Jesse Eisenberg

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert.

I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Modest Mouse.

Hi.

Hello there.

Hello there.

Hello there.

Jesse Eisenberg.

This is a reunion for he and I, as you'll find out. We met one other time.
Yes. I really enjoy Jesse Eisenberg.
I enjoyed him so much. Truly.
And when I was listening back, I was like, holy, this guy is great. He's a special dude.
He is. And he's very quick.
He's very funny. Mm-hmm.
He was a joy. He is incredible.
He's an Academy Award nominated actor, filmmaker. Did I say actor? Is he a blessing? He's a borderline blessing.
Wow. And he's a playwright.
The Social Network. Come on, guys.
Now you see me. There's two, three, third comment maybe?

Zombieland.

Oh, Fleischman in Trouble.

Great show.

When you finish Saving the World

and his movie is out right now,

A Real Pain,

which is a bona fide great movie.

I hope people check out this movie.

It's so, so good.

It's so unique and honest and great.

Please enjoy Jesse Eisenberg.

The Blessing.

The Blessing. You don't watch Christmas Vacation enough.
Oh, I don't. Let's have Aunt So-and-So say Grace.
Grace? She's been dead for years. No, The Blessing.
They want you to say The Blessing. He's pointing at his teeth.
Why is he pointing? Because he's very old and he has a toupee and it catches on fire. A lot's going on on that.

Please enjoy Jesse Eisenberg.

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He's an armchair expert.

He's an armchair expert.

He's an armchair expert. How are you? Hi.

Welcome.

I'm sorry I'm late.

Oh, that's okay.

Thanks for having me here.

Yeah.

Oh, you smelled delightful.

Oh, you too?

Did you have any comments on that?

I did not.

Did you guys embrace?

We shook hands.

You shook hands.

I'm wearing perfume.

Is it possible it's me?

Yeah, I think it's her.

I'm not. Did you guys embrace? We shook hands.
I'm wearing perfume. Is it possible it's me? Yeah, I think it's her.
It's definitely not me. No, no, go smell him.
Only if it's allowed. Only if you can smell it.
I really smell everywhere. Yeah, you do smell nice.
Yeah, it smells fantastic. You do, you do.
This was just given to me. By someone else.
By somebody else, yeah. Well, that person smells great.
So maybe she smelled great, yeah. My compliments are the former owner of that sweater.
Oh, no, no, she's a stylist. So perhaps she sprays everything before she gives it to me.
I'm being dressed for the next month. That's a fun first question.
Is most of your wardrobe comprised of shit you've collected on sets? Only. One time I had taken my clothes from a movie and then we had to do promotion of the movie.
And so I just changed out the clothes I had with the new version for the promotion. My lawyer called me and she said, Sony called.
You have to send back the new versions that you replaced. So there is a risk.
You can get caught. That's a ding, ding, ding, because my only really sad experience I ever had with wardrobe was Sony.
Really? Because in this movie's a third, they made this really cool astronaut's outfit for me. And again, there were several and I wanted it said no you can't have it and i said well i'll pay for it and they said no you can't pay for it and then years years later i know you're not on social media but like 15 years later someone sent me a link to it being sold on ebay for like 15 bucks it's sold or something completely insignificant serious yes the whole astronaut outfit and like, those sons of bitches, I would have given them more than $15.
Wait, who was selling it? I imagine Sony just was like, we got to get rid of all this. We need 15 bucks? We got to get 15 bucks by Friday.
Oh my God. We're going to be kicked out of these offices.
They maybe thought that it was going to be such an enormous hit that it would be at the Smithsonian and then it would end up being worth millions and millions. Yeah, maybe we were both thinking the same thing.
And then it came out and just didn't do that. Didn't really do that.
I think it's eBay. Yeah, I think it's eBay time.
It could also be, you know, the company that made it. They could add duplicates.
I don't even know. I don't want to throw Sony out of them.
Were they selling it as a Zathura branded thing? Great question. I have forgotten.
We'll have to do some research on this. Okay, got it.
Yeah, maybe you can have an intern. Okay, this is always a stressful question to hear out loud, especially in public.
But do you remember meeting me? Uh-oh. I was actually racking my brain trying to.
I'll paint a picture for you. Okay.
I don't know the year. It would be between 2008 and 2013 because that's when I shot the show.
But I was at Universal shooting Parenthood and I'm outside my trailer and I see a young gentleman across the way in front of one of the bungalows, I think having a cigarette. Were you a smoker? No.
You weren't a smoker. I could tell from a hundred yards.
I'm like, that's just. Oh my God.
Yes, I do remember. I could tell your body posture.
I just recalled this. Yes.
And I remember you were shooting there and I strolled across this great divide. Oh my God.
I know exactly the day. Of course.
I just harangued you. That's right.
I was doing a reshoot for a movie and you were shooting. I remember exactly where it was.
It was towards, Jesus Christ, I don't know any of the names of the streets out here. It was by whatever was closer to the street where you enter.
Anyway, I totally remember that. I mostly out of curiosity had to confirm, like, can I possibly be recognizing that's Jesse Eisenberg from this far away just by how he's standing?

Yes, there's no one with my posture that would possibly be in a movie.

I remember you were so sweet.

Yeah, I was there for one day doing reshoots.

Yeah.

And I came over and I'm like, I could tell as you from and you're like, okay, trying to take that in.

Like, that's a weird icebreaker.

And then we had a nice 15, 20 minute chat.

Yes.

I don't know why I remember you smoking, but I sexed you up a little bit. And you were holding it.
Yeah, I was holding it for him. Yeah.
He just like asked me to hold it, I swear. That's interesting.
Maybe I was, maybe I was going through a moment. Did you ever smoke? I've tried to smoke to relieve stress.
I tried to take it up and thought like, this will help my personality. And it just doesn't.
I thought this will calm me. And it does that little trick of you're finally breathing for the first time where you're taking like deep breaths.
I always thought if they can come up with a cigarette that didn't make me nauseous, I'd be a heavy smoker. Yeah, it's kind of poisonous.
I mean, I'm addicted to nicotine greatly. But not cigarettes.
I smoked for, I don't know, 15 years and it's miserable the first, I don't know, 100 cigarettes. You got to really stick with it.
You do. Okay.
I tried to and then I also tried to smoke during a movie where I was just feeling so stressful. And then this young assistant prop woman, she was really nice.
And we always used to talk and she was very friendly and nerdy. And she thought that we were kindred spirits.
And then she saw me smoking one day and she came over to me and she just said, I thought you were different. And I always felt such shame.
You had betrayed. Yes.
Whatever thing. Cause see, that was like a cool guy move.
She didn't know that I was feeling deep, genuine anxiety and just trying to do anything to relieve myself. It was before I was taking like antidepressants.
I was just trying anything. To regulate.
Exactly. And it occurred to me after she said that, that, oh, right, maybe it doesn't work on me anyway.
Well, I don't want you to say that, but okay. I do.
I don't think you need to pick it back up or anything. Yeah.
But I like his encouragement more. My overarching hunch is that you've convinced yourself there's a lot of things you can't pull off that you could.
Maybe that's true. Yeah.
So my gut's telling me you think you weren't pulling it off and you probably were. You know what? That's very savvy of you.
And as I get older, I start thinking more along those lines. Maybe I've kind of self-defined in a way that's actually maybe not the most accurate.
Yeah. This is one of Monica and I's longest standing battles.
I think she's cooler than she thinks she is. I encouraged her to shave.
I think I'm pretty cool, but he wants me to go extreme. He wants me to shave my hair.
No, no, just the side. I thought she could really pull off like kind of a punk.
One side. One side shaved.
I like that. Right? Picture her in that.
I like it too. On others, it's not that I don't think I'm cool enough for that.
It's just not me. Well, how do you know it's you until you try on some looks? Well, that's true because speaking of cigarettes, for Halloween, I was Mary-Kate and Ashley, one of them, current era.
And so I was holding a cigarette the whole time. I've never smoked in my life.
And so I wasn't smoking, but I was holding it. And I was like, it is cool.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course.
Unfortunately. There's a line in Manhattan where he goes, I don't smoke because it gives you cancer, but I look so incredibly handsome with a cigarette in my mouth.
Yeah. Yeah.
It's true. You don't want it to be true, but it is true.
Have you ever bought a car and then you got in the car and you're like, oh, fuck, I don't think I can do this.

Yeah, I got an Airstream.

Oh, OK.

I got like the smallest trailer.

Yeah, exactly.

But I guess I feel that way anytime I'm going in reverse.

But also, just like you'd stop at these campsites. I travel with my family and I would have to unhook the thing and I would always be asking

for help.

I was always just like the campsite's little brother just asking for help. Everybody.
Can you show me how to use this tool that I carry around for some reason? Well, you kind of answer the question. So that was my hobby as a kid.
So I'm pretty mechanical and we have a tour bus. And I say to my wife every time we're in it, because the entire time we're operating, it's breaking.
Like it's breaking real time as fast as I can fix anything. There's too much gadgetry on it.
Of course. And I always say to Chris, I'm like, what does your normal person who's not a mechanic do with these recreational vehicles? Is yours in constant need of something? 100%.
I mean, it flooded in Minnesota in the deep, deep winter. And of course, the thing would freeze and break if I didn't do anything about it.
And luckily, mechanics, they saw me in a movie, which is the only reason I got to get in there. You think the big thing's buying the item.
friend that's basically a down payment exactly i mean there were just mice in the inside of the airstream not on the inside of the airstream on the inside of the inside of the air like within the two walls yes do they eat any plumbing because mice ate plumbing in my bus and it was so expensive because i have all this water you know i have two toilets and shit they fucking ate through the plastic hoses we on vacation. All the water dumped on all the electronics, short-circuited everything in the bus, the shades, the lights, everything.
And then you found out later. This was the work of mice.
Oh, wow. A coordinated effort by mice.
What's the solution here? New fucking plumbing. But I mean, how do you get mice out of the things? Exactly.
How do you prevent the mice? Well, first I went on a mice killing spree, which was I put traps out in the bus with yummy, yummy peanut butter. Those ones were ethical.
And this fell on my sister, unfortunately. She had to go release them in Griffith Park.
I assume they came right back. The ones where it closes in the little box? Yeah, it's like a little resting area before we take our next trip.
Right, right. And they get the peanut butter.
What did you find? Just bits of foam chewed up everywhere and turds? I took it into a place and they said, yes, they had eaten the entire inner foam lining of the thing. Here's the other thing about mice.
They love eating plastic. Is that what it is? Are they actually eating it? They're eating it.
They're just chewing and spitting it out. Okay, great point.
I didn't see how much debris there was underneath. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
But yeah, they love insulation and wood. These things are not food.
No, but they thrive on it. Yeah, they really do.
We're currently trying to sell it. Yeah, that sounds right.
Well, this is a great place to offer it. We've made a great pitch for the product.
I think my wife was just asking the school moms, if anybody knows anybody, but this is a far wider reach. Yeah.
Oh yeah. Yeah, exactly.
Is there an info? Jesse Eisenberg's mouse ridden. Please in the comments, what's year and the size? 2017, 16 foot Bambi sport.
Beautiful. I would say good condition, but now you know.
Yeah, riddled with mice. Yeah, I was going to say never had mice, but now you know.
But I got it. I fixed it up.
It's mint condition. That's gorgeous.
So is it info at armchairexpert.org? Yes, that's exactly right. And just give me a number.
I don't want to have to start going through a whole thing. Yeah, and you don't want to be in a long-term negotiation.
Just throw out your final number. Listen, I'm easy.
We want to sell. The seller is very motivated.
Exactly. Where do you keep this? I live in New York, so I keep this on my mother's lawn in New Jersey.
Okay. And so when you guys want to go on a trip, you drive.
Do you run the truck or do you own a truck? During the pandemic, I bought my very first car, which was just a Jeep Cherokee. I never had a car because I'm in New York.
Then I gave it to my sister, so I don't have the car anymore either. So I have to go to my sister's, get the car.
Then I have to drive to my mom's. So it's a great way to visit your whole family.
Yes. Only to get 20 miles down the road and realize there's a major mechanical issue.
That's exactly it. Are you confident driving even though you've never had a car until a couple of years ago? Yes, it is a good question.

I'm confident.

My dad was a taxi driver in New York right before I was born,

and he taught me how to drive.

And so I guess the word would be cocky.

Okay, yeah, arrogant.

Arrogant driver, fearless to a dangerous degree.

Oh, okay, this is great.

So cars can be so healing because you're saying you feel very confident

and it sounds like you're aggressive in the car.

Oh, I see where you're going.

Yes.

Why don't I use that as the real me and smoke a cigarette out the window of my Jeep? Spit tobacco out the windows. Yeah, exactly.
You have a piss jar like in Crazy Heart. Monica's shaved head blowing in the wind.
Oh, fuck yeah. Exactly.
Riding on the roof. One side of her head blowing in the wind, the other side having a sheer breeze.
This is a good movie. This is Monica and Jesse go wild.
This is a great movie. Because I'm pretty tame as well.
But I do think the car. So we OK, you were brought home as a little tiny bambino to Queens.
Wow. Yes.
OK. But then when do we move to New Jersey? Wow.
Oh, you're already impressed. Wow.
That's not so impressed. Very cursory.
I'll get deeper. Are you serious? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I have your physical from 10th grade. Well, you're in luck because it's the same physical right now.
Yeah, we went to New Jersey when I was five years old and then I grew up in the suburbs. But I left when I was 18, so I got my license at 19.
So this explains the driving situation here. I was counting down the days till 16.
I could not wait. But I grew up in a rural area of Michigan outside of Detroit.
And in New Jersey, clearly kids were driving, right? You were probably anxious to get your permit and all that. Not really.
What happened was I was starting acting and then I also was going to a high school in New York City. And so I was taking the bus into New York City every day from New Jersey to go to high school and I was around no one driving.
Okay. Right.
So like I was only around city kids. In fact, I had to use a fake address to be there.
It was city public school. This is the performance art senior year.
Yes. Yes.
Every time you reference anything, I'm going to be in shock. I want you to pace yourself though.
I think I could sustain the same level of interest. Oh, this is great.
It's kind of like an acting exercise. Yeah.
Yeah. Okay.
This is your greatest day of your life. So no matter what, that would be an acting exercise.
This is the greatest day of your life, no matter what information you hear. And then I would say, thank you for coming in, Mr.
Eisenberg. We just got your lab results back.
And unfortunately you are showing a very large tumor in in your neck. You've got a couple months left.
Right. Wait, sorry, what's happening? This is the greatest day of your life despite the information I give you.
Yeah. This is the, wait, you mean it's like the greatest day and then I go to the doctor? No, the acting exercises.
This is the greatest day of your life despite whatever information. I get it.
Okay, got it. Mr.
Eisenberg. Let's take this back.
Let's try it one more time. Okay, got it.
Did you cut, Rob? Yeah, you cut. Okay, great.
Oh, you cut. Don't ever cut.
Wait till I yell cut. Yes, we did get your sonogram back of your chest and you have a very large mass.
How large are we talking here? Eight to 12 inches, it seems like on the skin. So virtually your full left lobe of your lung.
So my whole lung is this other thing. Yes.
This is incredible, you know, because I have not seen an episode of The Wire and I keep promising myself if I ever find myself bedridden, if I get the flu or in this case, obviously, it's something much more long term. I'll finally.
Oh, my God. Well, congratulations.
You're going to love it. It's a great show.
Be patient of the first three episodes. Okay.
It takes a minute for the writing to set in. That's fine.
Obviously, I have the time. And is the right the right line okay because I've also not done Breaking Bad it's not great but it'll make it through I think both series really? yes the left is that bad? the left is not great okay great can I do the old sitcoms you know 10 years of 20 episodes of Perfect Strangers you're probably not going to get through Cheers I'm not going to make'm not going to make it through Cheers.
That's right. Okay.

Yeah.

But what a great show to go out watching. Yeah.
Yeah, exactly. Okay.
This is great. This is a good actor.
You did a really good job. If I'm your teacher.
At first I thought it was so good that at first I was like, he still doesn't get it, but he really got it. He got it.
I was playing. I need to do a few minutes on mom and dad because they both have very, very colorful, interesting backgrounds.
So as you said, your father was a taxi driver, but he also worked at a hospital and he also became a college professor of sociology. This doesn't seem like a possible trajectory.
That sounds like an immigrant story. Oh, yeah.
His dad worked at a cafeteria and then my dad was the first one to go to college in the family. Now he's a college teacher.
So he's a bright guy. Yeah, really smart.
How long was he driving a cab and working at the hospital? A few years in Queens. Oh, no,

he worked at the hospital after that. When I was a kid, he worked in hospital administration.

And then the hospital merged with another hospital. And so, yeah, he started teaching.

Where does he teach? He teaches through the Sunni system at a school called Empire State.

It's part of like the State University of New York system.

Sunni as in opposed to Shiite? That's right. Okay.

And which is weird. My mom is Shia.
Oh, wow. That's complicated.
And I was raised Jewish. That's a counterintuitive.
They went in a neutral route. Yeah, the two fronts met in the middle.
That's something we can both agree on. Yeah, exactly.
And then mom was a choreographer in a high school. Oh my God.
That's not even on the Wikipedia. She was also a clown by the name of Kalana, what was her mom? Yeah, Bonabini.
Bonabini. Wait, so that's on the internet? Or I got your mom's number.
Got it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which is also on the internet. Leaning to the number thing.
Can we take one second to recognize that we've interviewed 800 people. No one's mother was a clown.
I mean, you got to acknowledge this is a very novel thing. Yeah, that's interesting.
I mean, she was not Bozo or like Barnum and Bailey circus. She was doing birthday parties in the tri-state area of New Jersey.
I guess I never perceived it as my mom, the clown, because people didn't know. It wasn't like, wow, your mom's that clown.
It was more like this is her job on the weekends. You never had a friend over that had this eerie feeling he or she had met your mother before.
And then hours later went, oh my God, did your mother do my fourth grade? Could you just put on tons of makeup for a second? Real quick, blow up a hundred balloons. You know, it's actually funny now that people know me, people do come up to me and said, your mom did my birthday party because they've linked it somehow.
But she was really great. So every Saturday and Sunday, she would basically wake up six in the morning, tune her guitar, blow up a hundred balloons.
And so it was disciplined for a really silly performance. She was a business owner.
She was a hustler. Yeah, actually, I didn't think of it that way.
Yeah, that's like a good model to have as a mom, I think. And as a performer, because I work with a lot of performers who still have to get over the hump of thinking, this is so silly what I do.
Embarrassment, yeah. You know what I mean? Yeah, embarrassment.
And I just never really had that because I saw somebody who took it so seriously. My mom never said, so weird today.
I was in makeup. It was just like, yeah, this was my job.
This is what I'm doing. And I took it really seriously.
Yes. So now I guess this is common knowledge.
I didn't know this before researching you, but when I told my wife excitedly from the bedroom, you're not going to believe who Jesse Eisenberg's little sister is. Oh yeah.
Yeah. Did she know? She knew immediately.
But do you know, Monica, his little sister is the Pepsi girl, the Pepsi girl. The one you're thinking of.
I love her. Everyone loved her.
She was universally loved. So she was working at the same time you were before.
She's 10 years younger, but she was through a series of weird, fluky things. Was in movies and very popular commercials when, yeah, I was like 14.
But you were already acting, right? Because you were an understudy at 12 years old for a Tennessee Williams play. Exactly.
That's pretty nuts. How do we get to? I was doing children's theater in New Jersey.
And again, is there something mom just put you in? No, she put my older sister who was shy and I just wanted to be with my older sister. I didn't really like performing.
It was on the weekends, children's theater every Saturday and Sunday. And then I had troubles in school.
And so I just wanted to do anything to have an outlet from school. So I started doing community theater.
It's like non-professional, but with adults in same towns. And it was an amazing outlet for me.
And then an agent from New York had come seen something and asked me if I would go on an audition for this play. It was Summer in Smoke, this Tennessee Williams play.
So 12 was your first professional audition and you got it. Well, I got like the understudy.
Well, that's a lot more than I've gotten on Broadway. Well, sure.
But it was a really weird job to get at 12 because it was like, oh, you know how you like doing that acting thing? You're not going to get to do that at all. You're going to get to watch a lot.
Yeah, exactly. And then you're going to play poker and smoke cigarettes backstage with all the other people who are kind of waiting for somebody else to get sick.
Praying for an injury. Exactly that.
Yeah. So do you have to go there every night if you're an understudy? You go there every night.
Again, for me, this was just a dream come true because I mean, I get to go to New York City every night. I didn't have to like interact with people at school because I had this other thing and I couldn't have friends anyway because I was leaving.
I got to miss Wednesdays in school because they do the day shows and Broadway. It was just great.
Do you remember how much you were making? I think I do. Or at least I can figure it out because it was the roundabout theater on Broadway, which they had these special contracts where you can make something like $220 a week.
It wasn't thousands. Gosh, no, no, no, no, no.
Because if I was 12 and you were paying me a couple grand a week to come hang and play poker. Oh God, no, there's like no economy for that kind of thing.
I made money when I was just about to turn 16 and I got on a TV series, Get Real, this is a Fox show. That's when I made money and we were all just in a state of bewilderment.
Yes, I bet. Even though at that point, little sister had also generated a bunch of money accidentally.
She started making money at like five years old and it was crazy. My parents are wonderful, wonderful people and this is not a but this, this is an end this.
And when my sister made money when she was younger, it was just like a weight off the shoulders of my house.

You just felt it.

And they didn't even want to take her money.

You know, there's the rules.

It was just for the first time, the lid went off the pot.

And again, this is all for her for college.

But there's a safety net somewhere in the mix.

Somebody loses a leg.

Yeah, it was like amazing.

And then I got on this TV show.

And then since that moment, it all just feels like a joke to me. Getting money for acting.
The whole thing just feels like a joke to me and my family and my wife. It all just feels like this is ridiculous.
I can't believe no one's telling them they don't have to do this. That we would all be here anyway.
Yes, yes. We would.
Would we go promote? That's the question. I've been told that's what you get paid to do is go promote.
Unless it's a podcast, then you would do that for free as well. It's so pleasurable.
It's the armchair expert. I mean, can I pay? Even the promoting thing, I just got back from Poland promoting the movie that I filmed in Poland and being there to promote it.
I was staying in literally the nicest hotel in Warsaw and it was the hotel that we would pass every day as we went to our bad apartments. And it's so funny.
So I'm like, oh my God, this is what it feels like to promote a thing versus when you're making a thing and there's a small budget for making an independent film and there's no money for any of that stuff. Yeah, no one asked for this, but I think the finances of this would interest people who are not in show business.
So if you think about a studio has a budget to promote the movie and they're trying to get it in front of as many eyeballs as possible. And so they have many options.
They can buy a TV commercial and a 30 second spot's going to cost however many tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars versus we send you to Camel. We show a clip of it and you talk about the movie.
We can count that as basically two ad spots. So by their math, they just save $200,000.
So if they're going to send you out there, my God, they'll spend five grand on your hotel room. Don't give a shit.
And they'll pay for you to get a massage. And it's a big savings for them.
So it's the best we ever live. You have just explained something that I have tried to articulate for a long time because it sounds like a little inside baseball of the movie industry.
But what you just described is the very strange economy of promoting a movie. Yeah.
And they have a set budget. They're like, we're going to spend 30 million marketing this or 5 million, whatever it is.
So you doing that one magazine thing is the equivalent of them buying an ad in that same magazine, which would cost way more than your $150 hotel room. But for us, the trickle down, just ripple effect of it is you feel like this is crazy.
It's the only time you feel like a movie star. Exactly.
And the movie I made was $3 million, which again, this sounds a little insidery baseball, but it's like very, very little money to make like a real movie that requires tons of sets, et cetera. Absolutely.
Speaking of when you just said it's the only time you feel like a movie star. Do you like feeling like a movie star? I just literally came from a hotel where I asked them to put me in a smaller room because it makes me uncomfortable.
I don't know if that's the New York thing. I just don't like too much space.
My bags are currently at the front desk because they're getting the smaller room ready. I feel a little out of sorts.
Yeah. I feel a little weird.
I feel like it's also wasteful. Like if there's a room that I'm not going to be in a lot, I don't want it to exist.
Sure. It's also like New York living, though.
You would never get an extra anything in New York. You'd never get an extra closet in New York.
You would put a friend there. You don't like attention would be my guess also.
Yeah. I mean, I guess I like it and hate it.
Gangly hillbilly crosses the parking lot to say, hey, I could tell you Jesse Eisenberg by the way you're standing. It was the parking lot of Universal Studios where you were filming a major popular show.
Yeah, I already got through one round of security, I suppose. Yeah, exactly.
Okay. So you were already on that trajectory.
You said a couple of times, school is miserable. What version? I mean, I guess I have hunches.
Oh, I really had a very bad. Were you shy and nervous? No, no, no, no, no.
I was hysterically crying when I was four years old. I got kicked out of preschool because I couldn't leave my mom.
I guess I maybe thought of it as separation anxiety or something. But it was just I was crazy.
I mean, I went to a mental institution when I was 13 because I went crazy. I left school for a year.
You did? I was like a very troubled kid. I don't know exactly why.
Because of anxiety. Yeah, severe anxiety and all this stuff.
OCD? Yeah, OCD. But it was more just like I couldn't go to school.
It just killed me. When I was in first grade, I cried every day.
Sorry, it's kind of like a funny story, but it's also sad or whatever if you were me. Those are the best kind.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like sad if you were me, funny if you're basically anybody else.
But I cried every day of first grade to the point where if I didn't cry on the bus ride, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, on Friday, the bus driver would give everybody Tootsie Roll pops. And so I tried to not cry on the bus.
So that everyone could get their Tootsie. And then on Friday, literally on Friday, you'd hear down my block, don't cry, Jesse.
People chanting at the bus because they would get Tootsie Roll pops. So I would be holding it in until I got to school.
Then I was allowed to cry. Oh, this is heartbreaking.
Now here's my hope is that it was so endearing that it got you out of getting bullied for it. You know, what's so weird? I always wanted to be bullied because I thought it would give me a reason.
Yeah. For some reason I wasn't.
Well, that's really kind of life affirming to be honest, because I do think even shitty kids have some critical mass of suffering. Okay, he's already too fucked up.
Oh, maybe that's it. They'll push, push, push.
And then there's a moment where their actual conscious kicks in, I think. That's a really good point.
So that's weirdly kind of hopeful that you were crying that much and they were just going, don't cry, don't cry. Not like, if you cry, you fucking baby.
That's really weird. I actually never considered why.
Maybe that's what it was. I think so.
I was in sixth grade this one time. It was right before I left school.
This kid, I'd never talked to him ever. And he picked up some wood chips and he threw them.
And it was kind of in my direction, but it wasn't at me at all. I promise you, because I didn't know this person.
I promise you guys, you're not going to believe me. I was so desperate for them to hit me so I could have a reason for my misery.
So I can pin it on something so I can tell my mom, no, I'm crying because this kid, and I even knew his name because I was trying to concoct a story in my head where this kid was my torturer and that's why school was hard for me. But it wasn't, and it wasn't even at me.
And that's in some ways like the saddest thing of all. I couldn't have a place for it.
Yeah. Wow.
What parent do you think it was harder? I mean, it's hardest on you. Let me say that first.
As a parent, that would be absolutely heartbreaking for me to know my kid gets on the bus and cries the whole way to school every day. But I weirdly guess that dad would be in a very big panic that this world's going to be too hard for a boy and that he somehow has got to toughen you up.
And how does he do it? That's exactly what happened. But I didn't think of it that way.
He'd probably so overcome with fear. Oh, this poor boy is going to get destroyed.
That's exactly what happened. So he would like push me back to school.
And then when I got out of the institution, it was basically like, if I don't go to school, then I go back to this place, which was terrible. He was doing tough love.
Out of his fear, I'm sure, that you were going to suffer your whole life. And also the fact that he was probably right, which is that if I just did it and committed to it and didn't have the option to not do it, I would probably learn to be okay.
What was the institution like? It was genuinely terrifying. Do you mean any sexy Ally Sheedy types that were like misunderstood? I have a fantasy about falling in love at one of these places.
Oh yeah. Does that make any sense? I don't recall thinking this is a great opportunity for me.
You can see the movie in your head, right? The teenagers that go to the derelict center. And then she's really hot and misunderstood.
And she just needs to talk about her dad to you and everything will be fine. Very vulnerable.
I'm sensing we were different 13-year-old boys. I didn't go in there thinking like, I can clean up.
You know, every cloud. I would be thinking cohabitation with other teenagers.
What might happen? Okay, that's probably why you didn't have to go there Yeah, exactly Because you were doing that in school and everybody thought you were awesome No, I remember asking this one kid for his shoelaces so I can kill myself And then I was brought into a soft room with a deflated volleyball Oh my gosh No, and I remember he was the coolest kid I don't know what that means at the time He was the was the Jack Nicholson character. Exactly that.
And I remember asking him for the shoelaces, thinking like, oh, he's going to think I'm cool. I don't know what the equivalent is like going up to the biggest guy on the jail yard and punching him in the face.
You know, I was doing, I guess, the going up. But it was also punished for it.
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

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See nerdwallet.com for details. Okay, so we're laughing about it, but were you terrified? Were you thinking at that point? There's something fundamentally broken with me, and I'm not going to be able to function on this planet.
Were you scared? That's how it felt. But I mean, I still have that same weird dread underlying, but I'm on like antidepressants now, so it helps a lot.
But yeah, just that weird dread of the bottom is going to constantly drop out. It's weird.
I'm doing this press tour, and I just keep waiting for the bad thing to happen. We got good reviews.
I was like, okay, that's good. And then the movie did well on the opening weekend.
It made more money than they thought. I was like, that's good.
So now something really terrible is going to happen to me. So I thought it was going to be the movie, but now it's like, no, I'm going to get hit by the car.
It's not even get hit by the car. It's more like existential.
Like people are going to realize I'm a terrible person. I live with this dread.
I assume it helps me in some way. Well, I've heard you talk about harnessing it in a positive direction.
I think that's virtually the only option you have on the table is you got to learn to work with your character defects and exploit them for the good side and try to mitigate the downside. Yes, I guess so.
You have no choice. I wrestle with this too.
I write from a place of you're a lazy piece of shit. You're a failure if you don't accomplish this.
Everything is negatively motivated. And so I relate to it.
When I hear you speak about it, I'm like, oh, yeah, I do a very similar thing. And then feeling guilt that I have to be motivated that way by self-loathing and all this.
And then hopefully some compassion and forgiveness and acceptance. You're that way.
And OK, here we go. Yeah.
And I do so enjoy my work. I feel like I just won the lottery that I get to be able to do something I genuinely like.
So that's really helpful. And also my work is emotionally cathartic because it's an emotional job.
And so that's really helpful too. All the stuff around it is really kind of unnerving.
In terms of the negative motivation thing, we're in the arts and no one's really asking us. Now you have an incredibly popular show, but probably at the beginning, no one was begging you to do this.

No one was begging you to be on parenting.

You know, all the stuff we're doing

has to be self-motivating

because no one cares.

Like, oh, can you write a script today?

No, no, who gives a shit?

Right, right.

And so like, I wonder if we,

in some ways,

are looking for some kind of motivation

because there is no external demand

to do the thing.

It's not like you have to punch in,

like you guys created this from nothing

and it's turned into this thing.

Now forcing yourself to think

in these weird ways to motivate yourself.

It's hard.

It is. man to do the thing.
It's not like you have to punch in like you guys created this from nothing and it's turned into this thing. Now forcing yourself to think in these weird ways to motivate yourself.
It's hard. Because I sit down, I write a script a year.
My background is playwriting, but I don't really need to do that because I make money from acting, but I feel like I'm going to be a failure if I don't do it. And so I live with this dread of failure.
And when I step back, sometimes I think, oh, maybe that's just the thing I create in my head to force myself to do the thing I like. Yeah.
Is that possible? No, I think it's possible. I also think it's fascinating that you can have, or in my case, it's like this split confidence.
There's no self-esteem at all in imposter syndrome and all this stuff. And then also this, you're a failure, which has innately in it some idea that I'm supposed to be special and super prolific and good.
Yes, yes, yes. That's fascinating.
So this dichotomy of I'm unworthy and I'm a fraud. And also you're supposed to be doing great things.
They're kind of incompatible. That's very true.
And I'm not acting. My days look like this.
I wake up in the morning. I'm depressed, but I'm so happy I get to take my kids to school.
And I love my. I mean, that's not like an active thing.
That's just something underlying the relationship. I'm sure some days you have to think it.
Yes. Some days there's an active loving my wife and some days there's just a passive.
I love you, honey. And keep that in your mind.
And then I just go into a real funk until the library opens at 1030, which is where I go right up until 1030, a miserable, stupid failure. I can't believe I have the posture that Dax Shepard could recognize from 30 feet away.
No other person would ever be in a movie studio with my posture. And then the library opens and then I go and I start writing and I'm sitting there laughing at my own jokes, like the most arrogant guy in the world.
And then I'm crying because I just wrote a monologue and I'm crying about the monologue and everything. And then I finish the thing and I go back home and I'm just such a loser.
I'm such a loser. My wife's going to leave me.
I'm such a loser. My kid thinks I'm a bad role model.
And it's so weird, but while I'm doing the thing, in some ways, I guess I think I'm amazing. I guess so.
Because I'm sitting there writing it. Well, you've been validated there too.
Yeah, but my wife validates me as a person too. And my kid loves me.
Work can be validated externally, but you cannot be validated externally. Oh, wow.
That's a good distinction. You as a person, your character, that's got to come from you.
So it doesn't matter what your wife says. That's the juxtaposition.
I know this thing that I'm outputting, which is not exactly me, is going to be okay. Yeah.
I picked this up in AA and it's been kind of helpful in me governing how bad the self-loathing can be. Because in there, it says that self-pity is the other side of the coin is self-aggrandizement.
You've still elevated yourself to some level where the universe cares is against you or you have bad luck coming your way, right? Like today, you know, something bad's coming. You're not that important to warrant this bad luck or the right sizing of the justice.
The piece of shit at the center of the universe. Yes.
Another great AA thing we say a lot. Or I'm not much, but I'm all I think about.
That's really funny. Yeah.
And sometimes I'll be in that kind of self-pity or it's self-pity adjacent, right? Right, right, right. And I'll go, this is so indulgent.
This is as indulgent of being a megalomaniac, which I would not tolerate from myself. So if I can turn that same ire onto the self-loathing part and go like, it's still you feeling way too important.
That is brilliant. So you're saying you'd be so ashamed to be the arrogant person that you should also be ashamed to be this person who's like self-loathing as though you've committed some great.
You should. You can imagine someone going, get over yourself.
You're not fucking so important and you're not suffering any more than anyone else. But then don't you feel like, oh my God, now I feel bad because I was a narcissist.
I'm the worst narcissist in the world. Yes.
I think I'm the worst single narcissist. Yes, but I think it starts dissipating every one of these steps you take.
So then it becomes a little manageable that your ego got away from you. I don't know.
Why does this cross over to AA? Because drinking is trying to solve those problems. We have this weird dichotomy of being so important and then also zero self-esteem.
And it's a thing that's very relatable to most people. It seems to be very universal in AA.
My hunch is it's probably universal to humans, but we have, for whatever reason, determined that was one of the main driving forces of the self-obliteration. Yes, that's really interesting.
Have you ever struggled with any addiction stuff? No, I can't. I've tried.
You've given it a go, like the cigarettes? The cigarettes. I've tried to really commit myself to being a stoner.
This is going to probably sum up my entire personality. The following sentence, I've even experimented with coffee.
Sometimes I'm like, I'm going to be a coffee drinker. And so I'll drink it four days in a row.
And then I'll just start to feel queasy and fall asleep. And so maybe like my body is kind of like a lightweight.
I can barely drink. I don't know why.
Or I'm just really wired at a certain level that all that stuff is just not necessary. It is quite obvious to me talking to you how Woody Allen would have been such an appealing figure when you were young.
Yeah. Because here's a guy that seems to have the outward same grab bag of anxiety and is processing it through art.
And it's hysterical. Right.
And so this is a time for a really great and weird story, which is you wrote something for Woody Allen. Yeah.
When I was 16, I got exposed to his movies, which maybe is a little late. If you're going to be somebody like me, I could have used them a long time ago.
Yeah. Yeah.
Shown it at the communal TV room at the institution would have been a great help. I would have gotten all the shoelaces.
But basically, I was writing a lot at the time. So the first screenplay I wrote was about Woody Allen changing his name to Woody at 16 years old, which he actually did.
But I said it in modern day and in my life and situation. And people liked it and it got sent around to various people and ultimately wound up at his lawyer who sent me a cease and desist letter.
What? That's so flattering. Well, at the time, it really was.
My dad came into the room. I was living at home.
I was 16. He goes, I have good news and bad news.
I was like, what is it? What's going on? He's like, we heard back from Woody Allen. And I was like, there can't be any bad news after that.
And he was like, it's a cease and desist letter from his lawyer. His lawyer, incidentally, who was his producer, I got to know.
Of course, the guy never knew. I'm sure it was somebody sending this letter 10 times a day to various people.
Yeah. And it's so funny that you picked up on that.
And what you described was exactly like that for me. It's like somebody who's outwardly nervous and paranoid about all sorts of things, but who makes life work for him.
Did you hit him with that story on a first meeting or did you wait till you were filming for a while before you told him? He's just not interested in like people. That kind of.
Yeah, that kind of thing. Like, hey, you get this? Wow, a coincidence about me.
He's somebody who's been so fetishized by culture. So I think he's just so uninterested in people telling him, hey, I got a brother who looks like you.
I never told him ever. I knew he wouldn't care or think about it.
And then we were on a panel for a press for a movie and somebody like it was a French journalist said, did Jesse ever tell you, you know, you did this thing? I looked over at him going, this is just going to be a waste of a time for him. He's not going to care.
And he goes, oh, interesting. No, I never knew that.
And we never talked about it again. This is exactly as you predicted.
So you were right. Exactly.
He just has no interest. Maybe in me.
I mean, one time he asked me, because he had met my parents at a play that he saw of mine. Then we worked together again.
And the only personal question he ever asked me was, you still have the same parents? Oh, wow. It was like a joke, but also indicating that there's nothing we're going to be talking about.
Do you chalk up the anxiety to just baseline biochemical or do you think any of it is nurture? Oh, yeah. I had some weird things in my life occur.
Probably a lot of it was circumstantial, but I do really have great parents. But yeah, I had some really weird stuff when I was a kid and I'm maybe wired this way, but it's weird.
My parents are actually comfortable, happy, normal. You feel great in their own skin.
So there's deep depression and paranoia in the family, but not for my parents. So, yeah, I think there was a series of weird things that happened when I was younger that probably accounted for all of my great personality problems.
Okay. Well, they got you here.
Again, I don't see them as problems. Yeah, exactly.
I find you very interesting to watch endlessly. So keep processing in public all processing in public.
I think people are going to really enjoy that. Yeah.
Okay. So back to now this

radical flip flopping. It's no wonder you're waiting for the shoe to always drop.
So you're

in a mental institution and then click of a fingers and you're on a TV show in high school.

Yeah. So after that period, I started auditioning more for things.
I went back to school. I was

slowly integrating back into regular life while still auditioning and basically desperate to get

I'm doing. And then there was an audition for this show, Get Real on Fox.
And I got the part. It was just crazy.
I mean, it sounds almost maybe arrogant to say, I didn't know I was funny because I was doing off-Broadway dramas like Tennessee Williams. I didn't know I was like a funny person.
Right. And then the TV show was funny and my character was funny and he was the character who was narrating the show.
So it was like a kind of comic voice. And I was auditioning and the people were laughing at the audition.
These are like professional people. They had big shows on.
And I remember thinking like, oh, I could be funny. I was partly doing an impression of a kid I met who was really funny and wry and stuff.
And so then it was like, oh, I have kind of a voice. And the show was basically asking me to do my voice.
It wasn't asking me like in a Tennessee Williams play. You're like, I'm doing a Southern accent, but I'm a Jewish kid from New Jersey.
Right, right. I'm fixing to go to the synagogue.
Yeah. And swim at the water hole later on.
I want to do a mikvah a little later in the creek. Exactly.
Whoa, very good. Thank you.
Oh, that's a great character. Southern religious Jew.
Yeah. Tommy Shlami, the best dramatic director in television history.
He's a Texas Jew. Oh, is he really? With the name Shlami.
Yeah, it's not helpful. Does he have like an accent? No, but he's so special.
He was the West Wing guy, right? He did West Wing. Yeah, yeah.
I've always seen that name and wondered, why not change it? Yeah. He did the Pilot of Parenthood and I said, just hearing that name, it's one that would make you or break you, and I see it's made you.
Yes. Like, he's so confident and cool.
That's true. You live or die.
Yeah, so anyway, so I was on this show for a year, and it kind of went under the radar and got canceled. Anne Hathaway, had she already done a bunch of stuff? No, I think it was both of our first jobs.
Oh, really? Oh, she was on it as well. Yeah, we played siblings, and she was, like, I think a year older than me.
Would you be in scenes with your sister thinking you've got to table your attraction to this person because you're playing? I guess maybe my brain was just like, you never talked to that person. Okay.
Not on your radar. Yeah, maybe.
I really was not. I bet that's charming to gals.
I bet over the years you've had something that would appear to be confidence because you've already just written it off as not an option. Yes.
Like an aloofness. That's so funny.
That might seem really attractive. I mean, my wife was my first date and she is so cool and beautiful and amazing.
And she was older than me. So I just went up to her like almost as a joke.
I was like, would you ever go out with me? And I never said that to a person ever. Oh, wow.
Would you go out with me? Would you ever go out with me? It was a joke. Is she Australian? No, but she could be.
She's so pretty. She's as pretty as an Australian is.
Oh, my God. She could be.
She's so pretty. You'd swear she was from Australia.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go look at her.
Yeah, go one look. My wife and I actually dated for like 10 years and we broke up and I did date an Australian.
That's what I'm thinking of. That was my other girlfriend.
Okay, a blonde Australian. Yes.
That's its own interesting story I want to earmark. But yeah, five-year break that ends a marriage is incredible and unconventional.
yeah that's true she was my first date my wife wouldn't date me when i was 17 she waited until i was of age there were like three-year period where i couldn't go to a bar and she could go to a bar you know i was 18 19 20 but i think i had the confidence to ask her because it seemed so absurd and she was like yes i will go out no she said absolutely not no but then she was an assistant to a producer for a few years before she started teaching. And the producer wanted to read my screenplays.
I was writing screenplays a lot. And so Anna, my wife, was the intermediary.
So she would have to read these things. And so she thought I was funny.
And I reminded her of her father, who was like funny Jewish. Oh, this is like Sorrento.
She kind of like fell in love with your words. Is that the name of the play? Sorrento? Oh, Cyrano.
Yes, Cyrano. Yes, you gave it the Parmesan cheese version of Cyrano.
Well, I'm always straddling the line between Philistine and know what I'm talking about. Like bullseye.
The references are very clear, but you add a T. Or an S, depending.
That's right. So then we dated for 10 years.
It was great. And now we're married.
Yeah, it's a good story. Good story.
You were going to go to NYU, but instead you did a movie and then you ended up at the new school and you dabbled in anthro? I've graduated in anthropology. I have an anthro degree.
Wow. Can I ask why? That's exactly why I was going to ask you.
I did because it was my wife's degree prior to me. What about you? Through my own childhood, I just always felt outcasty.
I didn't feel like I agreed with the vibe that was existing around me. I thought there had to be other ways.
And Anthro was like, oh, not only are there other ways, there's like very exotic, interesting other ways. Oh, you mean to just live? Yeah.
Culturally, realizing how flexible culture is and how many versions are out there to try begs the question, are we even close to what version we'll be ultimately living in? Because anthropology teaches you that cultures are not superior or inferior to each other. Cultural relativism.
We just got to learn why it functions the way it does, not whether that's good or bad. I find that very liberating.
Me too, especially because you're trying to constantly be a good version of this society, but that in some ways, it's a little randomized. Yeah, and I'm feeling like it's unacceptable how I'd like to be doing this.
Oh, there isn't a right or wrong. That's comforting.
Yes, that's a really good point. My wife specifically, she grew up living in different places in Central America and Europe, and she just lives life totally different than anybody I know.
She's an activist and she's politically minded, but she's just uninterested in like, we just had a presidential election. She's uninterested in all of the numbers of the presidential election.
She just kind of feels like they're helping people in need. She just doesn't have this sense of the rat race of modern life.
Is she less inclined to levy a verdict? She's uncynical. She's never criticized people.
She's never, I mean, in 20 years with her, she's never looked over at me and rolled her eyes at something somebody said. And I'll ask her like, wasn't that so stupid what that person said? She's like, no, I mean, they're going through a hard time.
It probably makes sense within their little sphere of culture. Exactly.
And this is the way they exist. It's OK.
They have trouble making friends. Just let them say that stuff to you.
It's OK. Right.
Yeah. A lot of compassion.
Exactly. She's never once uttered the phrase, that was weird.
And partly that's, I guess, why I was also able to ask her out. She seems very unjudgmental.

She wouldn't think like, wow, no, you're ugly.

She'll just take it at face value.

And then cultural pluralism is also one of your focuses.

Yes, that's because I graduated with a weird degree.

The new school has these kind of eccentric degrees. So it was democracy and cultural pluralism, which was basically an anthropology degree.

Yeah, interesting.

And then you're doing a bunch of acting while you're at the new schools.

Yeah, I would leave every other semester. And is that where Libipson was the new school? Oh, wow.
Yes. James Lipton.
James Lipton. That's it.
It was the Sorrento side. Yeah.
Yeah. I was never in acting classes there, but yeah, he ran inside the studio.
But that was a new school presentation. Exactly.
It was. Did you ever go to any of those weird lectures and ask questions? I didn't.
I knew them really more from the Will Ferrell parody of them. Do you remember those? Yes.
I guess you're young enough that it had already been parody. Like, it was hard to take that kind of thing seriously.
And I was working with actors who are occasionally so pretentious that I was so turned off to that thing. What's the word that you, you know, just this kind of self-important, sanctimonious version of actors.
I hated it too, but if I do some soul searching, I think it's probably because I thought maybe they were better than me, that I haven't studied enough. Oh, yeah, and I could understand feeling that way.
You have the opposite. You've been working for so long and you were on Broadway.
You're like, I've really done it. But no, I could see it having also the effect of, oh, wow, this is the real deal.
This is the way you're supposed to talk about things. To me, it just seems like self-important pretense as though your job is like more important than any other job in the world.
Okay. So you come onto my radar in the Squid and the Whale, which is such an incredible movie.
Is that Noah Baumbach's first directing? I think he had directed other movies that hadn't gotten the same amount of attention. I saw that movie and I absolutely loved it.
I love Jeff Daniels like crazy. I think he's one of the most unsung.
Him in newsroom. Yeah, so I saw that and I thought you were incredible.
And I thought that movie was absolutely incredible. Is that Mark kind of, I already know the answer, I think, which is you don't ever feel safe.
But did it feel like, okay, the right people are noticing this. I have my foot in the door firmly.
I don't know how to describe it other than to say so briefly. It's like the kind of thing I've been in things that are popular and been in things that are unpopular.
And there's always a little period after the popular things come out where you do have, yes, I would just call it exactly what you said, a feeling of security. Oh, I know if I wanted a job in the next six months, I could definitely get one.
Yes. I don't know that it would be great or that I would love it, but I've been involved in so many of these things where something is really liked briefly.

And then you go back to the same thing six months later.

It's always the case.

It's a cycle.

Well, you have four years between Squid and the Whale and then Zombieland, which unless I'm mistaken, Zombieland is then the next big kind of thing.

Yeah, it was like a big movie.

So in those four years, where are we at mentally?

Also, is there anyone you've isolated as I'm emulating that career or I would like that career? Were you thinking of what kind of actor you were aspiring to be? No, I mean, if anything, like I grew up really liking Ben Stiller and Adam Sandler movies, probably like every other kid on my block and every block in the world. I guess I saw in Ben Stiller, maybe before I noticed Woody Allen, maybe a kindred thing like, oh, I could be in movies as a good role in movies and not have to change too much about myself.
But no, I never thought like, I'm going to do that because as actors, you know, you have no control over anything. And also, weirdly, I was really just getting cast in dramas.
Zombieland was a comedy, but all the auditions were very dramatic auditions. I was really not getting cast in those comedy things anyway.
Even this movie I did right before Zombieland, Adventureland, was a comedy, but the director wanted to make his bittersweet coming of age story. He didn't want to make a broad comedy.
Mottola, right? And that was a follow up to Superbad. Well, that's the thing.
It really wasn't. It was like Greg's life story in the 80s and this bittersweet thing.
But because they build it as exactly what you just said, people were disappointed in it because they thought it would be really funny, like Superbad. It's interesting that you asked this and I haven't thought about this in like 20 years, but what you just described was I actually thought one thing might happen to me, and that's not the thing that happened.
I thought I could be in a Long King Polly or something like that, and I was just not cast in those roles. Zombieland to me was so fucking incredible.
I don't like zombie movies. I was like, who's Ruben Fleischer? This guy can fucking direct.
There was a Metallica song in the movie, which there almost never is. Yeah, you're right.
When you were shooting Zombieland, did you have any sense while it was happening? Like, oh yeah, this is pretty mega. This is going to be fucking awesome.
That's the movie I started smoking on that I was told by the prop woman. It was a really nice person filming that she couldn't believe that I had transgressed so badly in her eyes.
But what was happening in the back of my mind, I thought this thing is good and that I'm ruining it. And I would have panic attacks all the time.
In fact, anytime I had to do a scene that was one of my audition scenes, I just froze up and I would start saying other lines. And then they told me, we just got Bill Murray to sign on for a day in the movie.
And I walked away and had another panic attacks. I was like, now people are going to see it.
And I'm so bad. And I know that Ruben wanted Michael Cera to be in the movie.
Ruben is a good friend of mine, so I could say this comfortably, has no filter and didn't realize that him telling me that he wanted Michael Cera to be in it would make me feel uncomfortable. Sure.
And also didn't realize that sending me videos of Michael Cera while we were shooting at night. So I'd be on my computer and an email with the subject line email with the subject line, Michael Cera funny video would be sent to all the cast.
This is cruel. He's kind of obsessed with Michael Cera.
Yeah, he was obsessed with Michael Cera. I'm sure who turned down the movie.
I'm sure that's why I got to audition for it in the first place. And so every day I was just thinking, oh, of course he wanted Michael Cera.
And I could read the part with Michael's voice in the part way more than I could read it with my own voice. So I just felt like I was every day letting down the movie.
And this was just like a failure because of me. And then I just started having these weird fantasy.
Of course, I'm going to go home to visit my wife on a weekend and Michael's going to be there in bed with her like, hey, too late, buddy. And I've since met him.
It's funny that he's like the nicest person. He's impossible to dislike.
But just at the time I was getting recognized on the street as him all the time to the point where when I said to the people, no, I'm a different person. They're like, yeah, fuck you.
You're him. It was a weird thing.
I think it's more common to have that than not because mine was Zach Braff the whole early ride. Thank you for saying that.
It is more common than not. Every time I talk to an actor, it's always, oh, yeah, mine is this person.
And I was this for Michael, too. And it takes a while to get comfortable with it now.
And I've talked to Zach about it as well. It's like, I'm happy to pose in a picture and you think it's Zach and that's great.
I don't need to correct anyone. You were great in Garden State.
Thank you. I've signed a hot rod.
This is an Andy Samberg headshot. But that's the part that you don't think in the moment that it's happening to him.
Everyone thinks I'm Michael Cera and everyone thinks he's Jesse Eisenberg. You forget that piece.
And he had, I think, told a story publicly about getting recognized at me at a bar or something. And I remember thinking like.
That was a fluke. Exactly.
Whereas for me, I mean, literally got cornered in an ATM by somebody aggressive saying like, yes, you are. Yes, you are.
And I was like, OK, fine, fine. I'm fine.
I am. I am.
And it's just like the weirdest existential crisis to be stuck in this vestibule going, I am the other person. I am the other person.
Let's take a picture. One time my sister's friend said, do you look like the guy in that movie? I mean, you're obviously like a better looking version of him, but like you look like him.
And I remember thinking, oh, that's so interesting. So the objective opinion is that I'm ugly to the point where she apologized for making that comparison.
Jesse, that happened to me while I was presenting on stage with this singer. We're midway through one of these award shows.
Like this season's blah, blah, blah. And she just looks at me and she goes, you're so much better looking in real life.
And I was really delighted and also like, but hold on now. She thinks I'm rough.
Like that's the objective truth. As opposed to what she thought before, which is why is this guy in movies, which I would have related to her on.
Right, of course. We could have talked all day about that.
I was surprised that my sister's friend even complimented me in the moment. Okay, now the social network comes along.
I guess I just want to know a little bit about how you came to be in that movie. And what's it like? Do you go meet Fincher first? Do you audition? Was it written with you with you in mind how's all that work i remember i was sent like three scripts that same day and two things were bad but i auditioned for those two you know it's like the nature of being an actor you just get the parts you get and i remember that script was oh my god it's such a great thing to read and then i just made the tape on my couch in new york and then they gave me the part and you got the part on the self-submission yeah it was like a whole thing it felt like it was like being sent to the CIA because my agent called and they were like, they liked your tape and they're going to watch it again.
I was like, okay. What does that mean? Thanks for the update.
Yeah, exactly. They called me out to California and then I met with him for an hour and David Fincher speaks in a very interesting way.
I was there just waiting for him to say, you got in the movie or you didn't get in the movie, but it was said he was like just telling stories about old Hollywood. And I didn't know what they meant for me because you're sitting there like a 27 year old actor.
Like, did I get the job? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they called me later and said, yeah, yeah, you got the part.
So it's a weird thing. You know, it's so strange.
Like I've auditioned for things that I haven't gotten into and you audition for them like 10 times and then they meet you. You read with this person and then read with that person and then they'll straighten my hair and make me read again.
This happens to me a few times. Straighten my hair so I can see what I look like as a Gentile.
And then you don't get those parts. And then a thing like this comes along and it was just I made a tape at home with my little sister and they cast me.
Wow. Did the repeated takes.
Let me ask you this. Are you prone to insecurity on set? It sounds like you were having a lot of insecurity on Zombieland.
Yeah, no, this I didn't. I felt like I was just in the shoes of this person.
The anxiety in Zombieland was really, I'm an interloper here. They tried to cast somebody else who's definitely funnier than me.
I still think definitely funnier than me. And he didn't want to do it.
And everybody's disappointed that I show up every day. The social network, it just felt like I was prepared for it in a different way.
The character was so interesting and socially aloof and cryptic and angry. And this is my comfort zone.
And is having the Sorkin dialogue put you immediately halfway there? Yeah, it's so helpful because you know the scene's going to be good either way. You didn't feel like you had to do some heavy lifting.
So it felt like, oh, I could just play in my character. Yeah, so often it's not on the page, the thing that we all know everyone's trying to get that day.
Exactly. It requires the actors to do some work that they shouldn't be doing, for example, like making certain emotional transitions seem logical when actually they're not in the script.
I mean, if you're working with great scripts like that, a great director, my experience was, oh, it's easy to be good in this. You get a bunch of takes.
The script is amazing. You can't fail.
A no brainer. Yeah, kind of like that.
And you famously had no experience on Facebook. You joined for 30 seconds or something.
Yes, exactly. Yeah.
I joined for 30 seconds to see what it was about. I joined for like 12 days once and I looked at everyone I went to junior high with.
And when that was over, I was like, I don't know why I'm on here anymore. The thing you just described is the exact reason I'd be curious.
I'm so curious to see what people look like. Just like what do people grow into? It's so fascinating to think about.
Well, my conclusion was everyone I looked at, I'm like, oh, they're old. Oh, they got families.
You can only do that so long before you go. And clearly I am too, because we're all the same age.
Whatever I am looking at them with, I have to acknowledge is happening for me too. I love that movie.
I rewatched it recently. It's still so great.
You did just rewatch it. I did.
Yeah. I was obsessed with it.
I would just watch it over and over again for a while. It was one of your movies.
I have a handful of movies that I end up just watching every night. Contagion.
During the pandemic, Contagion. I still haven't seen that.
Is it great? It's so good. I'm so curious.
It's such a good movie. Okay.
Yeah. Devil Wears Prada, Social Network.
Seven. We love seven.
Seven. Fincher's got two on the list for Monica.
That's interesting. Yeah.
Good Will Hunting is my number one. That was the original.
Is it the kind of thing you could say every line to? I wouldn't want to be put to the test right now because it's been a minute. But at one point, I could recite the whole movie.
She would sit in class and watch the movie. In my head.
I would watch it and then rewind it and watch it again. Were you in class at MIT? I wish.
No, because I was too busy watching movies in my head. But Social Network is so good.
You're so good in it. Everyone's so good in it.
Well, thank you. You already had your taste of it all with Zombieland, but that's an enormous moment.
You get nominated for a BAFTA on a Golden Globe and an Academy Award. That prick Colin Firth had done King's Speech.
So no one had a chance in hell. Yeah.
What was that whirlwind like? Hard, fun, weird, and exhausting. And when I would complain to my dad, my dad would just always say the same thing.
He was like, if you have one of these in your life, if you're like in the arts, be so happy. Why are you complaining? And Obama was president at the time.
And I was like, I have to go to a weird dinner. My dad was like, do you know the president of the United States probably has 17 things a day that he has to do that are not the thing he likes doing? You should be just so grateful that somebody's given you free dinner and everything.
And I remember I was thinking, oh, I shouldn't go to the Academy Awards because awards are stupid. My dad called me and he was like, are you an idiot? This industry has given you so much.
Of course, go to these things. These award shows are basically ways for the industry to celebrate itself and to promote itself.
So just go there and be grateful. Now I'm a little more grateful about things rather than trying to resist.
Well, just, you know, you're going to feel uncomfortable in all these places you go. Yeah.
But also I think in a bubble, they're strange why they pit artists against each other. This kind of teenage poetry thought you grow out of that stuff.
And isn't it all a lie too? Which part? The story about why you're not drawn to it. If I were you, I'd be like, I don't belong there.
Those people belong there. That's the real feeling in my heart that I might not want to look at.
Yes. So I build on top of it a very defendable reason why.
Artistic. Which is that awards are bullshit.
Pitying artists and all this stuff. The brain quickly fills in a plausible excuse that doesn't require you to own your fear or your vulnerability.
Yeah, yeah. That's so intuitive.
I even call my mom sometimes or my wife. What's the difference? One of those two people tells me, last time you had a good time and you met a friend of yours there and you were funny.
And you actually leave going like, no, I actually belong in this group of people, which I keep convincing myself. I should be there alone.
I don't know why they invited DiCaprio. He's a great actor, but he's not as fun as me at a party.
There's a charm missing. It's that X factor.
So how was hosting SNL in the wake of that? That was so funny. It was like the exact same thing you're describing.
I had turned it down 10 times because I did not want to be somebody who had hosted Saturday Night Live. I just felt so embarrassed.
I was like, I'm going to be a person who did it and who would never be asked back. So I was just like, I don't want to have done it.
I feel so embarrassing. And then I did the exact same thing that you just said.
So instead, I justified it by like, no, no, no, no. Because I want people to know me as an actor, not as caricature stuff.
So I don't want to do it. So that's why I justified it.
And then I was really pressured to do it. And I was a fan of the show, obviously.
I mean, everybody is. And it's an insanely unique experience to have on planet Earth for a week.
Yeah. In fact, I don't even really remember lots of it.
When you're doing the show, you're being dragged around by the sweet woman, Donna, who's changing your costume. You literally have no autonomy.

You're being just taken around to various things and the hours are weird.

Yeah, you're kind of in a fever dream the whole week and then it ends, right?

And you try to process it afterwards.

That's exactly it.

Yeah.

Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

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Oh, I did want to mention one thing because it seems relevant for a real pain, which is Emma Stone, of course, was in Zombieland. Is that the first time you meet her? Yeah.
You guys become pals, obviously, because she's a producer on both the movies you directed. Yeah, exactly.
I think she is so talented. I think she's so sparkly.

And. You guys become pals, obviously, because she's a producer on both the movies you directed.
Yeah, exactly. I think she is so talented.
I think she's so sparkly. And I thought poor things she was off the charts great in.
I find her to be a real unicorn. I'm very intrigued by her.
Oh, she's a total unicorn. I mean, she's funnier than almost anybody I've ever met and great dramatic actress.
And I will say, knowing her now as a producer, she's so savvy within the film industry. We're like on marketing calls with the studio and there's people who've been doing that job for 20 years and they're all amazing, but she just holds court and we're all just sitting there taking notes.
And she's somebody who's never marketed a movie. She's just so savvy at every aspect from giving me a note on my script to then marketing to production, everything.
It's hard to describe what the thing is because I haven't seen it in somebody else. It's hard to articulate it.
She just seems always right is what it feels like. Everything she says to me is always, oh yeah, that seems better than what I was thinking.
You're right. There's a hyper intelligence too.
I should have listed that in the mix. Yeah.
But so often you go on a movie and you really bond with somebody, but then there's no legs to it afterwards. You both go to different sides of the planet and do another movie for three months.
How did you guys end up maintaining that friendship? It just broke through that. I think everybody who meets her has that same feeling.
And I think everybody who meets her feels like they have that bond. And I was very, very aware of that when we were working together.
I was like, I'm her best friend, but also I think probably everybody feels that way. It's because she's so genuine.
You have the sense in her presence like, oh, this is my new best friend. Wow.
My hunch is she makes you feel incredibly comfortable to talk to. Yes, exactly.
And so for a lot of people, she's the most comfortable person they get to talk to. And so they are in the level of intimacy that they can feel comfortable sharing.
Yeah, that's exactly it. They feel in her presence like this is the most comfortable I've been.
Because I could also see you convincing yourself to not stay in touch with her. Oh, no, I did.
I basically I didn't reach out. That's my hunch is that she probably pursued you as a friend.
She did. I only say this because I didn't want to bother her because I think of her as on another planet.
She's also a very busy person. Yeah.
But she would send me text messages like I had put out a book the next year. She'd send me text messages of lines in the book.
She would come to all the plays I wrote. She was just very supportive.
I think what it is, is that she's like a comedy nerd. And so I was writing comedy essays.
She would send me a picture of one of my short stories or something, and she would say, this is my whole life. And she's genuine.
Beams give me hiccups. Yeah, Bream gives me hiccups.
It's a collection of short stories that I published in there and elsewhere. And she would just send me pages from it.
And no one was doing that to me. It's so sweet and flattering.
I think she's just like a comedy nerd in addition to being also like a goddess. And so I think that's what it was.
So she became interested in the stuff I was writing. And so she would always be the only one who would read my stuff.
I mean, more than any other friend. Yeah, she believes in you creatively.
Yeah. And so she got my first movie script and she was thinking of starting a production company.
And she asked if she can produce this as her first movie. Wow.
That is when you finish Saving the World. Yeah, exactly.
Okay. You do the Now You See Me's.
Those are huge hits. John's a friend of ours for part two.
John Chu. Oh, really? You got to see Wicked.
He fucking slayed it. I can't wait to see it.
It's insane. Okay.
It makes a ton of sense. You've written a bunch of plays that have been produced.
You've been writing forever and you're acting. So obviously directing is not a big leap.
But for you, did it feel like a big declaration? Not really. I just was feeling like I wasn't getting good movie parts for a while.
I was always writing plays because I was doing movies that I really liked. You were living also in a subset of Hollywood that got largely diminished.
You were in a lot of 20 to 60 million dollar movies, quirky comedies. Those went away.
The actual sweet spot you were living in is only just deflated over the last 10 years because that's TV now. That is so interesting.
God, I just blamed myself. But I'm sure you're at home going like, yeah, no one likes me anymore.
Forget the fact that they haven't made a 35 million dollar dramedy in eight years you know it literally never crossed my mind but so i've had this happy thing where i was acting in movies i really liked which you're saying went away i guess that's true yeah and then i was doing plays and it felt great and then it had been a few years since i've been in a movie that people really like so i just thought i have to take the thing i've been doing in theater and just move it to movies where i can kind of take control of it a little more. I had written a book for Audible, and instead of turning it into a play, which I was going to do, I turned it into a screenplay because I just thought then I could just get in movies.
And it truthfully was helpful. Like I was working with A24, produced it, and it was basically like I'm in with the cool kids again in the movies.
And I engineered it myself. And now I acted in my second movie.
So now it even helps me as an actor. But it was kind of like, I guess, taking a backdoor back to the table that I felt I wasn't sitting at anymore.
Right. And had you convinced yourself that the ride was over, even to the degree where you were trying to transition into gratitude for having been at the party? That's funny.
You're talking about the memoir phase of the career. Like the processing of the experience.
Yes, exactly. Now you're opening the car dealership based on the sitcom that you're in.
Mine is I'm doing Ace True Value hardware commercials regionally in Michigan. And I go, no, you didn't get punked.
We do have garden hoses on sale. Now watch out for those zombies with this new rake.
Now you see these cars. Now you don't.
Yes. God, where was I? All now I could think of.
Where are we? Directing. Oh, yeah.
Oh, this is what I was going to say. Basically, you joke that I was in the

gratitude phase. I was not in the gratitude phase.
I moved to Indiana. I was in the I moved

to Indiana phase. Bloomington, Indiana.
I moved to Bloomington. Yeah.
What is that?

Bloomington is a city and cities are groups of people. And you know this from your anthropology

that those people can be different. But basically, my wife grew up there.
OK. My mother-in-law

tragically got sick and she was running a domestic violence shelter there. And we went to help out with the shelter and to take care of her.
And in terms of professional stuff, because that's kind of what we're talking about, it was like just a total two feet out the door of this thing. You know, it's a weird industry.
It feels so unstable. You feel like, oh, the thing's going to spit me out tomorrow.
Being in Indiana, I was just around none of it, which was great. Paradoxically, it was weird because I was the only actor there.
And so people were like, hey, are you still acting? Sure. Which is not a question you want to be asked.
What year was this? This was probably 2016, 17, 18, 19. Pre-pandemic.
Yeah, no. And then in the pandemic, we were there all the time.
We moved to Indiana. You left, basically.
Exactly. And it was a relief.
But you're running away from something, too. I was running away from not feeling like I'm pounding the pavement in New York.
Also, I was in this Batman movie and the Batman movie was so poorly received and I was so poorly received. I've never said this before and it's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I genuinely think it actually hurt my career in a real way because I was poorly received in something so public.
I've been in poorly received things that just don't see the light of day for the most part. no one knows.
But this was so public and I don't read notices or reviews or movie press or anything. So I was unaware of how poorly it was received.
But I don't even know what you're talking about. And that's another fallacy.
Another reality. This is another thing that we think.
I didn't know that either until I was reading about you today. Yeah, we think everybody knows.
I'm sure you think we know what you're talking about, the movie, and then you were poorly. Like, I didn't know that until you just said it.
Oh, yeah. But in the industry, if you're in a huge, huge movie and not seen as good, the people who are choosing who to put next in their movie are just not going to pick you.
Yeah. You're just like associated with something.
I loved my role and I loved the movie doing it and everything. So I feel just myself to blame.
I'm not like they did me wrong. No, I'm like, oh, I guess I did something wrong there.
And so it did feel like I had to climb out again. Yeah, but you were really depressed after that.
It was depressing, but I'm depressed all the time. In some ways, just like, oh, yeah, of course, I had this great opportunity.
Of course, it didn't go well. Just pessimism.
Okay, great. So here's this other great irony, which is constant fear of the future.
But when terrible shit's happening to me, I'm kind of good in terrible shit. I'm fine.
Which begs the question, why am I so afraid of the future? Because every time I'm in the shitty thing, I do just fine. Oh, no, it's exactly what I expect.
My main trouble comes when a good thing is happening because I think now is the really bad thing. And it's that anticipation that's really troubling.
Yes. My mother-in-law was very sick.
And while we were taking care of her, it's such a self-centered way to view something. But I remember I just had never anxiety because I never had a thought about myself.
It made me feel so good to be able to help somebody who needed it. During the pandemic, there was no work, obviously, couldn't go to sets.
So I was working in this domestic violence shelter. I was just volunteering and I'd never been happier in my life.
It was just getting outside of yourself. Now, I heard you talk about directing.
I thought this was a cool thing to acknowledge because I say this kind of publicly. This is a wild business.
The most creative person isn't the best director. You have to also lead 120 people in a direction.
That's its own skill set. And it's almost bears no relation to the other part of the job.
Yeah. It's like your general manager of a store.
Yeah. It's very interesting.
You think, oh, if you're creative, you're a writer and you're in your room by yourself. And if you're a good enough writer, eventually they'll go, do you want to direct? You're like, well, I sit in a room by myself.
This is going to be a different experience altogether. I liked hearing how you owned that.
Like, I'm not the kind of guy that can be shouting on set. We're losing the light.
But you found your own way through it. What is it that you landed on that made you comfortable in that role? Oh, that's so nice to ask.
The directors I've loved working with are not those people either. They're people like me.
And they are great because they're real people who so appreciate everybody who's on that set. They appreciate the actors who are exposing themselves, discounting their own vanity, even though their face is going to be blown up to a million feet.
And I just walk in so lucky and happy that this production designer, this cinematographer, this art director is here working. They're far more talented at their job than I am at my job.
This is my first or second movie. This is their hundredth.
These actors, same kind of thing. So I just feel really lucky.
And the two movies I've made are very specific to my voice. And so I'm very confident in the creative part of it.
I know where I'm not confident in, and I'm so happy that I have people working with me who are. When I think about it that way, it's pretty easy.
My new movie I'm acting in as well, and I never had a chance, for example, to watch the playback of me in the scene. I never had an opportunity.
We were moving too quickly for me to go and put my headphones on and watch me act. It was basically I could either do that or do another take.
It would take the same amount of time, so I'd just do another take. I was too busy to second guess myself for my hair.
I just finished doing Now You See Me 3 and it's an ensemble movie and the part doesn't require me to like dig deep. And yet still, I was so nervous all the time.
This is my shot on this movie. And this is the important scene in this movie.
When I'm doing my own thing, I just don't have that. There's no buildup.
I think I'm best in the things I've directed because, yeah, I'm so distracted by the much bigger issue at hand. So you're unselfconscious.
Yeah, there's no time for it. I got to get these lines out.
I wrote that's my job. But what does it tell you then about the nervousness from the other thing? Does it tell you that's just fantastical stuff that you're creating to fill your mind? It gives me an example that I can do the same job without all the bullshit.
I don't have to be fearful. Right.
And I don't have to be nervous. It's almost like immersion therapy for you or I, where you get results and then you have to acknowledge, oh, I didn't need all that racket.
I just find there's so much waiting in movies. You fill your head with crazy stuff.
Again, I just finished this movie. Ruben Fleischer actually directed it.
It was a big movie and you could not go wrong in this movie. It's Now You See Me 3.
And yet you spend the six hours in your trailer waiting to do the thing. And so by the time you get to do the thing and the line is basically just like, I got him right here.
Something like that. And so you're in the trailer and you're like, I got him right here.
I got him right here because you're thinking this requires so much because I'm here in this trailer. Yeah, it must require so much if there's all this crap around and all these people around me.
Exactly. So then you over inflate the importance and then you screw yourself up a little bit because it actually is better if you don't think about it.
Yeah. Well, I watched A Real Pain last night and I really, really enjoyed it.
And in fact, I was watching it. My 11 year old who was just trying to get out of going to bed, which is a great technique.
She kind of joined me. She was laying on the floor watching with me and she goes, this movie is hard to watch, but I really like it.
And I'm like, yeah, that's like a whole genre of movies, hon. We take for granted.
All three of us grew up watching certain kinds of movies. And now kids grew up watching like kids movies or tentpole movies.
This whole strata. Oh, right.
Of like an emotionally taxing talk heavy. It's not in the marketplace.
It was cool. This is uncomfortable.
You can feel what these guys are going through. And that in itself is very intriguing and pleasurable to consume.
But what you're saying is that's unique. My finger's off the pulse.
If you're 11, look, we took them to the mall Friday night because I found out there was a Dairy Queen in the Burbank Mall. Once we got there, I was, oh, we've never been to the mall with the kids.
They think this is spectacular. We're in Macy's.
They're on every bed, every couch, every chair. And I'm like, oh, right.
This was my entire childhood going to the mall. They never been there just because mall culture is not the same thing.
Well, we don't shop at the mall. We shop online.
And this particular mall, the Burbank mall, shout out. It's a time warp.
It's the 80s. It's the same terrible things at the food court.
It was just one of these dumb things where I was like, oh, right. I spent every weekend of my life at a mall.
This is their first time to a mall at 11 years old. In that way, this movie was weirdly refreshing because this movie could have been.
The Burbank Mall of movies. Yeah.
Could have been. What director do I want to say? Not Hal Ashby, but there's a 70s vibe to this movie.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's character based, you know, walk and talk characters that you don't necessarily fall in love with right away.
Every scene you set up for, you probably were going to get through four or five pages of dialogue. Yeah.
Wait, did your kid not find Kieran to be really funny? Because Kieran's antics are funny in the movie. Yeah, she liked Kieran, but Kieran is also making everyone very, very uncomfortable around him.
Unpredictable. Yeah, it's unpredictable.
All right. So let's set up the movie and then I want to hear your own history and going into it.
The thing I want to applaud the most is just as a writer, it's such a different story by the conceit of it. So you and your cousin who are very close as kids who are separated in adulthood, geographically and socioeconomically and all these things.
You shared a grandma. She lived in Poland, World War II, and she died and she left you guys money to go visit where she's from.
And you guys join a tour. Yeah.
With a really fun group of different people with different reasons to be on the tour. And now we're just on this tour through Poland and it's a Holocaust tour.
And there's these cousins trying to come to terms with how different their lives have turned out. I'm sure the implicit guilt in your character's mind.
And he's Kieran. So he's the dude from Succession.
He's impossibly charismatic, can get away with saying anything. And it's really fun to watch.
What's your own? I know you have some similar bit of history with Poland and your aunt. Yeah.
The house that the guys go to at the end is my family's house. Oh, really? And my wife and I went to all these cities in 2008 when we were just traveling through Poland.
So I knew these places quite well. And then my aunt Doris was born and raised in that house.
My cousin Maria survived the war through a series of miracles, as we say in the movie. So it was kind of like a combination of these two people.
And then I'd been on some of these tours, not in Poland, but first time my wife and I went away together was to Venezuela. She's like an interested person in the world.
She took me when I was 18 to Venezuela and we went on this tour. And it was so funny because you're with these other Americans or British people, whatever, it's an English speaking tour.
And you're not having any local experiences. You're in another place, but you're kind of in this bubble.
I thought it was so kind of funny and ironic. So I wanted to kind of present that world.
Also would be, I thought, really interesting to just have it set on like a holocaust or so basically the kind of humor of the movie and of the characters can just be offset and against the backdrop of something quite big. Where do you get that relationship? I've written about characters like these for a while.
Kieran's character is Benji. I played a character named Ben in a playbook called The Spoils, which was about a similar kind of character.
I'm fascinated by people like that. So if you haven't seen the movie, the character that Kieran plays is this incredibly charming, charismatic, live wire, firecracker, but can also be very manipulative, antagonistic, intimidating, but also lovable and then also ultimately very broken.
Something is very disturbed. For lack of better verbiage, he seems kind of bipolar.
You don't know what you're going to get on what day. Is he going to be really high and ramping up everyone else around him? Or is he going to be in the pits and drag everyone down with him? Yeah, exactly.
And I guess I've found people like that just to be initially very enviable. Like, I wish I had that kind of outward charm.
I wish I could say what was on my mind. I wish I felt comfortable enough in my own skin to even say, hey, I'm feeling really bad now.
He gives people the greatest moment in their lives, but he also, when he's not feeling good, he decides he has to turn everybody's world sour. I always thought that's like the version of me that I don't present.
Well, that's what I was going to ask. They're two different characters, but are they you? I mean, are they your super ego and your id? You're the first person to put it in those Freudian terms, but that's what it is.
So Kieran's like the id. My character is David.
Everything David is feeling and all the things that are coursing through his unconscious come to life. And that's Kieran's character.
And there's something unsustainable about Kieran's character. So that's why there's a kind of broken, bittersweet quality to him because he doesn't have a sustainable life.
He can't keep jobs or friends or girlfriends. You meet him in the beginning at the airport and you leave him at the end at the airport.
He's a person who kind of exists in this transient liminal space, just a purgatory of his own troubles. There's also all this great exploration of what the third generation Jewish experience is, but it brings up different things that you could potentially be dealing with, with that family history that's shared by so many.
One of them I found was fascinating, I had never really considered, was in your great moment of frustration with your cousin, you say the notion that he's living in the basement of his parents' home, knowing what his own grandmother went through and survived, is like somehow this this cosmic disappointment. It never occurred to me that people would feel that way, but of course they probably would.
That might be an actual thought people have who feel like they're underachieving. Which of course would just bring them down even further.
There's like a quote in every culture that has the following thing. Japanese culture, it's like rice patties to rice patties in three generations.

There's another quote, which is like first generation builds the house.

Second generation lives in the house.

Third generation burns it down.

Italian is like shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.

And I say it in the movie, the first generation does some menial job.

They work themselves up into the middle class.

Second generation maybe moves themselves up a little further in the third generation, burns the house down.

And I think that third generation, if I were to analyze it, maybe on a mass level, I would say something along the lines of there is a guilt that their lives are comfortable and they're lacking meaning that the first generation had. Yeah, you inherit.
It's more than the immigrant story. It's the survivor immigrant story.
And yeah, I think about my own self-flagellation. And if I could add in there that my Papa Bob, he was orphaned.
He adopted all of his younger brothers and sisters and supported them. I think what that man went through and I'm like, yeah, I didn't get X movie to Y actor.
Isn't that weird? What a shameful place I'm occupying in my head right now. Exactly what the movie is talking about.
I don't know how to reconcile it. I've written four plays about this exact idea because all my plays are about usually an American's modern American creation, like what you're just describing in touch with somebody whose life is somehow just more fraught.
The play that I like the most is called The Spoils. And my character is like Kieran's character and his roommate is a Nepalese immigrant who's based on my friend.
We both met at NYU, but my roommate is getting a business degree. And I think business degrees are ridiculous because capitalism is bullshit.
And he's like an upwardly mobile immigrant. And it's just this clash of cultures.
And so my life is just completely stifled because everything seems like bullshit because I have the comfort to have that. It's a luxury.
Yeah, exactly. You get self-hating.
And then if you're telling yourself this story of God, I can't believe my grandfather, what you just told me now. And you're worried about your role.
It just adds to the self-hating cycle. Yeah, just all more fuel.
And then again, the story he's telling, like, yeah, just an outward rejection of all wealth because he doesn't have it. Also, these stories that he's telling himself, Kieran.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rich people are fucking idiots.
Which helps dissipate some of the shame. It's the thing you said earlier about not going to the award show and then creating a thing in your head.
Yeah, because award shows are bullshit, you know. Yeah, yeah.
You have to, if your life is not working out in certain areas, the quicker thing to do is not try to fix it or blame yourself or try to fix yourself. The quicker thing to do is create some really well-reasoned, logical-sounding argument of why the thing that you didn't get is bullshit.
Yes. And why the thing you're doing is the natural and right thing to be doing.
Yeah. I say this a lot about our current hatred of billionaires.
I don't have that hatred. I'm like, poor people don't hate billionaires.
It's a certain class of people that is actually pretty privileged that has the luxury of saying that's bad and capitalism is bad and X, Y, Z is bad. It's like, if you're actually disenfranchised, you don't think that.
Oh, that's so interesting. It's a weird cycle that happens with privilege where you start picking apart the way to get.
I think this is some of the great angst with economically disenfranchised people is they're hearing rich people talk about that they should care about the planet. Right.
And they're like, yeah, let me handle dinner and rent. And I might join you in this existential crisis that's a thousand years away.
There is some reality like when your full bandwidth is made up of surviving. A lot of these other concerns are trivial.
The idea of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is that once you fulfill food and air, then you have shelter. And if you're worried about your movie role, I suppose that's not even on the pyramid.
And if it wasn't a pyramid, it'd be the star on top of the Christmas tree of the pyramid. Yeah, the tip of the flag.
And Maslow would punch you in the face. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but it's a similar thing. It's like the cultural, if your parents left a country to come here so that you could have the opportunity to make a ton of money, you're not going to be like, I think money is bad.
You're going to be like, that's literally the whole purpose of. That was the life raft.
Yeah, exactly. That's what the movie is doing.
And that's what the characters in their own different ways are trying to go back to connect to it in some ways. My character is kind of a yuppie and has all the feelings of OCD.
It makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I don't want to tell anybody about it because I'm grandson of survivors. Right.
Were the places you were filming actual? Yeah, we filmed at a concentration camp. We filmed at one called My Danic, which is five minutes from where my family lived.
Not the house that's in the movie, but my second cousins lived nonetheless. We filmed at this place, Maidanic.
It was really difficult to film there. They don't want movies filming there for obvious reasons.
I mean, most movies that are about the Holocaust take place during the Holocaust. These places that are hallowed grounds don't want extras and Nazi uniforms running through.
So I took eight months to get in touch with these people to finally express to them what I wanted to do, which was I wanted to take these characters on a tour through this place, which is now kind of called a museum, the way that they as a museum are hoping to get people to come into. The movie was serving the same purpose as the place and important to go.
I've been to a few of these genocide museums in Rwanda and Cambodia, and I visited several of the concentration camps. Every time I'm at these places, I just have this thought, which is like, God, everybody has to see this.
And it's hard to say exactly why. I guess, you know, it'll make you more empathic.
All of it's overwhelming. And so I don't like thinking about it.
And my best course of action is to explain why. It's just to basically fall on Nietzsche.
To have kind of a Nillis takeaway is your only recourse to not suffer in thinking about it. I'll go, yeah, bad shit happens on planet Earth.
People are tribal and that's the facts of life. It's all an attempt so I don't actually have to feel how miserable that might be.
Oh, I see. I got a little compartment in my head and it's like, yeah, the Earth's gnarly.
We do gnarly shit. People are susceptible to cults of personality and we're social animals.
I understand it, quote. Therefore, I don't have to feel it.
But I think going there, I go, it matters a ton and it's real and it's palpable. And there's nothing I can do to really think my way out of this.
That's right. I mean, and I guess it speaks to the thought that one death is a tragedy and a genocide is data.
So when you go there, you realize, oh, actually, there's something real here. It's not something to just write off as a data point of something that occurred.
To understand intellectually. Exactly.
One detail that I absolutely love that you had in the movie, only because I just read this book when we ceased to understand the world. Have you read that book? Oh, no.
You must read this book because you show the Prussian blue on the gas chambers. It's the greatest book of all time.
The first chapter is the Prussian blue. It's called Prussian blue.
Sorry, I forgot the title. That is the single greatest book I've ever read, but I read it like five years ago and I just bought it for everybody I know.
Did you read Maniac yet, his next book? Oh, did he write another thing? You must read it. He's French, right? He's like from 10 different countries.
French is his first language, but he might be in Argentina writing. Oh, that's exactly what it was.
Is that what it is? He was living in South America, but he's French. That Prussian blue chapter is the eeriest thing I've ever read in my life.
And so to tell people, Prussian blue only exists as a byproduct of the poisonous gas that was used. Wait, what is that? Sorry.
So Prussian blue is just this beautiful color in a palette of painters and it was discovered in some year, I forget which year. And when you create that compound that's in cyanide or you say it in the movie we say cyclone b yeah those chemicals create the color prussian blue which is so beautiful and all of the gas chambers had prussian blue all over like the gas just would seep out of the doors where they would open it so surrounding the door going in and so now like 80 years later the stains still on the wall.
And they're these clouds of the prettiest blue you've ever seen. It's so weird.
There's something very weird about it. And you know, it's also the name of a girl band.
Do you know about this? Oh no, Prussian Blue? White supremacist two sisters. Oh my God.
Ladies, ladies. It's the wrong use of Prussian Blue.
Yeah. Also the wrong use of your life.
What are you doing? I mean, they purposefully named that because they're white. Right.
Yeah.

Isn't that fascinating?

It's a fantastic movie.

You did a fucking great job.

It's really, really good and refreshing and new and interesting and a cool story.

And Kieran's phenomenal and you're phenomenal.

Thank you so much.

I appreciate you saying that. Yeah.

And I'm delighted that you accomplished so much in such short time and on such little money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We just had someone on.

Who was just here talking?

Oh, maybe Anna Kendrick.

When you make a movie for such a low budget, you want two things. You want America to think it costs 100 million, but you want everyone to know you only had 3 million.
Oh, that's brilliant. I want the credit of having made a big movie for a very little amount of money, but I want everyone to think it costs 100 million.
I was was told to stop saying it for exactly that reason. Yeah, you're exactly right.
Why is that? Because America doesn't want to go to a movie. I want my cake and eat it too.
But what's the appeal? Well, you want to watch it and be like, holy shit, this movie's incredible. It must have cost a hundred million dollars.
I see. I see.
I see. It's a huge big movie.
There are occasionally movies that the story of the thing is $50,000 and they did this, but that's, I guess, few and far between, right? Right. Puffy chair.
We can name them probably. Yeah.
Well, Jesse, this has been wonderful. I've enjoyed this so much.
I hope everyone checks out A Real Pain. It's so, so good.
What's interesting, it's Searchlight. This all makes sense.
Because I watched a Disney debut, which is their screening platform. But of course, Disney owns Fox and Fox Searchlight.
Yeah. Will it make its way to Disney then? Disney Plus, I think it will.
It comes on. Yes.
Oh, OK, great. Imagine it's the only Holocaust movie on Disney Plus.
Just type in Holocaust on Disney. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
What if it said, I don't like to talk about that? Yeah, we don't talk about that. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Maybe you'd enjoy Dumbo. Or you want to feel like shit, Bambi.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
All of their saddest movies come up. We don't have that title, but we have Bambi.
Lion King. You know, all these movies, the parents die in the beginning.
All of them. That's the formula.
Yeah, isn't that just bizarre? It is. And when it's pointed out to you, you're like, oh, it's that simple? It makes sense.
So it's the only way to get kids to care immediately. That's the only thing they know and could understand as painful.
You know what ChatGPT told me? Because I asked, is this exploiting kids' psychology? And it said, no, this is a way to safely teach kids about emotions. So it's not real, but you're dealing with emotions.
They're playing out their biggest fear. They'd lose mom and dad.
That's right. They're doing what we do.
Just a few years later, it's Texas Chainsaw. Yeah, exactly.

Next stop.

Six more years.

All right.

Well, I enjoyed meeting you on the lot some 12 years ago

and now this has been even better.

I hope everyone watches

a real pain

and we would love for you

to come back

when you're doing it again.

That would be great.

Thank you so much.

This was so nice.

I sure hope there weren't

any mistakes in that episode, but we'll find out when my mom mom mrs monica comes in and tells us what was wrong i want to give a public shout out to the number one bunny in america the number one rabbit carly barton my little sister she got out all 1500 sweaters wow carly in like two. She had to borrow the truck, multiple trips to the post office.
Thank you, Carly. But she cranked.
That little gal can work. I think I can always call her a little girl.
It's not disrespectful on a feminine standpoint because it's my little sister. And she'll always be a little girl.
I think she likes being a little sister. I'm sure she does.
Yeah. I like being a little brother.
I mean, I hated being a little brother, but now I like being a little brother i think she likes being a little sister i'm sure she does yeah i like being a little brother i mean i hated being a little brother but now i like being a little brother i could see that yeah you have little brother energy ah you wish i got big brother energy oh here's something that i wanted to bring up because i always talk about things i love that i've seen and i know you're never gonna watch this which this, which really breaks my heart. But do you know about the Yacht Rock documentary? On Max? My God, is it good.
What's the deal? First of all, Simmons produced it. Oh, cool.
He's doing a lot of docs. Oh, yeah.
I think he did the McMahon one. Yes.
That's awesome. He's crushing that doc space.
Yeah. I've removed my shoes for comfort i see um thank you it's really good and you know i consider myself a student of yacht rock as you know since you've known me yacht rock was my thing it gives you the origin of yacht rock it was a comedy sketch by these guys in the 90s they they coined the term yacht rock okay i knew all the players of course and you know my love for Steely Dan.
But I got to be honest, I don't think I knew how much Steely Dan is the hub of all that music. I mean, you can trace all of it so perfectly to all just them being the nucleus.
And you know, Steely Dan is my absolute favorite. I force people to talk about it all the time, especially when we have musicians.
So what a delight for me to hear that that was the glue that held all that together. Do you talk to Best Boy Jimmy Kimmel about it? Of course.
Yep, yep, yep. Since he loves Yacht Rock as well.
He and I, well, Molly sent me the best video ever. If she says to her Alexa or whatever device she has, hey, Alexa alexa play good music she did a video of this it'll go playing dax's um playlist like the playlist that jimmy made for me is what alexa thinks is good music that's so cute he made you a playlist there's a few bands i guess that's where the debate is like where does the line like hollow notes is not yacht rock but that's so why right a lot of people would say why i think it is and then there are people like kenny loggins is one of the he'd be on the mount rushmore of yacht rock but he also danced in all the genres he also had a lot of rock and a lot of pop and then all these seminal yacht rock jams.
Carly Simon, Steely Dan, James Taylor. That's the neither of those are James Taylor is not yacht rock.
I mean, I think so. You think so? Yeah.
Who gets to decide? Well, if you watch the doc, they give you a pretty good framework for what it is.

Huh.

So the band that's at the hub is, of course, Daly Dan.

But then the individual that's the common connective tissue is Michael McDonald.

He's in every single one of these things in some capacity.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

I wonder what Simmons is going to do next. Because he's on a roll, I guess.
He's going to make one for you. That would be fantastic.
Speaking of, I got a lot of really sweet reach outs from people in my life, like old people in my life when I was in middle school and high school. And they were so happy for me that we got to have Lisa on.
100% of comments are about you well that's very sweet yeah people's enthusiasm and excitement for you it was like people who I don't talk to really but were there for when it was really when friends was the salve yes and so they were all very it was very heartwarming and sweet that they were like, oh my gosh.

That is nice.

Yeah.

And then Anthony, who also was there, he texted me.

Not a blast from the past.

Well, not a blast from the past, but a.

Longstanding friendship.

Yeah.

He was in the past and he was a part of it.

And he's also a huge Friends fan.

And he said, I almost commented, Lisa Kudrow, this is how I find out. I have forgotten to tell him.
You had to even tell him. Yeah, I'd forgotten.
And then I said, oh, some people reached out, which was really sweet. And he said, yeah, you really created strong brand awareness even back in the day.
You didn't tell anyone was coming up? Because when I did Toto, I couldn't resist. Whenever I was with the boys, I'm like, oh, dude, Toto said this.
Toto said that. I told people Toto.
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
I told people about Lisa Kudrow. I guess I just forgot to tell the most important person.
Okay. Yeah.
Okay. So sorry, Anthony.
This is a public apology. I need you to be brutally honest.
So, I was going to wear a hat because, as you know, I am involved, engaged in a two-front war with the thickness of my hair. Okay.
And so, I have a product that I have to use in the morning and at night. And it makes my hair terrible.
I have an eye dropper. I drop, drop, drop, drop, drop.
I just want it on my scalp. That's what I'm hoping.
And then I try to get my fingers in there and just rub the scalp. But of course, it gets all over the hair.
And then it's a pharmaceutical. So it's not like a hair product you'd want to use.
And so my hair just always looks bad, basically, because I'm putting it on in the morning and then at night. So take your pick.
It's going to look bad. So I'm wearing a lot of hats lately because I don't want to deal with it.
I did notice you were wearing a lot of hats. Or maybe I won't put in that product.
I'll give up some territory in this war. I might lose the battle today, but worth it so that I don't have to wear a hat at work.
Okay. And then so I was, that was all happening.
I just exercised, went in there, cleaned up. What are we going to do here? Wear a hat.
And I go, I'm not going to wear a hat. And now now i'm here and then just crossed my mind does my hair look crazy well did you put the stuff on it yeah i got to well you just told me you decided you might not do that on a day i'm not gonna wear a hat i would forego the treatment so that my hair doesn't look all goopy so i was gonna wear a hat today okay but then i decided at the last minute when I came down, no, I'm not going to.
Okay. Got it.
You see the confusion. It looks fine.
Okay. Great.
It doesn't look insane. What are you, what means, what's insane to you? Like a big block of plastic on half my hair and then normal hair everywhere else.
Oh, no. Okay.
He doesn't have that. But I have an idea.
Tell me. You know those scalp things? They're like.
That tickle your scalp? Yeah. The metal rods.
They have little like sticks on them. You could do the thing and then use the scalp thing to get it all over.
And then you wouldn't be using your hands to get it all over. It's a great idea.
But I think if you'd use the product you wouldn't you would know why that's not gonna be an option for me because i do the eyedropper well inevitably it wants to start running down my forehead and i don't think i can get it in my eyes so i constantly i just gotta immediately stop it oh it's like um you've spilled something on the counter and it's making its way towards the edge and it's gonna go down on the floor you gotta You got to really quick get involved. Okay.
Because you definitely want to get you like you have to put it up here. Well that's front number one of the war.
It's two front war. I'm fighting in the front and in the back.
The middle were fine. I don't really even need.
So most of my drops are all along the front and then it wants because of gravity, come down my face. Okay.
I have another idea. What about Q-tips? What about if you put it on a Q-tip and then you dab, dab, dab? So I almost think I tried that method.
The problem is, is like I've got an eyedropper and I don't know in milliliters, but it's a considerable of fluid if i was going to douse a q-tip we would be in there for like 45 minutes to to get enough of that fluid on the q-tip get that then transferred to the scalp then go back because the q-tip doesn't absorb all that much and you're supposed to do two of the oh you're too full it's a lot of fluid. All right.

Well, just a hat, I think is great.

Just keep wearing a hat.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, it's almost Christmas time.

Are there any Christmas updates?

I got a new tablescape.

So that was exciting.

Tell me about a tablescape.

New tablecloth.

This is from Heather Taylor Home.

We love Heather. As a human.
I mean, I don't know much about the products but amazing product wonderful woman my tree is 35 but she's still my baby just like harley is always your little girl yeah her skirt is pink and green okay so now i'm i'm deciding to do pink and green as a theme across the board in your home. Yeah.
Okay. That's the Wicked Colors? Oh, God.
I guess they are. Because Kristen did a Wicked Tree and it's pink and green.
Nothing against Wicked, but that wasn't the point. You wanted to be more original.
I just wanted to match the beautiful skirt. The skirt's so cute.
It doesn't look Wicked-y. Okay.
I don't think people would think it. I'll ask.
I'll ask everyone. Well, in full honesty, when I look at our wicked tree, I don't think wicked.
No. I mean, green obviously is very embedded into the wicked aesthetic.
Yeah. But I don't know about pink.
Does that represent her? I guess because, yeah, I think she wears pink stuff. What's her glenda glenda or glenda glenda she wears pink i forgot that i only think green when i think wicked but you're right pink is a color yeah apparently it's it's uh an essential part of the sauce speaking of ariana grande oh yeah did i on here? No.
Oh, my sweetest little delty. Yeah, you told me.
He's so cute. She has her first star, Sheila.
Oh, my God, you guys. I love it so much.
It's her version of Lincoln's Taylor Swift. She finally has her girl, and it's Ariana Grande.
And and she has printed up she goes on the internet and finds she types in ariana grande color shit it's in my phone as a search which is problematic but um because she uses my phone sometimes it's like a drawing outline and then she prints up all these little things and then she colors them all day long and then she's now telling me a lot of facts about ariana grande and she wants to know when we're going to interview her i know now we have to well of course i'll die i'll die getting her yeah because my little girl anyways i it is so you have two big gets taylor and aria i know My gals did not shoot low. They have good taste.
They went right for the stars. But boy, do I like it.
And I really like, it's just so cute when you love something when you're little and you start gathering all the facts. And she's telling me about her vocal range and why she's special in this way and that way.
So cute. Oh, I love it.
It's's pure you told me this a little bit ago and so then some videos have been popping up about her i mean i get so many wick wicked videos which is kind of weird okay maybe they know about my tree and they're confused i look i loved the movie i love the movie but i'm not like some people are die hard wicked and they've seen it multiple times and they're sing-alongs exactly it's a whole it's like a whole thing it's so fun that's not really me so i guess i'm i'm interested it's interesting that i'm being targeted in that way do you remember adam osher we interviewed We interviewed him. Instagram.
Instagram CEO, head of head of Instagram. I don't know what the title is, but I follow him.
And you know, there is a feature on Instagram where you can wipe your algorithm. Really? Yeah.
It's like if you're starting to see stuff too often that you don't like, and maybe you watch in my case, it would be like, I watched a fight video. Because because there are certain fight videos i love if it's like a little guy that was getting bullied by a big guy in a car situation he gets out and he happens to knock the guy out i love that sure but then they think i like every kind of fight and then i just and then it's sticky i kind of it's hard for me to resist looking watching fights and i don't want to watch a bunch of fights yeah so like that's a case I might go in there and and like just wipe it and then start fresh but that's a feature now that's cool yeah I like that he's a very thoughtful mindful person that's trying to make that thing the best version of it there's like a real commitment remember when he was here they were gonna hide likes yeah yeah they.
They beta tested that. And I don't think the consumer wanted that.
Yeah. But they tried, which I think in theory was a really kind of good idea.
Yeah, I agree. But I do appreciate that there seems to be a lot of effort being made to keep it a kind of positive place.
Yeah, they have. I think they have whole divisions at Meta that are fully ethics based.
Right, right, right, right. And so a lot of the things have to run through that.
Trying to dial down the polarization and stuff. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
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I've also gotten a lot of videos about her. Okay.
And I sometimes think to send them to you to show Delta, would you do that? Or are you like, probably not videos? Yeah. Like I love that she's drawing pictures of her.
I don't mind going on the internet and getting the little things, but I don't really want her just mindlessly ingesting a bunch of videos. Yeah.
I.e. fights in parking lots.
Right. Yeah.
I get that. But how's she learning about like her vocal range and stuff? Probably at school.
That's where you learn everything, right? Well, I don't know. One friend learns one thing and they add to the thing.
The other friend's like, I heard she owns a chihuahua. And you're like, yeah, you know, I don't think she owns.
I don't even know if she owns a dog. That was just an example, a theoretical example.

Sure.

Yeah.

Can you see if she owns a dog, Rob?

Yeah, I'm Googling it already.

She has several dogs.

Myron.

Oh.

A pit bull mix that was left behind by rapper Mac Miller.

Oh.

Myron.

All right.

Do you have any, have you watched any more Christmas movies?

The last one was Charlie Brown Christmas and then half of Frosty. Have you watched any? Yeah, I watched The Holiday.
I mainly just have it on in the background. The Holiday, Home Alone, Love Actually.
Again, I just think it'd be so trippy to be in one of those movies where like every single year, everyone's reminded of it's like a hit song yeah you don't get that with movies people aren't like making time to watch yeah which was an incredible movie but in large part i'll never be seen again yeah so it's kind of a gift it's a blessing to end up in one of these it's a blessing it's almost like what we do sort of like how podcasts are so intimate they they become part of the your fabric like your daily fabric christmas movies have that they become part of your traditions they're good triggers yeah and like when we had jude law and we talked a little bit about the holiday. Yeah.

He's like part of my year.

Yes.

Always.

Always.

And Jack Black too.

I forgot that he was also in his role.

But it was almost mine for a minute.

Yeah.

When he had a scheduling conflict,

but then they worked it out.

Yeah.

You could have been, you could have been, I could have been in one of those where everyone remembers. That would be cool.
They should re-release Without a Paddle and just give it a ton of Christmas songs. Maybe I don't think you could trick.
Well, you're really lucky if you're like Die Hard. I haven't seen it, but Die Hard, which is a Christmas movie, but it's not right.
It's funny you would say that. Well, no, it's just set during Christmas.
You know, I tried to do this with chips and I was a bit heartbroken because I love that just in the background of L.A. in Lethal Weapon was Christmas because it's so especially if you're from Michigan, it's weird that California has Christmas.
How are they doing it? They don it? They don't have fucking snow or anything. I guess.
There's something really neat about it. Yeah.
So I had this great scene between Michael Rosenbaum and Vincent D'Onofrio. And he pulls over Michael.
And where we shot it is right at the 101 where you get off at Vine. So the background was the capital records building and they always put this enormous christmas light tree it's like the shape of a tree on the roof and it's so iconic and every shot i kind of built around making sure that was behind d'onofrio and it was so great and it was the opening scene and you i was like oh it's great it's gonna have a christmas vibe and we have other christmas stuff but when that one went away that scene didn't make the movie it was a great scene on its own but it didn't really service the movie all that well so that scene got left entirely unseen and then it really took out the momentum of the christmas aspect dang yeah but i was trying to do that that would have been cool yeah because i love a little pop of Christmas in the movie.
Everyone says triggers in a negative way, but there's really positive triggers. Yeah, that's right.
I think we think it because guns. Oh, yeah.
Well, I think we think it because everyone says I was triggered every fourth sentence. Yeah.
In popular culture, myself guilty of it, too. And it's never a good thing at the end of it yeah but i guess my point is i think it that originated just even that colloquial term originated from a gun trigger yeah or a crossbow probably no okay um rob um is the home alone house in Chicagoago like immortalized at christmas yeah i used to work not far from it and i'd sometimes just drive over there and eat lunch on the street oh my god just like outside in my car do people and like they don't they don't love that people um hang out there oh because someone lives lives there.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
They wouldn't like. I mean, whoever, Columbia should have bought it.
Well. I think.
And they made it a museum. But you can't put a museum in the middle of someone's neighborhood.
That does remind me, last thing, Lincoln and Delta and I, on Sunday, we went into Altadena. I think a bit because you and I had shot a commercial there.
Yeah. Well, that's also funny because all time the restaurant I love, you love, we all love.
They just opened a new restaurant in Altadena. And you went.
And I went the day before we shot the commercial. And it was so weird because I never go to Altadena.
Same. Yeah.
So we were shooting a commercial there. And then I kind of remembered, I think they have a street here that's super Christmassy, known around town.
So then I hit up Bree because she lives adjacent to Altadena. Yeah.
And I said, isn't there a street? Oh, yeah. You got to go Christmas Tree Lane.
It's right by the public library, blah, blah, blah. So and she said, we let the kids hang out the sunroof because you drive really slow.
And I was like, okay, great. I got great tips.
I'm going to bring the Raptor because it's got a huge sunroof. So Lincoln and Delta and I went up to Christmas tree lane and we spent two hours just crawling through all the neighborhoods looking at all of the houses that were decorated.
And there are some doozies. I'm so proud of those people that put in that effort.
Me too. Some of these displays, that was a week of installation for sure.
There was a full Christmas vacation house. Oh, wow.
With like the characters there. There was someone had the lamp from Christmas story.
You know, the dad wins that stupid lamp. It's a sexy leg with a stocking on it and then a lampshade.
And then the dogs break it. And he's so upset.
My lamp, my lamp. And he spends his whole time gluing it back together and that looks insane someone had one of the actual things in their window wow someone put up this huge it's like you're standing inside of a christmas photo they put a big border with merry christmas and it's lit so you can get out and step behind it so i got the girls standing behind people like come out and walk around oh there's's signs from the city no parking during this time it's like it's designated as an attraction and you just coast through and people walk that's so cool we hung out the sunroof not we them yeah cute I can't reach the pedals you cruise control fuck you're right Rob I should have set the cruise on six miles an hour maybe ghost ride it it just gotta walk next to it that sounds really lovely yeah it was really really fun and then we made the mistake of going to the in and out in altadena and it was it was a record waiting it was a record how are they doing this are they doing this? I've never been in my entire life, and there's not been a line.
At random times, it's pretty cool. Good for them.
Because they don't build out for it. And they don't market.
I've never seen a commercial for In-N-Out. Well, Bree and I used to see those commercials.
Oh, really? Because we would sing. That was our love song.
What was it? The song was, In-N-Out, that's what a hamburger's all about. But we would say what made it our love song is we would say, In-N-Out, that's what a hand in burgers all about.
we would say what made it our love song is we would say in and out that's what a hand in burgers all about oh we would say hand in burger that's what made it a love song oh i thought i like that because i thought you were gonna make it gross dirty like that would be a sex song right one more thing about in and out my mother went to california when a kid, when I was a skateboarder. We couldn't believe she was going to California, USA.
We had never been, we never even met people that went to California. Yeah.
And when she came back, what she had seen while she was out there, this is what a good mom she was. She had seen other skateboarders and they had the In-N-Out sticker on their skateboards.
It would say In-N-Out Burger and the skateboarders would cut off the b and the r so it said in and out urge oh and she brought back a stack of the stickers for david and i and she showed us how to cut off the thing cute yeah and were people like that's so cool man people thought it was really cool california like oh my god the land of fruit nuts i told you my my friend's mom said that really cool. It was California.
Like, oh my God. The land of fruit and nuts.
I told you my friend's mom said that. Was California like a crazy fantasy as well for you? It was a fantasy that I wanted to go live there.
But just as a place. Long before I wanted to be in show business.
It was just like, oh, they surf out there. They skateboard out there.
There's palm trees out there. Yeah.
We were infected with the fantasy of it. I was infected with the fantasy of Hollywood.
And I knew that was there. We went on a family vacation when I was 11.
Oh, see. Okay.
Well, then that, yeah, then it's a real place. So of course you wouldn't have had that yeah we did the tour the first time

i went i think my mom took me when i was maybe 14 or 15 to do leg work for a car show so we were working yeah but we flew and we went to riverside that's where the car show was the riverway speedway what a no disrespect to riverside folks not the fantasy of california Sure.

Like a land, you're 50 miles from the ocean.

Yeah.

It's industrial.

Yeah. To Riverside folks, not the fantasy of California.
Sure.

Like a land, you're 50 miles from the ocean.

Yeah.

It's industrial.

Yeah.

It's sprawling.

I was like, this is California.

Oh.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But then we went to San Francisco because we had legwork up there.

And then we rode the trolley.

Yeah.

And I was like, well, this is a fantasy land.

Definitely.

Yeah.

Went to Chinatown.

And we went to San Diego. Went to the zoo.
You did. Your parents are good.
Good parents. Yeah.
Very. Took their little girl all over.
Yeah. Show her the world.
Yeah. Bit them in the butt.
Because you split. She left.
Yeah. They shouldn't have shown you this place.
No. We sit right by the airport and you could hear the planes the the whole night that's my riverside experience um anyway okay so this so jesse ding ding ding he lives in hollywood actually doesn't i think he lives in new york damn it but he has done a lot of work here in hollywood yeah i feel bad because when you talked about Jesse's sister, I was like, I was, it was new information.
And I reacted as such. And then like four seconds later, I was like, oh, I did know that.
Oh, you already knew that. But I forgot.
And when you said it, it sounded new. Yeah.
And then I felt fraudulent. I didn't know.
I'm wondering what percentage of the audience will know immediately who i'm talking about because as soon as i heard pepsi girl i could see her in my head the spirally curls let's bring up a picture of her on the tv search bicycles in paris on the tv show where is the i think that's austria oh that's what i think I think, is it beautiful? I think it might be Ireland. There she is.
Look how cute she is. Oh, she loves her Pepsis.
And you know what else? Look at her little teeth. I know.
She looks like him. Yeah.
Like they definitely have a family resemblance. Yeah.
Oh my God. I wonder if he thinks she's so cute.
He didn't say so in the interview. Well, yeah, of course not.
It's his sister. Well, you think your sister's so cute.
My sister is cute. You talk about it all the time.
I don't talk about how cute my sister is all the time. I'm just kidding.
But if your sister is known as being like the cutest girl in america i wonder if i would hate it yeah

exactly yeah even if it was your little sister no if it were her i'd like it i want the best for her i always have well that's great i love her dimples dimples are a thing if and when science is uh good enough which it it will be um i'm gonna pick dimples for my kid oh really yeah i don't know if people with dimples like dimples even though we all like their dimples well that's they're crazy lincoln was just telling me that there are now a trend on social media is there's like a freckle filter. People put freckles on themselves.

And what a turn of events.

Everyone with freckles didn't want them.

And I was trying to explain to her, look, here's how it goes, Link.

Whatever you don't have, you want.

I wanted curly black hair.

Sure.

Everyone with curly black hair wanted straight blonde hair.

Yeah, exactly.

I had a ton of freckles.

It was like a fart cloud on my face. And of course, I didn't want freckles.
Right. But had a ton of freckles it was like a fart cloud on my face and of course i didn't want freckles right but what happened to your freckles i don't see any you don't uh-uh it's probably too much like sun damage under i bet if we if i got good if i got like um acidy facials maybe it would reveal oh but you know my arms are freckled to high heaven right it's almost like i'm almost turning a person of color just on the arms.
If you just saw my arms. Maybe with age, also freckles dissipate on the face.
Just this. I would say the sun exposure, but that also seems counterintuitive because sun also brings out freckles.
A lot of people in the summer, their freckles come out. They pop.
Yeah. Oh, in the summer, my freckles were on fire.
Yeah. Freckles are so cute.
A lot of freckles. Freckles are so cute.
They are cute. Oh, yeah.
So I'm going to pick dimples. Okay.
For my kid. When you get your designer kid.
Yes. A girl with dimples.
Oh, can you imagine? She's going to be so cute. It's a cute name, too, for what it is.
It on a monopoeia it is yeah yeah oh i do you think if i go to my face guy if i tell him i want dimples that would be the easiest thing for them to do because they just carve out no i i don't know if i understand how it works but i do believe there's some kind of a facelift you can get with strings where they put string in your face somehow. So clearly they could just put the string in and suck that part of the string in.
And if they haven't invented that, that's mine. They do a dimplplasty.
Oh. Incision in your cheek, remove a small amount of muscle and fat, and it creates a dimple.
Actually, that's what I said.

I said carve something out.

You're right.

Wow.

I want string involved.

It's only $1,500.

Oh, that sounds way too cheap for facial surgery.

I don't want...

This is not where you want to save a buck.

I'm going to come back in the new year.

You have six dimples.

You get multiple dimples.

Do you think if you like...

Some went wrong, so I did another one. Well, if you get multiple dimples do you think if you like one

went wrong so i did another one what is if you like two dimples why wouldn't you like four when i design my kid she's gonna have one eat on each side okay i guess i have to figure out exactly where and then she's gonna have curly hair okay i don't think i have to design i think she's gonna have naturally curly hair like me.

Well, I guess it depends on who her dad is.

Right. gonna have curly hair okay i don't think i have to design i think she's gonna have naturally curly hair like me um well i guess depends on who her dad is right okay but naturally don't get with uh caucasoid lowers your chance exactly but remember i saw that mixed girl at um mixed late woman yeah that you're obsessed with and turn out her parent one of her parents was indian yeah she was so pretty yeah well have a kid with carrot top or something oh that's a good idea oh curly okay i like that yeah red curly hair um dimples and then i'm gonna give her are there any indians with red hair i've never seen one yeah well that's natural people dye their hair right sure sure that's a recessive gene that I don't think has made its way to dominance.
All right. Anyway, Jesse.
Jesse. Jesse has sort of red hair.
Does he? I'm not sure. Okay.
There's those crickets. Yep.
Crickets. Okay.
What is going on? What is going on in LA with crickets? Because this happened when I was recording something else in a different location. We had to stop.
Because cricket infestation. Yeah, I don't know what's going on because they're here in the studio.
And then when I'm in the hot tub at night, it's so loud behind my head, the crickets. It's interesting because in the summertime in Michigan, I love the sound of crickets.
In the hot tub at night or when we're recording,'re recording I hate it again we had this moment last week where the guest was becoming very emotional and it was a very sweet moment and like it almost like someone cued the crew like there was a second crickets crickets crickets the PA was like cue the crickets all of a sudden the crickets were so loud in there and I was like oh my god this is so embarrassing i didn't hear it

because it was a big enough it was a sweet enough moment that i think you're in it but i mean this is like not good for sound well they're they're invested in the garage rubber because when we do when that new couch came carly and i opened the garage to move it in and probably 400 crickets came out.

So we need to get some cricket poison.

Yeah.

I read you can do peppermint tea. and probably 400 crickets came out so we need to get some cricket poison yeah

i read you can do peppermint tea just brew a pot of peppermint tea and splash it everywhere they don't like peppermint tea okay and um some other aromatherapies okay okay speaking of do Mice, another unwanted pest.

Yeah.

Unless you're talking about me. Yeah.
Love eating plastic. Oh, yeah.
They eat. Yeah.
They eat plastic. They do.
They eat my bus. And they chew right through it to keep their incisors from growing too long.
What if I took that mouse to court, like a small claims court, and I said, look, he's $3,500 worth of damage here on my bus. And the mouse is standing there.
Maybe the mouse has a lawyer. I'm not sure.
But the mouse is just there. What do you say about this? And he's just like, and you go, oh, he loves plastic.
That's what he's saying. Yeah, well, he loves plastic.'s what he's saying yeah well he loves plastic okay so ebay's a thorough astronaut costume not there anymore yeah people snatched them up as they should they were like 15 bucks right you can buy spacesuits though on there you can if you want there are thousands of dollars yeah i don't have such an interest in um aeronautics or sure it's just more i had an interest in keeping my costume in nostalgia yeah all right was squid and the whale noah bomb back's first movie no it was called kicking and screaming in 1995 that was his first movie that's different than the will ferrell kicking and screaming though? I think it is.
It's and Screaming in 1995. That was his first movie.

That's different than the Will Ferrell Kicking and Screaming, though.

I think it is.

It's different.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

This is about four young men who graduate from college and refuse to move on with their lives.

Okay.

When we cease to understand the world, author, is he French?

He's from 10 different countries.

He was born in the Netherlands.

He spent his childhood in Buenos Aires and Lima. And then he moved to Santiago at the age of 14.
So a lot of countries. A lot of countries.
And if you type in is Benjamin Labatou French, it says no. Oh.
No, he is Chilean, not French. But do they mean his nationality or his ethnicity? Yeah.
It says nationality no he is Chilean not French do they mean his nationality or his ethnicity yeah it says nationality he is a Chilean author birthplace childhood it just it doesn't say it doesn't say like his dad is from it doesn't say that okay I sent it to Kutcher the other day I said I don't know if I've already recommended this book or not sent him him the link on audible. And then he said,

I'm pretty sure I'm the one who recommended this to you.

Oh no.

Which is possible.

I don't,

I can't remember how it came across my desk.

Take it off your chest.

Get it off my desk.

Oh man.

That's your Ariana Grande.

Yeah.

Well, my Ariana Grande is friends i guess like that i sat that pure time yeah who was do you love any singers britney you did good for you it's britney bridge i know except i didn't really okay you know no i did i I did, but not like I liked friends or nothing. I wasn't owning it in the way that- Probably more just to be involved.
Part of the group. Yeah, definitely.
I was more into Yacht Rock. You don't know shit about Yacht Rock.
I was actually because my dad would play music in his car. Soft Rock.
Soft rock. The soft rock station is the yacht rock station.
So that's like, yeah, Carly Simons goes in there, James Taylor. Soft rock for sure.
Yeah. Yacht rock is a subset of soft rock.
All right. Yeah.
Okay, that's fine. Okay, well, I think I said this already, but I am planning on reading this book over the Christmas break.

Oh, good.

Yes.

I'm excited to read it. It's a goodie.

Yeah.

One of my faves.

I'm re-listening to it right now.

And I'll read The Maniac.

And I'm going to read three more books.

You're writing a lot of checks that I don't know that your little buns are going to cash.

We'll see.

All right.

All right.

Happy holidays.

Happy holidays.

Love you.

Love you. Love you.
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