Maureen Dowd | Club Random

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Speaker 1 Was that you? It was you, fool. Oh, really?

Speaker 1 I was going to say, great line.

Speaker 1 You don't remember?

Speaker 1 Produced by Harvey Weinstein. Oh, yeah.
Well, there's that. But

Speaker 1 go ahead, Maureen. Yeah.
Keep liking it.

Speaker 1 Hello. Hello.

Speaker 1 It's around the corner. How are you?

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 1 I know you have a little cold. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And you still showed up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, I love people who keep a booking. Thank God I'm in

Speaker 1 Bobby Kennedy's America. I don't worry when I get sick.

Speaker 1 Well, let's not start fighting about that. All right.
Let's wait

Speaker 1 like 10 minutes before we get into. You look fantastic.
I don't know what you're doing to get through this cold. What are you doing to get through a cold?

Speaker 1 Well, I had to cancel my first day on the book tour. I was supposed to be on CNN with Caitlin Collins.
And,

Speaker 1 you know, I just slept. But when you're on book tour, it's hard to get enough sleep.

Speaker 1 Man, you're a trooper. I mean,

Speaker 1 you go places in the world. I mean, I wouldn't go in the world.

Speaker 1 I don't. I know.
You don't like to travel, right? I'm done. I did it.
Done. Not like you did.
Like Larry David is like that. I mean, Europe, what's the problem? No,

Speaker 1 he was in Europe recently recently because he officiated at Ari Emmanuel's wedding in Italy. Oh, really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think he married them. Oh, my gosh.
I didn't know that. Well,

Speaker 1 anyone can do a wedding, you know.

Speaker 1 I'll do yours.

Speaker 1 So I'm not going to pass you this joint

Speaker 1 because, you know, you have a cold. And we also know that you once had a very bad experience with marijuana.
Right. And then you gave me some advice on your show.
Publicly.

Speaker 1 But if they ran that advice on a loop in dispensaries, that would be good.

Speaker 1 What was the advice? I forget because I'm a pothead. Well, they didn't, I mean, the problem with Winn-Denver.

Speaker 1 Right, you ate it.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 can I just clear up something which I keep trying to clear up, but no one believes me?

Speaker 1 It was a five-square chocolate caramel candy bar. I had one half of one square.
Everyone said you shouldn't have eaten the whole candy bar because that's like guzzling a bottle of Jack Daniels.

Speaker 1 But I didn't. But here's the thing.
It was a bunch of hippies who suddenly became billionaires and they didn't want to put in a speed bomb for new people where they labeled it.

Speaker 1 with instructions or had a thing on a loop like your instructions where they said said if you take an edible you've got to wait an hour and a half because that's how long it takes to kick in.

Speaker 1 So but the funny thing was they

Speaker 1 put up, they hired a model who looked like me and put up billboards all over Denver with the message

Speaker 1 something like, don't be like Mo, go slow.

Speaker 1 with like me with my head and my hands. But yeah.
That's really kind of a cool feather in your cap. I have a picture of it in my office.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like I have framed the flyer that the Westboro Baptist Church handed out. Remember them? Yeah.
God hates fags, people. Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's one of my prized possessions. Yeah.
Well, I actually got the laws changed there because

Speaker 1 all I thought was that they should give you better instructions. I didn't want to slow them down, but they were all furious at the idea that they would be slowed down.

Speaker 1 You know, but a lot of new people were coming in and older people, and they just needed to tell them how to do it. Well,

Speaker 1 exactly. They need to, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 1 I still want you to tell me how to do it. I still haven't gotten back on the worst, so to speak.

Speaker 1 Well, first of all, don't eat it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Unless you can get it. I mean, there are people who do.
I don't want to tell everybody how to do their own thing. But for me, eating it was always problematic.

Speaker 1 I wanted to eat it because it's better for you, I think. You don't have to put smoke in your lung.

Speaker 1 But it's just too much of a commitment. And you know how I feel about commitment.

Speaker 1 But it is. It's a giant commitment.

Speaker 1 Sometimes a terrible commitment. And it's like an acid trip sometimes.
And that's what happened to you. Well, what happened was, yeah, so

Speaker 1 I was with a girlfriend, Alessandra Stanley, and she

Speaker 1 and I did this tiny bit of this candy bar. And we were suddenly, you know, well, we were fine.
Then nothing happened for an hour and a half. So we figured we'd get a glass of wine and go to bed.

Speaker 1 Well, that's so then suddenly

Speaker 1 I felt paralyzed, but I also felt super paranoid. I was sure that the hotel officials were going to come in and kick me out of the room.
And then we were sort of both. paralyzed for 12 hours.

Speaker 1 And then when I got up, for some reason, I took a glass of water and walked over to my computer and poured it into it.

Speaker 1 What? Yeah, I like killed my computer. I forgot to put that in my piece, but um well that to me speaks of some sort of psychological thing that was

Speaker 1 well yes wouldn't it would I mean I don't you don't mean Sigmund Freud to see that.

Speaker 1 But you know what I suspect, but I never prove was that I think they were using a lot of medicinal level at that point. So you didn't quite know what you were getting.

Speaker 1 I think it might have been a little stronger, even.

Speaker 1 And also, they were disguising it as candy. Remember, little kids were, and that was all I said.
I said, don't now, you're in the game. Don't disguise it as candy and just give people instructions.

Speaker 1 Well, of course, that certainly is, that's the low-hanging fruit that they could do. And I own a pot store with Woody Harrelson.
Oh, yeah, I want to go over there. The woods, it's fantastic.
Everyone,

Speaker 1 it's amazing. Yeah, my researcher is here with me, and he's still upset upset he didn't take Woody Harrelson, was giving out gold, like goldfinger,

Speaker 1 gold foil joints the night of your show in D.C.

Speaker 1 Can you get him one of those? Yeah, but you know, CNN, I was going to say it's a conservative organization, but they're not that conservative. I'm on there now.

Speaker 1 When they asked me to, would you like to be on? I was like, yeah, be honored, CNN. Are you kidding? But what are you going to do about all the fucks? We don't care.
You don't care? Yeah.

Speaker 1 CNN doesn't care about

Speaker 1 yeah wow things have changed when i first went on the tonight show you couldn't say ass david zaslov

Speaker 1 well you think he did it no i'm kidding he's a looser guy he is he's a great guy yeah i love him too yeah no he's uh he's a guy from jersey and mark thompson our old ceo is near yeah mark thompson our old ceo is now running cnn yeah i just had lunch with him he's a great guy yeah yeah yeah no I have to trash someone soon

Speaker 1 we love everyone oh you have my picture with Chico

Speaker 1 I love that it's my it's like that if I had to take another thing out of my house besides the West

Speaker 1 Baptist Church flyer saying that I am Satan and I'm praying to Obama like this and he's got devil horns which is awesome I would say this.

Speaker 1 You got me this when my book came out last year and you interviewed me and Chico photo bombed.

Speaker 1 If you're not watching this, if you're listening, Chico photo bombed the picture and it's mostly, I'm in the background, which is perfect because, you know, when you're older, it's a great place to be.

Speaker 1 But Chico, with his one fucking eye, just I love that picture. I do too.
It is my prized possession. But no, there's plenty of people.
I mean, first of all, the book is fantastic.

Speaker 1 I very often get too stoned and forget a lot of things, but I'm not going to do that today. Not to you, not to the awesome Maureen Dowd who's been so good to to me.

Speaker 1 I read, you know, Notorious, it's called, and it's a collection of all your pieces, your profiles of not just people in show business, but whoever's a big mocker.

Speaker 1 I mean, I love the ones you do about fashion. I love the ones you do about tech Titans.
That's a big thing. But anybody who's in the culture like that on that level.

Speaker 1 And some of these, I mean, I remember all of them. And I have a very, shall we say, selective memory.

Speaker 1 But some of them came back like from the 90s.

Speaker 1 Like Al Pacino. And some of them are from like early 90s.
Yeah. When you and I were both first kind of, when did you get your column? And

Speaker 1 I mean, I remember the 88 election when you covered it. It started in 95.

Speaker 1 95 is when your column started. Okay, so politically incorrect started in 93.
Right. I did a story, which is more of a column, not one of those pieces, but about, remember I trashed

Speaker 1 Ary

Speaker 1 at the White House for he was criticizing you for that time.

Speaker 1 I trashed the Bush White House when they were criticizing you about,

Speaker 1 you know, during the Iraq War when, or it was, sorry, it was after 9-11 when. Oh, when they fired me.

Speaker 1 It's so funny, Maureen. You know, like, here's the arc of my career.
You could see it through that lens of

Speaker 1 Islam

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 I was a big hero to the left after 9-11, because six days after the attack, we did our first show, and somebody said, Dinesh D'Souza said, you know, the people who were attacked, they were not cowards.

Speaker 1 And I wholeheartedly agreed and still do. You can be evil and not be a coward.
I mean, they stuck with the suicide mission.

Speaker 1 Now, I've heard some of them on the plane didn't know it was a suicide mission. Right.
And they were like, wait, what kind of a mission? Yeah, but you came back.

Speaker 1 But they did it. And I think they probably did know.

Speaker 1 So I was a big hero to the left

Speaker 1 because I said, you know, terrorists don't necessarily aren't necessarily terrorists, which was true.

Speaker 1 And then I became a big enemy of the left because I kept saying true things about

Speaker 1 Islamic extremism. which they didn't like because they think that's Islamophobia.

Speaker 1 So it's interesting the way it came i stayed right where i have always been no keeping it real about both sides of that but it just came around i mean and and now we are i'm not surprised that we've reached this place where wokeism is somehow aligned with infitada is the only solution that the people that would i look that look and dress and admire terrorists and infitata, which is not a benign word or concept, they're aligned now.

Speaker 1 That's the end of that cycle.

Speaker 1 And I'm very happy with where I stayed, despite all the people who

Speaker 1 throw me out of their little club for it.

Speaker 1 Well, that's why people love you. People ask me about you all around the world when I travel.
World. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Customs agents. Really? Yeah.
And where?

Speaker 1 Because people want someone to just tell it straight, not be

Speaker 1 spinning for one second.

Speaker 1 No, I get that in America, but where in the world do they know me?

Speaker 1 Ireland.

Speaker 1 So they get where they see it on YouTube. They're proud of you as the son of Ireland.
Really? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I remember when I visited there in 99,

Speaker 1 and I never really thought, oh, you know, I'm Irish, but I was always very... unsentimental about it.
And I truly believe in my heart that

Speaker 1 you can't be proud of something you didn't actually achieve. I'm not really proud I'm Irish.
It just happened. You know,

Speaker 1 I'm not proud I'm white. It just happened.
I'm

Speaker 1 proud that I stayed on the air after they tried to get rid of me. That's an accomplishment.
No, nobody puts baby in a corner.

Speaker 1 But when my plane landed, I was crying.

Speaker 1 And I don't know why. I mean, I didn't expect it or I just maybe

Speaker 1 something in the earth, or I don't know what it was but when the plane was touching down

Speaker 1 I guess somewhere in me I know what my roots are that is a great story it's not much of a story it just happens oh I love that though

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 yeah and then and then

Speaker 1 I had the best time driving around Ireland has changed a lot you know they had a

Speaker 1 gay Indian

Speaker 1 Oh, they're super woke. Yeah, prime minister.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 For people who don't know,

Speaker 1 there's like stupider woke in other countries, even in many places. I mean, New Zealand, I think.

Speaker 1 I've heard some things that a young woman prime minister, you know, who had said things during COVID very much like, you know, if we are the only one. Jacinda Arden, I did one of these pieces on her.

Speaker 1 We are the only one. She was great.

Speaker 1 I mean, she was

Speaker 1 great when I interviewed her. Yeah, I'm just saying.
She did, yeah, she got in trouble over COVID. That's why.
Well, also just this attitude that I do hate on the left of like, we own the truth.

Speaker 1 Right. I mean, I think Fauci said almost as, I am the science.
Well, I think they took his mural down

Speaker 1 in Washington.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 What's it like? I mean, that's been your home. your whole life for people who don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was born there. You were born and raised there, and your father was a detective and

Speaker 1 sorry sergeant at arms what in the capital no he was a dc police detective who was in charge of senate security got shot for 20 years he didn't get shot he captured the gun of oh he ran from the Senate to the house and tackled and took the gun away from one of the

Speaker 1 Puerto Rican terrorists. Puerto Rican terrorists.
Yeah, so he shot up the house. You can still see the gunshots on some of the

Speaker 1 desks.

Speaker 1 And he

Speaker 1 took the gun, and then there was a trial.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 the defense attorney asked him how he knew that

Speaker 1 it was his client's gun. And my dad goes,

Speaker 1 because I carved my initials on it, which you can see if you look at it. Holy shit.
That's a story. He was.

Speaker 1 My dad was very magnetic and cool.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 anyway, Washington is one big ball of stress. They need some weed there.
I mean, they're ripping it

Speaker 1 now from the inside out.

Speaker 1 You mean now it is? No.

Speaker 1 But it wasn't before? You're just saying it's worse. No, it was.
It must be people just getting fired. There's nothing more close to home than that.

Speaker 1 And he's tearing through the government and firing people.

Speaker 1 So that's really what I was asking is like, what, what is, I mean, do you see that in Starbucks when you're? Everyone's head is spinning. I mean, this

Speaker 1 wolf pack or brat pack of

Speaker 1 young doge kids

Speaker 1 with backpacks and pizzas shows up.

Speaker 1 They had a confrontation today or yesterday at the U.S. Institute of Peace where they didn't want to let them in, and they were trying to sneak in.
And, you know, it's scary because it was,

Speaker 1 I think you said something. I'm elaborating on it, but it's like if you want to get rid of your stomach, you don't use a John Belushi samurai sword to cut it off.
You just use Ozimpic.

Speaker 1 Like, there's a more careful way to do it. I mean, it would be nice to save money and have a leaner government, but these kids show up

Speaker 1 and they're trying to get into agencies.

Speaker 1 very disorienting because there was no

Speaker 1 planning in the sense of there's no

Speaker 1 disclosure agreements. Nobody knows what they're getting.
They're getting taxpayers' information.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 a lot of it probably is illegal. And

Speaker 1 it's just an insane situation. And Elon Musk, there's a piece about him in the book.
Oh, yes.

Speaker 1 It's pre-I mean, it's the older. Yeah, when he didn't like it.
It's funny, he also was a liberal hero. Yeah.
Not that I'm a conservative hero now. Yes.
He fully went all the other way. Right.

Speaker 1 As Joe Rogan used to also be quite liberal. Right.

Speaker 1 But the Elon piece is from, what, 27? Silicon Valley was liberal, and now it's very

Speaker 1 Republican. He did the Tesla, you know, I mean, there was like,

Speaker 1 you know. And everybody in Hollywood had a Tesla.

Speaker 1 And I remember when it wasn't that long ago when he was just posting things before he owned Twitter that were fairly benign and similar to the way I thought were.

Speaker 1 Like I remember he once he put like a graph of like, here I am, and here's where,

Speaker 1 you know, the common sense used to be the middle. And here's its move.
Here's how it's moved.

Speaker 1 And, you know, he had the left abandoning it, which it has in many ways. Right.
So he, you know, sees himself as in the middle while the shift has happened.

Speaker 1 I see that too, but I didn't go all the way. Yeah, I didn't go.

Speaker 1 He's gone very far. But I think the problem is he does not believe in government.
So he's perfectly happy to eviscerate government. And he's treating it like a business or something.

Speaker 1 And it's government. You know, you can't do that.

Speaker 1 No. I'm not saying I don't want to get rid of stupid and wasteful things.

Speaker 1 But the way they're doing it, you know, just imagine Washington and this crazy pack of kids running around getting everyone's information.

Speaker 1 Even if you were going to metaphorically demolish a building, say a building does need to be demolished, wouldn't you go in first? and take out whatever is valuable. Right, right.

Speaker 1 You know, you'd go into the... But they just show up.
I mean, I can't say Trump. Yeah, Trump is treating treating it.

Speaker 1 I used to like this TV show when I was little called Treasure Chest, where Jan Murray would open the treasure chest every week. Remember that? Vaguely, I don't remember.
Sounds vaguely.

Speaker 1 And so, was it a game show? Yeah, so there's that thrill of them getting into an agency and finding the things that are stupid to cut, but there's more to it than that, you know.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 the thing I worry about the most, which now will probably get us on what we're going to argue about health-wise, is

Speaker 1 during,

Speaker 1 well, before COVID, we had a little group in China,

Speaker 1 a little group of like eight scientists and doctors who were supposed to monitor if anything was brewing over there. I forget what it was called.
It was like a five-word name, a very long word.

Speaker 1 The biomedical room establishment

Speaker 1 committee of whatever it was.

Speaker 1 It was just, it cost three cents, basically. Right.
And he got rid of that. Right.
And I don't feel like he's ever confronted with that enough. And now that's what they're doing all over the world.

Speaker 1 And diseases start in other countries and then they come here. How can these people who are, some of them are not stupid at all, how can they not see?

Speaker 1 that that's the smart thing to do and that if another virus comes here it could be worse Ebola. You know, stop it in Africa.
Right.

Speaker 1 I just don't. Well, like when he had this presidential address, you know, recently, he

Speaker 1 had a child there who he said had gotten cancer maybe from chemicals. But then they're cutting the things at NIH that are watching that.
Like when he talked to Zelensky today,

Speaker 1 He said, oh, I want to help you with these children that the Russians have kidnapped. You know, they've kidnapped all these Ukrainian children.

Speaker 1 But then Doge cut a Yale program, which tracks the children and tries to, you know, so this is what's going on.

Speaker 1 Everybody wants to get rid of waste, but this is a crazy, nobody knows what anyone's doing. Everything's spinning.

Speaker 1 So are people in Washington,

Speaker 1 how do you see it? Like when you go out drinking more?

Speaker 1 Are the cars crashing off the side? Were they just people like I want to know how you actually

Speaker 1 just like in a movie where the car is starting just driving off the road and people are just there? A guy's running out, he's on fire, that kind of thing. That movie.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 you know, on the on the disease thing, I got to say,

Speaker 1 when I read the byline in your paper about these news stories, I can't help but remember that this is the person who said that any even hint that COVID could have come escaped from a lab was racist.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 So you can't really blame me, and maybe she's your friend. I'm sorry if she works across the cubicle or whatever, but you can't blame me for being skeptical.
I don't blame you. Okay.

Speaker 1 I don't. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Go ahead.

Speaker 1 Okay. All right.
No, I'm glad. Because I know we've, I know you and I have slightly different views.
And like, I mean, I know RFK is easy to, I said last week, he's like having a bipolar girlfriend.

Speaker 1 You know, sometimes he says crazy shit and you just, you know, he's the girl you're sorry you started to talk to at the party. Right.
You know.

Speaker 1 But just from what I basically know, I mean, we used to treat natural immunity.

Speaker 1 as a little more valuable than we do now. I'm not saying this is the pharmaceutical industry taking over America entirely.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist like that.

Speaker 1 But like any industry, they're very influential. And the solution always seems to be more of what they're selling.

Speaker 1 And this is the first one, COVID, I recall, where we really didn't count natural immunity at all. Even if you had it, which is really usually the best kind, you still had to get the vaccine.

Speaker 1 That seems strange. And they fired medical workers who wouldn't do that.

Speaker 1 Well, I know that

Speaker 1 COVID was hard for all of us, but I do know it was hard for you because I feel like I kept sending you pink ties to cheer you up.

Speaker 1 And I wore them here.

Speaker 1 We shot the show. I did the monologue there.
We did

Speaker 1 the interviews right here. I did the editorial outside in the backyard.
We did it once in the rain. I will treasure that moment.
I did a monologue with holding an umbrella. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, you got through it.

Speaker 1 You know, was uh

Speaker 1 it was terrible i

Speaker 1 was terrible you know was the terrible part is i would do the show

Speaker 1 the show yeah okay it was still the show we we kept it pretty much like it was we had a laugh track for the you know we tried that we cut we had old footage of people laughing from other

Speaker 1 eras it was funny people thought it was a good bid um yeah we got through it but after we finished the taping i would walk out that door and i'd walk the 50 feet to my house and I'd just be silently all alone again.

Speaker 1 And that's, you can't come down from a show like that. Right.
I know. I was working

Speaker 1 and you just, it was like, it reminded me of the first time I took mushrooms and when the mushrooms wore off, when they had eaten all my serotonin, and I was just like.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 I know, I was at my dining room table working by myself for two years. I thought I would go mad.
You know, it was, was, it was a horrible period for the country. Did you go into the office every day?

Speaker 1 Well, I try, but they just did a crazy six-month redecoration of our office. So we haven't been there, but I won't be going back after book tour.

Speaker 1 But really, why would you need in your job to go into an office? You don't need to, but I don't like working alone.

Speaker 1 I mean, if I had known I was going to be working alone so much, I would have become a cocktail waitress. I don't want to be a journalist enough to do it alone.
You know, it's.

Speaker 1 So you like to hear the clacking of the other. Yeah, that's the whole point.
The newsroom. Right.
You know, his girl Friday.

Speaker 1 All these kids have not even experienced a newsroom. I don't know how they meet people to date.
I don't know how they get mentors.

Speaker 1 I don't know how they imitate, you know, I used to like watch reporters and then I would know how to do it.

Speaker 1 I don't know who they model themselves on. I think it's horrible for young people, but some of them seem to not want to be in the office, which I don't get at all.
Oh, most of them. Yeah.
Well,

Speaker 1 I think when historians write of this era, they will say that the Great Divide was no longer the things that we obsess over. It wasn't economic, although these divides all exist.

Speaker 1 It wasn't racial, that certainly exists.

Speaker 1 It was virtual versus not real.

Speaker 1 Like there is

Speaker 1 somewhere in the

Speaker 1 chart of ages and generations, a place where people like you and I

Speaker 1 have so little,

Speaker 1 so little in common with someone who lives on the phone. Oh, yeah.
I was watching. re-watching, you know, I watch things in the bathtub.
I watch things in the kitchen.

Speaker 1 You know, the news is. Do you have a TV in your bathroom? I got a TV in my drawers.
I got a TV everywhere. I love TV.
But yes, in the bathtub, I watch movies.

Speaker 1 And I was watching one from, I think it was from 2011 called Crazy Stupid Love. Not a genius movie, but not bad.
Yeah, it's fun. Yeah, it's fun.
Ryan Gosling. They do the Patrick Swayze leap, right?

Speaker 1 Don't they dance?

Speaker 1 Is that the one?

Speaker 1 Yeah, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Emma Stone and Steve Durrell.
They do the

Speaker 1 same thing. I'm not up to that part.
There is a part where he takes his shirt off, and of course you remember it. Sorry, I didn't mean to ruin it.
No, no.

Speaker 1 No, no, I've seen it before.

Speaker 1 I'm just saying, I'm watching this, and it takes. Okay, so here's my review or recap.
Okay, I'm not going to ruin it. It's fucking 15 years old.

Speaker 1 If you haven't seen it, you didn't miss the great, it's not Citizen Kane, but it's cute. Okay.
So it's, it most of it takes place in a bar.

Speaker 1 Steve Corell is married to Julianne Moore, and in the first scene, she wants a divorce. Okay.

Speaker 1 And so he's like this,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 slubby guy who's out there now single. So he goes to this, a singles bar.
This is why I'm telling this story, because the singles bar, and I'm thinking, this is 2011.

Speaker 1 And this is like, it could be from the 1300s. This is so out of date that people go to a, that's the main set.

Speaker 1 He goes to a single bar where Ryan gospeling every night is scoring with hot chicks who go to singles bar to be chatted up by guys who have lines.

Speaker 1 And it's like, okay, first of all, today, guys can't even talk to girls. So that's not going to happen.
They'd all be on their phones.

Speaker 1 Women are afraid of places like that because they get roofied by the incels.

Speaker 1 Again, this is only 2011. And already, this is, again, to somebody who's just starting out going, you know, in their dating life, 18, 19, 17, whatever it is, this is like,

Speaker 1 you might be in the Civil War. Why don't you just have something in the barn where we're sitting on barrels and churning butter before we meet somebody?

Speaker 1 And that's the dividing line, I think.

Speaker 1 And we're strangers in a strange land, and they're cyborgs. I mean, you know, they have the phone, they're almost like part computer.

Speaker 1 And they don't, it's funny with journalism because they don't want to make calls. They'll text someone,

Speaker 1 but they don't want to pick up the phone. Even texting

Speaker 1 sometimes is too much. It's a challenge.
Yeah, right.

Speaker 1 Which is amazing. And the idea of actually confronting somebody and saying,

Speaker 1 it's just not working out. Right.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 That would just never.

Speaker 1 In fact, even putting it in text, they just ghost. Now, have you dated someone where you had that divide? Where they were very.

Speaker 1 When am I not?

Speaker 1 Yes, but I found one who isn't.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 man.

Speaker 1 Yeah, man, you have to catch a lot of computers. But I mean, it's

Speaker 1 yeah, it's that to me is going to be

Speaker 1 and already people are identifying this, but I don't think they know how much, like you say, cyborgs. I was watching the Taylor Swift Endless

Speaker 1 concert.

Speaker 1 It's taken months to get through that.

Speaker 1 Nikki Glazer made me do it. She said, okay, I've talked about television.
She's fun.

Speaker 1 I like her. She's a sweet person.
I don't get get the music. Enough said.
But like everybody, when they cut to the audience, all you see are phones.

Speaker 1 No one is experiencing this through their eyes. Right.
They have to put this artificial filter that somehow makes it better.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 they're also

Speaker 1 recording it.

Speaker 1 Right. So for.
Yeah. So when I'm covering,

Speaker 1 let's say I was on deadline writing about the Trump address recently, and my assistant is watching it through his phone.

Speaker 1 He's not watching the TV with me, and I'm like, let's both look at the TV.

Speaker 1 No, that is not.

Speaker 1 Even the TV is not real. No.
I mean, it's real, but you know what I mean. It's not like Lincoln.

Speaker 1 Oh, there's Lincoln.

Speaker 1 That's the motherfucker himself. I think that's right there.

Speaker 1 But there's some like filter in there. And I'm like, let's just, you know, pay attention to this.

Speaker 1 But no. I don't know what my World War II parents would say if they just suddenly ripped Van Winkled back to life.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just can't imagine what they would think of anything. I mean, they were lifelong liberal Democrats.
They put that in me, and I think I

Speaker 1 basically kept the faith, although I won't go to stupid woketown with you. But I don't know they, I don't think they would either.

Speaker 1 I don't know. My father was as Irish-y Democrat, loved Kennedy and Pope John

Speaker 1 as you get at the city. He had a huge picture of John John.
I cannot 100%

Speaker 1 predict that he wouldn't be a Trumper.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 My father wouldn't, but I wonder.

Speaker 1 I don't think my mom would, but I can see parts of Trump she would like.

Speaker 1 She did feel we were sending too much foreign aid and a lot of the things he harps on.

Speaker 1 And I think she would like, she liked

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 she liked, funnily enough,

Speaker 1 she became a Republican with Reagan because she loved Ronald Reagan, especially in a tuxedo. She loved him.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 then she loved Clinton because he was optimistic and talked to her. I think she would like the fact that Trump keeps talking to his fans, you know?

Speaker 1 He talks to anybody. Yeah, but also he talks to them in a way

Speaker 1 Barack Obama or

Speaker 1 other George W. Bush don't talk to

Speaker 1 fans the way they would talk to their wife or a friend. And Trump does.
You know, it's very, he would tell.

Speaker 1 people at rallies anything he would tell milania probably more If Trump and Obama were sitting here right now,

Speaker 1 they wouldn't agree on a lot, but you know what they would both say? Boy, that Maureen Job was hard on me.

Speaker 1 Well, it's my publisher. Confirm or deny.
Confirm. But my publisher, Trump called us after

Speaker 1 the 2016 election. He called the Times and he came over and we had a big meeting with him and he began complaining about me.
And the publisher said, Mr.

Speaker 1 Trump or President Trump, it's not your fault, it's just your turn.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 Now, that's a great title. Yeah.
Remember that? Oh, I should have used that as the title. Well, I have another shot at it.
That's

Speaker 1 there's the title.

Speaker 1 So, next time the title thing comes up and you email it about the title, I'll forget this because I'm bought it. Sorry.
You remember. I'm remembering.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I have become, partly because of some things I've been reading in your columns, because you love to reference them, a big like classic movie fan lately. Oh, my God.
And I never did it.

Speaker 1 There were a lot of ones I had missed.

Speaker 1 I saw Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Speaker 1 And I know you and I have talked about horrors in movies. Yes.
And I loved your editorial. Oh,

Speaker 1 I thought that was. It's so funny because when I was at Columbia.
Horrors are having a moment. Yeah, I was at Columbia getting my

Speaker 1 graduate degree in English literature a couple of years ago. Yep, I got it.
Wow. And I was in a class of pre-Renaissance plays.
And the teacher, this British guy, goes, what, this woman character?

Speaker 1 He goes, what is she? And I looked down at the footnotes. And I go, oh, she's a whore.
And the whole class, all the students and the teacher were like, oh.

Speaker 1 And the teacher goes, Maureen, she's a sex worker.

Speaker 1 before Shakespeare, right? Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 yeah. So, your degree is from Columbia?

Speaker 1 Yes, it was much more valuable. You know, I didn't have rich parents to pay for it.
So,

Speaker 1 when you go to Columbia,

Speaker 1 do they give you the kefaya when you first get there, or is it when you go on the

Speaker 1 thank God my

Speaker 1 time there was

Speaker 1 before that, and so it was very peaceful. Oh, it was before that.

Speaker 1 Right before. But

Speaker 1 reckless at Tiffany's, they're both whores. See, I never, I always.
Well, that's the same with Pretty Woman. They're both.
He's not a whore. Well, he's a businessman.

Speaker 1 Right, but he's. Phil, listen to yourself.
But he's, it's funny.

Speaker 1 He's a businessman. This is funny.
You would like this. Listen, they're cutting words out of

Speaker 1 they're saying we shouldn't use certain words like there are eight different gender words, but one of the words that they're trying to cut out is prostitutes, and that's such a useful word in Washington.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 well, you but prostitute, you know, is a word if you look it up in the dictionary. The first definition doesn't mention sex, it just says

Speaker 1 it's doing something you hate for money. Yeah, there's so many men and you can prostitute yourself, but that's not politicians.
Okay, but that's that's not, but in breakfast at Tiffany's,

Speaker 1 no, he's a man whore. He's got this lady

Speaker 1 who you see in a few scenes, like, and she writes him. Patricia Neal.
She takes care of him. Takes care of him.

Speaker 1 He's a whore. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Nothing wrong with it. He's more of a

Speaker 1 kept

Speaker 1 man.

Speaker 1 Whatever it is. He's a writer who's not selling anything, and he gets by.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But that's what I never, I always heard, oh, it's Audrey Hepburn.
She's she's a hooker.

Speaker 1 It's like, oh, oh, well, you know, originally Truman Capote wanted it to be Marilyn Monroe, which would have made, well, it would have made more sense because she's supposed to be kind of a hillbilly and a singer.

Speaker 1 Right, right. You know, and because it was Audrey Hepburn, they completely whitewashed.
what she did for a living. So you just thought she was a party girl.
No, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 No, whitewashed is not what they did. The times were just so different.
Here's what it is: she goes out with gentlemen. Of course, this is a chaste era where you don't ever see any sex.

Speaker 1 She goes out with gentlemen who give her $50, which to go to the ladies' room. To go to the washroom.
Yeah. Okay, well, $50

Speaker 1 in 61 was what? A thousand? Yeah. Okay.
So they give her a you didn't believe the washroom thing.

Speaker 1 We might go to the washroom

Speaker 1 broke, but you're you're coming back ready for action. So I'm telling you, that's their way of saying she's a hooker.
But tell me what other movies you've been watching. Oh.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 Any other Remington? Oh, I did a

Speaker 1 triptych of the Double Indemnity. I'd never seen that.
Oh, I love that. Except for her wig.
It makes her look like George Washington.

Speaker 1 Talk about Barbara Stanworth. Yeah, I love Barbara Stanworth.
Is she not cute?

Speaker 1 She was my dad's favorite actress. She has a sexy way about her.
I guess for the era.

Speaker 1 I mean, in the first scene, Ray Caesar, I mean, she's got an ankle bracelet, which apparently gives him wood like you can't believe.

Speaker 1 And he's like.

Speaker 1 But it's so funny. Again, the sensibilities of different eras.
This is like I think about the phones and like we're of different species from 2011, but from 1944 or whatever that movie was.

Speaker 1 I mean, okay,

Speaker 1 he meets her, the first scene, she's married. This is the old one about

Speaker 1 the femme fatale

Speaker 1 who gets some

Speaker 1 stupid schlub to kill her husband for her.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 1 That's that.

Speaker 1 And then I watched two other movies with the same plot. Body Heat.
Yeah, because it's always.

Speaker 1 It's great. It's a great plot.
Yeah. The woman's a vixen and the god's the sap.
Right. So, but, and then I watched one, there's one

Speaker 1 that came out just a couple of years ago called Careful What You Wish For. Nick Jonas is the sap.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 Okay, so. You got to watch Out of the Past.
That's my favorite. Is that the same plot?

Speaker 1 Yes, but it gets a little twist at the end. It's Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas, a friend, our old friend, and Jane Greer.
It's the perfect film noir. Oh.
I base my...

Speaker 1 Yeah, I based my whole

Speaker 1 when I started in journalism, it was mostly men, and I was terrified.

Speaker 1 So I would watch film noir to see how the women kind of dominated, you know, and take tips from them, not as a femme faital, but as somebody, you know, they would always come in and say something like, quite the hacienda, or they'd say something that would put the men back on their heels.

Speaker 1 So I wanted to be coached by

Speaker 1 very strong.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of snappy dialogue and double indemnity, but of course, it does, I mean, it makes so little sense unless you lived in that era and you understood that

Speaker 1 things were so chaste on the surface, at least in media, that you just had to indicate things. So he meets her for five minutes in the first scene.
He's an insurance guy. He goes to the house.

Speaker 1 She's married. The husband's not there.
And he immediately is hitting on her.

Speaker 1 Okay, and nice ankle bracelet, baby. And, you know, it's so there's an attraction.
We see that.

Speaker 1 Then he goes back a second time and kind of gets it that she wants him to kill her husband. Yeah.
So he's like, I'm not the sap who's going to do that. Get another sap in here.
I'm not a sap. Right.

Speaker 1 So goes to his apartment. Of course, that night, a knock on the door, it's her.

Speaker 1 By the end of that scene, they're kissing and saying, I love you. Right.
It's like, it just, they're not concerned. But she didn't mean it, Bill.
But they're not.

Speaker 1 They're just not concerned with realism the way later decades were. Thank God.

Speaker 1 That's what I love about it. I get Kent Pass.
Oh, my God. Wait.

Speaker 1 I love you giving the plot of classic movies to another. Okay, so that's that one.
And, you know,

Speaker 1 this is like masterpiece theater.

Speaker 1 Okay, so Body Heat is 40 years later and much better and hot.

Speaker 1 I mean, wow, I forgot like how much like

Speaker 1 nudity and like

Speaker 1 Grabman is Johnson on screen. It's for the early 80s.
It was, you know, ahead of its time, I think. Maybe that's why it was such a big hit, because that probably was taking it to another level.

Speaker 1 But it's the same thing. It takes place in Florida.
It's super hot. The heat is like a character in the movie.
They're always sweating completely. So he's this guy.

Speaker 1 He's a lawyer, but he's not doing great. He's kind of down on his luck, but hot, gets laid a lot.
And she's the lady who wants to kill her husband, who this one isn't bad.

Speaker 1 And Double Indemnity, the husband's mean. This one, he's just kind of like, it's Richard Crenna.

Speaker 1 Not that bad. It's like, it's like

Speaker 1 this plot goes back to Macbeth. Macbeth had a nice boss, but the wife said, no, you've got to kill him.
Take his job. You're right.

Speaker 1 It is a little lady Macbeth.

Speaker 1 She stayed with Macbeth, right?

Speaker 1 No, I think. Or she would have.

Speaker 1 No, she. Because these ladies just want to

Speaker 1 kill two birds with one stone. They want to get rid of the husband and then get his money.
Right. And

Speaker 1 cut out the sap who helped them. Yeah.
This is my favorite genre. Oh, really? Yeah.
I'll think of some more. So Body Heat is much better and hotter.

Speaker 1 And there's that funny scene with the little girl.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 I didn't quite understand that.

Speaker 1 The little girl witnessed him. He comes over one night.

Speaker 1 He's been fucking the lady who wants to kill her husband, Catherine Turner, and he sees a woman standing there who looks just like her from behind.

Speaker 1 And because they've been fucking, he says, hey, lady, you ought to fuck. And she turns around and it's not Kathleen Turner.

Speaker 1 It's her friend who looks just like her, who we find out, I won't ruin the plot at the end, but that's very important to the plot. And he's embarrassed, but now somebody else knows about them.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 The little girl who's her daughter, she sees

Speaker 1 she sees Kathleen Turner blowing him and then she um

Speaker 1 doesn't identify him because she said it was a bald man

Speaker 1 remember a bald man why because she saw his

Speaker 1 oh she's talking about his dick

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 see

Speaker 1 i don't think i didn't get that

Speaker 1 they were joking about that it's ted danson by the way who plays the friend yes oh yeah i'm not good at doing that

Speaker 1 I do really, that's one thing I've always needed a girlfriend for. When I haven't had a girlfriend, I just don't understand movies.

Speaker 1 I watch them, but I'm always the guy going, is that the same guy? Oh, it's been the other. Okay.
What is your all-time favorite movie? Saving Private Ryan. Wow.

Speaker 1 So you didn't think Shakespeare and Love should have won the Oscar? You know what?

Speaker 1 You could test me on almost any other year and I wouldn't know what the movies were. That year, I remember vividly because I was so bitter.
Yeah, seeing now, we're going to have our disagreement.

Speaker 1 You like Shakespeare and I loved it. And I have an interview with Tom Stoppard.
Because you're a Shakespeare freak. Yeah, and I told Tom Stoppard how much I loved it.

Speaker 1 It's in the book, and even he didn't seem to like defend it that much.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 I mean, yeah, maybe

Speaker 1 this has to do with the fact that my parents were in World War II,

Speaker 1 met met there. Yeah, my dad was in World War I.

Speaker 1 No. Yeah.
Well, he was 61 when I was born. Oh, right.
Yeah. Oh, my God.
So there's still time, Bill. No, I'm past 61.

Speaker 1 There's time.

Speaker 1 There is not time.

Speaker 1 But that's okay.

Speaker 1 I find that liberating.

Speaker 1 So go ahead.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay. So, like, my father had died, I don't know, a few years before this.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 1 to say I was a puddle who couldn't get out of it. How old were you then?

Speaker 1 When he died? Oh, I was in my 30s. Oh.
You know, I was not a...

Speaker 1 Yeah. But, you know, I mean, we all got to go sometime.
I'm just saying that, you know.

Speaker 1 You don't process something always right away. And in that movie,

Speaker 1 well, first of all, I love World War II movies and I love Spielberg and it is just an amazing movie. But it starts with Private Ryan as

Speaker 1 present day. It's the 90s.
Right.

Speaker 1 And of course, he looks just like my father, like men look like that,

Speaker 1 with the same exact kind of bad shirt my father would wear. Right.

Speaker 1 So already I'm like

Speaker 1 Verklamt, I don't know what the word, you know, Spielkis is one of those Jewish words that means you have an upset stomach.

Speaker 1 And then the movie, movie, and then that reverts back at the end. And so, like, I think I stayed in, I think I, it took me like 20 minutes before I could leave the theater.
Oh, my gosh, so I know.

Speaker 1 I was so,

Speaker 1 yeah, and I was like on a first date or something. Oh, my gosh.
So, how did that happen? I know that poor girl, how did that happen?

Speaker 1 I just

Speaker 1 have loved that.

Speaker 1 Did she love that? I don't remember because

Speaker 1 I mean, she was, she wasn't bad about it.

Speaker 1 Okay, so

Speaker 1 when I was 13, my brother took me to see Hamlet in,

Speaker 1 you know, our park in DC.

Speaker 1 And I immediately decided Hamlet was my boyfriend. And then

Speaker 1 it turned out that he was the worst boyfriend in literary history. Like a fear you commit suicide and he treats it terribly.

Speaker 1 And he's indecisive. I think which is

Speaker 1 women the ick. Yeah, I think that explains a lot.
But

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 in the meantime, I did fall in love with Shakespeare, so I loved Shakespeare and Love because of that. Was it a good movie? I loved it.
I just thought it was super clever. I loved Tom Stopper.

Speaker 1 Produced by Harvey Weinstein. Oh, yeah.
Well, there's that. But go ahead, Maureen.
Yeah. Keep liking it.

Speaker 1 Well, I didn't. First, you tell us you're a drug addict.
Yeah. Now you're supporting

Speaker 1 rapist. Shakespeare-loving drug addicts.
But, you know, I did one of these pieces on Judy Dench, and I loved her, but I didn't use it because she had Harvey Weinstein's name tattooed on her bum.

Speaker 1 And I'm not sure she would want to read about that now. Who did? Judy Dench.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 1 Because he provided her with a lot of great roles, including that role as the queen in Shakespeare and Love, where where she was only on screen for 12 minutes and she won an Oscar.

Speaker 1 She's probably the only girl he didn't try to fuck. That's why she's got his name kind of put on her.
Well, there's a story about Uma Thurman and Harvey in the book. Oh, in the book.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's funny because a lot of great guys.

Speaker 1 Was that where that was? And a lot of guys kept telling me they read it twice, which is. Well, I remember it vividly.
Well, it was one of the more jarring ones. I mean,

Speaker 1 that's like a reporter's dream that when you get somebody to open up about.

Speaker 1 It was a complicated story, though, because it involved Quentin also.

Speaker 1 But, you know, they're still friends. But she wanted, you know, she wanted to get out this story of how he had been careless in the Carmen Guilla scene and killed Bill.
And she was hurt by that.

Speaker 1 But they, then he talked about it and said she was right.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 Yes. I mean, I'm sure everybody could be more careful.
On the other hand, he didn't cut off anybody's head with a helicopter.

Speaker 1 Remember that guy? Yep. I mean, I'm just saying

Speaker 1 movie censored.

Speaker 1 Dangerous places. And it's all relative.
I mean, they really are. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, Tom Cruise. How many movies were you in?

Speaker 1 I, well, let's see.

Speaker 1 I did my first tonight show

Speaker 1 in August of 82, and it went well. So they asked me back in November, and then I did it New Year's Eve.
This was a big feather in my cap going into 1983. My third Tonight Show.

Speaker 1 What did that feel like? It felt like time to move to California. That's what I did.
I used their ticket because they would, you know, you had to pay.

Speaker 1 And then you could, and it was first class because that was the union.

Speaker 1 Thank you union got that first. I would trade it in, as we all did back then.
And it was like $1,800.

Speaker 1 I'd fly coach for $200 and make make $1,600 on the ticket, which was four times what I made for the show. Right.
So I was like, oh, I'm moving to California.

Speaker 1 And I put three suitcases together and I moved to California. And that night, Joel Schumacher was watching the tonight show

Speaker 1 and cast me in DC Camp,

Speaker 1 which I've always thought was a horrible movie, but people still like it. Was that set in D.C.? It was set in D.C.
I was there for six weeks. Oh, wow.
In a hotel room with Gary Busey. You try that.

Speaker 1 You think you had trouble with the pot.

Speaker 1 I kid Gary, but he is crazy. But yeah, I mean, it was fun.
I mean, to be 27 years old and in a movie and, you know, so that was my first movie.

Speaker 1 And then I did, you know, the classic Cannibal Women in the Avocado Jungle of Death, which actually is a funny movie. Pizza Man, same director.
What was the plot of Pizza Man?

Speaker 1 Donald, it's 1990, but Donald Trump is in the movie as a

Speaker 1 look-alike with it, and yet he's like the punchline to the whole thing. It's about a cab driver who's just trying to collect his $15,

Speaker 1 and it takes him on. It's a film noir.
You should see it. It's a film noir.
I am going to see it.

Speaker 1 Good luck getting it. It's a film noir parody.
But you're not a sop. No,

Speaker 1 I'm bogey.

Speaker 1 You're a bogey. I'm the hard-boiled detective.
Oh, well, you know, this is funny.

Speaker 1 When Trump was thinking of running for president in like 2015, shortly before he did, he was vying to play the president in Shark NATO 3.

Speaker 1 True story.

Speaker 1 I'm sure. True story.
I'm sure. So it was one, you know, later.

Speaker 1 When was the last time you talked to him? Interviewed him?

Speaker 1 He,

Speaker 1 well, when I promote, I had a book about Trump and Hillary in that election, the year of voting dangerously. And I was on Michael Smirkanish at CNN on Saturday morning at nine o'clock.

Speaker 1 And I'm thinking,

Speaker 1 who is up watching this at nine o'clock? And Trump was. And I was critical of him.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 afterwards, I ran into Jared Krishner. and Ivanka at a dinner party in DC.

Speaker 1 And Jared took me aside and he said, you know, my father liked you, but now he thinks you've gone crazy. And I said, well,

Speaker 1 I think he's gone crazy. And Jared said, well, if you do two tweets and a column or two columns and a tweet, you can get back on his good side.
Oh, God. And I was like, no, that's not going to happen.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God. It's like a priest thing.
Three Hail Marys and

Speaker 1 two Our Fathers. Yes.

Speaker 1 Which I often had to do.

Speaker 1 Two tweets.

Speaker 1 columns. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We were bargaining. Everything is so transactional.
Yes.

Speaker 1 But I'm curious, what kind of dinner party is there in DC where you find yourself with the cushioners? Yeah, we have a journalist dinner. David Bradley has it.

Speaker 1 And it's, you know, he's a Victorian gentleman. He doesn't.

Speaker 1 make his guests feel uncomfortable so they feel safe there and they invite newsmakers and it's a bunch of journalists and then we talk to them and

Speaker 1 you know that kind it wasn't it I don't but can you be in the same room with the enemy I mean I can I pride myself on don't fucking tell me who I can hang out with right you know if I want to take Ann Coulter to the opera I will you asshole yeah and I think we need more of that not less of that but I you know, you, you just don't see that.

Speaker 1 You know, that the Kennedy Center, which I'm sure is close to where you live. Right.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I get

Speaker 1 how awful it is what Trump is doing to it because it is an art center. But you know what? I know where that comes from.

Speaker 1 Now, maybe I'm wrong about this because I'm only getting it from watching the TV. show, which I've watched every year,

Speaker 1 where they give away five Kennedy Center honors to great people of the arch.

Speaker 1 And it's always a big movie star and somebody else you know, and then an opera singer and some dancer and, you know, like culture vultures know, but I don't.

Speaker 1 So you skip through those and then you get to, and this year it was The Grateful Dead and Francis Ford Coppola. Okay.

Speaker 1 I didn't see, again, maybe I'm wrong, but watching it, I did not see one face on that screen, either in the audience, and there are a lot of audience shots where you see, you know, and of course, it's a very uptight audience.

Speaker 1 I would hate to have to like, you know, there's always that announcer and, you know, here to present, you know,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 please welcome Morgan Freeman.

Speaker 1 And then, you know, he comes out and they do a tribute. It's very polite, and you really wouldn't want to be edgy.

Speaker 1 I would be like the totally wrong person to be in this room under any capacity, and I'm sure I never will.

Speaker 1 Okay, but like I did not see one face either on the stage or in the audience shots that looked like they might have voted for Trump. And I just thought, you know, invite Ted Cruz.
Would it kill you?

Speaker 1 Don't you think he likes the Godfather too? Right. Don't you think somebody in the Senate is a grateful dead fan who's who's a Republican? You know, you just lost an election.
Right. Maybe.

Speaker 1 Now's the time to reach out a little. I don't, I didn't vote for them either.
But would that kill?

Speaker 1 So I get it a little bit when they get into office and they go, you know what, assholes who stuffed our heads in the locker. Right.

Speaker 1 Here's what you get now. Yeah.
But this is what is so crazy about watching Trump because he's got these two sides. So one side is kind of scary because it's authoritarian.

Speaker 1 He and Elon are trying to undermine the judiciary and Congress. You know, Congress is in charge of these agencies, not these Doge kids.

Speaker 1 And the press, Elon keeps saying that the people on X are the press now and Legacy Press is dead. So in a way, like Dick Cheney, they're messing with checks and balances.

Speaker 1 But on the other hand, Trump still has that wacky, kind of funny side where he goes down and takes over the Kennedy Center. And now he wants to give the awards to dead people.

Speaker 1 He wants to give the awards to Elvis, Bayreuth, and Pavarotti.

Speaker 1 And then he goes down, he starts making this speech about how he thinks they should do cats, which was also George W. Bush's favorite play.
Really? Yes. And so he.

Speaker 1 You know, the movie is like a joke of all time, right? Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 1 But Trump says at first he didn't get it, but then he began to look at the beautiful bodies of the men and women in gold tights and he got mesmerized. He's giving this like kind of semi-homo erotic.

Speaker 1 Then he did say, well, I like the women better.

Speaker 1 But then he's got that wacky side. So he's redecorating the Oval Office and making it like Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 1 He hasn't brought up the gold. He has a gold thing with him on Mount Rushmore, but he has like a gold TV.
Wait, let me tell you, a gold TV remote.

Speaker 1 And he put gold leaf around the famous mantelpiece in the Oval Office that you know from TV. And he wants to hang a chandelier and they're trying to talk him out of it.

Speaker 1 And he won't be talked out of it. You know, he wants to make it like Mar-a-Lago.

Speaker 1 And, you know, I think that you see it actually, I think, in the SNL impersonation, that that wacky humorous side is what makes people less afraid of the authoritarian. He's so human.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And not only less afraid, but yeah, less afraid because what we always fear about politicians is that they're not telling us something.

Speaker 1 They're just not to be trusted. Yes.
Spin. What does spin mean?

Speaker 1 It means like there are people in this world who, when you talk to them, like when I talk to you, I know I'm getting the complete unvarnished truth.

Speaker 1 And then there are people in this world who, when you talk to them, you never feel that.

Speaker 1 You always, you can't put your finger on it maybe, but you just feel something is being elided or it's being exaggerated or it's being spun, but it's just not the complete truth.

Speaker 1 And here's a guy who, I mean, as he sees the truth, it isn't often.

Speaker 1 It's a mix of lights in.

Speaker 1 Well,

Speaker 1 it's his impression of the truth.

Speaker 1 If he doesn't like Zelensky, his approval rating is 4%, but it's really 57.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 But, you know, impressionistically, poetically, it's 4%.

Speaker 1 And his fans accept that. But not just that.
It's like, can we trust this guy? Well, he he just voices his interior monologue.

Speaker 1 The thing that we're all, we all edit. No one just says what's in their head except him.
Yeah. So you could, like, if he is thinking homo erotically about

Speaker 1 types. Or Arnold Palmer's cock, you know, he'll just that'll dominate the news for a while.

Speaker 1 Well, it's interesting because, you know, I have my sister, Peggy, on book tour with me, and she's a Trump voter and a Republican.

Speaker 1 all the brothers, right? Yes, but it's interesting to see things from her point of view. But even she kind of rolls her eyes and says she wishes he wouldn't keep saying he won the election.

Speaker 1 She doesn't want him to sell gold sneakers and tacky things when he's president. So, you know, it's, it's, there are a few things she's got to eat.
You got to put up with a lot. And they do.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They're like, you know, that celebrity spouse who always has to act humble on the red carpet. Right.
She puts up with me.

Speaker 1 Shut up. You're George Clooney.
It's fine. I'm sure she's fine.

Speaker 1 You don't seem like

Speaker 1 that much of a nightmare. She said to tell you that she saw one of your early shows and it was the funniest thing she's ever seen.
I mean, my family is in love with you because

Speaker 1 you are not just on one side or the other. You just say it as it is.
Oh, I love you.

Speaker 1 I'm, you know,

Speaker 1 it's funny that you really have to reiterate over and over again where you are because the side, each side wants to only like pick the things that they agree with and then pretend that the other side of you doesn't exist, but it does exist.

Speaker 1 And I have to always say it. But my big problem with liberals is that they basically, I mean, liberals is one thing, but woke.
Okay.

Speaker 1 They basically forgot and don't defend and don't want to defend what liberalism is. I mean, all the things that I think make us great, like personal

Speaker 1 individual liberty, rule of law,

Speaker 1 you know, what we would call Western values, scientific inquiry, human rights,

Speaker 1 women's rights, gay rights,

Speaker 1 freedom of speech.

Speaker 1 trial by jury, all these things that were, I'm sorry, invented in Athens and Rome and Paris and London and Philadelphia.

Speaker 1 I guess they're bad because they came from white people. I don't know.
But they want to turn their back on this. Well, I don't want to say that.
That's Western civilization.

Speaker 1 That guy that they just threw out of the country, and I'm against it because he didn't break any laws. It's just a freedom of speech thing.
I defended him, even though he's a dirtbag who I hate.

Speaker 1 But his slogan was, they want to tear down Western civilization. I mean, saying it out loud, the out loud part, tear down.
Well, Western civilization, I think, is a good thing.

Speaker 1 And basically, that's where the liberals lost me and lost their way. They forgot about Western civilization because woke is all about identity and not about ideas.
Right.

Speaker 1 Well, so my dad was so excited the night Harry Truman was elected, he stayed up all night. My brother was so excited the night Trump was first elected, he stayed up all night.

Speaker 1 And Democrats weren't paying attention to what happened here with the working class.

Speaker 1 And also, they they just stopped being any fun. I mean, they made

Speaker 1 everyone feel that everything they said

Speaker 1 and did and every word was wrong.

Speaker 1 And people don't want to live like that, feeling that everything they do is wrong. No.
You think we're over that era? Do you think that? No, I think

Speaker 1 Democrats are just in a coma. They haven't figured out.
Right. But no, the woke are not giving up on that.
I mean, we saw with the Seven Dwarves movie just came out. Oh, right.
And the

Speaker 1 dwarves, right?

Speaker 1 They thought about the dwarves. It's so funny.

Speaker 1 This is, again, one of my big problems with progressives. They just, they're so stupid so often about things that they find their way back to something that's very unprogressive.

Speaker 1 Like you think, getting jobs for people, very progressive. Not if you're a dwarf.

Speaker 1 Because like there are dwarves out there who wanted to play these parts who couldn't because it was somehow politically incorrect to portray dwarves as, I don't know, miners who know Snow White.

Speaker 1 It's a fucking crazy character that somebody invented for children. And you're arguing about whether it's right if real dwarves play dwarves.

Speaker 1 There are dwarves in the world and there are jobs for them that you lost on their... And then Snow White

Speaker 1 loves Palestine. Like, I wasn't going to see this movie anyway.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 you know, that

Speaker 1 people who get their news from TikTok,

Speaker 1 just please shut the fuck up. It was, I think the Democrats just got to have a suffocating persona where you just couldn't do anything or say anything that wasn't to be criticized.

Speaker 1 Somebody once wrote, the politics of purity makes people stupid and mean.

Speaker 1 Was that you? It was you, fool. Oh, really?

Speaker 1 I was going to say, great line.

Speaker 1 You don't remember it?

Speaker 1 Not at the moment. I'm scared.
I'm too scared. Scared of what? I'm scared of

Speaker 1 TV and you and me.

Speaker 1 Everything. Well, I'm scary?

Speaker 1 Well, because I know if you chose to, you could eviscerate me. I could say the same about you.
Oh, that's true. But mine will happen on Sunday.
This is a good film noir. Yeah.

Speaker 1 The last person in the world I would ever want to eviscerate,

Speaker 1 really,

Speaker 1 is you. That's how I feel about you too.
I know. So why are we scared? I don't know.
I can hear my heart beating.

Speaker 1 We basically agree. I'm going to have a dream.

Speaker 1 We basically agree. I've had like three.

Speaker 1 We basically agree. I mean, honestly, I wish you would write more.
I wish you would turn your poison pen more on the woke. Because when you do it, it's great.

Speaker 1 I understand why there's so much more on the right. And look, you know, I bet.

Speaker 1 And now the right is kind of getting like that. They're kind of getting into cancel culture.
I told you about the colours. Of course they did.

Speaker 1 They would never left it. They canceled Colin Kaepernick.
Oh, yeah. Nothing more quicker or cancellier than that.
Right, right. They're total babies.
There's total snowflakes about. I mean, please.

Speaker 1 Except for one guy. The one guy who can get away with any insult and they all come running back is Trump.
I mean, everybody who works for him, Lil Marco, Steve Bannon,

Speaker 1 they are so. I'm shocked about that.
I was watching Ted Cruz on TV today or yesterday. I was thinking, why did he come back? You know, after

Speaker 1 Trump.

Speaker 1 In fact, my sister, Peggy, got one of the few apologies that Trump ever gave because I was interviewing him and he's like, how's your sister? He knew she was a Trump voter. And I said,

Speaker 1 She is not going to vote for you because you've been trashing Heidi Cruz and talking about women in these horrible terms. And

Speaker 1 I said, Why don't you just apologize to, you know, for that? That was horrible. And there was this long pause.

Speaker 1 And finally, he's like, Okay, you know, I'm sorry I said that about her. Really? Yeah.
I had Ted Cruz on,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 like everything I ever read was like the most disliked guy ever. Right.

Speaker 1 Like just this, this cyborg who was like programmed to be president when he was three years old and has never faltered. And I don't doubt he wants to be president.

Speaker 1 When he was on the show, and I just did not meet that guy.

Speaker 1 Matt Gates sat there. Right.
I did not meet a monster. That's my line now.
Everyone's a monster until you talk to them. Right.

Speaker 1 I mean, I disagree with a lot of stuff, and there's some real deal breakers in there. But I mean, Ted Cruz, he had a sense of humor.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 He just, I, I, like, so I, you must have had more encounters with him than I do. And I have heard that a lot, people, even in the Senate, even his own party, really don't like him.

Speaker 1 I just couldn't find why. Yeah, but that's what I love.
I love that you talk to these people. And that's what's horrible about being in Washington now, because

Speaker 1 everybody's in their trenches. And, you know, it's just like we picked up the Civil War where we left off or something.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, I was at a big party the other night. Michael Kievis',

Speaker 1 no secret, it was in the paper, 44th birthday party. And Bill and Hillary were there and Oprah.
And, you know, a lot.

Speaker 1 I mean, Michael Kievis is the most connected guy in the world and he knows everybody. And, you know,

Speaker 1 David Geffen and, you know, lots of Billy

Speaker 1 and Bezos. and like in the past Elon would have been there too.

Speaker 1 I met Elon a number of times at Keebas's house. Right.

Speaker 1 What'd you think of him?

Speaker 1 Pleasure. Yeah.
I mean, this is before he went full on. Yeah, my piece in the book is

Speaker 1 right, right. No, I mean, I still think he's going to be the one, if there's killer robots or killer AI, he's going to be the one to save us.
I'm sure nobody wants to hear that. To give him his due,

Speaker 1 he was talking about how we need to be on our guard against AI

Speaker 1 before I was, it was even on my radar.

Speaker 1 He called it summoning the demon. Yes, when many other people were saying, you're crazy, what is this? But he also wanted to be an advocate for carbon-based beings.

Speaker 1 He wanted to be humanity's advocate. That's why he started this whole Mars thing.
He said he wanted to die on Mars, just not on impact.

Speaker 1 I've done a number of things on how silly it is to go to Mars. I'll never understand that or his population thing.

Speaker 1 But the Mars thing, I mean, I always thought Elon would be the one to save us from global warming because we have to

Speaker 1 plainly have to invent our way out of it. But now I don't think we will because he doesn't give a shit about Earth.
He wants to go to Mars. He treats planets the way he does baby mamas next.

Speaker 1 You know?

Speaker 1 So he and Trump and Elon remind me of like

Speaker 1 you know people always ask me if they're Shakespearean but I think they're more like Greek gods you know they're sort of capricious and cruel and they do what they like it's like watching Zeus and Dionysus the god of fertility you know it isn't like watching Shakespeare but but I can't like In times past, he might have been at this party.

Speaker 1 Yeah. No, he's in Washington.
He was, you know, I don't know if he was invited. I don't know if like that is just a dynamic.

Speaker 1 He's very busy, though. I know he's busy.
No, I'm just saying. He's busy destroying.
I'm just saying, I don't know if he could be in that room. And it wasn't all.

Speaker 1 It wasn't all. Michael Kivas has friends on both sides.
It wasn't all just liberals. But, you know, he worked for Hillary Clinton and they're very, he's very close to the Clintons.
Right.

Speaker 1 So, yes, I mean, mostly, but, you know, I mean, he has friends, a lot of billionaires' friends, and billionaires are very often Republicans.

Speaker 1 But could Elon Musk be there now and not feel unwelcome? No,

Speaker 1 you were talking about movies that are. And maybe that's on him.
Yeah, like Advising Consent, where you see both parties mingling at dinner parties and solving problems.

Speaker 1 And Gene Tierney's a lovely hostess.

Speaker 1 No, people do not do that. They're in their corners.
No.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 how does that end?

Speaker 1 Well, I was going to ask you, how do you think?

Speaker 1 I mean, do you think?

Speaker 1 I think we have to have the scene at the end of the movie where the statue of liberty's arm is just sticking out of the sand. Yeah.
Where I don't think it gets better before it completely crashes.

Speaker 1 I know that sounds pessimistic.

Speaker 1 But do you think...

Speaker 1 But I don't know how to get back because the hatred is so deep. But do you think that Democrats should fight fire with fire and get a showman? I mean, it's funny because Elon Musk.

Speaker 1 Well, Fetterman is who I suggest.

Speaker 1 Elon Musk was known as the P.T. Barnum of sci-fi, sci-fi P.T.
Barnum. And then Trump is P.T.
Barnum.

Speaker 1 But do you think, I mean, you know, I interviewed George Clooney. I had an interview with him, and I'd always heard people say he was charming.
And I was like, oh, I'm sure he's not that charming.

Speaker 1 And he gave me a five-hour interview. So

Speaker 1 day went to night. So, you know, yeah, the guy is charming.
And I said to him, what do you think of running?

Speaker 1 Because basically, the Democrats need an attractive host body to stuff all their issues into that people will be drawn to. I don't think George Clooney really suggests a regular guy, working class.

Speaker 1 No, I know, I know, but I still think, but people are drawn

Speaker 1 to celebrities. Oh, so your interview with Josh Shapiro was great.
Oh, thanks. I had never really heard him talk that much.
He was so appealing.

Speaker 1 And that, you know, I was watching it with my sister today, and she said I would vote for him. I mean, that's what the Democrats need.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They need someone who could lure people back to their party. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 I saw this thing.

Speaker 1 They're going to lose.

Speaker 1 California, New York,

Speaker 1 Illinois are all losing seats

Speaker 1 because people vote with their feet. Right.
And they're going to Texas, Florida, Utah,

Speaker 1 all red states, some other state, Arizona maybe, or something.

Speaker 1 But yeah, that's and this is just because we're overtaxed, we're over-regulated, we can't afford a house here.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 if that keep trend keeps going, even even this many seats lost is, you know, that's the house is very often 218 to 216 something like that okay we're talking about six or eight seats that are definitely going to be red now

Speaker 1 and you're going to have to do something drastic and do you you like Gabbon too no

Speaker 1 especially now I always thought he was the guy because he's great at being a politician looks great you know just gift of Gab

Speaker 1 and also very smart you know has the facts in his head He doesn't have to look up something.

Speaker 1 He does the work. Right.
And unlike Obama, he was willing to go spar on Fox. Yes.
And now, I mean, you saw this.

Speaker 1 He name-checked me saying, I'm doing a podcast, and I want to do like Bill does, talk to both sides, not be ideologically captured necessarily by the left. Well, this is a big change.

Speaker 1 He's on the show next week. Oh, wow.
He's top of the show on the 28th. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Well, I mean, there are people who think because of

Speaker 1 Kamala having Beyonce and then

Speaker 1 Taylor and people on her side that Democrats should just stay away from celebrities altogether. They should.
I think it's a negative. I don't think it's far from working.
I think it turns people off.

Speaker 1 It turns me off a lot of the times. Like Rachel Ziegler, not going to vote for her.

Speaker 1 But they've got to find someone

Speaker 1 who's alluring and

Speaker 1 charismatic. Yeah.
I mean, I thought Josh Shapiro and Gretchen Whitman

Speaker 1 would have been a better last week about Gavin. Like the same things they say about him, they said about Clinton.
He's too slick. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He's so slick he wins. Right.

Speaker 1 You know, I see your paper like already tried to shit on him for this. And I'm like, you know.
You know what you call a Democrat who infuriates the New York Times electable. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He was out front on a lot of things. Yes, and he has the credibility.

Speaker 1 He has a kind of like, I did my time in the liberal trenches, mayor of San Francisco and all that.

Speaker 1 And it's like, if you can't understand about moving to the center and saving the party, yes, there will be so much carping about it.

Speaker 1 But that's the other reason why I think he'd be good, because I think he'll take it. He's not a bitch.
Who else do you like?

Speaker 1 Well, I say Fetterman.

Speaker 1 I love that he just says that he is Trump-esque in a number of ways,

Speaker 1 minus the things I don't like about Trump. I mean, he seems like just a regular guy.
He doesn't give a shit what he says. He's got a brand.
You know, I mean, he's just, you know, he definitely has,

Speaker 1 I mean, that was my joke about it. It was like, if he ran with Pete Buttigieg, disability plus gay equals one person of color.
You could get away with it in the Democratic Party.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, the way he dresses in Congress is quite startling because it was only in the last few years they allowed women not to wear, like they used to be banned for sleeveless.

Speaker 1 Come on. Yeah,

Speaker 1 one of my former assistants, who's a big political writer star now, Ashley Barker, Trump trashed her recently on social, his social

Speaker 1 social, yeah. Yeah, he truthed it.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 But she went in there one time. I forget if she had on cowboy boots or a sleeveless blouse or something, and they told her, you know, she couldn't.

Speaker 1 I feel like the Republican Party has, I mean, you're apropos of what you said before about, you know, the Democrats no fun anymore.

Speaker 1 I feel like all the ladies who, you know, like, I'm not saying you really want to have relations with anyone in Congress or a politician at all, but if you were bent that way, I mean, the ones who, like, you know, Eric Idle is going, yeah, she's a goa.

Speaker 1 She's a goa. She goes, right, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
She goes. I mean, they're all in the Republican Party.

Speaker 1 I'm not saying they're doing anything, but

Speaker 1 the Christy Gnomes. Who is yours? The Lauren Girls.

Speaker 1 They all just seem, you know, is she a goa?

Speaker 1 I think the answer is,

Speaker 1 whereas like AOC,

Speaker 1 you know, she's attractive, but you just, oh my God, you know, you just wouldn't, I wouldn't want to be on a date with her. I know she's married, and I'm not asking.
I think she is married yet.

Speaker 1 No, I think she is. Is she? Yeah, no, she got married.
Oh, I miss her.

Speaker 1 But, you know, yeah, Washington was very titillated recently because Lauren Boebert,

Speaker 1 after some big thing, got in a cab with Kid Rock.

Speaker 1 And also, I was going to ask you, do you have a crush on Christina? No. Given how you feel about dogs.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 No. In fact, Chico just lost his other eye when you said that.
Yeah. Exactly.
No. But you know what I mean about the Republican.
I mean, they just

Speaker 1 kind of lost sex appeal, too, I think. They used to be kind of the sexy, fun party, and they're not.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 it's

Speaker 1 what I used to do jokes about, you know, where the punchline was something, something, stick up your ass. Yeah.
It was about Jerry Falwell. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, and now it's about the kind of prigs who are always

Speaker 1 up my ass. Right.
Exactly. Yeah, I know what you mean.
So do you watch or listen to

Speaker 1 Two Angry Men, Harvey Levin's podcast about lawyers? No. Oh, it's him and Garregos.

Speaker 1 Garregos, what's his name? I forget. Oh, Mark Garregos.
Mark Garregos. Yeah, who was one of the, what, Susan McDougal's lawyer? Because I'm watching this Trump thing.

Speaker 1 I'm thinking, like, I mean, this is, I love this podcast because, like, it's not just the bullshit people or whatever, their opinion. It's like what the lawyers say.
Oh, I love that.

Speaker 1 Because, like, I'm watching this thing going on between Trump now and the judges.

Speaker 1 And, you know,

Speaker 1 do I want Venezuelan gangs out of the country? Yes. I I mean, this is always my fucking dilemma.
But that's like

Speaker 1 living in this America. Exactly.
So that's not the mountain anyone's going to die on. We're happy to see them leave.
But then you're unraveling the Constitution. I know.

Speaker 1 So like, and I'm bringing the lawyer show up because like, I've said this for years, like

Speaker 1 everybody talks about the law. Like it's nothing.
The law is whatever they say it is

Speaker 1 at any given moment. That's why like when you see a lawyer,

Speaker 1 he's always in a room with a giant wall of law books behind him. Somewhere in one of those fucking books

Speaker 1 is something that will justify what I want to do anyway. Right.
So Trump is just like cutting out the middleman. That's another good film noir kind of thing, Double Jeopardy.
Have you seen that?

Speaker 1 With Ashley Judd? Ashley Judd.

Speaker 1 I bet you I have. What's

Speaker 1 who else is in it? Her husband. Yeah, I have seen it.
Her husband frames her for his own murder and she goes to prison.

Speaker 1 But then one of the inmates tells her that it's because of double jeopardy, she can get out and kill her husband. And she does.

Speaker 1 Right. Well, not quite.
There's also one called Eye of the Beholder.

Speaker 1 I love that.

Speaker 1 Explain it.

Speaker 1 He falls in love with her because he's looking at her. Yeah, I haven't seen it recently, but I thought it was really good and atmospheric.

Speaker 1 I feel like it was a ripoff of Sharky's Machine. Do you remember that movie? Vaguely, yeah.
Burt Reynolds. Yeah, yeah.
He's like a, he's got a, he's in the, he's a cop. He's got to surveil

Speaker 1 this woman and then falls in love with her. Isn't that the basic thing? Yeah, I love that plot.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 By the way, if it's not Burt Reynolds, it's a stalker. Yeah.
It's creepy.

Speaker 1 Even if he's a cop, you don't want to think about it.

Speaker 1 But if he's a cute guy, yeah. I mean, you wrote that in the

Speaker 1 Why Men Are Necessary book. Yes, I did.
Isn't it funny? My mom begged me before that book came out. She goes, please change it from a question to a declarative sentence.

Speaker 1 She wanted me to call the book men are necessary. I was like, mom, she goes.
Men are? Yeah, she wanted me to call it men are necessary. And I said, mom, you know,

Speaker 1 they're going to be fine with it. They get that

Speaker 1 teasing them. And she's like, no, they'll have their feelings hurt.
Sure enough, no man would pick up that book. And I realize now, always listen to your mother.

Speaker 1 I should have called it men are necessary.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 1 That's interesting. Because you are.

Speaker 1 Especially you.

Speaker 1 We are. Yeah.
We are. For not just for procreation.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes. I mean, Orwell had that quote, something like, most people sleep peaceably in their beds at night, knowing other men do violence in their stead.
Wow.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 What? I'm like,

Speaker 1 before that, I thought, you thought I was an idiot.

Speaker 1 No, I like all these weighty quotes. But it's true.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean,

Speaker 1 we live cushy lives. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And it's another thing that the kids really piss me off about. They have no perspective on how good they have it.
They think they some they somehow think they live in the worst time ever. Right.

Speaker 1 And they're so burdened by so many things.

Speaker 1 And some of them are just.

Speaker 1 Did you see the woman from Love is Blind who jolted her husband?

Speaker 1 No, you know, okay. I don't watch any of that.
Oh, I don't watch. Oh.
Are you crazy? But I read about it. Yeah, okay.
Okay, so it's Love is Blind.

Speaker 1 Are they on an island? No.

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I guess they're blind dates and then they're going to get married. I don't know.

Speaker 1 It's one of those. Anyway, she's at the altar.
She's about to marry this guy. And

Speaker 1 at the last minute, says, can't do it. Why?

Speaker 1 Because

Speaker 1 she found out that he didn't really think that much about Black Lives Matter.

Speaker 1 Not that he said anything terrible. He just, she asked him about it and he was like, I don't know.
I haven't read that much about it. Oh my God.

Speaker 1 That was the end.

Speaker 1 And I just have this one question for her, which is like,

Speaker 1 what have you actually done?

Speaker 1 Do you think that you're

Speaker 1 coming up short husband to be, who you just publicly jilted?

Speaker 1 What do you think you've done to actually improve whatever the situation racially you're upset about? And I don't think she can answer that question.

Speaker 1 Did you ever have a situation like that where someone said one thing and you were just totally turned off? You mean got the ick?

Speaker 1 That's a really interesting question because it's so easy and so common for guys to give women the ick. Right.

Speaker 1 Guys who want to get laid.

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's so hard to give us the ick.
I used to do a joke about that. Like I could like a if I was when I was in my 20s, she could say anything.
She could say, I'm a Nazi.

Speaker 1 And I'd be like, were you always interested in Germany or was it more of a political?

Speaker 1 Nothing would deter it. So it's the older you get, one of the nice things is, yeah, you become more of a human being.
You're less horny, so you can be more discriminating.

Speaker 1 And yes, it's very easy to give me the ick now.

Speaker 1 I remember this.

Speaker 1 I had this very, very good friend, Michael Kelly, and he had to move to Cincinnati for a couple of years to be a reporter, and he didn't know anyone, and he was trying to date, and he finally went out on a date with this really cute girl.

Speaker 1 And somehow, in the course of the evening, when he was ordering wine, he realized she thought that burgundy wine was burgundy because it was colored burgundy.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 he said to me,

Speaker 1 I had to decide if I was going to say anything or I was going to be very, very quiet because I really needed to go home with him.

Speaker 1 So he was very, very quiet. And did it work? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But he was an

Speaker 1 onophile. You know, he loved wine.
So I don't think it had a long-term future. Onophile.
I know that word from the New York Times crossword puzzle. I've got to give them credit for that.

Speaker 1 They need O-E-N-O

Speaker 1 or letters that you really need when you're doing a puzzle. Yeah, that's the right word, right?

Speaker 1 I remember sometimes watching my mother do the Time Sunday puzzle with my father, and she'd say, They need the letters.

Speaker 1 True. Sometimes you just need the letters.
I mean, never try to write a crossword. It's not easy.
They need the letters. That sounds like a Woody Allen log, really.
Like the end of Annie Hall.

Speaker 1 They need the eggs.

Speaker 1 But I'd say, of all the decisions, I've made so many bad ones and so many stupid things.

Speaker 1 But never getting married,

Speaker 1 priceless. Do people

Speaker 1 don't you think

Speaker 1 you're one of the few people like me and Oprah

Speaker 1 and the Pope who

Speaker 1 have never gotten married? Yeah, no, I would like to be married.

Speaker 1 I think I would be really good at it.

Speaker 1 You would. I'm sure you'd be good at anything.
Well, but

Speaker 1 you know, I mean, the sacrifices just seem

Speaker 1 it's very hard to

Speaker 1 like make

Speaker 1 your life

Speaker 1 and another life when you think about how hard it is just to get your life each day.

Speaker 1 So now it's like two dragonflies who have to fly in tandem every, you ever see them fly and everywhere they go, they're in tandem.

Speaker 1 And if you get out of tandem, then fighting and, you know, gunnysacking grievances that build up over the years. I mean, that's always what deterred me was that it doesn't,

Speaker 1 how do you avoid that? Well, there's a great part in the Al Pacino piece in the book where I'm pressing him and he did not like to talk about his love life.

Speaker 1 And I'm asking him why he never got married.

Speaker 1 You know, he said, well, if he could find someone who wouldn't mind living down the block,

Speaker 1 he might do it. Like, didn't Betty Davis or some of these people, like Sartre, and you know, they had apartments next door, or, but he wanted someone down the block.

Speaker 1 The modern rich people have solved that problem by building houses that take up a whole block.

Speaker 1 And then you can officially live in the same house, but you're really living down the block.

Speaker 1 Well, there is one person in the book who's like you and does has absolutely no interest in marriage or kids, and that's Ray Fiennes.

Speaker 1 And it was interesting to talk to him about that.

Speaker 1 He's a very interesting combination of he's a real gentleman. Like, I went to the wrong restaurant and missed half our interview.
And

Speaker 1 he said, Don't worry, we'll do it tomorrow morning at breakfast. And very few movie stars would do that.
So he made you breakfast?

Speaker 1 No. But he,

Speaker 1 you know, he is also has a kind of a hedonistic streak.

Speaker 1 He's a bit of a libertine. And he said he was the oldest, and he raised, you know, guy in Shakespeare and Love was his brother.

Speaker 1 And he said he got rejected for Shakespeare and Love because Julia Roberts didn't fancy him.

Speaker 1 But he just has, you know, just no interest.

Speaker 1 He likes, he likes. It's funny you mention him because I just saw him.
I never met him.

Speaker 1 I think I did meet him, but I saw him a couple of nights because it was just Oscar weekend and the Vanity Fair party and the party probably Friday night,

Speaker 1 the agency parties, the WME, CAA parties.

Speaker 1 And I'd only seen him in the movies where he very often plays a very serious character, a very serious actor. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Nazi. Boy, not that guy out.
at a party. No.
You know, he's always had a big smile on his face, and he's a goer.

Speaker 1 You're right, I think he's a goer. He's a goer, but you should have him on this show.
He's a really fascinating guy. And Andy, you know, he's friends with

Speaker 1 friends with Andy Cohen. And Andy Cohen said he loves all kinds of women, whatever age, whatever shape.
Wow. You put a woman in front of him and he can appreciate her.
Oh, wow.

Speaker 1 That's a superpower. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 No, he's a goer. He's fun.

Speaker 1 Let's get a hold of him. Let's get a moment right here.
Yeah, let's have a party.

Speaker 1 But I did want to tell you that, you know, people keep asking me what Shakespearean character Trump is like. And I finally found a similarity.
You know how in Richard III,

Speaker 1 Richard is very malevolent, but he's funny.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he gets the audience on his side because he's funny. And he walks up to the stage and he tells the audience what bad thing he's about to do.
He brings them in on it, but with humor.

Speaker 1 And I feel like Trump is like that, you know, and that binds him. Like a lot of audiences love Richard III, even though he's doing terrible things.
He wants to kill his nephews. And, you know, but

Speaker 1 if you bring, if you make them feel like your confidants, you know, that can take you a long way.

Speaker 1 Well, I could talk to you all night, but

Speaker 1 I have to be good night sweet prince

Speaker 1 I could lie and

Speaker 1 do a smooth out exit but that's really what it is I'm so happy

Speaker 1 with you goes by like that

Speaker 1 that was fun thank you so much

Speaker 1 I'll probably be in DC shortly so

Speaker 1 if you'd like to have lunch I will be around. Do you have anything you want to do that will be fun? I'd love to go to one of those power restaurants where they powerful people.

Speaker 1 Is it what was the place,

Speaker 1 the grill, or what was the place that's like the power? I want to go to the power. There was like a place called Duke Zebirds, and they were all

Speaker 1 steakhouses. Of course.
We had them. Men are making decisions

Speaker 1 at lunch. Yes, women are over.
Steak at lunch. Yeah.
Steak and decision. We had our day.
Now men are in charge.

Speaker 1 You're pretty threat. That was fine.
It like went in five minutes. I know.
I was afraid to drink.

Speaker 1 But now

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