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

Hey, Pardon My Take listeners, you can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.
On today's Pardon My Take, we have writer, producer, director, podcaster, everything guy, Brian Koppelman. Actually, a really interesting interview with him.
He created, he wrote Rounders, he writes Billions, which is currently going on, So you've probably seen one of his movies or shows very,

very,

very, with him he created he wrote rounders he uh 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 something a little different for your friday we also have uh fire fest 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 rated T for team. My name is Paul Heyman, special counsel to Roman Reigns and the bloodlines wise man.
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Today is Friday, February 21st. And I just want to say coach K a round of applause 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, it's their year.
They're going to win the Final Four. They're going to go all the way.
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, 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 a great game.
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.
Oh, really? 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, so he makes sure that he doesn't do even the slightest level of good sportsmanship after a long run. It is a safety issue.
It's a very big safety issue. 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.
Just negging the shit out of his team that is actually the ones that need the coaching at that moment. 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.
Now, this is a pretty bad job. Like, we joke around about Coach K and his, like, hypochondrianism or whatever it's called.
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.
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, I've got polio and coronavirus and a migraine.
So not going to be able to switch up my defense in the second half. I think what Coach K was doing is he is doing the classic midseason coach move where he's like, I'm letting you guys figure it out.
You guys go coach yourself. I'm not going to put anyone in 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? Like, that's the start of the DVD loss right there.

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, 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.

I can't wait to play that exact soundbite in like two months with some inspirational – Me too. It's probably going to happen.
They should actually use that for the DVD. One shining moment underneath with highlights.
I think that you're onto 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 and then by the end of the game after they get blown out by 20 points or whatever it was uh his team will finally realize that they really need coach k he's the only one that can save us right because we're not able to do it on our own and then yeah maybe like a little motivational thing coach k removes he should remove the Ks from all the Duke practice jerseys because they're not representing him. Also, they're due.
So take the Ks off all the practice jerseys, equipment bags. You have to earn that K at Duke University.
That was borderline a Rick Riley joke, but I do like that. I like that.
The due, they're due, take away the Ks, boom, we're ready to go. 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. You guys get yourself out of this mess.
It's your fault. Yeah, I went and recruited and dropped the bag at all of your houses, and you're all like top five recruits.
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.
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? They probably actually have a good game next because this was probably a look-ahead spot, which they always lose one of these games.
It's a trap game. Yeah, where they're playing against, you know, a...
Vot Tech. Oh, so not a look-ahead spot whatsoever.
I mean, there is no actually... Tech at home.
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, and then everyone will say hey look they figured it out yeah they don't even have any good games left they're gonna win every single game for the rest of the season so there we go i really do think that it is here this this is this is big cat's rant that he went on right there is absolutely gonna will coach k to another ncaa title yes yeah they're gonna 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 i love that i love when he teaches the kids don't you kink when you lose he's a coach 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.
Actually, sometimes a loss is better than a win. Yeah.
Yeah. I would rather lose every game because then we would learn more.
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.
Yeah. There we go.
You're not seeing it. I love it.
Good statistic. Yeah.
If you learn more from a loss and an interception uh 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 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 I like that Hank just spit a fact at us that was just an enterprise commercial like hey You guys hear this one yeah we have every single march also the last 25 years of our lives also home depot employs 1200 olympic athletes there you go oh man and football is family that's also a fact yeah even if everyone in your family roots for a different team football's family all right if you want to watch us, we are barstoolgold.com. We are Skype show.
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. 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 yeah i'll give you a couple couple thoughts that i have i'm technically in favor of this because it's more football and more football equals better 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 each conference i feel like this is a big bat signal that they're sending up to get Jeff Fisher back into the league.
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 into the league. 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.

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 another possible outcome to the season.

Oh, this team has a strong chance to go 12-5.

That sounds weird to me. That does sound weird.
So Warren Sharp put it together. In the last 10 years, we would have had five 10-win teams, nine 9-win teams, and six 8-win teams.
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 uh below 500 teams the 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 tressman never would have been an nfl head coach because lovey smith was fired when the bears were 10 and 6 Lovie 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.
So now we're playing like revisionist history. That's fucking my whole head up.
Here's my thing, PFT. And I've been thinking about this.
I have the perfect NFL schedule. I don't think they're going to do it, but this is what I would like a perfect NFL schedule to look like.

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 that much longer.

So what I want is 17 games, 19 weeks, two buys,

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. Now here's where a little wrinkle comes in.
I think you could do what people will say with two buys, you're going to have a lot of weeks where the schedule is all fucked up and good teams aren't playing. Stick with the one rotating buy, so exactly how it is right now, Christmas week.
There's college bowls all Christmas week. 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 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 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.

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?

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

The NHL also does a handshake moratorium on trades during Christmas week. Yeah, there you go.
It's all about family. I don't mind that at all.
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. 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.

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.

No one's going to want a 17-game season. It's just too weird to say the number 17.
And if there is 18, then my two-by makes even more sense because you can't do 18 games and have only one-by. That makes no sense.
Now, the other part that I would like to see... Maybe expand the rosters? There you go.
Expand the rosters. If there are 17 weeks, what I would want them to do as well is make a cross-conference guaranteed game every year.
The Giants and the Jets should play each other every single year. I don't know.
Maybe you do the Chiefs and the Packers, Super Bowl I. There are certain rivalries that you could create out of this extra week that you play every single year, and I people would really like the Colts and the Bears should play each other they're two and a half hours away from each other like there's all these different teams that could play each the Ravens and the Redskins 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 and then every four years you play the team twice which is even more fun Steelers and the Eagles yeah our Steelers Patriots to make sure that you get that game uh every but you're talking about like cross-conference yeah Steelers play every year if there are two Mannings in the league brothers brothers should always have to play a game against each other.
Yeah. J.J.
Watt should play a game against T.J. Watt and Derek Watt.
Actually, here's an idea. 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? They play each other, and then the winner has to play again that night it's like it's like or the next day it's like early mma where you're where you're fighting in a tournament yeah just last team standing really last team so i do like how they how warren made sure to like twist that knife in you a little bit letting you know that this is it's like skynet if it had been developed uh like 10 years too late instead of saving the earth uh you ended up with Mark Trestman yeah so that was a nice twist of the knife but I I like the idea I think this all obviously uh 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 be able to smoke weed now.
Because that really is all it is. Like, we'll play an extra game.
We get to smoke weed. And none of this bullshit that, like, the league tests for it.
Because that's, you know, like, 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.
I don't know. I'm down for more football.
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.
Took Rob Manford out. Way to stay relevant.
Yeah. Is there anything new that's going on with the Astros? 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.
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. They're the butt-stros as far as I'm concerned.
So I hope that more and more Little League teams will kind of follow along with that. But I was thinking, would it be possible for anyone who bet on the Astros in 2017 to file a class action lawsuit? If they bet against them, you mean? Like if they, if they, yeah, yeah, exactly.
If they lost money on an Astros game because they bet against them. I'm sure someone has.
Absolutely. 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.
We'll get to that later. To tell you any update, the only thing I saw was when Rob Manfred 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.
It's a very different world than 1919. Yeah.
We're talking about the Black Sox. Mostly recycling.
We recycle now. We don't use trash cans.
Right. And social media.
This is a weird thing to talk about because I'm pretty sure like the black socks 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 like that they went in front of a grand jury it was america's pastime so he couldn't be more wrong about this it overshadowed World War I, which at the time wasn't even called World War I. It had to rebrand in 1939 because there was now World War II.
So it was just the Great War, the Black Sox scandal. Fun fact, no one got convicted with the Black Sox scandal.
So they all got off legally, but then baseball gave them the death penalty. I haven't done enough reading to figure out exactly what happened and what type of evidence 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.
But I feel like everyone that has a take on this Astros scandal is just basically saying that manfred's being a giant pussy yes 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 that's what we knew that the minute they they released a report and aj 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, 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.
Yeah. It's just my thoughts coming from a sports junkie, regardless of the sport I play.
All right, let's do Firefest before we get to our great interview with Brian Koppelman. He came in.
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.
We could have done hours because he has so many interesting stories and life views. So Firefest, PFT, why don't you start? Oh, okay.
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 Guy Fieri was trying to choose what XFL team to support I was trying to get on on board the defenders bandwagon and I ended up challenging him because I'm here in Atlantic City he has a a restaurant here, which I walked by several times. 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? And he told me 35, which is a perfect number.
I'm Mr. 35, so I agreed to it.
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 top meat. There's no bottom meat to it.
So I feel like I could do it, but historically, I'm not good at eating things. So I was hoping that I could get a tip from you, an expert at eating stuff.
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 um you got got by guy fieri because he's already agreed to come on part of my take so you threw that in he's he got you on that one but the dc defenders fan thing that's got to be a big deal right like that's well i, I mean, I've DMed with him as well, but when did he agree to come on part of my take? Well, his guy did. 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.
Okay. So you should maybe negotiate less because be like, hey, material change, you've already agreed.
Or make him get a DC defenders tattoo this is better than than planning this behind the scenes because now it's out in the open he's already agreed to it so now he can get he can get pressured I think having like a connection with his booking representative that type of stuff falls through all the time now we've got the uh the added benefit of our simp army on social media. Big Cat simp army going after Guy Fieri.
Yeah, you're 35. I think you got this easily.
I think you're fine. Like, honestly, 35, you're fine.
What should I do? Should I get in the steam room before? Does that help? No, just pound. I think the biggest thing is you've got to 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 and then also is there a time limit because you can just hang out and just eat slowly all day.
There was no time limit specified. So you're good.
You're good. I feel like an hour seems reasonable.
Yeah. 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? I'm sure I have. Yeah.
By accident. Right.
Like you didn't even mean to. And you did it.
I've also got i'm not a drug guy but i do have a brownie got it i wouldn't do that no no okay you gotta you gotta stay hydrated and and clear clear eyes because i say no peds no peds you got you've done this you've definitely fucked around and gotten a triple double fucked around and eaten 35 wings by accident before definitely this You don't even have to think about it. Right.
Just order wings and then be like, whoops, I just ate 40 by accident. I accidentally won an eating challenge.
Right, right, with yourself. Okay.
Got it. Yeah.
Hank, you got a Fyre Fest? 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. I 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. Like, I was in shock, pain, tears basically streaming down my face, but I had to act.

I didn't want to outwardly be screaming in pain,

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.

You have a pretty much broken foot?

No, I looked at him, and he wanted to cry.

Tears started streaming from my face from trying to not react.

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.
Wow. Is it swollen? Yeah.
It's a little bruised. Let me see it.
I want to take my... We got to get some more of that Russell Wilson nano bubble.
Russell Gold. That actually...
Yeah, let's see. Show the feet, sweetie.
Show me the feet. Let me see them piggies.
Let me see those feet. How are them little tootsies doing? Yeah.
Oh, yeah, yeah. He fucked up his big toe.
Pretty good. Hank, show me your toe.
Yeah, he's got a nice bruise on his big toe. Let me look how fucked up your toe is.
That sucks. Oh, wow.
Look at that. All right.
My Fyre Fest is also from that trip, Hank, because I think I've peaked in my life. Because we went on this trip to different casinos and Hank can attest he was laughing in my face but every single casino we went to they asked for my opinion and my opinion was we need more TVs and uh 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.
And I don't think I'll ever get – I'll never get to, like, this level again. Hank, you were laughing in my face when you – like, they would actually earnestly ask me, like, what do you think of our casino? And I just went, not enough TVs.
And that was my only input. Yeah.
I mean, that's really the part that you were born to play. It's like 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 bedding kiosk yeah and wi-fi oh yeah i did say that too they 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'd have really bad cell reception 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 so i'm thinking for the common man yeah of course it makes a huge difference wi-fi can take a shitty shitty scenario and make it a billion times better like if fedex field had the fastest wi-fi on the eastern seaboard i bet people would actually like going to Redskins games.
Agreed. 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.
A good Wi-Fi can cover up a lot of sins. It's like a great sauce at a restaurant.
So I'm out there thinking for the people. I'm using your eyes.
I've been trained my whole life to think about the most basic common man. Oh, it needs more TVs.
Yeah. More TVs, better Wi-Fi, and then bathroom locations and convenient USB plugs that you can put your phone into.
Yeah. These are the things we think about all the time.
All right. Let's get to our interview with Brian Koppelman.
Great interview. Like I said, wrote Rounders.
He writes and produces Billions. I think he produces it, right? Yeah, showrunner.
Everything. Executive producer.
Great, great, great interview. Before we do that, we're going to get right back to the show.
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All right, back to part of my take. All right, let's get to our interview with Brian Koppelman.
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. I mean you hog it all dude i mean i i i can i can shoot pretty well shoot pretty well i mean that's it i guess pretty well basketball player is there is there a podcaster that you've tried to get in that you have not oh a profession that i've flamed out yeah i mean the truth is like if you would have asked me at 12, I would have thought I would have been a point guard.
Yes. Like, I really did 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 the point guard? They both could play the point. They could both shoot.
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 ball.
Yeah, failed point guard, Brian Koppelman. Yes.
Who's the best ball player in the industry that you've played with in recent years? I love it. I love the question.
So Clooney's very, very good athlete. I hate that.
Interesting. I hate that.
He's a very good, he's college level athlete, George Clooney. Like full college level athlete.
Some guys have it all. He does.
He sold his tequila company for $2 billion. He can grow a beard.
When we were making Ocean's 13, George had a basketball game every day. 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.

He was a great baseball player, like college level, baseball, recruited for baseball.

And he's like a really – he defends really hard.

He really knows how basketball works.

Like he knows how to do a pick and roll.

That's it.

He knows – he understands basketball.

Cutting, yeah.

So he and I would play and we would have these wars.

And I'm so – and he's like in the best shape. What do you think his body fat's at? Right.
Especially 12 years ago when we were making that movie. 6%.
Right. And my body fat floats probably around 48%, something like that.
And we would play, and we would always be tied 7-all. We'd play in the California Heat.
And then I would start sweating as though you could roterie, like a rotisserie chicken, basically. And then he would just win every time, like 11-7.
I would keep it close. So, like, big brother, little brother, like, hey, I just want to keep this close, and then I'll beat you at the end.
Not that I could do. I would just get so gassed.
I couldn't move to defend him. And then Woody Harrelson's, like, really good at basketball, too.
Interesting. I can see that.
Yeah. I thought, whereas Clooney, I kind of knew, oh, that guy's, I thought I could beat Woody.
And then, because Woody smoked, I mean, you know, he just smoked so much pot all day long. I mean, he's just high.
So is everyone in the NBA. Sure.
Every sport, really. But Woody's not a pro athlete.
And I just figured, well, I'm going to be, he destroyed me, man. He was up at the hoop.
He could really get right to the hoop. Like, even though they lowered the hoops, I think they lowered the hoop and white men can't jump.
They did. For Wesley.
Because Wesley couldn't play basketball. Yeah, for Wesley, but not for Woody.
Woody has hops. Yes.
It's actually a hilarious story that he really actually didn't play basketball. And they had to kind of...
Wesley didn't. Yeah, right.
Woody did. Right, right.
Yeah, it was a shock to me. All right, so let's talk.
Let's start. Where do you want to start? I mean, you have a fascinating career, a fascinating career.
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 had a brush with, like, early Eddie Murphy. I've just always been enthusiastic about stuff.
Like, in a way, I've just always been unbelievably curious and enthusiastic 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 in us that we can stoke that might lead us towards some kind of success 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 in and say like, you're like a rock star even though you're a comedian he 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 i was like you're gonna think i'm insane but i just saw this guy and he's gonna be the biggest fucking star and you've got to work with him and and like the next day he called him was like you know that 16 year old kid that was my son and then they did made these three albums together. For me, the perk, 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.

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.

Yeah, maybe I'm 17 by then.

But, you know, basically 17, he's 20.

Yeah, he's not much older. Yeah, yeah.
He was 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 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 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 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 which was like great fantastic 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 but then they also wouldn't take their they would understand like well he really likes this stuff yeah it's not like you were just lazy you weren't just like hanging out on your couch and skipping school i wasn't i wasn't active interest that you were pursuing on the side which i think is probably a more important indicator of of success than anything else, like in a classroom, you know, averaging a 95 on all your tests, I would say like being driven in your passions is probably going to make it more likely that you'll succeed. You're so 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. And I remember I was in a class and it was too young.
I couldn't read like the Odyssey. 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 Fountainhead 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 now I'm like if you've got some kid in your room and he's reading let him read you were doing Friday Night Lights that's what Johnny Moxley, he had his playbook but he had Slaughterhouse--Five inside of it.
Oh, is that true? Instead of reading Spider-2-Y Banana. Varsity Blues.
Yeah. Oh, Varsity Blues.
Yeah, Varsity Blues. The prequel.
John Voight kicked it out of his hand. Right.
Well, this guy, this was, I remember the name of the guy, but I'm not going to shame him and say his name. That's okay.
We're going to guess all these names by the, and by the way, Big Cat's absolutely right. When you don't name something on Twitter, it's usually like the third reply gets it perfect.
You're talking about Runner Runner right now. Guys.
Sometimes they will get it. There are certain of these people where it's just like, I'm not telling those stories to make that person uncomfortable.
I'm more just trying to tell it so people know the way things are and like how it how it goes so like if there's some famous old director i i don't need to make that guy's day miserable by naming him right now i would have by the way when i was in my 30s well okay so but now here because i read a quote that i thought was very interesting um you were talking about how when you were younger in your profession anger used to fuel you. And now when you're older, anger doesn't run as clean and you don't use that the same way.
You try not to. I love that you're asking about this.
Because I feel like we're both 35. I actually feel myself getting right into the anger doesn't fuel me the same way it used to well because also you have success now right so it it does you start to realize if i only still so the anger we're talking about is that thing where someone didn't believe in you uh they told you we're loser they told you there was no chance um they gave you and so you use and by the way you know or someone was fucking horribly mean to you or tried to steal your whatever the fuck they did that you put in uh like an arrow in your quiver and and you were like well i'm gonna fucking show show them right 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 keep going from – for me anyway.
If I keep working from that place, 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 is hardwired in you guys, right? 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 it just doesn't serve you. It serves us.
Look, you know that feeling. You start even a pickup basketball game or a pickup soccer game, and at the beginning of it, some guy fucking needs you and doesn't say sorry, whatever.
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 better to sort of just like be Kobe like in that one way where they go 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. And it's really hard to get to that place.
And by the way, we all – I'm not Buddha. I still fucking remember every insult.
But I try not to allow that to be the thing that drives me in the morning. Yeah.
I find that anger and using the motivation of people doubting you is good to get you off your ass and engaged in something. Yes.
But for me, if I'm trying to come up with something creative, it's actually counterproductive. Because I'm thinking 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.
Yeah, you know what? If you're mad, you're not going to get to that place. Dude, you know what's brilliant about that too? It is, 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.
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. So you have to get that off your head because the only way to become successful is to take huge risks.
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.
So that actually segues perfectly to Rounders and how you started in the Hollywood business because you took a big risk. You were, what, 30? 30 years old, yeah.
And you said, I'm going to change kind of my whole entire profession. So you decide, when did it click? Was it actually playing poker in a club and you're like, this is...
Well, yeah. I mean, I was a degenerate poker player.
I spent maybe two years.

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 rooms.

This is pre-online poker.

Oh, yeah. This is 1995.

It's funny to think that if you were 10 years older, you would have made rounders,

but it would have been like some dude who's jerking off.

He's playing online poker. He's wearing sunglasses that have a dinosaur on the window.
That's really the last moment there. Like Greg Raver? Well, I actually 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.
But they were after rounders. after Rounders Raymer was like around that time one of those two guys watched Rounders and was like Moneymaker 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 and that's what made me want to be a poker player but for us it was like Huck Seed and Phil Hellmuth, like the generation before Phil.
They weren't famous to regular people, Stu Unger. They were famous to us because we were degenerate poker guys, Dave and I were.
But I was just playing cards a lot. And then my son Sam was born, and I had this really like – and I was still playing a lot of poker.
I was working and playing tons of cards. But at a certain point, I realized like I wanted – and this part can sound corny, except it's 100% true.
I realized like I wanted to be the kind of dad that 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. I was a horribly blocked writer.
I was terrified by my perfectionism and the ADHD that I would fail at it.

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

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, 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 cheese double cheeseburgers in my office and i i was just fat as fuck and i realized like my life was not where i wanted it to be and so i called levine my best friend he was bartending and i i went over to where he was working and i said uh we should write a screenplay i this 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. And then we set off.
Amy cleared out the storage space underneath 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. 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. And as soon as we started, and I'd say to anyone listening who has some idea in their head about who they think they are, you don't need to upset everything.
So I didn't quit my job. All I did was get up earlier, earlier sleep a little bit less and then i found that i 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 because i 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 like 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 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 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.
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. 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, like, you know, ripping up scenes that didn't work and we killed ourselves, but we did come out of there with that script that is a movie that people to this day are all obsessed over.
I mean, today there was a, you know, I got hundreds of tweets about it today. Just out of nowhere, someone will tweet something about the movie and then there'll just be just a run of conversation about it.
I saw you were talking about it, so you're not going to tell us Teddy KGB's last hand. No, it's the one thing.
How long did it take that process from starting to when the final script came out? Hank is a huge fan of yours, by the way. Oh, cool.
Thanks, Hank. I'm a fan of yours, too.
He used you as inspiration when he was in film school yes oh that's awesome yeah i listen to the show i know who you are and everything um thanks so um i listen to the show because the levine boys got me into it my and and um because i love those guys yeah because of the brooks capca my three favorite listeners the brooks my son and i listened to the brooks thing and just howled uh laughter you know not that long so like we i'd say that like 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 I'll say I know that I first walked into a poker club in New York an underground club I was playing in lots of places but I probably first walked into an underground club December 15th 95 or something like that and then we started writing the script 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, four and a half months of writing 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 we sold it i guess we finished it um 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 when it sold. 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 we we made started making the movie. So, yeah, it was an incredible, crazy shit.
Yeah. So how far into the process were you? Because it obviously felt like it was a natural thing.
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. I mean, no, you don't know.
You really don't. I mean, Hank, if you make stuff like that, you don't have any way to...
You can just go by like... Our goal for it, 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 so that's goal number one 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 good fellas love diner 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, 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 as I'm sure when you guys started this, you were just trying to entertain guys like you. Right.
Who would joke who would understand what you were doing 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 the more actually you find out that there are more people who want to get some of that energy but speaking to what pft was just saying we had the benefit of instant feedback because we say we tape something and it's out there yes you have you are sitting there writing and you're saying yourself well i think it's gonna work but we have no idea well you have to yeah but you have to be willing 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. Which I think has its drawbacks as well.
If you listen to too much instant feedback, you start to second guess everything that you think is good. Do you find yourself doing that? You guys do that? It's hard not to.
I try not to. But 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 right 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 that's like our true north that we follow you have to and it's it's weird too because we're in a different 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 it's kind of i'm sure it happens with billions where you'll have people you know oh i used to like season one and two but now it stinks 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 is is so, like your audience, our core audience is fanatical. Right.
And they're not going anywhere. And they're watching episodes of the show three, four, five times.
They're binging the whole season over and over again. So like, yeah, I would like everyone like it.
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. Or I, cause for me, it's funny.
I can't allow myself to listen to what the odd, I want the show to work. I will never slack off.
Like David and I beat ourselves up so much making the show. 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-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. So I'm obsessed about making the show as good as my limited talents and abilities will allow.
But it's never going to be because I'm not working. I'll work forever, and so will David.
The two of us will kill ourselves to get it right. 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 they're always like shit man I just got my script rejected by the blacklist today and I'm in a shitty mood.
I mean, you immediately find out. Yeah, someone who clearly watched the show and took the time to find your Twitter handle so he's familiar with you.
So it's, yeah, he's got something else going on, I'm sure. You know what, just like having a dialogue back and forth with you is probably like, that's a good night for that person.
it would have been I mean that's the other thing for me like if I could have I mean if I could have like communicated with Harold Ramis when I was a kid you know who made Stripes and 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 the The first half is so much. You lost the plot.
Yeah, what happened there?

Like, Sergeant Hulka, why did he disappear?

But the truth is I would have been like, holy shit,

how have Ramos responded to me?

I would have printed it out and put it up on my wall.

So I don't know.

You can't really listen to what people say when they engage.

No, but it is.

Sometimes it can be helpful.

It's tough to separate constructive criticism and good feedback from just the noise sometimes and so separating the signal from the noise the whole thing on the internet right it's tough sometimes but I think that the second you start to discount any criticism is the second you start to die because if you're not willing to evolve and and you've become so egotistical in what you're doing that you think that you can do no more wrong uh you're in a bad place and it's not going to end up well but that that then it's about choosing so like my friends and i and colleagues and i 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. Then I'm completely engaged when I'm making it.
Once I'm done, though, I don't... There's nothing I can do about it.
It's like that thing on Sex and the City. Did either of you guys watch it? You can admit it if you watch the show.
I never watched the movies. 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 a guy on the show,

Berger,

he wrote a book

and it came out

and then Carrie criticized the book

and he's like,

well, I can't fix it now.

Right.

It's out already.

So, that's the thing.

It doesn't even know good.

They did it with Cats, though.

They took Cats back in.

And Sonic.

Yeah, they re-edited.

Well, that was before

yeah so how did that work out for everybody on cats that worked out well for everybody so speaking of wait samantha her maid stole the vibrator right i guess so along these same lines i'm very curious so billions obviously tremendously successful you uh season four is coming out may Five.

Five is coming out in May.

Yeah.

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.
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. I'm sure that I will feel pressure, but 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 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 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 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 if you're not paul thomas anderson or wes anderson there you have quentin there's just a lot of fucking limitations.
And you're just trying your best to transcend them, which is to say David Benioff and Dan Weiss are fucking geniuses, those guys, who made Game of Thrones. I mean, Benioff wrote my favorite novel the last 15 years, City of Thieves.
Even if you're not a reader of novels, go read that book. It's fucking incredible.
It's as good as any TV show ever.

And whether those guys nailed it or not, I don't think they – 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.

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.
It's who you are. But it's not 360, right? Our intern tweeted out a picture of my penis one time.
So it's most of it. But yeah, I know what you're saying.
Yes, we expose ourselves in a limited amount sometimes. And so you do feel like there is a relationship there too.
So people have a a relationship with the TV series but that is not really David Benioff and Dan Weiss responsibility. Their responsibility is to like make the best show that they can based on the way that they see it.
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 who is your your best friend, and is when I'm writing my scenes in the show where he's writing his, we're just trying to amuse the other guy. Right.
I just want to make Dave laugh. I just want to make Dave wonder what's going to happen.
Like, I just want to entertain him. And I know that if I entertain him and he entertains me, and also we're each other's harshest critic and biggest fan.
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 but but at the end of it it's going to be this collective thing that we've been doing since rounders together and i guess i have to trust 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. But our tribe will understand if we're true to what we're doing,

our tribe will get it.

And that's all that I can do, really.

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

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. I think that we should trust ourselves.

But there was probably some creeping doubt that's like

no idea. We could be totally

totally. Of course, nobody could want

that. Of course.
Yeah. I mean, when you start a

movie with three stacks of high society,

you know, nobody

knows what that means. They could everyone could have been like, this is

bullshit. I don't want this.
And it was rejected, by

the way. But I mean, that's the other thing, Hank.ank it was rejected those 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 they 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.
But I mean, I thought, oh, man, maybe we're just completely fooling ourselves. Maybe we're just total frauds.
When it comes to landing the plane, as Big Cat brought up on Billions, I've got two ideas that are foolproof. Fire away.
Just sign a little thing that says I can take the ideas. No, you can.
Verbally, I'm granting you this contract. Thank you.
That's great. Okay, one.
This is almost a no-brainer. You've probably thought of it already.
At the very end of the very last episode, Bobby Axelrod realizes that he was also Paul Giamatti the whole time. Oh, cool.
Split personality. Yeah.
Now I'm going to have to reshoot the first episode of next season because that's how we started. We started the episode with that.
Like the whole fifth season was supposed to be that journey. Yeah.
All right. Well, my other one was just that he wakes up and it was a dream.
Also an excellent idea. And he's in prison.
Also an excellent idea. I just ad-libbed that one right now.
He's in jail for insider trading after season one. You want me to throw one out there? Sure, I'd love it.
Have you seen the show? No. Okay.
Great. But I know because we've seen some of it.
No, I've seen every episode. I've heard it's good.
I was mistaken when I asked Mark Cuban 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 into a little pissing contest over that car. Yeah.
I remember. How I consume television now, I'll wait until it says, like, okay, season seven is the finale season.
Then you'll watch the whole thing. And then I'll watch all of them.
Then them then i'll be like this show sucks i can't remember anything that happened uh because it all becomes one show but what about i saw uh not because you were tweeting about it because rich eisen was tweeting about it non-stop that he was in an episode right he and bob mennery together yeah okay so how about you have rich eisen come back and then you kill his character off but you also kill him real life. Then you never have to do a finale because it's like the show's over.
You're in jail for murder. I understand all your show business success now.
Yeah. I really do.
That's actually great. You kind of got your way out of it.
Incredible. You don't have to write a finale.
Amazing. They actually killed Rich Eisen.
Plus Rich Eisen's dead. Yeah, and then we don't have to hear about Michigan being back.
Can I just say, seeing those two guys together, because Rich, I love Rich. Yeah.
Rich is so straight straight laced in that way and Manory is so not and watching the two of them commentate together and like what was happening when we would call cut was fucking hilarious because then Big Cat and I could write our own TV show about how you killed Rich Eisen in Netflix documentary and yeah a true crime story about how we convinced you to murder. Where do you know this idea started a murder spree? Where is the bong? I mean, all these ideas are free.
Yeah, they are free. Speaking of...
How's your Miles Teller movie going? Good. Thank you for asking.
I hope he likes us. The boner thing is going on.
I actually want to talk to you offline about the boner thing, because I feel like there's a good opportunity. You want a little dialogue? You need a dialogue.
For me to pick your brain a little bit because I'm actually going to write this thing. The boner thing.
It seemed like he didn't like you guys, by the way. When you asked.
I think he did, but he's also kind of one of those bald-busters. I like you guys a lot.
He's a little prickly sometimes, but. Great actor.
Like, truly great. Great.
Yeah. We're going to 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 take.
High bar. High bar.
Do you think we should take Viagra before we write like you did with your writing partner? Oh, sure. You're trying to do a Roman ad right in the middle of this whole thing? So it just comes right in the conversation? I assume that you wrote rounders with raging hard erections the entire time, right? Well, here's what I would say about that.
What else do you guys want to know? What else are we talking about? You were on Vine for a while, right? Oh, yeah. You were doing like six-second screenwriting tips.
Yes. We're going to try to remake Vine.
That was actually how I found you, I think. Oh, when you were in film school? Yeah.
Cool. And on Vine.
Yeah, I had 60 million Vine loops or whatever. No big deal.
Yeah, 60 million. It was pretty good.
Vine was awesome. I loved it.
Well, that was all just to take the fucking piss out of these bullshit

screenwriting teachers

right

basically I just said

for the fuck of it one day

all screenwriting books

are bullshit

all of them

read screenplays

watch movies

and let those be your guide

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

and I was like

I never thought about

any of where are you

so I wrote back like

where are you getting this shit

and then they were like

well everyone knows

what they're supposed to do

I went to a seminar

at the Radisson

Thank you. seven-act structure that you have to do.
What happens in the fourth act? 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 what they're supposed to do.
I went to a seminar at the Radisson. And I was like, stop.
Like, that's total. So then I just grabbed the phone, and it was Vine, and I just said it as a fucking joke.
I mean, I meant it. But it was like, and I called the Sixth Angle Screening 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.
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 I pay money to get a genre lesson is fake? 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.
No matter what the subject is. It doesn't matter what the subject is.
If you're paying money to attend a conference room at a hotel, you got scammed. There's an issue that you're getting scammed unless your employer's paying for it.
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. Yeah, if you feel like you're in a scene from Up in the Air, that movie where Clooney's taking the backpack out, like, yeah, don't go to the seminars.
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 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 in 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.
And I realized, well, of course you fucking can. All you have to do is do it.
Don't worry about the labels. 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. He'd been 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.
Why can't you be? It just takes a lot of work. Rigor.
Tremendous rigor. So if you're willing to put in that work, who should tell you what you can or can't do? So that's what I was saying.
It's an important lesson. Do you find that the structure of your screenplays kind of naturally falls into the traditional three-act structure? By the way, this is what I talk about on my podcast, which is called The Moment with Brian Koppelman.
I am. I talk about that.
Oh, you're going to bleep it. The Moment with Brian Koppelman.
I wasn't trying, but I did it very directly, right? It's a very direct thing. The Moment with Brian Koppelman.
Yeah, I wasn't trying. I mean, I did it very directly, right? It's a very direct thing.

The moment with Brian Cobbman.

There we go.

Bleep that.

Yeah, great.

But I try to talk about that there as well.

What was your question you just asked me?

I was plugging, so I forgot. I was saying that, do you find that the structure

of the screenplays that you write kind of fall

into that traditional three-act structure?

Well, so that's one of the things I talked about

on The Vines, too, and I talk about on the podcast with Brian Koppelman, which is that you don't have to tell a story. It's a beginning, middle, and end.
People make it so complicated. Three-act structure.
Inciting incident. That just inciting incident is like, holy shit, I was at the handball 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 friends said, go fuck yourself. 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. 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 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 exciting incident, a beginning, a middle, and an end.
And that's all you have to do in telling a screen story too. Just get 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.
People want to earn money by telling you how to do this stuff. They to make it complicated that's what con men do right 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 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 you got to got to do the work.
But if you do the work, you can solve these things. They're not impossible.
Not the smartest guy in the world. I just was willing to work really hard every day to figure it out.
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, you can att but they all just worked really hard a lot of times. It's true.
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 competition.
You have to because you don't know if you're talented. The thing is, yeah, you need to have some talent.
You have no idea if you're talented until you do the work. That's the fucked part of the whole game.

You know, you've 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.

You may just find your way.

This is like J.J. Redick.

We had dinner with J.J. that night.

I mean, I got to go this summer and rebound.

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? 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, what is he making now, 13 a year? I think like, oh yeah, maybe 13.
Two year, 26. But a two year, $26 million deal, right, for these two years in Norris.
That guy still – the deal's – it's guaranteed money, and he's still in there. 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.
He turns on some hip-hop of questionable auspices and time period. But I guess it was what he was listening to when he was in college.
And then – He's a human in twins. Yeah.
Yeah. Some hip-hop.
It was not Kendrick. There was no – He's putting on this music.
And then his very affable, relaxed personality, and the moment the training started, it all disappeared. He was like, stand over here.
Pass me the ball this way. Rebound this way.
I'm going to take, put this chair here. I'm going to go around it like it's a defender.
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. He's going to have a 20-year career in the NBA as a guy who's constantly able to score.
Because 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.
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.
That's inspiring as hell to me. 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.
And so that's kind of what motivates it. Which is insane to think about.
It's crazy. Because he's been doing this for what, 20 years probably? He's been shooting at an extremely high level.
I'm like the opposite. Every time I step in the gym I'm like, maybe today's the day I'm J.J.
Wright. You're like the kid in the meme.
I haven't done any of the work, but maybe I'll just get hot out of nowhere and just start hitting everything. It's just so much work to be good at shooting.
But yeah, I spent years trying to learn to shoot well. But that's the thing, like that level of just like industriousness, there's no substitute for it.
Has anyone ever said this to you? Because I'm about to say it and it's totally honest so billions, rounders everyone knows how successful my favorite movie that you wrote was Walking Tall thank you that's all you say thanks glad you liked it you didn't like it no I mean listen getting to write for the rock classic the rock getting to write for the rock Johnny Knoxville getting to write for the rock kind of a little bit of a roadhouse part two dude getting to write for the a huge thrill and honor. I genuinely loved that movie.
I'm a lifelong WWWF. I'm a huge wrestling person.
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 Macho Man when he had the Intercontinental Championship? It's insane.
Old school wrestling. It's an insane interview.
He just did this interview recently where it was a totally 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.
I went down a rabbit hole the other day. Posted for people nuts mr perfect vignettes sure it's actually like the best writing ever like him doing or winning it everything was just the greatest character ever throwing the basketball but honky tonk man was just talking about i mean it's the same thing we're talking honky tonk we're just going i mean here i'd put so much work and effort into creating the character and i'm thinking to myself you just put a little shit in your hair dude yeah yeah right what did you he was like i It took years.
I felt so create in the character. And I'm thinking to myself, you just put a little shit in your hair, dude.
Right, yeah, yeah, right. What did you...
He's a method actor. He was like, I just, it took years.
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, 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.
And he's like, I just had to walk out of there like some kind of a dickhead, man. He goes, I had to call my wife, and I had to just tell her, honey, 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.
It was just unbelievable interview. So Walking Tall is great.
I can't argue with Walking Tall. I just want you to know, there's at least one person walking around who's like, Walking Tall.
The truth is, is a movie called Solitaire Man that Michael Douglas starred and you should watch that it's not like Walking Tall at all Walking Tall Dave and I worked on that for four weeks and so I can't you wrote in four weeks? we wrote it we rewrote it someone someone had written a draft of it it was a rock he had a big stick and he just fucked shit up well that's the funniest thing is you is when they hired us, they said – 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. He'd been offered the movie.
They'd offered him like five million bucks. 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. And we thought,

I think we can do that. Yeah, you did.

How did you punch it up

to target Johnny Knoxville?

You made the stick bigger.

Well, you're joking,

but this is Hollywood.

This is Hollywood

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.

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. There's one thing really important.
And we said, what? They said, you have to really make sure you give the stick a personality. He did this.
I know this movie. Give the stick a personality.
The stick needs a backstory. We need to understand why this stick.
But we felt like we were in a Hollywood comedy at that point. So the answer is you just give Johnny Knoxville some dialogue that sounded like the kind of dialogue Dave and I write, and then he wants to come do it.
We'll include a scene with a shopping cart. I'm happy I brought that up.
I had no idea. You 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 just that.
And then you have to keep a straight face because when they're paying you for those, you know, 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. We're going 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, or the rock with a moment. 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 and so when they're like give the bat a personality we were just like a hundred oh absolutely yes sir we know exactly yeah we personality don't you worry yeah no this thing's gonna be like dave chappelle it's going to have the best personality in the world.
There'll be a sequel with just this thing. You won't believe the personality that this bat is going to have.
Soon after that, we stop taking those gigs. The two-five-four.
I want to talk real quick about Billions again. Please.
It fascinates me. This show and...
Do you watch Succession? I'll watch it after. I won't watch it until we're done.
I don't want to ever be... You i mean there there there's i know that there's a similarity of the world yeah so i just don't want to fuck with it yet so i will i love adam mckay's no i do actually have have the same perspective i try not to listen to too much other like sports talk because then you start yes internalizing yeah you just don't have a mutual understanding that we don't listen to the lebitard show and they don't listen to us.
Right. No, swear to God.
Because we both like each other, but we know that we will be accused of taking something. We're in the same area.
Yeah. And people will be like, oh, so if you just don't listen, then 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 it.
Which one of you is Stugatz? Probably me. I'm small.
Yeah. We go back and forth.
We flip back and forth with it. Yeah, I mean, he's a big guy named Dan.
Right, right. That's why we made the show.
Yeah, that's exactly what happened. But in terms of those two shows in particular, Succession and Billions, 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% like a person that you can root for all the time.
They all have their flaws. 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? So a trick is if somebody is great at what they do, the audience is interested in hanging.
If you're fucking amazing at what you do, the audience like like, you know, we watch John Jones. Because we watch Conor.
I mean, Conor, it's possible he's not a great human being. I would say that's very possible.
I think it's really possible. That's the most aggressive I'm going to get about Conor because I can end up in a room with him someday.
Yeah, he'll punch you. You're right in his age-wise.
Oh, yeah. enough i'm almost old enough he's not he's really if i were 65 i'm not just 53 63 then but but uh it's possible he's like but i'm i'm compelled to watch him right yeah and also in the real world most people are gray most people on their have their best moment you would think they were saying their worst moment you think they were a devil.
And so not everybody, but we are interested, Dave and I have always been interested in examining people in between. And that's fascinating to us.
So I was never worried. Executives in any endeavor, in any business, will always try to get the, you know, what's the safe middle? But if you're a creator, you have to ignore the the safe middle and you have to be going for what's really fascinating to you.
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. 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

and what story are they telling themselves?

And if you can make that stuff compelling enough,

then people will hang in.

And then, you know, in our culture now,

people will look at folks like that like heroes.

To David and me, they're not heroes at all,

but they're humans.

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.
You come from a family that created egg cartons? My great, great uncle Leon invented the egg carton. Wow.
Made no money off it, but he did do that. You're one of those egg carton trust fund babies.
I am, egg carton trust fund baby. That's like uh icebreaker if you ever had to be in an awkward situation like you think that would work interesting about yourself 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 yeah yeah that's good you get a cut that's a wild one though yeah um my Yeah, I think his name was...
No, not Leon. It was...
It's somewhere on the internet, whatever it is. Created egg cards.
It's a real thing. You love Twitter threads.
Is there a goal? Like, how long could you make a Twitter thread? I want to see you go for... Kobe goes for 81.
It's true. I do really dig him.
I do dig him. Because I could just write an essay on the blog.
You should do. But I think the Twitter thread is somehow better.
I like it. But do it.
Go like 80. Go 85.
Because I actually. But I don't write them ahead of time, right? I'm just going.
So you do one slash question mark. I sort of know.
I sort of have a sense of where it is. And I'll just do one and then a parant and I'll write end at the end you want me to do like a hundred yeah go show to tell him Seth Abramson because I feel like I read a book when I read a long Twitter thread I'm like wow do you not like Twitter threads do you think Twitter's not for that I like them I think it's very funny I actually have no problem with the person who writes the Twitter thread.
It's the people who quote tweet the Twitter thread and be like, very important thread. Well, I would say the things I'm doing, I think it's pretty clear I don't take myself too seriously when I'm doing it.
You're fine. It's the people who quote tweet you.
I'm just fucking around telling funny stories. I mean, I call them Hollywood gold for Christ's sake.
I don't really think they're gold. You know, I just do them when I have a good...

See how long you can get people to commit to it, though.

Like, see if you can just do an endless thread.

I am a professional storyteller.

The longest...

Write a whole movie in thread form.

Have you watched any Big Cat or any Ladd matches

since we talked about that you have to go and watch?

No, I have not.

I forgot.

It's grazia, man.

Come on.

I know.

That's my bet.

He was the best. Hand up.
Hand up. Why have you not watched any? Because I forgot we had that conversation The big cat He's the original big cat Alright I got one last question Seeky question promo code take You get $10 off Go do it right now 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.

I won't answer the question.

We're going to bleep it out.

Oh, I can just tell you guys.

My theory is he either had ace-10

or he had nothing.

Cool.

That's great.

It's been so much fun, guys.

Nothing?

Did he have nothing?

This has been...

Put your hat on if he had nothing.

This is the best.

Just put his hat on. This is the best oh i have one last one last last question uh i've always wanted to be an extra done can i be an extra yes okay it's really bad though have you done it no it's it's the worst time but yes come come do it okay you just gotta sit there for so long are you really gonna come for 12 hours.
Well, what type of extra do you think? I'll be a dead body. Now we're in a negotiation.
No, I'm just curious. Yeah, I could put you in a restaurant behind somebody or something.
I could be in a restaurant. I'd love to be in a restaurant.
I'd love to. The answer is yes.
Can I be a dead body? But you're really showing up for 12. Like you're there for 12 hours and it's going to be boring and annoying.
Do you eat though? Do they give you food? Yeah, you'll get some crap services. I some crap services.
Plus, you'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.

I guarantee you – and I don't want to diminish from what they do because you're right.

Being an extra, it's a tough way to make a buck.

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 of a shot in billions.

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. But also kind of funny.
If the whole scene, well, we would have had to stunt that, Big Cat and I would have had to have stunted that before. If the whole scene gets cut, that's life.

But like one of my good friends came

and we were shooting a softball scene

and he played shortstop

and he was really good shortstop

and he was so psyched.

Then the whole scene got cut

and he like retrained himself

and he hurt his shoulder

and then that scene got cut,

which was sad, but it happened.

Listen, I'll take my chances.

You would probably be in the show.

I'll take my chances.

Also, rounders for sports betting. I'll help you write that.
Great. Awesome.
Rounders 2, when is that coming out? Right. That's good.
That is coming out, right? Yeah. I heard Edward Norton talking about that.
Nobody gets through an episode of Pardon My Take without having to deal with those type of questions. With these questions.
Correct. Let me say, I'm so happy to do this, guys.
I really am such a fan.

And the Levine boys,

Joe and James and Robbie,

you're so happy right now,

I think,

that Uncle Brian did this.

And yeah,

thanks for having me.

Which one of the Levine boys

is Pete Gass?

Let me tell you this.

Robbie Levine is an incredible,

all three of them are amazing.

Robbie,

you guys could be talking about

Robbie as a professional athlete.

Whoa.

Great athlete. Okay.
Okay. Thanks, guys.
Thanks. three of them are amazing uh what robbie could you guys be talking about robbie's professional athletes whoa great okay okay all right guys thanks the barstool golf time app makes it easy for golfers to find the best tee times at the best prices stop searching all over google for your next tee time start searching multiple courses in your area from one app it's annoying to have to create accounts for each individual course to book online just make one account with us at Barstool Golf Time and book all of your tee times.
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By the way, before we do that, I was texting with our guy, John Rothstein, last night. He wants to figure out our schedule, but he wants us to do a wing eating contest sometime soon.
I think we should do it. I don't do those.
Yeah, we should do that maybe in the offseason because this is March. It's going to be March.
I was thinking, though, why do we sleep in May? Why don't we sleep in... It's only February.
It's only February, but why don't we sleep in the whole second half of April? Because you're still coming down. Got it.
You're still thinking about college basketball. I was thinking about that.
We sleep in May. It's like, yeah, that makes sense.
The final four is like April 4th.

But we sleep the last three weeks of April.

That kind of rolls off the tongue.

We sleep in the last three weeks of April.

Right.

You miss taxes.

Done.

Don't have to do those.

Good.

Your Honor, I was asleep.

Yeah, I was sleeping. Case dismissed.

Too much basketball that I watched in March. Had to sleep the rest of April.
All right. Segments.
PR 101, Greg Robinson. He had 157 pounds of marijuana caught.
He is a very rich man. Obviously plays for the Cleveland Browns.
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? Besides already making it look uncool by having Revell tweet out the street value.
Yeah, that was a big narc move. I think it's, well, it is a JV Nate Newton move in every sense of the word so it's half as much as nate newton 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 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.

I feel like that could be a personal use case right there.

Like, what drug dealer do you know named Greg?

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.

I'm old Greg!

Remember that video? Yeah. Yeah.
Viral AF. Yeah, very viral.
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.
Yeah, or he could just go with the, well, dude, you wanted 17 games. We get to smoke and distribute lots of marijuana now 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 yes uh so he nate newton had 175 pounds of marijuana so not that much bigger sam heard still a lot, still a very lot.
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 in his, I remember in his defense, his lawyer was like, well, he was just trying to flex.
Like he didn't actually need that. Right.
He was just trying to. He was just saying it.
He was just saying that he was dealing drugs for the cloud. It's just a prank.
So either way, Greg Robinson, I mean, I think this is one of those situations, too, where, like, what's worse, jail or having to go play for the Browns again? 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 a month later with 175 pounds of marijuana.
Got it. So he forgot it was against the law.
Yeah. That's what he needs to do.
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, and it becomes an institutional problem and not just a Greg Robinson thing. Right, right.
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, who cares? Greg Robinson, like you make a couple jokes and you move on.
He's not good enough to really care. So that kind of sucks.
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. That's bad.
Also, yeah, in some legal scenario, they should just give up those charges because the charges aren't popping, Your Honor. Right, yeah, like it's not lit enough.
People really don't care enough. Yeah, if you're in the Southern District of New York, you're trying to make headlines here.
You're not trying to arrest like a Browns offensive lineman that was graded lower than the quality of his marijuana right right and also Ravel just totally made it not cool by tweeting out the street value um all right sorry not sorry quickly for Kevin Love so Kevin Love did he 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 and Kevin Love came out and said, 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 and nobody 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. I love this move because he's basically apologizing for being a bad teammate and undermining his coach only after his coach got fired, so he can be like, yo, my bad.
I did get you fired, and you also sucked bad i'll try a little harder i'll look in the mirror well yeah i mean there's 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 so we have to ask if kevin love is a narcissist it sounds like the answer is yes pretty clearly yes uh he learned from lebron about how to undermine a coach and then be upset after that coach lost his job. Actually, you know what it sounds like with Kevin Love? 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. 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,

now what do I do?

Wait, I got to play?

Now it's kind of boring.

Yeah, I got to try?

You want to see how I got these scars?

Yeah.

From Kelly Olenek probably, ripping my shoulder out of the socket.

The Cavs, by the way, this is now, they're going to,

I want them to fire, who's even their interim? Who is it? Do we know? We can look it up. I want them to fire their interim before the end of the season because they're going for the record, I think.
This is their fourth – oh, it's J.B. Bickerstaff.
This is their fourth coach in less than 12 months, I believe. I can't remember.
J.B. Bickerstaff, that guy's fired.
That guy's got a name like a corrupt mirror in a Dr. Seuss book.
We need him fired because I need them to get five coaches in the span of 18 months. I don't think that that's possible.
I mean, I didn't think that was possible, but they're knocking on the door of that. Yeah, no, I think it's very possible.
It's absolutely 100% likely to happen. Now, what happens to B-Line now? Does he go back to college? 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 JB Bickerstaff that's talking about uh Larry Drew because it was so recent so it's still like the fourth spot 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 uh I think he goes back to to NCAA because he's very good coach. Where? I don't know.
But, yeah, he's definitely going to go back, right? 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. University of Texas? Texas back? Dude, shocker smart.
Oof, that was bad. That's been a bad run.
All right, should we finish with FAQs, Hank? Yeah, it was FAQs. We also asked if anyone had playoff improvements for any league in any sport.
Ooh, I like that. How to fix playoffs in basketball.
Make them a five-game series. All games should be played at streetball venues like Rucker Park.
Special playoff-only OT rules. A player from each team is selected to play one game of horse what that's a bad one too okay these people are high that's bad play every game on an aircraft carrier have brooks kepka back on the show that's a good playoff rule i agree like that we should actually yeah we will have him back on the show absolutely how to fix the nfl wild card weekend invite brooks kept onto your podcast done done give home field advantage to the team with the moat lit the most lit fans lit fans can be measured by their average blood alcohol content cool traditions noise costumes and receiver gloves per capita i like that okay that now we're working yeah there's a fan metric all year this reminds me big cat the one thing i i don't like about giving the players off the week of christmas is we're working.
Yeah. There's a fan metric all year.
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. Well, no.
I don't know if I'm willing to give that up. 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.
Okay. There should be a fan union, to be honest.
Yeah. Yes, absolutely.
We can concede that for this idea. 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? Actually, no't no i was calling pft yeah yeah it's not that weird it's real easy for everyone yeah that's not really weird at all and we probably i mean pft is probably i'd say it's like 50 50 with sunglasses in the office yeah yeah yeah was it uh was it jason biggs that was talking about my baby blues yeah i feel like i need to i as many people as possible need to talk about how great my eyes are even though they're not that great just that the mystery's out there yeah oh that's why he always wears the sunglasses because if he took him off he looks like cal jr he actually tried to take him off for a show once and we just started ferociously making out so we had to stop that uh-huh it was tough erections were knocking into the mics good old skype days uh sup pmt boys not so much hank my wife has a crush sad face how about we shuffle divisions every year example world wait the wife has a crush on you i i mean that's what i'm inferring damn hank yeah there at you. Cuck him.
Shout out Justin Bieber. You're not the only one who can hit on rank.
Too big of a cool nickname for you and Rhea. Tell your rank.
Rank. Hank.
Henrion. Hia.
Hia. Hia.
Hia. Hia.
Hia. Tell your wife too bad.
How about we shuffle divisions every year? Example, World Cup group drawings. instead of eight divisions, have four in top two seats from each division make playoffs and have the Super Bowl at Lambeau.
Fuck the Super Bowl at Lambeau. Although a snow Super Bowl would be cool.
A snow Super Bowl would be cool. Snow Bowl, it would be wonderful.
It'd be great for me as an owner to get that extra revenue every single year. So I'm 100% in favor of that.
You have to remember, though, the Super Bowl is not about the Super Bowl. It's about the media.
So we need our vacation. Yeah, but it'd be like the true football.
It'd be true football. I feel like the media would like that.
No, the media would not like to be in Lambeau in the middle of January or February. 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 he rented out a single level house that's a catty corner to Lambeau Stadium and just like walk from the front door, pick up the paper, and walk to the stadium for the game. Brett Favre once threw up painkillers in front of this house.
It's got history. Right.

All right, last one.

Are you guys doing anything special for the PMT one-year anniversary?

No, we need to.

What day is it?

Yeah, we should.

That's the 29th, so that would be.

Leap years always fuck me up mentally.

It's like, whoa, that shit's another day in February?

That's next Saturday, so probably not. nope but uh thanks for thinking about it yeah i'll text i'll text the group chat yeah okay that's pretty happy anniversary gang one year yeah that's dude leap years always fuck me up that's kind of cool that's all i got i just kind of like looking at it you know 29 man 29 do we get do we get paid extra for this month yes that's how it works for labor since there's one more day 30k yeah pro extra 30k prorated for the extra day i love it we work extra hard this year so good job uh all right what do we got monday we haven't decided what we have Monday.
We have a lot of good interviews that are in the bank.

Maybe.

Yes, and some more good ones coming up.

Yeah.

Maybe one of the ones we do tomorrow.

Maybe one of the ones we do tomorrow.

All right, well, get excited because we've got great interviews coming up.

See everyone tomorrow.

Love you guys. Thank you.
Today's another day to find you shine away.

I'm coming for your love again.

Take on me.

Take on me. One, two, three, let's go! Thank you.
Take me Take me Take me Take me Take me Take me Take me you 1, 2, 3, let's go. Thank you.