Lanford Wilson, who wrote the play I was in with Way Back in Circle Rep with Bill and Hurt, told me when I was leaving the theater to kind of chase movies. He said, make it matter. Make it count. I mean, he wrote it into a script I have that he had written and and you don't always get to do that. Yeah, but me mattered. We were going to air this thing before the election, you get to play a very controversial figure and it's going to be relevant and it will inform people in a way that maybe they weren't informed in 2016 about what happened, what he did and how it affects us.

Now, that's those are all reasons to do something that's a better project to be in than something that you shoot and then people forget it as soon as it's over. And I've been in those two.

Well, I read that you used to wear lifts to even seem taller, which is funny because you're like the fourth tallest actor in Hollywood.

I get to have lifts like it's like Clint Eastwood. Then, you know who else is six two. And Tim Robbins. Tim Robbins. Robbins can get up there. Get up there.

Ben Affleck is like a solid six. Two and a half is a good. Yeah, good. Yeah, that's stunning. It's stunning when you meet your heroes. Schwarzenegger, you know, Sly Stallone is like five seven.

Sly Stallone, you just go, no, I can't I can't deal with this. I can't deal with this. No. Yeah.

I wanted I was looking for anything and I said, I want two inch lifts in my shoes, which will get me up to six foot five. At least I'll feel like I'm six foot eight. Yeah, but then you meet Jim Comey and you're still looking up. So, you know, I needed Elton John's Flatworm platform shoes.

How does this cut through all the noise? I mean, there's so much Trump related noise every day. How does this project cut through that as its own kind of thing? I think people might be curious about what happened, really that might lure them to cut through and watch it. I also think it played Billy, cut it and wrote it like a thriller. Yeah, and so it holds as it just does. What happens next? Oh, my God, what what are you going to do now in holds in that way of storytelling, which I think is a great plus for people to hang onto it and come back for the second night and all that stuff.

And I also, too, I remember I watched it, Bill, and I, I didn't realize I was shooting it, but when I got done watching it, I turn it off and I said, oh, my God, it was just the beginning. This was just we had no idea of the next three years of chaos and madness that would make this look far less than it was at the time. Right. You know, at that that's what hit me.

And I think people will it'll it'll it's like the first two. It's like watching going rules, like watching the first inning of a baseball game and then turning out and finding out you lost 22 to three.

I got a chance to see you on stage in April 12, 19, To Kill a Mockingbird. Oh, I went back. You'll like this. I went back with my my family went to that and then wrestle mania, like maybe a day later.

So it was quite a weekend. Oh, yeah. I think it might have been the only person who ripped it off in the same week.

It's great when tourists come to New York. We always like we always enjoy. There's so much for them to do.

I thought the play was just outstanding and good. I'm not like a huge stage guy, really. I'm more of a movie TV.

I'm an only child. I thought I was just and I saw Serkin a couple of months later because did a rewash troubles with us? And, you know, when you're praising somebody, it's that you never want to go overboard because it's OK. I was so impressed with the detail.

Of every single piece of it, like even how they were doing the SAT and then the actors and just every single piece of it was so carefully, perfectly picked, it was just so impressive and that, you know, I've been to enough places where you can kind of tell the difference. But it was just like, was that going to a really good restaurant where everything is just top of the line, you know, or a cigar? The waiter is fucking great.

Oh, man, they took my plates. I didn't even notice. And there's just like 19 things going on. It's just like the highest level of it. And it really felt that way. Did it feel like that to be in it? After we opened, yeah, and that's the hope every time and it who's in the cast, who's directing? Are the sets good enough? What are they what's the director doing? Why is he you know, there's so much that can go wrong so fast.

And we had forty five previews. We opened our first preview was November 1st, twenty eighteen. And then we opened I think on December 13th, like six weeks later as forty five warm up shows where er is that usual.

Like they do.

They usually do forty five warmup shows you know, but it was a lot. It substitutes now for the out of town. In the old days you'd go play Detroit, you go play Boston, you played Philly, work out all the details and then you bring it into New York and cross your fingers. Forty five. It's less expensive to do forty five previews and then bring the cast in every day. And here are 30 pages of rewrites. I mean every day we were rehearsing and here and we're putting it rewrites.

He's cutting that line. He's cutting that phrase. You have a new cue for that. We want you to stand over here now instead of over there. And we go on it a. And it's I remember one night I went on and I counted them, I had 30 changes. Wow. In one show and it was just like slalom, skiing, your slalom, skiing. I just did that change. When's the next one coming? And and you don't even know the lines that you've got that.

Well, you're still kind of you know, and that was that's as hard is as I've ever worked as an actor and all of us together going through that. And then they start hauling in the critics a week before opening. And so you've got to open seven times right before you even get to opening night, because one of those nights is going to be The New York Times and The Washington Post and Hollywood Reporter. And they're all coming. So it's and for me.

You're dealing with Gregory Peck for and you're dealing with an audience that came in, you could feel them in the first weekend of previews. Fourteen hundred people who bought their tickets six months ago and were bringing their paperback copy of the book, holding it right here, going, Wow.

Don't fuck this up for me. You could feel it. Wow. And then I walk out and usually there's the star. Applause Not so much. Not so much, because I prove it to them. It is prove it.

But it's also he's not Gregory Peck. I knew he wasn't going to be. I have an open mind. I'm still OK. Go ahead. You could feel it. And then you start to go. And then by the end of the first week, it's less of that. You're getting a good buzz, which is the good news. Um, previews. The buzz is good. Thank God. There's two more previews. And then about the hundredth performance, which for me was somewhere in late January, early February.

It takes a hundred shows to get on top of it.

Oh, that's I'll say now that that's why I waited. I wanted to make sure you got the one hundred that we had.

We had about April. It was all tourists and we kind of phoned it in because we knew the national media was in town. The tourism in the south, the fucking audience was going to be at the Russell mania thing. Let's just it out there and get out of it.

That was April, right, David?

No, but if it takes it takes a long time to be able to write it and do with play with it. And that for me, that was about everywhere.

It was such a special experience to go to it. You were fantastic in the play and just everything. And then kind of the hidden subtext to where we are now as a country. And it just there was a lot going on and I thought I took my daughter. I think she was almost 14 at the time, but she loved it and she was just old enough to was the first time she saw Hamilton is the first like heavy dialogue play she had seen.

And it was was pretty cool. So that was like the best way to play could go. Yeah. Have you have you had a play that was just DOA? Like, you're opening night and you're like, this is going to bomb, this is a disaster because you've been in a few of these. Yes. You don't have to say the play. No, I usually it was off Broadway. Yeah. And that was back when the reviews would come out.

And they were kind of the 12 print reviews in New York City for your off Broadway show. And you need them. You need them. And you get panned across the board and it's over and you're in a hundred and fifty seat theater off Broadway in Sheridan Square.

And there are eight people out there tonight and nine nine people in the cast. And you, like you always do. You ask the stage manager if the cast outnumbers the audience, do we have to do the show? And the answer was always, yes, you have to do the show. Who's the best actor you've ever seen on stage? I'm. There are different kinds of actors I saw Gil Good, John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson do a Pinter play.

And that's the English there was there was so much brilliant technique and timing and. Not a wasted move. I saw Al Pacino in Pablo Hommel in late 70s, I think, and Al was all over the place. He was. He was I had seen Dog Day Afternoon in college and that was whatever Al Pacino was doing in that movie. I want to go find out how to do that. And that means I have to go to New York City.

And that took me to New York City, that movie. And then I saw him on Broadway and he was like electric. He was on fire. You didn't know what he was going to do. And instead of learning about Al's approach and process, he didn't know what he was going to do. And so those are two different kinds of performances that were equally, you know, I wish I'd seen Olivier on Broadway.

I was going to ask because one of my favorite writers is William Goldman. And he always said, Olivier was I forget what play it was, but it was like that was that was the standard.

Yeah. Yeah. I said that in the 50s. I can't remember. Yeah. Yeah. The entertainer maybe. Yeah. Well, congrats on that. That was awesome. Good luck with the good luck with the Comi rule on Showtime. Thank you very much. Thanks for all the entertainment over the years, too.

It's nice to meet you and really enjoyed your work over the years. I hate Russell mania, but I'm not that. Thanks for coming out.

All right. That's it for the podcast. We have one more coming Thursday night. It's been Rosillo playing off all kinds of stuff this week.

Man, that'll be an action packed on plus. Don't forget about me on C.C. Sabathia and Ryan Rukia show are to see to that's going to be Wednesday and I made a cameo on Rasselas podcast as well. He had Jeff Pearlman on, who wrote a really good book about the 96 to 04 Lakers. And I just kind of crashed the pod and joined the second half of it, talked about Kobe and Phil Jackson, everybody.

So a lot for you to listen to. Don't forget to go to the ring or. Com. Don't forget about the ring and podcast network. See you here on Thursday night with Priscilla.