Rounders And Billions Creator Brian Koppelman, Plus Coach K’s Classic And New NFL Rules

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Speaker 1 On today's part of my take, we have writer, producer, director, podcaster, everything guy, Brian Koppelman. Actually, really interesting interview with him.
He created, he wrote Rounders.

Speaker 1 He writes billions, which is currently going on. So you've probably seen one of his movies or shows.
Very, very interesting interview about his entire career in the creative process.

Speaker 1 Something a little different for your Friday. We also have

Speaker 1 Firefest. We have FAQs, PR 101, New Rules in the NFL.
It's going to be a packed show, and it's all brought to you by...

Speaker 5 When Cool Creamy Ranch meets Tangy, Bold Buffalo, the whole is greater than the sum of its sauce. Say howdy, partner, to new Buffalo Ranch Sauce only at McDonald's for a limited time.

Speaker 6 They're participating, McDonald's.

Speaker 4 Okay,

Speaker 1 let's go.

Speaker 1 Now in the street, there is violence.

Speaker 1 And then a lot of soft work to be done.

Speaker 1 No place to hang out or washing.

Speaker 1 And then I can't gain all on the sun. Oh, no, we're gonna rock it down to Elite Track Avenue.

Speaker 1 And then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Oh, we're gonna rock it down to Elite Track Avenue.

Speaker 1 Welcome to part of my take presented by the Cash App. Go download it right now.
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Speaker 1 Today is Friday, February 21st.

Speaker 1 And I just want to say, Coach K,

Speaker 4 a round of applause.

Speaker 1 Because that guy, that guy, when he loses, now you might say, hey, look, Coach K loses to NC State. They're seven-point favorites.
Duke is, it's their year. They're going to win the Final Four.

Speaker 4 They're going to go all the way.

Speaker 1 No, they lost to NC State. It was a little bit of a stunner.
Yeah, he brushed by, did the blow-by handshake, and was a poor sport.

Speaker 1 But you forget, you forget that Coach K, when they lose, he's teaching the kids because he went up to NC State's best player afterwards, Markel Johnson, and he hugged him and he said, you played played a great game.

Speaker 1 Not a good game, a great game. And PFT, on top of all that, I don't know how this happened, but there's a picture of it, of him talking to him.

Speaker 4 Oh, really?

Speaker 1 So the whole world saw him having a very private moment where he was so classy in defeat after doing the blow-by handshake, which, of course, he always does when he loses and they rush to court and he says it's a safety issue.

Speaker 1 So he makes sure that he doesn't do even the slightest level of good sportsmanship after a loss.

Speaker 4 It is a safety issue.

Speaker 1 It's a very big safety issue.

Speaker 2 My favorite is when Coach K goes into the other team's locker room after the game while they're getting changed and tells them what a great game that they play.

Speaker 2 Just nagging the shit out of his team that is actually the ones that need the coaching at that moment.

Speaker 2 Now, Coach K will always remind you after a loss that he did you a favor by allowing himself to be beaten by you because it showed it teaches you a lot about your mental toughness if you can even take on the likes of Duke.

Speaker 2 Now this is a pretty bad job. Like we joke around about Coach K and his

Speaker 2 hypochondrianism or whatever it's called.

Speaker 2 He made zero adjustments in this game. I watched the whole game.
I was betting on the over. Class act by Duke all the way to hit that three with about 10 seconds left.

Speaker 2 I really appreciated that, but there were no adjustments made. My only conclusion: Coach K at halftime was just on WebMD, looking up.
He's like, oh,

Speaker 2 I've got polio and coronavirus. So, that, and a migraine.
So, not going to be able to switch up my defense in the second half.

Speaker 1 I think what Coach K was doing is he is doing the classic mid-season coach move where he's like, I'm letting you guys figure it out. You guys go coach yourself.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to put anyone in on the bench, off the bench. I'm going to let you guys figure it out.
And then they can come from this loss and be like, you know what?

Speaker 1 Like, that's the start of the DVD loss right there.

Speaker 1 You know, that will be the one where, well, we were at NC State and we were down. And Coach K challenged us to come back.
And we didn't.

Speaker 1 but after he took away our jerseys and told us it's actually less about wins and losses and more about the lessons you learn along the way that's when it clicked for us and we went on a tear afterwards.

Speaker 7 I can't wait to play that exact sound bite in like two months with some inspirational

Speaker 2 I think that you're on to something that like Coach K intentionally didn't make any adjustments because he was letting the team know that this game was on them and they could get themselves out of the hole they dug themselves into.

Speaker 2 And then by the end of the game, after they get blown out by 20 points or whatever it was, his team will finally realize that they really need Coach K.

Speaker 2 He's the only one that can save us because we're not able to do it on our own.

Speaker 2 And then, yeah, maybe like a little motivational thing, Coach K removes, he should remove the K's from all the Duke practice jerseys because they're not representing him. Also, they're due.

Speaker 2 So take the K's off all the practice jerseys, equipment bags. You have to earn that K at Duke University.

Speaker 1 That was borderline a Rick Riley joke, but I do like that. I like that.
The due, their due, take away the K's, boom, we're ready to go.

Speaker 1 I love this when it happens in college basketball where a coach will let the huddle coach itself. He'll stand deliberately like 10 feet away from the huddle and be like, you guys figure it out.

Speaker 1 You guys get yourself out of this mess. It's your fault.
Yeah, I went and recruited and dropped a bag at all of your houses and you're all like top five recruits.

Speaker 1 And on paper, you should beat everyone in the country by a million. And all you need is a little bit of coaching to make you great.
But yeah, you guys figure it out.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's on them at this point. And their only conclusion is going to be that they absolutely need Coach K.
Now, who are they playing next? What's Duke's schedule like?

Speaker 2 They probably actually feel like.

Speaker 1 They probably have a good game next because this was probably a look-ahead spot, which they always lose one of these games.

Speaker 2 It's a trap game.

Speaker 1 Yeah, where they're playing against, you know, Votech. So not a look-ahead spot whatsoever.
I mean, there there is no AC-Ahead home.

Speaker 1 There's no look-ahead spots really in the entire ACC this year because it's very, very top-heavy. So, most of the games, not exactly big-time games, they'll kill Virginia Tech by a billion.

Speaker 1 And then everyone will say, hey, look, they figured it out. Yeah, they don't even have any good games left.
They're going to win every single game for the rest of the season.

Speaker 4 So, there we go. That was

Speaker 2 the first year.

Speaker 2 Big Cat's rant that he went on right there is absolutely going to will Coach K to another NC of A title. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 Duke has already lost their last game of the year, guys. I said it.
It's already happened. It's already happened.
All right. Other news we got going on.
So that was an all-time Coach K performance.

Speaker 1 I love that. I love when he teaches the kids.
Don't you, Kank? When you lose,

Speaker 1 but you have to remember, when you lose, it's all about winning. So when you win, it's important to win.
But when you lose, it's actually not about wins and losses. It's about teaching the kids.

Speaker 2 Actually, sometimes a loss is better than a win. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I would rather lose every game because then we would learn more.

Speaker 7 98% of Division I athletes aren't going to play pro sports, so he has to teach them and set them up for the future.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there we go. You're not set up.

Speaker 2 I love it. Good statistic.

Speaker 2 Yeah, if you learn more from a loss and an interception than you do from throwing a touchdown or winning a game, like Jameis Winston is going to be, that's why he's a future Hall of Famer. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's just storing up all the knowledge right now. So, yeah, I would much rather lose a game for Coach K than win a game for some random coach at NC State.

Speaker 1 I like that Hank just spit a fact at us that was just an enterprise commercial. Like, hey, you guys hear this one?

Speaker 4 Yeah, we have every single march for the last 25 years of our lives.

Speaker 2 Also, Home Depot employs 1,200 Olympic athletes.

Speaker 4 There you go. Oh, man.

Speaker 1 And football is family.

Speaker 4 That's also a fact.

Speaker 1 Yeah, even if everyone in your family roots for a different team, football is family. All right, if you want to watch us, we are barstoolgold.com slash PMT.
We are Skype Show.

Speaker 1 PFT is still in Atlantic City. People love the Skype show, so we're back for a Skype show.
We have to talk really quickly about the NFL's new rules.

Speaker 1 I would assume we haven't spoken, PFT, about this, but I would assume you're in favor because how could you not be? Because it would be six games on wild card weekend.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'll give you a couple of thoughts that I have. I'm technically in favor of this because it's more football and more football equals better.

Speaker 2 I'm also in favor of this because if you go back, like if you have if you have that extra game on wild card weekend for for each conference, I feel like this is a big bat signal that they're sending up to get Jeff Fisher back into the league.

Speaker 2 Like this 8-8 playoff team that could make some noise, if you're looking for a coach to capitalize on that, it's almost tailor-made for Coach Fisher to get back in the league.

Speaker 2 So I like it for those reasons. The reason I don't like it is because...
I'm really good at thinking in my head of what the possible records could be when I see the schedule come out.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, oh, that team can go 9-7. Oh, that team can go 8-8.
But when you add in the extra game, now I have to learn

Speaker 2 another possible outcome to the season. Oh, this team has a strong chance to go 12-5.

Speaker 2 That sounds weird to me.

Speaker 1 That does sound weird. So, Warren Sharp put it together: in the last 10 years, we would have had five 10-win teams, nine nine-win teams, and six eight-win teams.

Speaker 1 So, if your argument is we'll have really, really bad teams, that's actually not really the case because it doesn't look like we'd have many

Speaker 1 below 500 teams.

Speaker 1 The other part that he threw out there, which was just an unnecessary shot that really hurt my feelings, in this, like, if we had this entire setup, Mark Treshman never would have been an NFL head coach because Lovie Smith was fired when the Bears were 10 and 6.

Speaker 1 Lovey Smith would have been the only third time in Bears' history that the Bears had gone to the playoffs three times in a row. So he wouldn't have been fired.

Speaker 1 So now we're playing like revisionist history that's fucking my whole head up.

Speaker 1 Here's my thing, PFT, and I've been thinking about this.

Speaker 6 I have the perfect NFL schedule.

Speaker 1 I don't think they're going to do it, but this is what I would like a perfect NFL schedule to look like:

Speaker 1 17 games. So what they're doing now is they're taking away some of the preseason games, right? So it's really not going to go.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so it's not going to go that much longer. So what I want is 17 games, 19 weeks, two buys,

Speaker 1 and you stretch it out so that the playoffs start in mid-January, and Super Bowl Sunday is now President's Day weekend. Boom.
So you get the Monday off, boom, we've solved that.

Speaker 1 Now here's where it comes, here's where a little wrinkle comes in.

Speaker 1 I think you could do one, because what people will say with two buys, you're going to have a lot of weeks where like the schedule is all fucked up and good teams aren't playing.

Speaker 1 Stick with the one rotating buy. So exactly how it is right now, Christmas week.
There's college bowls all Christmas week.

Speaker 1 Just eliminate that week on the schedule of NFL football because you can watch bowl games, there's NBA Christmas, and it will make you force you to spend more time with your family and be like, I miss NFL football.

Speaker 1 Then it comes back the following week, and also you look like this is also a win for NFL where they can say, we give the players Christmas week off. Like, how great are we? So huge PR win.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 They come back, they finish the season maybe with three or four weeks going from New Year's to the middle of January. Boom, you've solved every problem.

Speaker 2 I think that's the perfect schedule. Okay, that's not bad.
I don't hate that at all. Giving the players Christmas off.
I think the NHL does that with Halloween, right?

Speaker 2 They give the players off Halloween so they can go trick-or-treating with the kids.

Speaker 1 The NHL also does a like handshake moratorium on trades during Christmas week.

Speaker 4 Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 2 It's all about family.

Speaker 2 I don't mind that at all.

Speaker 2 I think it could be a pain in the ass for a coach to get fired the second week of January because then they have to go back and do taxes and be like, oh, I technically earned like $125,000 during this year.

Speaker 2 And that makes it just, it muddies the water as far as income tax season comes along. But yeah, I don't mind that.
I like the two-buy idea.

Speaker 2 17 weeks just seems, I don't know, 17 seems like a weird number. It absolutely feels like it's just a bridge to get to 18 games.
I feel like that's the finish line. It's going to be 18 games.

Speaker 2 No one's going to want a 17-game season. It's just too weird to say the number's 17.

Speaker 1 And if there is 18, then my two-buy makes even more sense because you can't do 18 games and have only one buy. That makes no sense.
Now, the other part that I would like to see.

Speaker 2 Maybe expand the rosters? Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1 Expand the rosters. If there are 17 weeks, what I would want them to do as well is make a cross.
conference like guaranteed game every year.

Speaker 1 The Giants and the Jets should play each other every single year.

Speaker 4 Like the,

Speaker 1 I don't know, maybe you do the Chiefs and the Packers, Super Bowl I.

Speaker 1 Like, there are certain rivalries that you could create out of this extra week that you play every single year, and I think people would really like the Colts and the Bears should play each other.

Speaker 1 They're two and a half hours away from each other. Like, there's all these different teams that could play each other.
The Ravens and the Redskins.

Speaker 1 Like, there are, I think if they did that, that's an easier sell for the fans where they're like, holy shit, we get this cross-conference rivalry that's pretty fucking cool.

Speaker 1 And then every four years, you play the team twice, which is even more fun.

Speaker 4 Steelers and the Eagles. Steelers and the Eagles.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Our Steelers Patriots team. Make sure that you get that game every, but you're talking about like cross-conference.

Speaker 4 Conference, yeah, yeah. Steelers and Eagles play every year.

Speaker 2 If there are two Mannings in the league,

Speaker 2 brothers should always have to play a game against each other. J.J.
Watts should play a game against TJ Watt and Derek Watt. Actually, here's an idea.

Speaker 2 If you're going to be adding in extra playoff teams and kind of watering down what it means to make the playoffs, why don't you have the first game on Saturday be two wildcard teams?

Speaker 2 They play each other, and then the winner has to play again that night.

Speaker 2 Or the next day.

Speaker 1 It's like early MMA where you're fighting in a tournament.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just last team standing. Early last team standing.
I do like how

Speaker 2 Warren made sure to twist that knife in you a little bit, letting you know that this is like Skynet. If it had been developed

Speaker 2 10 years too late, instead of saving the earth, you ended up with Mark Tressman.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so that was a nice twist of the knife. But I like the idea.
I think this obviously,

Speaker 1 if the players agree to this, because it's all coming up with the new CBA, if I were a player sitting there and I saw 17 weeks, all I would say is, well, we better be able to smoke weed now.

Speaker 1 Because that really is all it is.

Speaker 1 We'll play an extra game. We get to smoke weed and none of this bullshit that the league tests for it.

Speaker 1 And obviously less preseason games would make sense as well, which kind of has a weird effect because I think you'll have guys having less of a chance to obviously make teams.

Speaker 4 I don't know.

Speaker 4 I'm down for more football.

Speaker 1 I think they just need to think about it more. There should be more practice in the preseason, all that stuff.
But either way, football's buzzing again. Way to get back in the news cycle.

Speaker 1 Took Rob Manfred out.

Speaker 2 Way to stay relevant.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Is there anything new that's going on with the Astros?

Speaker 2 Because the only news update I saw from that was that there's now a Pennsylvania Little League organization that's not letting their teams be the Astros this year.

Speaker 2 So it's a movement that's going from coast to coast officially. We're not letting the kids wear the Astros uniforms.
We're not even using the name Astros.

Speaker 2 They're the Buttstros, as far as I'm concerned. So I hope that more and more Little League teams will kind of follow along with that.

Speaker 2 But I was thinking, would it be possible for anyone who bet on the Astros in 2017 to file a class action lawsuit?

Speaker 1 If they bet against them, you mean?

Speaker 4 Like if they

Speaker 2 lost money on an Astros game because they bet against him, I'm sure someone has. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 That's that there's hell hath no fury like a gambler scorned. So, that absolutely has been filed in Vegas, and I'm sure Ravel's waiting to tweet about it, like he tweeted about Greg Robinson.

Speaker 1 We'll get to that later. To tell you, any update, the only thing I saw was when Rob Manfred

Speaker 1 cited changes in society for the backlash to the Astros. Part of it, the quote is, part of it is the way society has evolved.
It's very different.

Speaker 1 It's a very different world than 1919.

Speaker 4 Yeah. We're talking about the Black Sox.

Speaker 2 Yeah, mostly recycling. We recycle now.
We don't use trash cans and social media.

Speaker 1 This is a weird thing to talk about because I'm pretty sure

Speaker 1 the Black Sox was the biggest controversy basically in the history of the world. Like that was the biggest story of the century up until that point, and we had already fought in a world war.

Speaker 1 Like, they went in front of a grand jury. It was America's pastime, so he couldn't be more wrong about this.

Speaker 2 It overshadowed World War I,

Speaker 2 which at the time wasn't even called World War I. It had to rebrand in 1939

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 there was now World War II. So, it was just the Great War.
The Black Sox scandal, fun fact,

Speaker 2 no one got convicted with the Black Sox scandal. So, they all got off legally, but then baseball gave him the death penalty.

Speaker 2 I haven't done enough reading to figure out exactly what happened and what type of evidence.

Speaker 2 If shoeless Joe Jackson wasn't wearing shoes because he had buzzers in them, or I don't know exactly what the technology aspect was, but I don't know how they got convicted by the court of baseball, but not in real life.

Speaker 2 But I feel like

Speaker 2 everyone that has a take on this Astros scandal is just basically saying that Manfred's being a giant pussy. Yes.

Speaker 1 Yes. And we knew this when it first happened because it's a player-run cheating scandal, and not a single player is being held responsible.

Speaker 1 We knew that the minute they released the report, and A.J. Hinch got fired.
It's like you guys are sacrificing the wrong guys here, and you're doing it and hoping we'll all forget about it.

Speaker 1 And guess what? No one's going to forget about it, and everyone's going to get bean this year. And I'm excited.
That's right.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's just my thoughts coming from a sports junkie, regardless of the sport I play.

Speaker 1 All right, let's do Firefest before we get to our great interview with Brian Koppelman. He came in,

Speaker 1 actually, we were working on President's Day, not to brag, but it was an awesome, awesome interview. Very long, very like one of those interviews that you sit there.

Speaker 1 We could have done hours because he has so many interesting stories and life views. So, Firefest, PFT, why don't you start?

Speaker 4 Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 My Firefest of the week is I talked myself into an eating contest, and I'm not very good at eating contests. So, I got on Twitter, was mouthing off a little bit this morning.

Speaker 2 Guy Fieri was trying to choose what XFL team to support. I was trying to get him on board the Defenders bandwagon.
And I ended up challenging him because I'm here in Atlantic City.

Speaker 2 He has a restaurant here, which I walked by several times.

Speaker 2 I was like, hey, how many of your chicken wing lollipops do I have to eat in order for you to not only become a Defenders fan, but also come on part of my take and discuss?

Speaker 2 And he told me 35, which is a perfect number, Mr. 35.
So I agreed to it.

Speaker 2 I took a look at these chicken wing lollipops they're about 75 of an actual chicken wing it's just the drumette and just the like uh the top meat there's no there's no bottom meat to it so i feel like i could do it but historically i'm i'm not good at eating things so i was hoping that i could get a tip from you an expert at eating stuff uh and you've competed in i have a food eating competition before so as a professional eater what would you recommend that i do to expand my stomach before tonight well first

Speaker 1 you got got by Guy Fieri because he's already agreed to come on part of my take. So you threw that in.

Speaker 1 He got you on that one. But the D.C.
Defenders fan thing, that's got to be a big deal, right? Like, that's.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I've DM'd with him as well, but when did he agree to come on part of my take?

Speaker 1 Well, his guy did, but we were trying to get it set up Super Bowl week. We were basically set up, but we didn't want to go to Fort Lauderdale.
So he's in.

Speaker 4 Okay.

Speaker 1 But so you should maybe negotiate less because be like, hey,

Speaker 1 material change, you've already agreed, or make him like get a DC defender's tattoo.

Speaker 2 This is better than planning this behind the scenes because now it's out in the open.

Speaker 2 He's already agreed to it. Absolutely.
So now he can get pressured. I think having a connection with his booking representative, that type of stuff falls through all the time.

Speaker 2 Now we've got the added benefit of our simp army on social media. Big Cat Simp Army going after Big Cat.
Or going after Guy Fieri.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're 35. I think you got this easily.

Speaker 1 i think you're fine like honestly 35 you're fine this is no no what should i do should should i get in the steam room before does that help no just pound i think the the biggest thing is you got to go hard for like 25 minutes as hard as you can and then you're going to hit a wall but make sure you get that first 25 minutes like put up numbers get to like 20 25 in those first 25 minutes get buckets yeah Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 And then also, is there a time limit? Because you can just hang out and just eat slowly all day.

Speaker 2 There was no time limit specified. So you're good.

Speaker 4 You're good.

Speaker 2 I feel like an hour seems reasonable.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but you got this. I have no doubt in my mind that you can eat 35 of these.
I mean, you've eaten 35 wings in one sitting before, right?

Speaker 4 I'm sure I have, yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 By accident, right. Like, you didn't even mean to, and you did it.

Speaker 2 You just. I've also got.
I'm not a drug guy, but I do have a brownie.

Speaker 4 Got it. That's a

Speaker 4 good diet. No.
No. Okay.

Speaker 1 You got to stay hydrated and and

Speaker 1 clear eyes because

Speaker 1 no PEDs. You've done this.
You've definitely fucked around and gotten a triple-double, fucked around and eaten 35 wings by accident before.

Speaker 4 Definitely.

Speaker 1 You don't even have to think about it. Right.
Just order wings and then be like, whoops, I just ate 40 by accident.

Speaker 2 I accidentally won an eating challenge.

Speaker 4 Right, right, with yourself. Okay.

Speaker 4 Got it. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Hank, you got a Fire Fest?

Speaker 7 Yeah, so Bic, I don't even know if you saw this, but I was with you this week and I was filming some stuff behind the scenes, and we were in a hotel room with like probably 10 people, and I put my camera down on like a desk the size of probably this desk here, and it like fell.

Speaker 7 You did see this. Landed on my foot, and like I didn't see it fall, so it just landed on my foot, and it like shocked.

Speaker 7 Like, I was in shock, pain, tears basically streaming down my face, but I had to act, like, I didn't want to, like, outwardly be, like, screaming in pain.

Speaker 7 So I just had to stand there and act like my foot wasn't broken, but I'm pretty sure my foot's broken. Yes.

Speaker 2 You have a pretty much broken foot. No, he really.

Speaker 1 He looked, I looked at him and he wanted to cry.

Speaker 7 Tears started streaming from my face from like trying to not react.

Speaker 1 And I was like, Are you okay? He's like, Yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I just dropped it on my foot in front of everyone.

Speaker 4 Wow. But no one's swollen?

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 Let me see it. Let me see it.

Speaker 2 I don't want to take my foot. We got to get some more of that Russell Wilson nanobubble.

Speaker 4 That actually.

Speaker 2 Yeah, let's see. Show the feet, sweetie.

Speaker 1 Show me the feet.

Speaker 2 Let me see them piggies.

Speaker 4 Let me see those feet.

Speaker 2 How them little Tootsies doing?

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 1 he fucked up his big toe.

Speaker 2 Pretty good. Show me your toe.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he's got a nice little bow. I mean, look how fucked up your toe is.
That's sucking. Oh, wow.
Look at that.

Speaker 8 All right.

Speaker 1 My Fire Fest is also from that trip, Hank, because I think I have peaked

Speaker 1 in my life because we went on this trip to different casinos. And Hank can attest, he was laughing in my face.

Speaker 1 But every single casino we went to, they asked for my opinion, and my opinion was we need more TVs.

Speaker 1 And that's, I realized like I was born for this job to basically walk into a room and say, yeah, there's not enough TVs here to watch every sport that could possibly be on TV at the time.

Speaker 1 And I don't think I'll ever get, I'll never get to this level again.

Speaker 1 Hank, you were laughing in my face when you when you like they would actually earnestly ask me like, what do you think of our casino? And I'd just be like, uh not enough TVs?

Speaker 1 And that was my only intake. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's really the part that you were born to play it's like you your job is to sit down and be like there needs to be more TVs and there needs to be a bathroom closer to me right now yeah bathroom and betting and Wi-Fi yeah and Wi-Fi oh yeah I did say that too we were standing in a room and they were all discussing serious things I was like hey just a like question do you have wi-fi in here because I have really bad cell reception and they're like what I was like well if we're going to be here gambling I need to be on my phone all the time.

Speaker 4 So I'm thinking for the comments. It does make a difference.

Speaker 1 Yeah, of course.

Speaker 2 It makes a huge difference. Wi-Fi can take a shitty, shitty scenario and make it a billion times better.

Speaker 2 Like, if FedEx Field had the fastest Wi-Fi on the Eastern seaboard, I bet people would actually like going to Redskins games. Agreed.

Speaker 2 Just because they're not paying attention to what's going on in the field, but they can update their fantasy team in real time super quick.

Speaker 2 A good Wi-Fi can cover up a lot of sins. It's like a great sauce at a restaurant.

Speaker 1 So I'm out there thinking for the people.

Speaker 1 I'm using your eyes. I've been trained my whole life to think about the most basic common man.
Oh, needs more TVs.

Speaker 2 Yeah, more TVs, better Wi-Fi, and then bathroom locations and convenient USB plugs that you can put your phone into.

Speaker 1 Yeah, these are the things we think about all the time. All right.

Speaker 1 Let's get to our interview with Brian Koppelman. Great interview.
Like I said, wrote rounders. He writes and produces billions.

Speaker 2 I think he produces everything. Yeah, showrunner.

Speaker 1 Everything. Executive producer.
Great, great, great interview. Before we do that.

Speaker 2 Hey, it's PFT here, reminding you that Boarshead makes game day entertaining elevated and effortless.

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Speaker 1 All right, let's get to our interview with Brian Koppelman.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. It is Brian Koppelman.
He is a filmmaker, essayist, podcaster, former music business executive, record producer.

Speaker 1 I mean, you hog it all, dude.

Speaker 6 I mean,

Speaker 6 I can shoot pretty well.

Speaker 4 Pretty well. I mean, that's it.
I can

Speaker 4 do basketball player. Is there a podcaster that you've tried to get in that you have not succeeded in?

Speaker 6 Oh, a profession that I've flamed out at. Yeah.
I mean, the truth is, like, if you had asked me at 12, it would have been point guard. I would have been, I thought I would be a point guard.
Yes.

Speaker 6 Like, I really did

Speaker 6 think there was a possibility. Back then, you know, I'm 53, so I'm old.
So, you know, there was hardly even the distinction. Like, was Clyde the point guard or Pearl a point guard?

Speaker 6 They both could play the point. They could both shoot.

Speaker 6 So growing up, you wouldn't even think in that way, but I always thought, well, if I could just shoot a little bit better, I could play college guards.

Speaker 4 Yeah, failed point guard, Brian Koppelman. Yes.

Speaker 2 Who's the best ballplayer in the industry that you've played with in recent years? I love it.

Speaker 6 I love the question.

Speaker 6 So Clooney's very, very good at.

Speaker 4 I hate that. Interesting.
He's a very good.

Speaker 6 He's a college-level athlete, George Clooney. Like, full college-level athlete.

Speaker 1 You guys have it all. He does.

Speaker 2 Like, he sold his tequila company for like $2 billion.

Speaker 2 He can grow a beard.

Speaker 4 When we were making, yes,

Speaker 4 he's got everything ocean.

Speaker 4 That's really the most important part.

Speaker 6 When

Speaker 6 we were making Oceans 13,

Speaker 6 George had a basketball game every day.

Speaker 6 I don't know if he still does it. I haven't seen him in a couple years, but up until even a couple years ago, that guy played basketball every single day.

Speaker 6 He was a great baseball player, like college level, baseball, recruited for baseball. And he's like,

Speaker 6 he defends really hard. He really knows how basketball works.
Like, he knows how to do a pick and roll.

Speaker 4 That's it.

Speaker 6 He knows, he understands basketball.

Speaker 4 Cutting, yeah.

Speaker 6 So he and I would play and we would have these wars and I'm so and you know, he's like in the best shape. What do you think his body fat's at? Especially 12 years ago we're making that movie.

Speaker 6 6%? Right. And my body fat floats probably around 48%,

Speaker 6 something like that. And we would play and we would always be tied seven all.
We'd play in the California Heat.

Speaker 6 And then I would start like sweating as though you could rotisserie, like a rotisserie chicken, basically. And then he would just win every time, like 11-7.
I would keep it.

Speaker 1 It's like big brother, little brother, like, hey, I just want to keep this close, and then I'll beat you at the end.

Speaker 6 You know, I thought I could, I would just get so gassed. I can't move to defend him.
And then Woody Harrelson's, like, really good at basketball. Interesting.

Speaker 2 I played it. I see that.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I thought, whereas Clooney, I kind of knew, oh, that guy's...

Speaker 6 I thought I could beat Woody.

Speaker 6 And then, because Woody smoked, I mean, you know, he just smokes so much pot all day long. I mean, he's just high.

Speaker 1 So is everyone in the NBA? Sure. Every sport, really.

Speaker 4 Poor Woody's not a pro athlete.

Speaker 6 And I just figured, well, I'm going to be.

Speaker 6 He destroyed me, man. He was up at the hoop.
He could really get right to the hoop. Like, even even though they lowered the hoops, I think they lowered the hoop in White Man Catch Job.
They did.

Speaker 4 Wesley couldn't play basketball. Yeah, for Wesley, not for Woody.

Speaker 1 Woody has hops. Yes.
It's like, it's actually a hilarious story that

Speaker 1 he really actually didn't play basketball. And they had to kind of.
Wesley didn't.

Speaker 4 Right, right.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it was a shock to me.

Speaker 1 All right. So let's talk.
Let's start. Where do you want to start? I mean, you have a fascinating career.

Speaker 4 A fascinating career.

Speaker 1 You started as, I mean, even going all the way back to your dad, and I was listening to a story that you not discovered because he was already on SNL, but you were, you had a brush with like early Eddie Murphy.

Speaker 6 I've just always been enthusiastic about stuff. Like, in a way, I've just always been unbelievably curious and enthusiastic.

Speaker 6 And would like, if something was great, I've just always been super attracted to it. I think that's like if, you know, all of us have something

Speaker 6 in us that we can stoke that might lead us towards some kind of success.

Speaker 6 And without even knowing it, like that incredible curiosity and sort of just regard and affection for stuff that was truly great and then decided to follow it so yeah like i was lucky enough eddie murphy was already on his way to being eddie murphy i was just lucky enough to be in a situation where i was at a club and he was performing as a comedian and i snuck backstage and found a way to get and say like you're like a rock star even though you're a comedian he had just was a featured player on snl the first year and then my dad was in the record business so i got home and i woke my dad in the middle of the night night.

Speaker 6 I was like, you're going to think I'm insane, but I just saw this guy and he's going to be the biggest fucking star and you've got to work with him.

Speaker 6 And like the next day he called him, he was like, you know, that 16-year-old kid, that was my son. And then they did.
They made these three albums together.

Speaker 6 For me, the perk, I didn't, you know, obviously there was no money in it or anything for me, but the perk was like, I got to hang out a little bit with Eddie, which was incredible.

Speaker 6 Like, I remember this right before he became hugely famous, he and I would like karate fight, fake karate fight with each other. You're 16.

Speaker 6 Yeah, maybe I'm 17 by then, but you know, basically 17, he's 20. Yeah, he's so.

Speaker 4 But he was so young. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6 He was so young that, and I mean, I could barely, he was, I was in such awe of that guy because you never saw, guys, you never saw anybody that funny in your life.

Speaker 6 Like what he was able to do and the charisma that he had. And I was just like, you know, I had, I'm lucky.
I was raised by parents who like gave a shit about me.

Speaker 6 So that sets me apart from like a lot of people. And so my dad took me half seriously, even though I was a total fuck up in school.
I played sports and I did the plays, but I did very badly in school.

Speaker 6 But they were always like, well, you have some other thing going on. So, like, if I said, I saw something great, they kind of believed me.
Right. Which was like great.
That's huge for a family.

Speaker 1 Fantastic.

Speaker 6 That's huge.

Speaker 4 Yes. Right.

Speaker 6 They'd still get really pissed about the school thing. But they were, you know, like, if I cut school because I wanted to get the new Iron Maiden album, that wouldn't endear me to them.

Speaker 6 But then they also wouldn't take their, they wouldn't understand, like, well, he really likes this stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's not like you were just lazy. You weren't just like hanging out on your couch and skipping school.

Speaker 4 I wasn't sure.

Speaker 2 I thought you had an act of interest that you were pursuing on the side, which I think is probably a more important indicator of success than anything else, like in a classroom, you know, averaging a 95 on all your tests.

Speaker 2 I would say like being driven in your passions is probably going to make it more likely that you'll succeed.

Speaker 6 You're so right. I mean, I remember this one time.
I loved to read and I had bad ADHD and I couldn't read this stuff that they would give me, but I loved reading.

Speaker 6 And I remember I was in a class and it was too young. I couldn't read like the Odyssey.

Speaker 6 They wanted me to, but I was reading another book and I remember I'd put the other, it was the fountainhead and I was like 13 or 14 and i was reading the fountain head and i took the odyssey cover and i taped it to the book that i was really reading and i was sitting in class reading it and the english teacher was also the wrestling coach so you know that means he was a horrible douchebag and he kicked the book out of my i was just sitting there reading and he fucking kicked it into my face out of the thing and he was like what do you have that crap in here and i and now i'm like if you've got some kid in your room and he's reading yeah let him read you were doing uh friday night lights that's what johnny Mox.

Speaker 2 He had his playbook, but he had Slaughterhouse 5 inside.

Speaker 1 Oh, is that true?

Speaker 2 Instead of reading Spider-T Y Banana.

Speaker 4 Varsity Blues. Yeah.
Oh, Varsity Blues.

Speaker 2 Yeah, Varsity Blues. The prequel.
John Voigt out of his hand.

Speaker 6 Right. Well, this guy, this was.

Speaker 6 I remember the name of the guy, but I'm not going to shame him and say his name.

Speaker 4 That's what I'm saying. Okay.

Speaker 2 We're going to guess all these names by the end. And by the way, Big Cat's absolutely right.

Speaker 2 When you don't name something on Twitter,

Speaker 2 it's usually like the third reply gets it perfect. It's like you're talking about Runner-Runner right now.

Speaker 4 Got it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, sometimes they will get it. There are certain of these people where it's just like,

Speaker 6 I don't want I'm not telling those stories to

Speaker 6 make that person uncomfortable. I'm more just trying to tell it so people know the way things are and like

Speaker 6 how it how it goes. So like if there's some famous old director, I don't need to make that guy's day miserable by naming him.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 6 Now I would have, by the way, when I was in my 30s.

Speaker 4 Well, okay, so

Speaker 1 because I read a quote that I thought was very interesting. You were talking about how when you were younger in your profession, anger used to fuel you.
Totally.

Speaker 1 And now, when you're older, anger doesn't run as clean, and

Speaker 1 you don't use that the same way.

Speaker 6 You try not to.

Speaker 4 Like, of course.

Speaker 6 I love that you're asking about this.

Speaker 1 Because I feel like, so we're both 35. Like, I actually feel myself getting right into the anger doesn't fuel me the same way it used to.

Speaker 6 Well, because also you have success now, right? So it does, you start to realize if I only still...

Speaker 6 so the anger we're talking about is that thing where someone didn't believe in you, they told you you were a loser. They told you there was no chance.

Speaker 6 They gave you shit. And so you use, and by the way, you know, or someone was fucking horribly mean to you or tried to steal your girl.

Speaker 6 Whatever the fuck they did, that you put in like an arrow in your quiver and you were like, well, I'm going to fucking show them. Right.

Speaker 6 That thing can drive you really far. Like, but the problem is then if you're, it leads to you having no satisfaction if you keep going from that.
For me, anyway, if I keep working from that place,

Speaker 6 it stops me from figuring out what the next thing I'm really curious about or interested in or engaged in for the sake of the thing. By this time, the ambition's hardwired in you guys, right?

Speaker 6 The desire to be successful, that's not going away just because you take your foot off the hate gas. But at a certain point, the hate gas just starts making your engine bumpy and

Speaker 6 it just doesn't, it, it, it doesn't serve you it it serves us look you know that feeling like you start even a pickup basketball game or a pickup soccer game and at the beginning of it some guy fucking knees you and doesn't say sorry whatever

Speaker 6 you know you get the adrenaline goes you could have 10 minutes where you're just lights out But then the adrenaline recedes and you're gassed and there's another half of basketball to play.

Speaker 6 Better to sort of just like be Kobe-like in that one way where that guy could put the ball in your face, you don't even move, and you just silently absorb it all and you go about dispassionately like prosecuting the game.

Speaker 6 And it's really hard to get to that place. And by the way, we all, I still, I'm no, I'm not Buddha.

Speaker 6 I still fucking remember every insult, but I try not to allow that to be the thing that drives me in the morning.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 2 I find that anger. And using like the motivation of people doubting you is good to get you off your ass and engaged in something.

Speaker 2 But for me, if I'm like, if I'm trying to come up with something creative, it's actually counterproductive because I've got, you know, I'm thinking about about something else ultimately in the back of my head instead of thinking about what would really drive me to be creative, which is just like coming up with something that I laugh about, that I make my friends laugh about, that sort of thing.

Speaker 6 Yeah, you know what?

Speaker 2 If you're mad, you're not going to get to that place.

Speaker 6 Dude, you know what's brilliant about that too?

Speaker 4 Is

Speaker 6 it'll stop you from taking, if you're worried, if your whole thing is, I'm going to show them so I'm going to succeed. Then success becomes the thing that's your target.

Speaker 6 And then taking the risks you have to take that could sometimes lead to failure is too great. It's too great.
Oh, no, if I fail, then they're right about me.

Speaker 6 So you have to get that off your head because the only way to become successful is to take huge risks.

Speaker 6 The kind of success in any of this stuff, the arts or entertainment, you got to take gigantic risks. And if you were worried about looking foolish for taking those risks, you'd never take them.

Speaker 1 So that actually segues perfectly to rounders and how you started in the Hollywood business because you took a big risk.

Speaker 2 You were, what, 30?

Speaker 4 And you said, I'm going to change kind of my whole entire profession.

Speaker 1 So you decide,

Speaker 1 when did it click? Was it actually playing poker in a club? And you're like, this is...

Speaker 6 Well, yeah. I mean, I was a degenerate poker player.
I spent

Speaker 6 maybe two years.

Speaker 6 I was working full-time, but I think I spent like two years, a year and a half, almost every day playing in the underground guard room.

Speaker 1 Free online poker. So you're doing that.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah, this is 1995, you know, 90s.

Speaker 1 It's funny to think that if like you were 10 years older,

Speaker 1 you would have made rounders, but it would have been like some dude who's jerking off on his

Speaker 4 underwear and playing online poker.

Speaker 2 He's wearing sunglasses that have a dinosaur on the lips.

Speaker 4 Is that really the last movie? Greg Raver? Like Greg Raver?

Speaker 4 Well,

Speaker 4 I actually wrote Fossilman.

Speaker 1 I wrote Fossilman and Chris Moneymaker down because I wanted to ask you which one of those two is Mike McDermott because you start rounders helped propel

Speaker 4 but they were after rounders. No, I know Moneymaker was after rounders.

Speaker 6 Raymer was like around that time.

Speaker 1 One of those two guys watched rounders and was like

Speaker 1 a thing.

Speaker 4 No, so that's it.

Speaker 6 No, that's true. Right.
Yeah, yeah. No, Chris said it on Letterman.
Yeah. I didn't know.
And then he goes on Letterman. He goes, I watched this movie Rounders.

Speaker 6 And that's what made me want to be a poker player. But for us, it was like Huck Seed and Phil Helmuth and like the generation

Speaker 6 before Phil. They weren't famous to regular people.
Stu Unger. They were famous.
They were famous to us because we were degenerate poker guys, Dave, and I were.

Speaker 6 But I was just playing cards a lot. And then my son, Sam, was born.
And

Speaker 6 I had this really like, and I was still playing a lot of poker.

Speaker 6 I was working and playing tons of cards, but at a certain point, I realized, like, I wanted him, and this part's, this part can sound corny, except it's 100% true.

Speaker 6 I realized, like, I wanted to be the kind of dad who would tell his kid, like, go live whatever your dream is. And I was not, because my secret dream was to do this stuff.
I was terrified.

Speaker 6 I was a horribly blocked writer. I was terrified by my perfectionism and the ADHD that I would fail at it.

Speaker 6 But I really wanted to be the kind of dad who would say, like, if you have a dream, go chase it.

Speaker 6 And then i wasn't so i had this real like moment and my wife kept saying like you can do this like i know you have it in you she was incredibly supportive but one night it just i was eating cheeseburgers i'd never smoked a cigarette in my life in 29 i'd started like a half a pack a day habit i was eating cheeseburger double cheeseburgers in my office and i i was just fat as and i realized like my life was not where i wanted it to be And so I called Levine, my best friend.

Speaker 6 He was bartending. And I went over to where he was working.
And I said,

Speaker 6 we should write a screenplay.

Speaker 6 And, you know, I'd been just gone into that poker place where I went in the poker place maybe two weeks later again, called him in the middle of the night and said, I know what we should write the thing about.

Speaker 6 And then we set off. Amy cleared out this storage space underneath

Speaker 6 our apartment building. It had a slop sink in it, one chair.
It was a quarter the size of this room. And Dave and I just met there every single day before work.
He would get done bartending.

Speaker 6 He'd sleep a couple hours. I'd get up super early.
We'd meet for two hours, outline and write the script, and then I'd go off to work.

Speaker 6 And as soon as we started, and I'd say this to anyone listening who has some idea in their head about who they think they are, you know what he took upset everything. So I didn't quit my job.

Speaker 6 All I did was get up earlier, sleep a little bit less. And then I found that

Speaker 6 that was the part of the day that I felt the most alive. That one hour even, I just felt like, oh, this is a version of me that I like.

Speaker 6 Because I had started hating the version of me that was hiding out in poker clubs and smoking cigarettes and feeling like I was going to become a toxic person.

Speaker 6 Like if you have a dream and it dies in you, I think it's like any other kind of death and it's toxic. And that that toxicity

Speaker 6 that would like leach out onto the people you love. The only people you care about being really good to, you would ruin by your bitterness for not chasing who you want to be.
And I had that thought.

Speaker 6 Consciously. And then as soon as I was writing the script with Dave, it was like, well, this could get made.
It could not get made.

Speaker 6 I could have to write 10 of them before one gets made, but this is what I'm supposed to do. This makes me feel like I'm who I am.

Speaker 6 And we were lucky that the thing, we wrote, you know, the part, we were lucky that we were talented enough and hungry enough that we wrote a script and we were rigorous and ruthless about throwing out, you know, draft, like, you know, ripping up scenes that didn't work.

Speaker 6 And we killed ourselves. But we did come out of there with that script that is a movie that people to this day

Speaker 6 are obsessed over. I mean, today there was a, you know, I got hundreds of tweets about it today.

Speaker 6 Just out of nowhere, someone will tweet something about the movie, and then there will just be just a run of the video.

Speaker 4 I saw you were talking about it.

Speaker 1 So you're not going to tell us Teddy KGB's last hand.

Speaker 4 No, it's one season. I don't want to.

Speaker 4 I'll leave it out.

Speaker 7 How long did it take that process from starting to when the final script came out?

Speaker 1 We started. I'm a huge fan of yours, by the way.

Speaker 4 Oh, cool. Thanks.
Yes. Huge fan of yours, too.

Speaker 6 He used to show him when he was in film school. Yes.
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah.
I listened to the show. I know who you are and everything.

Speaker 6 Thanks. So I listen to the show because the Levine boys got me me into it.

Speaker 4 I love those guys. Because of the Brooks Captain, the Brooks Captain.

Speaker 6 The Brooks, my son, and I listened to the Brooks thing and just howled laughter.

Speaker 6 You know, not that long.

Speaker 6 So like we interviewed, I'd say that, like, I'm compressing the time a little bit, but David and I probably outlined it for a long time, like from when I first walked into a poker club.

Speaker 6 I'll say I know that I first walked into a poker club in New York. an underground club.

Speaker 6 I was playing in lots of places, but I probably first walked into an underground club December 15th, 95, or something like like that. And then we started writing the script

Speaker 6 like six months later, where we really started writing the script. We probably were outlining from then until we started writing the actual script.
Once we started writing the script,

Speaker 6 four and a half months of

Speaker 6 writing, you know, scenes from the outline. Four and a half months meeting every single day except Sundays.
We didn't meet Sundays, but we met six days a week. And then

Speaker 6 we sold it. I guess we finished it.

Speaker 6 Oh, I know. We finished it right before New Year's.
We rewrote it right after New Year's and then of 96. And then it sold March 3rd, 1997.
That's when it sold.

Speaker 6 And then we went into production December 15th. So exactly two years from when I walked into a poker club to the day I have that,

Speaker 6 we started making the movie. So yeah, it was an incredible...
crazy shit that happened that way.

Speaker 2 So how far into the process were you? Because it obviously felt like it was a natural thing.

Speaker 2 You felt good when you were writing the script, but how far into it did you think this is actually going to be successful? Or did you even know? I don't know.

Speaker 6 I mean, no, you don't know. You really don't.
I mean, Hank, if you make stuff like that, you know, you don't have any way to,

Speaker 4 you can just go by like our goal for it.

Speaker 6 Like, so there was the one goal, which is, I want to prove to myself I can write every day. I'm not sure I can.
I want to prove to myself that I can do it, right?

Speaker 4 So that's goal number one.

Speaker 6 But then the other goal was we had movies that we watched over and over and over again, the two of us, like Diner and Stripes and The Godfathers and Goodfellas. Love Diner.

Speaker 6 And like, so Diner was like the movie for the two of us that we knew every word to. And we just wanted to make a movie, write a movie that dudes like us would watch over and over and over.

Speaker 6 quote to each other, know all the words, argue about. We never thought it would have an appeal beyond that.
And that's all that we were focused on. And I think,

Speaker 6 as I'm sure when you guys started this,

Speaker 6 you were just trying to entertain guys like you

Speaker 6 who would get the joke, who would understand what you were doing.

Speaker 6 And the fact that then it mushrooms, because the more you commit to the specific vision where it's like, we're just into the thing we're into,

Speaker 6 the more actually you find out that there are more people who want to get some of that energy.

Speaker 1 But speaking to what PFT was just saying, we had the benefit of instant feedback because we tape something and it's out there.

Speaker 1 You are sitting there writing and you're saying to yourself, well, well, I think it's going to work, but we have no idea.

Speaker 6 Well, you have to, yeah, but you have to be willing.

Speaker 6 I mean, that's the hard thing about being a writer, right? Being a writer, the internet changes it a little because you can test stuff out in different ways on the internet now.

Speaker 2 Which I think has its drawbacks as well.

Speaker 2 If you listen to too much instant feedback,

Speaker 2 you start to second guess everything that you think is good.

Speaker 4 Do you mind yourself doing that? You guys do that?

Speaker 2 Well, it's hard not to.

Speaker 2 Like, I try not to, but, like, you know, if you're getting 100 tweets about something that you put out that day, 60% of the people liked it, 40% didn't, the 40% is just going to overwhelm you, and that's all you're focused on, right?

Speaker 2 For me, it's more about just like trusting yourself and knowing that if I think something's funny, then we just go with that. That's like our true north that we follow.

Speaker 4 And you have to.

Speaker 1 And it's weird, too, because we're in a different...

Speaker 1 Like podcasting is a weird spot to be in right now because it's now old enough, that podcasts have been around long enough that people are starting to be like, well, we've listened to this is old hat.

Speaker 1 I'm sure it happens with billions where you'll you'll have people, you know, oh, I used to like season one and two, but now it's things.

Speaker 6 But I just ignore that shit. You can't, I mean, also, I have different kind of metrics that I care about.
Like the show

Speaker 6 is so

Speaker 6 like you, like your audience, our core audience is fanatical.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 6 And they're not going anywhere and they're watching our, they're watching episodes of the show three, four, five times. They're binging the whole season over and over again.

Speaker 4 So like,

Speaker 6 yeah, I would like everyone to like, but I'm sure you guys have seen on Twitter, like I'll take the worst comments and I'll just retweet them and I'll be like, thanks for watching.

Speaker 6 Or, cause for me, it's funny. I can't allow myself to listen to what the odd,

Speaker 6 I want the show to work. I will never slack off.
Like David and I beat ourselves up so much making the show.

Speaker 6 You know, I lose sleep if I think there's a three minute, if I think there's, as I'm sure you guys, if I think there's a three minute section in an episode that isn't working when we're editing, it will cost me sleep for a week, two weeks until I fix the three minutes.

Speaker 6 So I'm obsessed about making the show as good as my like limited talents and abilities will allow but it's never going to be because i'm not working like i'll work forever and so will david the two of us will kill ourselves to get it right

Speaker 6 so once we've gone through that process and given it just done the best i know how to do with it some guy sitting at home sniping at me who's clearly watched it by the way still watching probably wants to be a writer yeah and then if you interact with those people and you go oh hey whatever but then three back and forth forth, they're always like, shit, man, I just got my script rejected by the blacklist today, and I'm in a shitty mood.

Speaker 4 And I mean, you immediately find out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, someone who clearly watched the show and took the time to find your Twitter handle and engage. So he's familiar with you.
So it's, yeah, he's got something else going on, I'm sure.

Speaker 2 You know, it's just like having a dialogue back and forth with you is probably like, that's a good night for that person. Yeah, it would have been for me.

Speaker 6 I mean, that's the other thing for me. Like, if I could have, I mean, if I could have like communicated with Harold Ramos when I was a kid, you know, who made Stripes and

Speaker 6 Caddyshack and all those movies, I would have like lost my mind. And maybe on a weird night when I'd smoked too much, I would have been like, ah, the second half of Stripes kind of sucks.

Speaker 6 The first half of so much. You lost the plot.
Yeah, what happened there?

Speaker 6 Like, Sergeant Hulko, why did he disappear?

Speaker 6 But the truth is, I would have been like, holy shit, Harold Ramis responded to me. I would have printed it out and put it up on my wall.
So, I don't know.

Speaker 6 You can't really listen to what people say when they're talking about it.

Speaker 4 Oh, but it is.

Speaker 4 Sometimes it can be helpful.

Speaker 2 It's tough to separate constructive criticism and good feedback from just the noise sometimes. And so

Speaker 6 separating the signal from the noise, the whole thing on the internet, right?

Speaker 2 Yeah, it's tough sometimes. But I think that the second you start to discount any criticism is the second you start to die.

Speaker 2 Because if you're not willing to evolve and you've become so egotistical in what you're doing that you think that you can do no more wrong, you're in a bad place and it's not going to end up.

Speaker 6 Well, but that that then it's it's about choosing. So like my friends and I and colleagues and I

Speaker 6 always show each other shit and always are brutally honest. There are five or six or seven men and women that I'll show stuff to and then get unvarnished, brutal feedback from.

Speaker 6 That I'm completely engaged. Yeah.

Speaker 4 When I'm making it.

Speaker 6 Once I'm done, though, I don't, there's not like

Speaker 6 there's nothing I can do about it. It's like that thing on Sex in the City.
Did either of you guys watch it? You can admit it if you watch the show.

Speaker 4 I never watched the movie.

Speaker 6 Samantha was the one that had a lot of sex right right all right you've watched mr big yeah so but there's this famous thing where uh um a guy on the show burger he wrote a book and it came out and then carrie criticized the book and he's like well i i can't fix it now it's uh-huh it's out already so that's the thing it doesn't do with cats though they took cats back in and sonic yeah they re-edited it well that was that was before yeah

Speaker 4 how did that work out for everybody on cats did that work out well for everybody

Speaker 4 so speaking of

Speaker 2 her maid, stole the vibrator, right?

Speaker 4 I guess. Did you use that? I remember that.

Speaker 1 So along these same lines, I'm very curious. So Billions, obviously, tremendously successful.

Speaker 1 Season four is coming out in May. Five.
Five is coming out in May.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Now, watching how people consume television now. Yes.
And the binge watching, and everyone's a critic, and you saw probably how Game of Thrones ended. Yes.

Speaker 1 Do you have anxiety with how are we going to land this plane? Like, how is this? Someday we're going to have to write the last episode of Billions.

Speaker 6 i'm sure that i will feel pressure but it's internal pressure because the thing that protects you from that ego is the thing i was talking about before which is like just throwing yourself into the work because the work makes you

Speaker 6 the work forces you to get humility because it's so hard and you fail all the time Right, when you try at this shit, you're failing every minute, right?

Speaker 6 You're failing when you're writing a scene and it's not as good as it should be. You're failing when you're shooting.
Like, it's tons of failure.

Speaker 6 Everything that we do involves a high level of failure constantly. And you're just constantly bumping up against your own limitations as an artist.
And your own limitations, there's great limitations.

Speaker 6 If you're not Paul Thomas Anderson or Wes Anderson

Speaker 6 or Quentin, there's just a lot of fucking limitations. And you're just trying your best to like transcend them, which is to say

Speaker 6 David Benioff and Dan Weiss are fucking geniuses, those guys, and who made Game of Thrones. I mean, Benioff wrote my favorite novel of the last 15 years, City of Thieves.

Speaker 6 Even if you're not a reader of novels, go read that book. It's fucking incredible.
It's good as any TV show ever. And yeah, whether those guys nailed it or not, I don't think they

Speaker 6 are. The problem with your favorite TV show is you put so much of yourself as a viewer into it.
Suddenly, it's like that thing where some listener of yours thinks they're your best friend.

Speaker 6 I know you guys show up places and your listeners feel like they know you incredibly well. They know a part of you, the part of you that you allow them to know.
And it's a real part of you.

Speaker 6 It's who you are, but it's not 360, right? Right.

Speaker 2 So our intern tweeted out a picture of my penis one time. So

Speaker 2 it's most of it. Yeah.
But yeah, I know what you're saying. Yes.

Speaker 2 We expose ourselves in a limited amount sometimes. Yeah.
And so you do feel like

Speaker 4 with the show,

Speaker 6 so like people have a relationship with the TV series, but that is not really David Benioff and Dan Weife's responsibility.

Speaker 6 Their responsibility is to like make the best show that they can based on the way that they see it.

Speaker 6 So it's the same thing with our show. Like we will, Dave and I, from the beginning, have just been trying to make a show.
The great thing about having a partner who's like your best friend,

Speaker 6 who is your best friend, and is when I'm writing my scenes in the show or he's writing his, we're just trying to amuse the other guy. Right.
I just want to make Dave laugh.

Speaker 6 I just want to make Dave wonder what's going to happen. Like, I just want to entertain him.

Speaker 6 And I know that if I entertain him and he entertains me, and also we're each other's harshest critic and biggest fan.

Speaker 6 So I'll fucking rewrite him without a moment's thought and he'll rewrite me without a moment's thought and we'll hash that shit out.

Speaker 6 But at the end of it, it's going to be this collective thing that we've been doing since Rounders rounders together. And I guess I have to trust.

Speaker 6 I don't know another way to do it, man, except to trust that that thing won't reach everybody. A lot of people won't like it,

Speaker 6 but our tribe will understand if we're true to what we're doing, like our tribe will get it. And that's all that I can do, really.

Speaker 6 I don't know how to do the other thing. Yeah.

Speaker 2 I guess there's like a leap of faith that comes in at the start because you've had such a good track record now where it's probably easier to trust now than it was at first when you're writing rounders and you're like, I think this is good.

Speaker 2 I think that we should trust ourselves. But there was probably some creeping doubt that's like, no idea.

Speaker 4 We could be totally fucked up. Totally, of course.

Speaker 6 Nobody could want that. Of course.
Yeah, I mean, when you start a movie with Three Stacks of High Society, you know,

Speaker 6 nobody knows what that means.

Speaker 6 Everyone could have been like, this is bullshit.

Speaker 4 I don't want this.

Speaker 6 And it was rejected, by the way.

Speaker 6 I mean, that's the other thing, Hank. It was rejected.

Speaker 6 Those three and a half months until somebody said yes, was just like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And we got rejected by every agency in Hollywood.
I mean, they just slammed us to the mat. And

Speaker 6 all sorts of bullshit reasons and probably true reasons why they rejected us. And that was when I had huge doubt.
I was like, we were already trying to write the next thing.

Speaker 6 But, I mean, I thought, oh, man, maybe, maybe we're just completely fooling ourselves. Maybe we're just total frauds.

Speaker 2 When it comes to landing the plane as Big Cat brought up on billions, I've got two ideas that are foolproof.

Speaker 6 Fire away, just sign a little thing that says I can take the ideas.

Speaker 4 No, you can.

Speaker 2 Verbally, I'm granting you this kind of of thing. Thank you.

Speaker 4 That's great.

Speaker 2 Okay, one. This is almost a no-brainer.
You've probably thought of it already.

Speaker 2 At the very end of the very last episode, Bobby Axelrod

Speaker 2 realizes that he was also Paul Gimati the whole time. Oh, cool.
Split personality. Well, we got to.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that's right. You just actually, now I'm going to have to reshoot the first episode of next season because that's how we started.

Speaker 6 We started the episode with that. Like the whole fifth season was supposed to be that journey.

Speaker 2 Yeah, all right. Well, my other one was just that he wakes up and it was a dream.

Speaker 4 Also entirely. And he's in prison.

Speaker 2 Also, I just ad-lib that one right now. He's in jail for insider trading after season season.

Speaker 4 You want me to throw one out there? Sure, I'd love it. Have you seen the show? No.
Okay. Great.

Speaker 1 I know because

Speaker 4 you've seen some of it.

Speaker 2 No, I've seen every episode. I was mistaken when I asked Mark Cuban

Speaker 2 if he was the basis for billions. And he was like, no, I've actually been in several episodes.
I was like, yeah, oh, that's right. You and Bobby Axe got to a little pissing contest over that car.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I remember. How I consume television now, I'll wait till it says, like, okay, season seven is the finale season.

Speaker 6 Then you'll watch the finale.

Speaker 1 And then I'll watch all of them, and then I'll be like, this show sucks. I can't remember anything that happened because it all becomes one show.

Speaker 1 But what about, I saw, not because you were tweeting about it, but because Rich Eisen was tweeting about it non-stop, that he was in an episode, right?

Speaker 6 He and Bob Menery together, yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, so how about you have Rich Eisen come back and then you kill his character off, but you also kill him in real life, then you never have to do a finale because it's like the show's over, you're in jail for murder.

Speaker 6 I understand all your show business success. Yeah,

Speaker 4 got your reality.

Speaker 4 Write a finale. Amazing.

Speaker 1 They actually killed Rich Eisenstein.

Speaker 4 Plus, Rich Eisenstead. Yeah, and then we don't hear about Michigan being.

Speaker 6 Can I just say, seeing those two guys together, because Rich, I love Rich. Rich is so straight-laced in that way, and Mannery is so not.

Speaker 6 And watching the two of them commentate together and like what was happening when we would call cut was fucking hilarious.

Speaker 2 Because then Big Cat and I could write our own TV show about how you killed Rich Eisenhower.

Speaker 4 That's a good documentary. And yeah, a true crime story about how we convinced you to murder him.
Where do you get this idea? Where is the murder thing?

Speaker 6 Where is the bomb?

Speaker 1 Listen, I mean, all these ideas are free.

Speaker 4 Yeah, they are free.

Speaker 6 Speaking of. How's your Miles Teller movie going?

Speaker 4 Good. Thank you for asking.

Speaker 6 The boner thing. It's going to be a little bit more.

Speaker 4 I actually want to talk to you offline

Speaker 2 about the boner thing because I feel like there's a good opportunity.

Speaker 6 You want a little dialogue? Just

Speaker 4 by being here.

Speaker 2 For me to pick your brain a little bit because

Speaker 4 I'm actually gonna write this thing the boner thing it seemed like he didn't like you guys by the way well no when you ask yeah no he did I think he did but he's also kind of like ball ball I like you guys a lot he's a little prickly sometimes but great actor like truly great great yeah great we're gonna do the boner thing but we want to do it in a way that's really the most intelligent movie ever made about dog boners great so do you think we should hi bar high bar do you think we should take Viagra before we write like you did with your

Speaker 6 partner? Sure, like

Speaker 6 you're trying to do a Roman ad right in the middle of this whole thing? Because I'm shouting. So it just comes right in the conversation.

Speaker 4 I assume that you're not. That's a product place.
Yeah, you have a product place.

Speaker 2 I'm not sure if you're a raging hard directions the entire time, right?

Speaker 6 Well, here's what I would say about that. What else do you guys want to know? What else are we talking about?

Speaker 2 You did, you did, you were on Vine for a while, right?

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 You were doing like six-second screenwriting tips. Yes.
Can you give, we're going to try to remake Vine. Can you give me a shot?

Speaker 7 That was actually how I found you, I think.

Speaker 4 Oh, wow.

Speaker 6 Oh, when you were in film school?

Speaker 4 Yeah. Cool.
That's how you're doing. And on Vine.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I had 60 million Vine loops or whatever.

Speaker 4 No big deal. Yeah.
60 million. It was pretty good.
Vine was awesome.

Speaker 6 I loved it. Well, it was all just to, you know, that was all just to take the fucking piss out of these bullshit screenwriting teachers.
Right.

Speaker 6 Basically, I just said for the fuck of it one day, all screenwriting books are bullshit, all of them.

Speaker 6 Read screenplays, watch movies, and let those be your guide.

Speaker 6 And as a joke, I called it six-second screenwriting lessons because what happened was on Twitter, people were asking me all these questions like, hey, in the seven-act structure that you have to do, what happens in the fourth act?

Speaker 6 And I was like, I never thought about any of it. Where are you? So I wrote back, like, where are you getting this shit? And then they were like, well, everyone knows that's what you're supposed to do.

Speaker 6 I went to a seminar at the Radisson, and I was like, stop.

Speaker 6 Like, that's total. So then I just grabbed the phone and it was fine.
And I just said it as a fucking joke. I mean, I meant it.

Speaker 6 But it was like, and I called the six-second screen lessons and I sent it out. And let's say at the time I had like 3,000 followers on Twitter.
I wasn't even on social media hardly.

Speaker 6 By the end of that day, there were like 10,000 people all talking about what I said and all being like, wait, you mean that that stuff that they I pay money to get a genre lesson is fake?

Speaker 6 And I was like, I don't even know what that word means. Like, stop.
Yes, it's fake. If you have to go to a Radisson for a seminar, it's fake.

Speaker 4 No matter what the subject is. It doesn't matter what the subject is.

Speaker 2 If you're paying money to attend a conference room at a hotel, you got scammed.

Speaker 6 If there's an issue that you're getting scammed unless your employer is paying for it.

Speaker 2 There's something about your life right now that has a big hole in it. If you're trying to fill that hole in a hotel conference room.

Speaker 6 Yeah, if you feel like you're in a scene from up in the air,

Speaker 6 movie where clooney's taking the backpack out like yeah don't uh don't go to the summoners so i said that and then i realized people want permission they want someone to give them permission to try their crazy dream they just they feel like we've been we were raised in these schools that were originally made to teach kids how to go work on their parents farms like the schools would give you the discipline to go work on a farm and know how to keep track and records and you were so you were taught that you need some authority to give you permission to do things like go to the bathroom even So people are like, well, I can't be an artist or I can't create.

Speaker 6 And I realized, well, of course you fucking can. All you have to do is do it.
Don't worry about the labels.

Speaker 6 Don't worry that when you were in eighth grade, some kid knew how to play Stairway to Heaven on the guitar already and he made it seem like he'd just taught himself.

Speaker 6 He's working on it for two years probably. But it seems like a magic trick and it seems like that guy's the special one and you can't be.
So I just wanted to say to people, of course you can be.

Speaker 6 Why can't you be? It just takes a lot of work, rigor, tremendous rigor.

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 6 So if you're willing to put in that work,

Speaker 6 who should tell you what you can or can't do? So, that's what I was saying on my podcast.

Speaker 1 It's an important lesson.

Speaker 2 Do you find that the structure of your screenplays kind of naturally falls into the traditional screen?

Speaker 6 By the way, this is what I talk about on my podcast,

Speaker 6 which is called The Moment with Brian Koblen.

Speaker 4 I am. I talk about that.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Oh, you're going to believe it.
Yeah, The Moment with Brian Koblins. You've got to have your own podcast.
Yeah, I wasn't trying. I mean, I did it very directly, right?

Speaker 6 It's a very direct thing. The moment with Brian Koblin.

Speaker 4 There we go, please.

Speaker 4 Yeah, great.

Speaker 6 But I try to talk about that there as well. What was your question you just asked me? I was plugging, so I forgot to go.

Speaker 2 I was saying that do you find that the

Speaker 2 screenplays that you write kind of fall into that traditional three-act structure?

Speaker 6 Well, so that's one of the things I talked about in the Vines too, and I talked about on the podcast the Brian Koplin, which is that

Speaker 4 you know how to tell a story.

Speaker 6 It's a beginning, middle, and end. People make it so complicated.
Three-act structure, inciting incident. That just inciting incident is like...
Something happened.

Speaker 6 Holy shit, I was at the Hamble Court yesterday, and this fucking guy wouldn't let me. Oh, what happened? Yeah, he pushed.
I wanted to, I called winners, and he and his friend said, Go fuck yourself.

Speaker 6 So that's the inciting incident. And then it's like, well, what did I do? And how would you tell me that story? That's it.
Beginning, middle, end. We all know how to do it.

Speaker 6 If you had to tell a story, because you got a member of whatever sex you're attracted to in a bar to pay attention to you for two seconds, and you had their interest, and you just had to tell them a story to get them to walk out of there, believe me, your story would have an inciting incident, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Speaker 6 And that's all you have to do in telling a screen story to.

Speaker 6 Just get my my interest and keep my interest by telling me a story that rises to some point in the middle and then there's some kind of reversal in it that I didn't see coming and then there's an end.

Speaker 6 People want to earn money by telling you how to do this stuff. They want to make it complicated.
That's what con men do, right?

Speaker 6 Con men, they want to take something that's simple, they want to really complicate it, and then they want to get you to pay them so that they can then make it uncomplicated for you.

Speaker 6 This stuff isn't that complicated. It just requires a tremendous amount of work.
What all of us are looking for is a hack that will prevent us from doing the work. That doesn't exist.

Speaker 6 You got to do the work. But if you do the work, you can solve these things.
They're not impossible. I'm not the smartest guy in the world.

Speaker 6 I just was willing to work really hard every day to figure it out.

Speaker 1 And that part is interesting to me because your podcast, The Moment, which we will actually plug, you talk to a bunch of people and, you know, whether it be success, failure, whatever their story is, I think you can attest this, but they all just worked really hard a lot of the time.

Speaker 4 True.

Speaker 1 And that kind of comes back to what we've done and what you've done. Like, a lot of the times, you know, even if you're not the most talented, if you work very, very hard and outwork your confidence.

Speaker 4 You have to.

Speaker 6 Because you don't know if you're talented. Thing is, yeah, you need to have some talent.
You have no idea if you're talented until you do the work.

Speaker 6 That's the fucked part of the whole game. You know, you got to be willing to put so much effort in to find out.
And you know what? By the end, the work may just will out. The work may just win.

Speaker 6 You may just find your way. This is like JJ, Reddick, we had dinner with JJ that night.
I mean, I got to go this summer and rebound.

Speaker 6 That's how he knows that I can shoot because I went and I spent an hour with him at his workout. That guy's what, the third best shooter in the NBA?

Speaker 6 Maybe second, it depends. Certainly, safely, the third best outside shooter for his whole career in the league.
He could just, and he's making third, what is he making now? 13 a year?

Speaker 4 I think.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, maybe 30 years.

Speaker 6 Two year, 26, a two-year, $26 million deal, right? For these two years in North.

Speaker 6 That guy's still, the deal's,

Speaker 4 it's

Speaker 6 guaranteed money, and he's still in there.

Speaker 6 I never saw a human being work harder than I saw him work in that hour in the gym. I mean, he just comes in there.
He fucking carries this huge speaker with him that he rolls this huge speaker in.

Speaker 6 He turns on some hip-hop of questionable auspices and time period. And I guess it was what he was listening to when he was in college.
And

Speaker 6 some hip-hop. It's not Kendrick.

Speaker 6 There was no tip of him butterfly. He's putting on this music, and then his very affable, relaxed personality, and the moment the training started, it all disappeared.

Speaker 6 He was like, stand over here, pass me the ball this way, rebound this way. I'm going to put this chair here, and I'm going to go around it like it's a defender.

Speaker 6 And the guy, I just saw him put himself through paces for an hour, and it made it so clear. That's why this guy's got a 20-year career.

Speaker 6 He's going to have a 20-year career in the NBA as a guy who's constantly above his court.

Speaker 6 He'll just push himself harder than all these other guys who are trying to either compete with him as a shooter or defend. He's willing to kill it.
He's in the Hamptons. It's the summer.

Speaker 6 He's not, he doesn't have to do any of it. He could play himself into shape as so many people do.
He's not playing himself into shape. He's walking in ready to play.

Speaker 6 That's inspiring as hell to me, man.

Speaker 2 Yeah, he was saying that he's always afraid that every single time he steps into the gym, he's not going to know how to shoot anymore.

Speaker 2 And so that's kind of what motivated, which is insane, just crazy because he's been doing this for what, 20 years probably? He's been shooting at an extremely high level.

Speaker 1 It's the opposite. Every time I step in the gym, I'm like, maybe today's the day I'm J.J.
Redding.

Speaker 4 You're like the kid in the meme. You're like, I haven't done any of the work.

Speaker 1 But maybe I'll just get hot out of nowhere and just start hitting everything.

Speaker 6 It's just so much work to be good at shooting. But

Speaker 6 yeah, I spent years trying to learn to shoot well. But that's the thing, like that level of, that level of just like industriousness, there's no substitute for it.

Speaker 4 I think.

Speaker 1 Has anyone ever said this to you? Because I'm about to say it, and it's totally honest. So billions, rounders, everyone knows whatever you want.

Speaker 1 My favorite movie that you wrote was Walking Tall.

Speaker 6 Thank you. That's all you say.
Thanks. Glad you like it.
You didn't like it? No, I mean, listen, getting to write for the rock.

Speaker 4 The rock. Getting to write for the

Speaker 4 right knox.

Speaker 1 Kind of a little bit of a roadhouse part two.

Speaker 6 Dude, getting to write for the rock is a huge thrill and honor.

Speaker 4 You know, I definitely loved that movie.

Speaker 6 I'm a lifelong WWF like I'm a huge

Speaker 6 wrestling person.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 in fact, I watched the greatest interview last night. Have you ever watched Honky Tonk Man's interview where he talks about how he refused to drop the belt to

Speaker 6 drop the belt to Macho Man when he had the Intercontinental Championship. It's insane.

Speaker 4 Old school wrestling. It was an insane interview.

Speaker 6 He just did this interview recently where it was a totally

Speaker 6 a shoot interview where he was just completely laying out how Vince told him to drop the belt and why he wouldn't. You can't take your eyes off it.
Honky Tonk Man, it's insane.

Speaker 1 I went down a rabbit hole the other day.

Speaker 4 Posted for people. It's nuts.
It's Mr.

Speaker 1 Perfect Vignettes. And it's actually like the best writing ever.
Like him doing the

Speaker 1 writing at everything was just the greatest character ever, throwing the basketball.

Speaker 6 But Hagen Tommy was just talking about, I mean, it's the same thing we're talking. Hagen Tommy was just going, I mean, here, I'd put so much work and effort into creating the character.

Speaker 6 And I'm thinking to myself, you just put a little shit in your hair, dude.

Speaker 4 I mean, right. What did you

Speaker 4 mess it up?

Speaker 6 He was like, I just, it took years.

Speaker 6 I felt so bad for the guy. He said he was just sitting there and Vince calls them in and he said with Randy and Elizabeth.
And he said, Randy,

Speaker 6 Vince would never even meet his eyes. He was just going, so Randy, you'll take the title on Saturday.
And he ignored the guy the whole time, not one word to him.

Speaker 6 And he's like, I just had to walk out of there like some kind of a dickhead, man.

Speaker 6 He goes, I had to call my wife, and I had to just tell her, honey, like, we just had a baby, and I had to be like, I don't know if we're going to get to keep the house.

Speaker 4 It was just unbelievable.

Speaker 4 Interview. So what? So, yeah, so

Speaker 6 I can't argue with Walking Tall.

Speaker 1 I just want you to know there's at least one person walking around who's like walking tall.

Speaker 6 The truth is, our best movie is a movie called Solitaire Man that Michael Douglas starred, and you should watch that. It's not like Walking Tall at all.

Speaker 6 Walking Tall, Dave and I worked on that for four weeks.

Speaker 6 And so I gave it.

Speaker 4 We wrote it in four weeks?

Speaker 4 We wrote our part.

Speaker 6 We rewrote it.

Speaker 4 Someone, someone had written a draft of it.

Speaker 1 It was a rock. He had a big stick.

Speaker 4 We had to fuck shit up. Well, that's the funniest thing.

Speaker 6 When they hired us, they said

Speaker 6 they hired us to rewrite. So someone had written a script.
That's one of those cases where they brought us in as like script doctors because they wanted Johnny Knoxville to say yes.

Speaker 6 He'd been offered the movie. They'd offered him like $5 million.

Speaker 6 He turned it down. And they were like, can you guys write a script good enough to get Johnny Knoxville to say yes? That's amazing.

Speaker 4 And we thought, I think we can do that. Yeah,

Speaker 2 how did you punch it up to target Johnny Knox?

Speaker 4 You know, I made this call bigger.

Speaker 6 Well, you're joking, but this is Hollywood.

Speaker 4 This is Hollywood.

Speaker 6 And we get on the call and it's with The Rock and everybody when they're going to hire us to do it. And Rock was great.
And then he hung up.

Speaker 6 You know, we talked to him for 20 minutes and he talked about what he wanted to do and it was amazing. And then the studio exec said, okay, we'd like you guys to do this.

Speaker 6 There's one thing really important. And we said, what? They said, you have to really make sure you give the stick a personality.

Speaker 4 There it is that is

Speaker 4 i know the actual

Speaker 4 i know this movie

Speaker 6 needs a backstory it needs we need to understand why this stick but it was we felt like we were in a hollywood comedy at that point because uh so the answer is you just give john and oxville some dialogue that sounded like the kind of dialogue dave and i write and then he wants to come do yeah we'll include a scene with a shopping cart that

Speaker 6 i'm so happy i brought that up i had hilarious give the stick a personality i mean you did it's one of the greatest things anyone in hollywood ever said to me you did you did you did johnny you have to keep a straight face because when they're paying you for those, as a screenwriter, the only times you can make, like wherever you are in the business, the only times you make substantially more is when there's like pressure like that, where they're like, we have four weeks.

Speaker 6 We want to green light the movie. We're going to pay you weekly.
So every week, we have a star we want to get. We have one other guy or the rock with a moment.

Speaker 6 Those are the only times that you have any leverage as a screenwriter. And so we knew we would get a paycheck that would take us through the next two years or whatever.

Speaker 6 And so when they're like, give the bad a personality, we were just like,

Speaker 4 oh, absolutely. Yes, sir.

Speaker 4 We know exactly.

Speaker 4 Yeah, we, personality.

Speaker 4 Don't you worry.

Speaker 6 Yeah. No, this thing's going to be like Dave Chappelle.

Speaker 4 He's going to have the best personality in the world. There'll be a sequel.

Speaker 1 We have just this.

Speaker 4 You won't believe the personality that that guy is going to have.

Speaker 4 Soon after that, we stopped taking those gigs. Two by four.

Speaker 2 I want to talk real quick about billions again because it fascinates me. This show and do you watch Succession?

Speaker 6 I'll watch it after.

Speaker 6 I won't watch it till we're done. I don't want to ever be,

Speaker 6 you know what I mean?

Speaker 6 I know that there's a similarity of the world.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So I just don't want to fuck with it yet.

Speaker 4 I will.

Speaker 6 I love Adam McKay's.

Speaker 1 No, I do actually have the same perspective. I try not to listen to too much other sports talk because then you start internalizing it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you just don't have to.

Speaker 2 We have a mutual understanding that we don't listen to the Lebatard show and they don't listen to us. Right.
No, sir.

Speaker 4 Because we both like each other, but we know that we will be accused of the same thing.

Speaker 1 We're in the same area.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And people will be like, Oh, so if you just don't listen, then you when someone accuses you of it, you know, you're like, Hey, listen, there's no chance I stole it because I didn't listen to you.

Speaker 6 Which one of you is two gods?

Speaker 2 Probably me. I'm small,

Speaker 4 we go back and forth, we flip back and forth with it. So,

Speaker 2 yeah, I mean, he's a big guy named Dan, yeah, right, right.

Speaker 4 Yeah, which is why we did this show.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 2 But in terms of those two shows, in particular, succession and billions, uh, one thing that's kind of in common about the two is neither show has any character that is like pure, that is like 100%

Speaker 2 like, you know, a person that you can root for all the time. They all have their flaws.

Speaker 2 How does that impact writing an episode to like try to figure out how to get the audience on the side of one person who might not always be morally...

Speaker 6 So a trick is if somebody's great at what they do, the audience is interested in hanging.

Speaker 6 If you're fucking amazing at what you do,

Speaker 6 the audience, like, you know, we watch John Jones.

Speaker 6 But

Speaker 4 we watch Connor.

Speaker 6 I mean, Connor, it's possible he's not a great human.

Speaker 1 I would say that's very possible.

Speaker 4 That's really possible.

Speaker 6 That's the most aggressive I'm going to get about Connor because I can end up in a room with him someday.

Speaker 4 Yeah, he'll punch you.

Speaker 2 You're right in his weeks. Age-wise.

Speaker 4 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 4 I'm almost old enough. I'm almost old enough.

Speaker 6 He's really, if I were 65, I'm not just 53.

Speaker 4 63, then.

Speaker 4 But

Speaker 6 it's possible he's not like, but I'm compelled to watch him, right? And also, in the real world, most people are gray.

Speaker 6 Most people have their best moment, you would think they were were a saint, in their worst moment, you'd think they were a devil. And

Speaker 6 so not everybody, but we are interested, and Dave and I have always been interested in examining people in between. And that's fascinating to us.
So

Speaker 6 I was never worried. Executives in any endeavor, in any business, will always try to get the, you know, what's the safe middle.

Speaker 6 But if you're a creator, you can, you have to ignore the safe middle and you have to be going for what's really fascinating to you.

Speaker 6 And to us, it was these kind of people who were, you know, prosecutors who use the prosecutorial office to try to advance their careers.

Speaker 6 Hedge fund people who are richer than any human needs to be, who still feel like a failure if they don't make another billion dollars. And so what corners are they willing to cut?

Speaker 6 And what story are they telling themselves? And if you can make that stuff compelling enough, then people will hang in.

Speaker 6 And then, you know, in our culture now, people will look at folks like that like heroes. To David and me,

Speaker 6 they're not heroes at all, but they're humans.

Speaker 6 But when you make somebody really great at what they do, really smart, funny, like our characters are, people will, they'll fuck with that shit. They want to.

Speaker 1 You come from a family that created egg cartons?

Speaker 6 My great-great-uncle Leon invented the egg carton. Wow.
Made no money off it, but he did do it.

Speaker 2 You're one of those egg carton trust farms. I am,

Speaker 4 baby. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That's a great icebreaker if you ever had to be in an awkward situation.

Speaker 4 Do you think that would work?

Speaker 1 Interesting about yourself.

Speaker 4 I think that'd be a terrible icebreaker. You could take credit for virtually every piece of recorded music that's come out in the last 50 years because of the baffling on the back of the microphone.

Speaker 4 Because they got walls, yeah. Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 6 You should get a cut.

Speaker 4 That's a wild one, though.

Speaker 6 Yeah,

Speaker 6 I think his name

Speaker 6 was Leon. No, not Leon.
It was

Speaker 6 somewhere on the internet, whatever it is.

Speaker 4 Created Ed Carter. It's a real thing.

Speaker 1 You love Twitter threads. Is there

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 goal? Like, how long could you make a Twitter thread? Like, I want to see you go for... Like, Kobe goes for 81 hours.
It's true.

Speaker 4 I do really dig them.

Speaker 6 I do dig them. Because like I have a I could just like write an essay on the blog.
You should do just I think the Twitter thread is somehow better. I like it.
But do it.

Speaker 1 You want me to get go like 80. Go 85.
Because I actually

Speaker 6 don't write them ahead of time, right? I'm just going.

Speaker 2 So you do one slash question.

Speaker 6 I sort of know. I sort of have a sense of where it is.
And I'll just do one and then a parent.

Speaker 4 See how far you can get it. And I write end at the end.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 You want me to do like 100?

Speaker 4 100. Yeah, go to

Speaker 4 Seth Absolute.

Speaker 1 Because I feel like I read a book when I read a long Twitter thread.

Speaker 4 I'm like, wow, that's it. Do you not like Twitter threads? No, you think Twitter's not for that?

Speaker 1 I like them. I think it's very funny.

Speaker 1 I actually have no problem with the person who writes the Twitter thread. It's the people who quote the Twitter thread and be like, very important thread.

Speaker 4 Or like, thread.

Speaker 6 Well, I would say the things I'm doing.

Speaker 4 I think it's pretty clear I don't take myself too seriously what I'm doing. You're fine.
It's the people who are.

Speaker 6 I'm just fucking around

Speaker 6 telling funny stories. I mean, I call them Hollywood gold, for Christ's sake.
I don't really think they're gold.

Speaker 4 I just don't want to have.

Speaker 1 I don't have people commit to it, though.

Speaker 4 Like, see if you can just do it.

Speaker 6 I am a professional storyteller.

Speaker 1 The longest.

Speaker 4 Write a whole movie in thread form.

Speaker 6 Have you watched any Big Cat or any Lad matches since we talked about that you have to go and watch?

Speaker 4 No, I have not.

Speaker 1 That's

Speaker 6 Grazia, man.

Speaker 4 Come on. I know.

Speaker 1 That's my bet.

Speaker 1 He was the best. Hand up.
Hand up. Why have you not watched?

Speaker 1 Because I forgot we had that conversation.

Speaker 6 The Big Cat. I know.

Speaker 4 That's the original Big Cat. I forgot.
Get in there. I forgot.

Speaker 1 All right, I got one last question. Go ahead.
Seek Geek question, promo code take. You get $10 off.

Speaker 4 Go do it right now.

Speaker 1 I don't think it was Ace Ace because that would be corny as hell. Because obviously he had the aces at the beginning of the movie.

Speaker 6 I won't answer the question.

Speaker 4 We're going to bleep it out. Do you think he's no one left?

Speaker 6 Oh, I can just tell you guys. Yeah, no officials.

Speaker 4 My theory is he either had ace 10

Speaker 1 or he had nothing.

Speaker 4 Cool.

Speaker 6 That's great. It's been so much fun, guys.

Speaker 6 Nothing?

Speaker 4 Did he have nothing?

Speaker 1 This has put put your hat on if you had nothing.

Speaker 4 This is your best.

Speaker 4 This is the best.

Speaker 2 Oh, I have one last one last question.

Speaker 2 I've always wanted to be an extra.

Speaker 6 Done. Can I be an extra?

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 6 Okay. It's really bad, though.
Have you done it?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 6 It's the worst time, but yes. Come do it.
Okay. You're just going to sit there for so long.
Are you really going to come for 12 hours, man?

Speaker 2 Yeah, well, what type of extra do you think is going to be a huge one?

Speaker 4 It's going to be an hour negotiation.

Speaker 2 No, I'm just.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I could put you in a restaurant behind somebody or something. I could be in a restaurant.

Speaker 2 I'd love to be in a restaurant. I'd love to be in the business.
If the answer is yes,

Speaker 6 but you're really showing up for 12 hours. Like you're there for 12 hours, and it's going to be boring and annoying.
I will eat, though.

Speaker 1 Do they give you food?

Speaker 4 Yeah, you'll get some stuff. You'll have to get craft sources.

Speaker 6 Well, she'll be able to hang with us by the chair. It won't be as bad for you as for like, but it's a really hard job.
Background, those people who really do that, what they do is hard.

Speaker 2 I guarantee you, and I don't want to diminish from what they do because you're right, being an extra is a tough way to make a book.

Speaker 2 I guarantee you I would show up for 12 hours if I could, if you could guarantee me that I would be in the background background of a shot in Billions.

Speaker 6 Well, here's the thing, right? If I'm friendly with somebody and I put them in as an extra, my goal is not going to be to cut them out. That seems, that just seems bad all around.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 If the whole scene kind of funny. If the whole scene is very funny, Frank to pull.
If the whole scene, well, we would have had to that Big Cat and I would have stunted that

Speaker 4 before.

Speaker 6 If the whole scene gets cut, that's life. But

Speaker 6 like one of my good friends came and we were shooting a softball scene and he played shortstop and he was really good shortstop, but he was so psyched, then the whole scene got cut.

Speaker 6 And he like retrained himself, and he hurt his shoulder, and then that scene got cut, which was sad, but it happened.

Speaker 2 Listen, I'll take my chances. You would probably be in the show.

Speaker 4 I'll take my chances. Thank you guys.
So, rounders for sports betting.

Speaker 1 I'll help you write that.

Speaker 6 Great. Awesome.

Speaker 1 Rounders 2. When is that coming out?

Speaker 4 Right.

Speaker 1 That's good. That is coming out, right?

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 1 I heard Edward Norton talking about that.

Speaker 6 Nobody gets through an episode of Pardon My Take without having to deal with those types of people. With these questions.
That's right. Let me say, I'm so happy to do this, guys.

Speaker 6 I really am such a fan. And

Speaker 6 the Levine boys, Joe and James and Robbie, are so happy right now, I think, that Uncle Brian did this.

Speaker 1 And yeah, thanks for having me. Which one of the Levine boys is Pete Gas?

Speaker 6 Let me tell you this. Robbie Levine is an incredible.
All three of them are amazing.

Speaker 6 Robbie, you guys could be talking about Robbie as a professional athlete sometime.

Speaker 4 Whoa.

Speaker 4 Great.

Speaker 4 Okay. Okay.
All right, guys. Thanks.

Speaker 1 What's up, guys? It's Big Cat here making my Irish entrance with proper number 12 Irish whiskey. How do you make an Irish entrance, you ask?

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Speaker 1 So get out there and make your Irish entrance. Anything else just wouldn't be proper.

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Speaker 1 All right, let's get to some segments. By the way, before we do that, I was texting with our guy, John Rostein, last night.

Speaker 1 He will have to figure out our schedule, but he wants us to do a wing eating contest sometime soon.

Speaker 4 I think we should do it in.

Speaker 2 I don't do those. Yeah, we don't do those.

Speaker 1 We should do that maybe in the off season because this is March, you know, like it's going to to be March. I was thinking, though, why do we sleep in May? Why don't we sleep in...
It's only February.

Speaker 1 This is only February, but why don't we sleep in the whole second half of April?

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 you're still coming down.

Speaker 2 You're still thinking about college basketball.

Speaker 1 I was thinking about this. We sleep in May.
It's like, yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 4 Except the Final Four is like April 4th.

Speaker 7 Yeah, we but we sleep the last three weeks of April.

Speaker 4 That kind of rolls off the tongue.

Speaker 2 We sleep in the last three weeks of April.

Speaker 1 Right, you miss tax taxes?

Speaker 2 Done.

Speaker 4 You don't have to do those.

Speaker 1 Good.

Speaker 2 Your Honor, I was asleep.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I was asleep.

Speaker 2 Case dismissed.

Speaker 1 Too much basketball that I watched in March. Had to sleep the rest of April.

Speaker 4 All right.

Speaker 1 Segments. PR 101, Greg Robinson.
He had 157 pounds of marijuana caught. He is a very rich man.
Obviously, he plays for the Cleveland Browns.

Speaker 1 And this reminds you of Nate Newton, of Sam Hurd, in a long line of very rich football players who decide they want to be Scarface. What's the PR 101 here?

Speaker 1 Besides already making it look uncool by having Ravel tweet out the street value.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that was a big North move. I think it's, well, it is a J.V.
Nate Newton move in every sense of the word. So it's half as much weed as Nate Newton.
Nate Newton was...

Speaker 2 Nate Newton was a Dallas Cowboys offensive lineman that got busted with like 350 or like 400 pounds of weed, something like that, back in, I think, the late 90s, early 2000s.

Speaker 2 But it is, so it's like half as much weed that he had. He plays for the Browns, not the Cowboys.
His name is Greg, which is not a weed dealer's name.

Speaker 2 I feel like that could be a personal use case right there. Like,

Speaker 2 what drug dealer do you know named Greg?

Speaker 2 Greg is the guy that owns the grow house that you rent the grow house from, and he doesn't have any idea until his electric bill jumps up to like $5,000 a month. Greg is not a drug dealer name at all.

Speaker 4 I love Greg!

Speaker 4 Remember that picture? Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Viral AF.
Yeah, very viral.

Speaker 2 I don't know what the PR 101 here is, except he should just say, I play for the Browns. I should be allowed to smoke marijuana medically.

Speaker 1 Yeah, or he could just go with the, well, dude, you wanted 17 games. We get to smoke and distribute lots of marijuana now.

Speaker 2 Yeah, my understanding was the new CBA ratified a clause that you could kidnap an Uber driver and force them to take you to Mexico and come back with 150 pounds of swag.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 1 So he Nate Newton had 175 pounds of marijuana. So not that much bigger.
Sam Hurd

Speaker 1 had still a lot, still a very lot.

Speaker 1 Sam Hurd didn't have, he just was trying to procure, he said 1,000 pounds a week and 20 pounds of cocaine. And then

Speaker 1 in his, I remember in his defense, his lawyer was like, well, he was just trying to, he was just trying to flex. Like, he didn't actually need that.

Speaker 4 Right. He was just trying to do it.
He was just saying it.

Speaker 2 He was just saying that he was dealing drugs for the clout.

Speaker 1 It's just a prank. So, either way, Greg Robinson, I mean, I think this is one of those situations, too, where,

Speaker 1 like, what's worse, jail or having to go play for the Browns again?

Speaker 2 Well, obviously, playing for the Browns. But Nate Newton, when he was arrested, he had 213 pounds of marijuana during a traffic stop.
And then he got arrested again

Speaker 2 a month later with 175 pounds of marijuana.

Speaker 4 Got it. So

Speaker 2 he forgot it was against the law.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's what he needs to do.

Speaker 2 Greg Robinson needs to get arrested again in another month, and then it can become a discussion of like, does the NFL have an offensive lineman getting arrested for distributing hundreds of pounds of marijuana problem?

Speaker 2 And it becomes an institutional problem and not just a Greg Robinson thing.

Speaker 1 Right, right.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, I mean, this is a, I guess it was a good time to do it. It's also one of those weird ones where it's like,

Speaker 1 who cares? Greg Robinson, like you make a couple jokes and you move on. He's not good enough to really care.

Speaker 2 So that kind of sucks.

Speaker 1 If you're not good enough to have everyone... Like, if you are a professional athlete and you get caught with 157 pounds of weed and you don't trend for more than a few hours, you're not that good.

Speaker 2 That's bad. Also, yeah, in some legal scenario,

Speaker 2 they should just give up those charges because the charges aren't popping, Your Honor.

Speaker 1 Right, yeah, like it's not lit enough.

Speaker 4 People really don't care enough.

Speaker 2 And if you're in the southern district of New York, you're trying to make headlines here. You're not trying to arrest

Speaker 2 a Browns offensive lineman that was graded lower than the quality of his marijuana.

Speaker 1 Right, right. And also, Ravel just totally made it not cool by tweeting out the street value.

Speaker 1 All right, sorry, not sorry.

Speaker 4 Quickly for Kevin Love. So Kevin Love did, he

Speaker 1 notoriously hated John Beline. He came to training camp like two seconds before the season started.
Hated him from the beginning. And then John Beline finally gets fired.

Speaker 1 And Kevin Love came out and said,

Speaker 1 We got to look at ourselves in the mirror. I was talking about passing that mirror test.
Definitely myself. I've been a shithead at some points this season.
I let losing get the best of me.

Speaker 1 Nobody likes to do that. It's really just looking at ourselves and finding out how we can be better.
And from there, trying to pull it all together.

Speaker 1 I love this move because he's basically apologizing for being a bad person, bad teammate, and undermining his coach only after his coach got fired. So he can be like, yo, my bad.

Speaker 1 I did get you fired, and you also sucked, but, you know, my bad. I'll try a little harder.

Speaker 4 I'll look in the mirror.

Speaker 2 Well, yeah, I mean, there was a lot of mirror talk in that statement that you just read. There were like three different instances of him talking about in a mirror or looking at himself.

Speaker 2 So we have to ask if Kevin Love is a narcissist. It sounds like the answer is pretty clearly yes.

Speaker 2 He learned from LeBron about how to undermine a coach and then be upset after that coach lost his job. True.
Actually, you know what it sounds like with Kevin Love?

Speaker 2 He sounds like the Joker in Batman, where he's like, I was just chasing cars. I don't know what I would do if I ever caught one.

Speaker 2 So his thrill this entire year was just undermining his coach and insinuating that he should be fired. But now that he actually got fired, Kevin Love's like,

Speaker 2 now what do I do?

Speaker 4 I got to play. Now that's kind of boring.
Yeah, I got to try.

Speaker 2 You want to see how I got these scars? Yeah. From Kelly Olytic, probably ripping my shoulder out of the socket?

Speaker 1 The Cavs, by the way, this is now, they're going to... I want them to fire.
Who's even their interim?

Speaker 1 Who is it? Do we know? We can look it up.

Speaker 1 I want them to fire their interim before

Speaker 4 the end of the season

Speaker 1 because they are going for the record, I think. This is their fourth.
Oh, it's J.B. Bickerstaff.

Speaker 1 This is their fourth coach in less than 12 months, I believe.

Speaker 2 I can't remember. J.B.
Bickerstaff, that guy's fired. That guy's got a name like a corrupt mare in a Dr.
Seuss book.

Speaker 1 We need him fired because I need them to get five coaches in the span of 18 months. I don't think that

Speaker 1 that's possible. I mean, I didn't think that was possible, but

Speaker 1 they're knocking on the door of that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, no, I think it's very possible. It's absolutely 100% likely to happen.
Now, what happens to Bilon now? Does he go back to college?

Speaker 1 I don't know. That's a great question.
I'm reading right now the Cavs. It's like there's an article.
Cavs are in an awkward stalemate with interim head coach, but that's not talking about J.B.

Speaker 1 Bickerstaff. That's talking about Larry Drew because it was so recent.
So it's still like the fourth spot.

Speaker 1 Their last interim head coach is still the fourth spot on Google when you search Cavs' interim head coach, even though they have a new one.

Speaker 1 I think he goes back to NCAA because he's a very good coach. Where, I don't know, but

Speaker 1 yeah, he's definitely going to go back, right?

Speaker 2 I think any school would be happy to have him, but then it's just a matter of what schools are going to have openings.

Speaker 2 University of Texas, Texas back.

Speaker 1 Dude, shock of smart. Oof, that was bad.
That's been a bad, that's been a bad run.

Speaker 1 All right, should we finish with FAQs, Hank?

Speaker 7 Yeah, it was FAQs. We also asked for if anyone had playoff improvements for any league in any sport.

Speaker 4 Ooh, I like that.

Speaker 1 How to fix playoffs in basketball.

Speaker 7 Make them a five-game series. All games should be played at street ball venues like Rucker Park.
Special playoff-only OT rules. A player from each team is selected to play one game of horse.

Speaker 4 What? That's a bad one, too. Okay, these people are high.
That's bad.

Speaker 2 Play every game on an aircraft carrier.

Speaker 7 Have Brooks Kepka back on the show.

Speaker 1 That's a good playoff rule.

Speaker 4 I agree. I like that.

Speaker 1 Actually, yeah, we will have him back on the show. Absolutely.

Speaker 2 How to fix the NFL wild card weekend. Invite Brooks Kepka onto your podcast tonight.
Done.

Speaker 1 Done.

Speaker 7 Give homefield advantage to the team with

Speaker 7 the most lit fans. Lit fans can be measured by their average blood alcohol content, cool traditions, noise costumes, and receiver gloves per capita.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 4 Okay, now we're working. Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's a fan metric all year.

Speaker 2 This reminds me, Big Cat, the one thing I don't like about giving the players off the week of Christmas is we're not going to get as many shots of fans in the stands wearing the team color Santa hats that they only get to bring out one time per year.

Speaker 4 Well, no.

Speaker 2 I don't know if I'm willing to give that up.

Speaker 1 We'll write that in the CBA. The fans will be part of the CBA, and it will be like, you have to wear the game before closest to Christmas, you still have to wear those hats.

Speaker 2 Okay. There should be a fan union, to be honest.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 We can concede that for this idea.

Speaker 7 FAQ, this one's for Slim Cat and Hank. Do you ever call PFT by his real name outside the office or off air? And how often do you see him without sunglasses?

Speaker 2 Actually, no, we don't.

Speaker 4 No. I always always call him PFT.
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's not that weird. It's real easy for everyone.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that's not really weird at all.

Speaker 7 And we probably, I mean, PFT is probably, I'd say it's like 50-50 with some glasses in the office. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 Was it

Speaker 2 Jason Biggs that was talking about my baby blues? Yeah.

Speaker 2 I feel like I need to,

Speaker 2 as many people as possible need to talk about how great my eyes are, even though they're not that great, just so that the mystery's out there.

Speaker 2 Like, oh, that's why he always wears the sunglasses because if he took them off, he looks like Cal Ripkin Jr.

Speaker 1 He actually tried to take him off for a show once, and we just started ferociously making out. So we had to stop that.

Speaker 2 Uh-huh. It was tough.

Speaker 2 Erections were knocking into the mics. Dude, old Skype days.

Speaker 7 Sup, PMT Boys. Not so much Hank.
My wife has a crush. Sad face.
How about we shuffle divisions every year? Example.

Speaker 4 World. Wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 1 The wife has a crush on you?

Speaker 7 I mean, that's what I'm inferring.

Speaker 4 Damn, Hank. Yeah.
There you go.

Speaker 2 Cuck him.

Speaker 1 Shout out, Justin Bieber. You're not the only one who can hit on

Speaker 1 rank.

Speaker 4 Speaking of your cool nickname for you, Henri.

Speaker 1 Rank.

Speaker 4 Rank. Hank.
Henri.

Speaker 4 Henri. Hia? Henria.
Henria.

Speaker 7 Tell your wife too bad.

Speaker 7 How about we shuffle divisions every year? Example, World Cup group drawings.

Speaker 7 Instead of eight divisions, have four in top two seeds from each division make playoffs and have the Super Bowl at Lambeau.

Speaker 4 Fuck the Super Bowl at Lambeau. Although a Snow

Speaker 4 Super Bowl would be cool. A Snow Super Bowl.
Snow Bowl,

Speaker 2 it would be wonderful. It'd be great for me as an owner to get that

Speaker 2 extra revenue every single year. So I'm 100% in favor of that.

Speaker 1 You have to remember, though, the Super Bowl is not about the Super Bowl. It's about the media.
So

Speaker 1 we need our vacation.

Speaker 7 Yeah, but it'd be like the true

Speaker 7 football. I feel like the media would like that.

Speaker 1 No, the media would not like to be in Lambeau in the middle of January or February.

Speaker 2 I think that there's definitely an element of the media that would like it. Like, Peter King would just get so turned on by the fact that

Speaker 2 he rented out a single-level house that's caddy corner to Lambeau Stadium and just like walk from the front door, pick up the paper and walk to the stadium for the game.

Speaker 1 Barts, the or uh, Brett Favre once threw up painkillers in front of this house. It's got history, right?

Speaker 7 All right, last one. Uh, are you guys doing anything special for the PMT one-year anniversary?

Speaker 1 No, we need to. What day is it?

Speaker 2 Yeah, we should. That's the 29th, so

Speaker 4 that would be.

Speaker 1 Leap years always fuck me up mentally.

Speaker 4 It's like, whoa,

Speaker 4 that shit's another day in February?

Speaker 2 That's next Saturday, so probably not. Nope.
But

Speaker 2 I'll text the group chat. Yeah.

Speaker 4 Like, hey,

Speaker 2 happy anniversary, gang.

Speaker 4 One year.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's, dude, leap years always fuck me up.

Speaker 4 That's kind of cool.

Speaker 2 That's all I got.

Speaker 4 I just kind of like looking at it, you know?

Speaker 2 29, man. 29.

Speaker 2 Do we get paid extra for this month?

Speaker 4 Yes, that's how it works.

Speaker 2 For most pro-raibers, since there's one more day, extra 30K.

Speaker 4 Yeah,

Speaker 4 extra 30K, prorated for the extra day. I love it.

Speaker 1 We work extra hard this year. So, good job.

Speaker 4 All right, what do we got Monday?

Speaker 1 We haven't decided what we have Monday. We have a lot of good interviews that are in the bank.

Speaker 2 Maybe

Speaker 2 some more good ones coming up.

Speaker 7 Yeah. Maybe one of the ones we do tomorrow.

Speaker 1 Maybe one of the ones we do tomorrow.

Speaker 4 All right.

Speaker 1 Well, get excited because we've got great interviews coming up. We'll see everyone tomorrow.

Speaker 2 Love you guys.

Speaker 2 Talking away

Speaker 2 though, I don't know what I'm to say I'd change anyway.

Speaker 2 Today's another

Speaker 2 day to find you shine away.

Speaker 2 Oh, I've been coming for your love, okay.

Speaker 2 One, two, three, let's go.

Speaker 2 Take

Speaker 2 the one

Speaker 2 meal, take

Speaker 2 me

Speaker 2 your heart

Speaker 2 to the

Speaker 2 body.

Speaker 2 One, two, three, let's go.