Seth MacFarlane

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Nobody gives a fuck what celebrities think.

What we do do well is tell stories.

And we're not doing the best job right now of telling those stories in a way that gives people hope.

welcome back to Where Everybody Knows Your Name.

Where do you begin with Seth McFarland?

First, I have to say he's a friend for many years, somebody I respect so much.

So many talents.

He's always been creative, whether it's acting, animating, writing, producing, or directing.

He created Family Guy and Orville, co-created American Dad and the Cleveland Show.

He also co-wrote, co-produced, directed, and starred in the TED movies.

And if you can believe it, Seth is also a gifted singer who's been on the world's most prestigious stages, including the Royal Albert Hall.

His latest studio album, his ninth, is called Lush Life, The Lost Sinatra Arrangements.

They are delicious.

I can't wait for you to hear them.

As a matter of fact, here's a clip from Lush Life.

I used to visit all the very gay places,

those come what may places,

where one relaxes on the axes of the wheel of life

to get the feel of life

from jazz and cocktails.

This is a love fest because this is my opportunity to thank you for so many things

and an ooh and ah at your talent.

And I just spent the last week listening to Lush Life.

Oh, good.

So I think we should start there.

Sure.

It's been out for a couple weeks.

A couple weeks, yeah.

Yeah.

About three weeks.

Anyway, you can download it.

You can buy the vinyl.

You can do it any way you want.

I think people should buy the vinyl.

That's the purest way to listen to this kind of music.

Yeah.

But just

how I got introduced to Lush Life is

Victor,

who has become a family friend, but he's drove Mary and me to work to Paramount for the last two and a half months.

And I've known him for years.

And

he knew, I think, that I just found out that we were going to sit down together.

So he downloaded it on his own and listened to it.

And then on the way home the next night, he was saying, You've got to listen to this.

He's a huge Frank Sinatra fan.

Yeah.

A purist.

And a singer himself, obviously.

You're talking about Victor Garber?

No, no.

Sorry.

My driver.

Oh, you're driving.

Victor Gonzalez, who is the most astounding man I've ever met recently.

Yeah.

But he grew up listening to Frank Sinatra when he was seven or eight.

And his father would come in and go, Don't you want to listen to pop?

And he went, Nope, I want to listen to this.

Anyway, listened to it.

And I'm just saying, somebody who worshipped Frank Sinatra loved

you singing Frank Sinatra.

Not just that you were bringing it back to life, but that how well you did it.

Then Mary, the next night going home, listened to it.

And I've been listening to it the last week or so.

And it really is spectacular.

You're so kind.

Yeah.

I mean,

it's sort of like fishing for the last, and they're good scraps, but fishing for the last scraps of,

you know, these great talents that

Nelson Riddle and Don Costa and Billie May and these guys,

these are undiscovered gems.

So for people who don't know the history of this, you found by working with Frank Sinatra Jr.

and the Sinatra family,

found these arrangements.

Yeah, Frank Jr.

used to do Family Guy periodically, and

when he became a friend of the show, and when he passed away, the stewardship of all of these charts that his father had collected over the years, over the course of his career, fell to Tina Sinatra.

And

she has subsequently become a great friend as well.

And she said, look, would you, would you want to buy these things?

And did they come to you?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Yeah.

And I said, absolutely.

You know, having no idea really what was in there, it was about 1,200 boxes worth of material.

And

luckily, they had their curator, Charlie Pignon, who

has been with Sinatra Enterprises forever.

And he kind of gave us sort of a cliff notes of exactly what was in these boxes.

But really, the only way to know is to play the music.

And so we hired an orchestra um same folks that play on the tv shows and went over to the fox lot to the newman stage and just brought

you know what was recommended to us as the the most likely candidates from these boxes by the curator and just played them and

you know from the first few notes of that first chart it's like it's something that's so familiar and so comfortable and so

second nature musically but yet is brand new Right.

It's like hearing, you know, like never having heard I've got you under my skin and hearing it for the first time in 2023 or whenever it was we did that first session.

So it was kind of amazing.

Because you have an orchestra on, I don't know if it's on standby or what, that you can assemble for

all of the background music.

Yeah.

Well, it's, I mean, it's, it's a, there's studio players that play on everything from, you know, Jurassic Park to,

you know, to Family Guy.

All freelance, and you put them together, period.

Yeah, I mean, they're studio players that

play scores for television and film, and

those are the people we call.

And is it the same people that you would then tour with?

Because I know you've toured all over the country as well.

As much as we can.

I mean, the LA players that,

when we can get them the best of the best, are just fantastic.

They're just some of the best around.

And when we tour, we'll, you know, if we play with the Boston Symphony or the Philadelphia Symphony or Houston or wherever, we'll bring a rhythm section.

So we'll bring maybe a

pianist, bassist, drummer, guitarist, and then maybe a lead trumpet player, a lead violinist.

And then the rest will be that local symphony.

And there's some great symphonies.

So it's, it's,

you know, you're singing with an 80, 90 piece ensemble is not too, not too bad.

We went to the, you grew up in Kent, Connecticut.

Yes.

You went to Kent's School,

not just for boys, but when you got there, it was for boys and girls.

Yeah, there were two separate campuses.

Yeah.

But, but, yeah, the dean of

students was, when I was there, was your roommate.

Don, Don Gallon.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He was a wonderful guy.

Yeah.

Were you there second form through?

I was there all four years.

Yeah.

I was there five years.

You were there five years.

What'd you do?

Oh, man.

It was scary when I was there.

You were there five years?

Yeah, you went there.

Yeah, it was a third, third, second through sixth form.

Second when I got there.

Oh, so there was an extra form when you were there.

Five years.

Wow.

And you were not a joined school, boys and girls.

The girl school was still going to bust us back and forth.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But I also, I was a day student because I lived in that town.

I grew up in that town.

And so I was, I had the,

you know, luxury of avoiding kind of the Lord of the Flies side of boarding school, which I'm sure was just hell.

Oh, man, it was scarier than crap.

I I was 13.

Yeah.

And they were 18-year-old hulking giants, you know, the six-formers, and it was very scary.

It's like, it's, and they just kind of leave you to your own devices.

I mean, after, I think now it's probably better.

Oh, much.

But when I was a kid and when you were a kid, it was like, no, it's you're, you're on your own.

Yeah.

Like, you, it'll toughen you up.

Yeah.

Toughen you up.

It'll do something to you.

I'm not sure.

It's twice your size.

It's like, yeah.

Can't school for boys makes men.

And

it's like, it's, it's gentlemanly at a dance and valuable in a shipwreck yeah

my friend and I Dwayne Retta who

I went on to Stanford with him and he's this great friend but anyway he was an athlete an amazing athlete but we both realized it was not worth trying to date somebody up in the girls school once a week at a movie or a dance it was just like it was like 1955 yeah yeah yes it was it was 1955 and school It's like dancing with the balloon between you that the chaperone.

Yeah, it was just, it was just.

But let me go back a step further.

Yeah.

Because I, because we're going to talk about Family Guy and American Dad, which I've been on thanks to you,

and all of that side of your life.

But how I, I, you started drawing family lore at two, but at least at five, you were like hired.

No, you did your first flip book at five, but at nine, you were hired to do a comic strip by a local newspaper.

Yeah, yeah.

It was our local newspaper, which tells you how small the town is, the Kent Good Times Dispatch.

That was the, that was the, the banner.

Yeah.

And, um, yeah, they, they hired me to do like a one-panel comic, like, once a week.

And it was like, they paid me five bucks, which later went up to 10.

And, uh, and I was doing that from age nine all the way up through, I think when I went off to college was when I stopped.

Okay, so how did you get there?

At nine, how do you it was a very how do you have a simple humor at all i mean what is that that you could know what was funny or interesting enough to put it in on paper i mean it's you know my family was very uncensored in a lot of ways um more what does that mean yeah i mean you know my mother was was there wasn't really any kind of humor that was off limits.

I mean, like even I remember from the age of four, her stubbing her toe and like, God fucking damn it, son of a fucking bitch.

You know, just just, it was just, there's no editing mechanism.

And that extended into, you know, the, the, the comedy that, that wafted throughout the house.

And so, um,

uh, so I had some sense of, I mean, it was very undeveloped, but I had some sense of maybe what was funny and what was not.

And I liked, you know, the far side.

And there were comic strips that I liked.

So I had, I was sort of aping certain things that

at the time before I kind of found my own voice.

But, but it was a, you know, it was such a small town.

Yes.

I mean, there couldn't have been more than 600 people at the time.

And so everyone knew everybody else.

And it was a very supportive town.

And so it was it was very in character for Kent for them to say, yeah, let's give this kid a shot.

And did people find it funny?

Did you get feedback?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I um was it ever too far south or it was it was there was one week I got um

a

a

a letter from the local priest because I had done a comic.

Oh, I know.

Yes.

Yeah.

This is sort of a, I've told this story before.

Where the comic, it was a guy at

thinking communion.

Because when I was a kid and I was in a church choir and I went to, you know, I, I didn't, I wasn't like a, our family wasn't a religious family, but I was, they felt that music was important.

I was in the church choir.

And I would watch communion at the Episcopal Church.

And it was just so oddly fascinating to me.

I couldn't figure it out.

I was like, is that really, they're eating him?

Like, this is really the body of Christ.

Like, they're eating.

That's like, what?

What?

And, and I couldn't, I just couldn't get it through my head what exactly was going on up there.

And,

uh, and I did this one panel comic strip at like nine or ten that said,

there's a guy taking communion, and he says, Can I have fries with that?

Right.

And I got a letter from the local priest saying,

shame on you for insulting the almighty God.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Shame on you for insulting the almighty God and those who love him.

Wow.

And I think maybe that was just an excuse to write to me.

I don't know.

But it was.

Was that?

No, that wasn't.

When you say you were in a choir and you were looking at chapel, that wasn't at Kent.

That was pre-Kent.

Pre-Kent.

Yeah, that was the local church.

An Episcopal church.

Yeah.

That was St.

Andrew's Episcopal Church.

Because we went to our share of chapel.

Oh, yeah.

Three times a week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, wolf.

We were every day

at six.

Wow.

I feel like for everything I experienced, you had like the,

you know, the

worst version.

Yeah.

It was, it was tough.

It was also wonderful.

You had to go every day.

Yeah.

Sunday was not early chapel.

Sunday was a, I don't know.

You had the full-on Dead Poet Society version of

incense, Sunday.

Yeah, we had to go Tuesday and Thursday at 10 a.m.

And then on Sunday, we had had to go for like a full service.

Yeah.

No, we were every day.

God, what a, yeah.

Every day?

Yeah.

What do you even talk about?

How much Bible?

Oh, I don't know.

I have no idea.

I was just looking

just hoping no five years in your case.

No hulking 18-year-old would turn around and look at me because he was pissed off.

That's all I was worried about the whole time.

Yeah.

Okay.

Kent school.

I somehow avoided that because I was assigned, for some reason, I was assigned to

be the be like videotape the football games

so I was able to like the hulking like seniors were like oh I was like their little buddy yeah so I was the you know yes sir boss yeah but I got a good close-up of you they big fella exactly but it's I asked my dad about this recently because I don't know if you ever were in the up in the crow's nest at the the football field right at Kent there was a the wrestling

room in the gym right had a crow's nest up top and that's where you taped the football games from.

Oh no, I didn't know that.

And so I just remember being handed this, you know, 1980s camcorder in this big heavy case.

Yeah.

And there's just a fucking ladder that, and this thing has to go up like 30 feet or however high it was.

And

maybe not quite 30 feet.

I'm exactly to my memory now, it seems higher.

But like, and I would walk in like all by myself and just climb this ladder with your one hand.

With my one hand.

And I'm like, and I said to my father recently, like, how was that allowed?

Yeah.

How, what, what were you guys smoking that I, cause, because, and I, and it took me forever.

I would like, you know, just climb in just

acrophobic terror.

Um, while you were filming, I was the guy because I hurt my knee playing basketball, which was my passion.

Basketball was my passion.

So I, and football, I was six foot and 120.

So they knew that I would die.

Yeah.

If anyone ran into me by mistake, I would die.

So, but you had to do something.

You know, you had to participate somehow.

So I was the guy lining the fields with that chalk machine.

That was your job.

That was my job as my big friends would go hand stomp all over the lines.

And, you know, that was me.

So you'd be, so you'd be lining up and they'd be like kicking all the

friends, it sounds like.

No.

Well, they were.

But i got to play basketball in the gym by myself i could go practice basketball after i lined the fields oh that's cool so there was a so you got good at it it was transactional yeah yeah it was transaction it's a it's a beautiful campus are you glad you went to kent school i i was it a plus i i am i am it's a it was a phenomenal education and a phenomenal like the teachers i had stick with me to this day was bill armstrong there bill armstrong yeah bill who scared the crap out of all of us all of us yeah and yet wrote one of the most sensitive books yep wrote books wrote sounder sounder yeah yeah

he he was i i recently went on uh uh went online and looked for some of his old books that i hadn't read because i i felt like there was some there was some uh what is that through through troubled waters the the book that he wrote about his wife's death i don't know oh right um right but yeah he was he was um a pretty amazing guy there was a uh god tim scott was the English teacher when I was there.

He's probably came on later, but he was fantastic.

Was Jay could no, Jay Colder wouldn't have been there.

No.

Yeah.

Trying to think who would have been.

Was that was

Obie Davis there?

Yes.

Obi Davis.

Yeah.

English department.

English and sometimes did the plays.

Yep.

Yep.

Directed the plays.

Was Charles Gould there?

Don't know.

No, probably not.

No.

Yeah.

Obi Davis was

he was one that sticks in my head.

That's just a great teacher.

I mean it was it was a great, great bunch of teachers.

Pitt Armstrong was his nickname, Pitt.

Oh, is that right?

Yeah.

And he, at age 13, he, uh, the second former, had this how to study kind of class, yeah, which was invaluable.

Unless you're in me.

We have the same thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

But was he, he had this partition between his little office and the classroom that came, it was a halfway petition so that there was a door jam that he could reach up.

And when we came in day one, he was doing one-arm chin-ups.

One-arm chin-up, just looking at us, just staring at us.

It's like, oh, fuck, we're in trouble.

It was kind of like the real life, you know,

John Wayne sort of like, he, he was like, yeah, he just, I mean,

to well into his 80s, like was still probably unbelievably, like it probably beat any student there in an arm wrestling match.

Yeah.

So just quickly,

big lesson learned at age 13.

We would take these little pop quizzes and you'd pass your paper back and forth to the person behind you so they would correct it and then read off your scores.

They were quizzes, not not exams or tests.

Well, it was clear, and then you just throw them away.

They weren't, he wasn't interested.

Yeah, so we thought my friend and I, who was behind me, went, Well, this is silly.

We could just put anything, and I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine.

And so we would give ourselves each other good grades, earned or not.

And then one day, and then we got cocky and tried to make the other person laugh.

So the tyrant of Rhodes, you know, was

pass in your papers that day.

And for the next six months, he would hand out, here's the test

for everyone.

And here's the test for Mr.

Dance and the cheater.

I was Mr.

Dance and the cheater.

Wow.

For six months, it was like, okay,

I learned a big lesson.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

That's, that's, yeah, that, that's, that hurts.

It's coming from that voice.

Yeah.

And the one I'm checking.

Did he do the thing where he, and I, and this, the whole point was to get us to remember

who the famous Greek was?

And now, of course, I can't remember, where he was

talking about some famous naval battle.

And he said,

I still don't think you're going to remember who this is or what his name is.

So we'll have him taking a piss off the side of the boat.

And he like, and he just draws the guy taking a leak.

And it's like, I remember that.

I just can't remember what the hell the guy's name was.

That's so funny.

But yeah,

he was a pretty amazing guy.

It was pretty much my formal education at Kent.

Then I went to Stanford and learned nothing because I chose to, not because of the school, but I found acting and off I went.

So yeah.

Were you an actor at Kent?

Like were you.

After basketball season was over, our final year, my friend and I went,

we'll try out for a play.

And we got into Martin Duberman's In White America.

Really?

And yeah, my friend is black, and

we both kind of went, it's not basketball, but it's okay.

Yeah.

That's kind of how I held acting.

It's not basketball, but it's okay.

If you want, and then you've later found your passion for it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

So off you go.

Where'd you go?

RISDI.

I went to RISD.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which was also a fantastic place that's just.

All right.

Sorry.

I'm trying to.

put the pieces together.

So, and I'm interrupting you like crazy.

Oh, no.

I haven't done this for a while.

You have music beginning because this is already more coherent than any podcast I've ever listened to so you're good.

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So you have music, you have drawing, you have drawing characters and being funny.

You haven't done stand-up yet.

So you really music and

anime drawing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's your creative output at the moment.

Yeah.

I, I had done, I had done as much theater as I could when I was at Kent.

So I had a little bit of that.

You know, I, I tried everything to

not play a sport sport if I could avoid it.

And

so, but yeah, when I got to

and choir.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the singing.

But yeah, RISD was where, I mean, my first love was

animation, was visual art.

And so I

applied to RISD, got in, and that was where I really started

figuring out what the hell my voice was.

I did start doing stand-up when I was in college.

and you know local stuff and in providence in providence yeah wow yeah which has got to be a tough gig.

I remember it being okay.

It was, it was, it was, yeah.

It was like, because, you know, I was from New England.

And so there was sort of a shorthand that was like, you know, you're kind of talking to the, it's such a small part of the country that, that, yeah, you're talking to people who all have grown up with the same sort of frame of references that you are.

Very working.

Yeah.

Very bright, very working class.

Yeah.

Tough.

Yeah.

It's, it's a weird, it's a weird dichotomy because you have like the, the, you know, the, the educated sort of professorial intellectuals.

And then you have, you know,

you can't park your car over there.

You have those guys.

And it's like, and I was kind of,

you know, dialed into both those worlds when I was there.

So it was, um,

uh,

but it was a great place to kind of find your voice.

Um, great school.

I mean, just phenomenal school.

How did you know that very first time, oh,

there's an open mic or there's something, or I saw somebody and oh, I got to do that.

What, what was that?

Because that's a big transition from drawing, being funny, and standing up.

Yeah.

I mean, the theater that I had done in school and kind of the hunger that I had had for that at the time helped to kind of grease the wheels.

So it wasn't like I was unfamiliar with being on a stage.

I just hadn't tried anything that was so solo and exposed.

But, you know, it's like you're in your 20s.

It's like, who gives a shit?

You don't care.

It's like, what if I fail?

I fail.

Who cares?

Okay, see, that's different.

I didn't have that that's very ballsy that is stand-up is ballsy well it's just like you know the worst that happens is that you have a bad night and no one laughs and you go home and people forget about it the next day um yeah

but

but it's it's i mean nowadays i would be much more reluctant to to i think about it at times like because it gets

you know at this point like the expectations would probably be because of family guy, because of everything.

People would be coming.

Show us your funny asshole.

So, did you develop something that you can point to later in life?

Go, yeah, I kind of got that from my stand-up at RISD.

No, I mean, there were a lot of impressions.

It was a lot of, you know, very kind of like diet-rich little sort of routine that I did.

But there are certainly elements of,

yeah, my college years were very, in different ways,

influential in what became Family Guy.

I mean, I was, I discovered film musicals.

You know, I'd seen them when I was a kid.

My parents had showed us all the

My Fair Lady, sound amusing.

I didn't really, I didn't really care that much.

And then I got into college and I started to kind of pay attention to the music a little bit more and realize, oh, this is, there's actually some great craftsmanship here.

And just thought Rex Harrison was hilarious in My Fair Lady, just like this guy is just like, just this

comical

person who, who, by all accounts, was

very

much, you know, as he appeared on screen.

Right.

And that became Stewie.

Stewie is essentially Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins.

There were a group of security guards that I was friends with when I was at RISD,

and they were all, you know, full-on.

you know, Rhode Island to the core.

And

Peter Griffin is very much derived from one of those guys.

But that was, yeah, I think there was, God, there was one year we made like, I got all the security cards together.

We made like a fake A-team episode for film class.

It was, it was, it was a fun place.

A fake A-team.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It was like

starring RISD security.

Yeah.

And that was like, it was for like some film project.

And they were like, yeah, sure, yeah, why not?

We'll do it.

But it was, it was just a

place that was

just kind kind of pumped gas in the creative tank in every way.

And it,

you know, I've heard that there are certain schools that, you know, at the time were teaching you how to, you know, they're kind of training you for Warner Brothers or for Disney or like, here's how to work in this style.

So it's a, it's a pipeline to this particular company.

And RISD was very much like, here's everything you might need to know.

Because we have no idea what you're going to want to do with your life.

And you have no idea what you're going to want to do with your life um

in a lot of cases and so they they just kind of kept it very open-ended and if and if it was

if you were kind of leaning in a certain direction it was nerd it was nurtured right

so you graduate from risd

and what happens and then um

well

my senior year

I had applied to the Boston Conservatory of Music for musical theater.

I just love this about you.

You interwove everything that you cared about creatively from a very early age.

The person we are talking to right now, you were there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

30, 40 years, whatever it is ago.

Yeah.

I mean, it's, it's, well, and the beautiful thing about animation is that it does encompass, I mean, something like Family Guy.

You work with an orchestra every week.

You do.

Does everybody do that?

The Simpsons does it.

We do it on American Dad as well.

Yeah.

I mean, any show that I work on, the Orville, we used about an 80, 90-piece orchestra every week.

See, that's amazing.

But I think

it's an important part of the, that used to be pretty standard on maybe not that size, but every television show you used to watch.

Right.

I mean, the little play-ons from Cheers are like,

those are acoustic

musicians.

But,

you know, it's performance art.

It's visual art.

It's musical art.

It's

writing.

I mean, it's so many disciplines in that one medium.

But yeah, I had a plan.

What I'm saying is you're designing the perfect Seth to go off and be the creator of

all these things you've created, to be the head of all these things you've created, because you have your fingers in everything.

It worked out that way.

It worked out that way.

Yeah.

I also didn't really know

which way I wanted to go.

My sister had gone to the Boston Conservatory of Music for musical theater, and she was, she spent four years there, and she had a beautiful singing voice.

And I

applied to their grad program, got in, and before I could go,

my student film, which was a really rough version of what would become Family Guy, had fallen into the hands of Hanna-Barbera, which was at the time still,

you know, at the tail end of their

existence.

Now they've kind of, you know, they're kind of gone.

They've been folded into cartoon networks.

And they're here in L.A.

Yeah.

Or they were.

Yeah.

Yeah.

At the time, they were still working under that banner.

And, and, um,

you know, and they were legendaries, the Flintstones, it's Scooby-Doos, the Jetsons.

And they had gotten a hold of my student film and

RISD

had entered it in some competition that they were

sponsoring.

And I won something called the Freddie Award, which is like, it's like a bunch of rocks with Fred Flintstone sitting on the top and your name on a little plaque.

And that was my introduction to Hanna-Barbera.

And so before I graduated, RISD,

I got a call saying, listen, would you want to come out and do a cartoon short for us based on your student film?

And I said, yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, there's a little bit of a

shit.

Do I, do I ditch?

the grad program at Boston Conservatory and

the opportunity was just too good to pass up.

So

took the California job.

I had came out here.

I had no idea.

I was, you know, stayed at like the Beverly Garland holiday in.

Do you remember?

I think it was, I think initially it was like, this was like the 1990s.

It was like 600 bucks a week.

Oh, wow.

I think that was like at the time, that was pretty good.

Just coming out of college, that was great.

Yeah.

But,

but I, I,

you know, learned the Hollywood style of animation through,

one of the best studios through the people that invented it.

Wait, how?

Because you've been hired to,

so did you start working with other people?

There was a program called What a Cartoon

that was created by

Fred Seibert, who has since gone on to

be a pretty major force in the animation world.

And

it basically, the idea was basically to give green animators with no credits a shot at making their own seven-minute pilot with an eye towards putting

control of animation back into the hands of the artists and taking it away from the writers, which I think there's a place for both that

when it gels is the best case scenario.

But they were very kind of like, look, the writers have taken over for years.

Let's give things back to the artists.

And so

I did this short called Larry and Steve that was based literally on my student film.

And

when that was done, they put me on a show called Johnny Bravo, which was a

show that was on the air at the time and Dexter's Lab and all these shows that the millennials and Gen Z will, you know, I'm shocked at

how much they remember.

So

I worked there for three years.

And

there was a fellow named Adam Shapiro who took over development at Hanna-Barbera and wanted to get them back into the prime time business and said,

listen, your film is sort of the closest, your short is sort of the closest thing,

Steve.

Yeah, yeah, that might be of interest to these people.

So he took me to the Fox lot at this, you know, at the time I'm like 22, 23,

introduced me to these executives.

And I, you know, had no clue

really.

I was learning it all as I was going.

And they said, we like this short that you did.

Would you want to do a pilot for us?

You're an animator.

And I said, Yeah, sure.

And,

and, you know, generally a pilot gets a pilot budget of,

you know, even back then,

500, 700 grand.

Right.

They gave me like 40 grand, like, spend it however you want.

So, so I spent about six months in my apartment

animating this pilot, the family guy pilot.

Right.

And all the money went to having the drawings

filmed and colored at a local production house.

And by the time it was over.

But each frame you drove.

Yeah, now keep in mind, this was like very like, you know, the Flintstones was the model.

So it's like you have heads that are nodding and mouths that are moving.

There are economical ways to make sure that you're not doing full-on Don Bluth.

But at the end of that six months, I submitted the pilot.

And by that time, I was 24 and

they said, yeah, we want to buy this.

Animation was really hot at the time.

The Simpsons was at its peak.

King of the Hill was a big hit.

It was like more and more and more animation.

And so they picked up my show.

And so at 24, I was kind of thrust into this world of,

you know,

it was a writer's room that I was partially in charge of.

And

I had to kind of learn on the fly.

So

one more process question, because it fascinates me.

Your writer's room is a bunch of writers.

Yeah.

And then,

so when you, what started first for you when you did your pilot?

Did you do the drawings first and then figure out, or did you script it with dialogue and then draw around that?

Yeah,

I had a script that, I mean, with animation, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's, it's analogous to like a live-action sitcom, where it's like you're, they're just steps that are

similar, but because there's a different medium, they're different.

You write the the script,

you do a storyboard, which is effectively blocking.

Right.

You then do the animation.

And everything's not really refined.

You're just sketching it out.

Yeah, you just, yeah.

With animation, generally, it's

you sketch it out with like a blue pencil and then you kind of clean it up.

You ink it or you or you use a pencil line or however, whatever your style is, and then it then it gets filmed.

But you know, you're you're animating to the voice

yeah because if an actor comes in and does something you got oh wait yeah yeah you gotta do that there's a scene in mrs doubt fire where robin williams you know obviously plays a voice actor and he goes into the studio and he's

um

speaking to completed animation on the screen and everything's magically syncing up and of course that's not how it works at all it's like you you have to let the actor do their thing and then you animate to their performance so that always that that always works in that order.

So there you are, a writer's room of how many people?

At the time, there were about

probably 15 people, maybe.

Were you assigned them or did you go find them?

No,

I had chosen, they had me meet with a few seasoned showrunners.

I picked

David Zuckerman, who had worked on King of the Hill, who had had animation experience.

And so he helped me kind of develop the show into something that

going to be sustainable week after week.

And so he was kind of the adult in the room.

And I was there to, and it was an interesting process at the beginning.

Like we, we, we are friends to this day.

But we did have our, you know, he was working with like

a young 24-year-old guy who was, you know, had no experience and a whole lot of ideas.

And it was his job to kind of corral it.

But we made, we made something that

endured really,

you know, for 25 years.

But it was an experience.

To be in that room,

everyone in that room was more experienced than I was.

I really shouldn't have been where I was for another 10 years when I arrived in that writer's room.

Running a room at 24

was just, I just had to learn on the fly.

And,

you know, that'll sink a lot of people.

And that's where I credit my parents.

It's like they

put enough of the,

you know,

stick up for what you want, but don't be an asshole.

Like find that Goldilocks zone.

And, and so they did their jobs well.

And that kind of got me through that period more than anything else.

But

uh, and and then the show, I do remember actually, I think it was like day three.

We were in the writer's room and like one of the first things we did was go on strike because

animation at that time was not included in, you know, it wasn't a WGA

covered medium.

And so you didn't have any of those benefits.

And King of the Hill and The Simpsons and the shows that were on the air were like, hey,

we're done with this.

We, yeah, we want to be.

We're bringing in a lot of money.

Yeah, exactly.

So they said, do you want to,

you know, do you want to stand with us?

And so we got to like three days later.

We were like, sure.

Yeah.

So for how long?

It lasted 24 hours.

Oh, good.

That was good.

That was how much the studios knew.

Like, well, we just, yeah, we were waiting for you guys to bring it up.

We weren't going to bring it up.

But yeah, of course, you should be healed.

One last thing on this, the process, I mean, yeah.

So you sit down and you write, you start the writing room and you start writing your first episode.

When is it on the air and I get to watch it?

How, how much longer?

About 10 months.

That's amazing.

10 months per episode.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

And how long before,

after you write the script, do you start getting roughs of the animation itself?

So you know, oh, this is this is working.

Probably a couple months.

I mean, it's, it's been a minute for me.

I mean, I ran that show for 10 years and it's now been a while.

But as I recall, it's, it's, you've, you finish the script, you do your record, and then maybe

about a few weeks later, maybe three weeks later, you start seeing storyboards.

Yeah.

Um, and then you see an animatic maybe a month and a half after a month and a half into the process.

And then

full animation you don't see for a while.

Because that goes over to Korea and then it comes back and it's that's like months and months later.

And then you did a home assist stuff and then

American Dad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

American Dad, Family Guy got canceled because nobody was watching.

I don't remember that.

Yeah, that was in about 2000,

2002, 2001, 2002.

After how many episodes?

After two seasons.

Oh, so it came back, obviously.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

After two seasons.

And I think it was two seasons.

And

because that third season, I believe, no, it was three seasons.

Sorry.

It was three seasons.

Jesus Christ.

So we got canceled after three seasons.

And

because no one was watching, I was still under a deal with 20th.

And so we created American Dad,

which was sort of a,

you know, it was more political show, but it was very much in line with Family Guy.

And

then Family Guy got picked up again because the DVD sales were doing well.

That's how long ago that was, that DVD sales can bring back a fallen show.

Syndication DVD sales were doing great.

So Family Guy gets picked up again.

I didn't intend to have two shows.

I didn't want to have two shows.

I wanted to focus on one thing.

This Family Guy was still very new.

But I now had two shows by accident.

And

I made the decision to focus on keeping Family Guy running at that point.

We'd had this brush with death.

And American Dad, I essentially turned over to my co-showrunners, Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman.

And it was a good move because you had two shows that

didn't feel like one felt maybe more like me and the other one felt like something different.

And it was, that was a good lesson in

the value of delegation at a young age.

And that's kind of how I operate now.

I'm either kind of fully invested in something 24-7

or I'm delegating it completely.

And whoever the showrunner is, their voice is very much the voice of that show.

When did Ted come along?

Ted came along about 2000,

God, 2010, 2009, 2010.

First pitched that.

And it was roundly rejected by most of the studios that saw it.

It was just too expensive.

You know, an R-rated comedy starring a teddy bear that talked was not

really on anybody's most wanted list.

And I think at one point they asked us to do it.

Can you do it with a hand puppet?

It'll be a lot cheaper.

And

then Universal said, yeah, okay, we'll roll the dice on this.

And

Mark Wahlberg and the rest is sort of history there.

Yeah.

That's when I slowly start to enter

the periphery of your life.

Yeah, you were in Ted.

Yeah.

It brought me great joy.

It was Ted dancing on cocaine.

That's right.

Being bitter or something.

It was like reminiscing of.

It was like the D, it was like they bought the Cheers DVD, and it was like the interview with you.

Right.

And I think you even improv,

you even improv a line that we ended up using in the film.

Oh, it brought me great joy too.

Woody Harrelson's smallest dick in show business.

Right.

It was my getting back at him for innumerable things he did to me.

Well, listen, we were happy to help.

But that was huge, became a huge hit.

And that gave you kind of, I'm assuming, license to pretty much start making whatever film you felt.

At the time, yeah.

Yeah.

At the time that was i mean i no one would have green lit a comedy western from anybody really i think if it weren't for if it weren't at that time if it weren't for uh ted but wrote directed and acted yeah yeah

how did you like that the actor directed part it was it was again completely new it scared the out of me i i i gotta say this is where i gotta give thanks to albert brooks because i was a huge fan of his remain a huge fan of his defending your life remains just oh the one of the greatest movies ever made to me.

And I just called him and said, listen, I haven't done this before.

You've done

a relationship.

Out of the blue.

No, I reached out to somebody who connected me with him, and I can't remember.

It might have been my agent.

But called him and

said, can I just pick your brain about this stuff?

And he was so kind and so cool.

And he said,

he said, not only can you, he said, you call me as often as you want.

And so I called him probably once a week while I was was working on that movie.

And every time he picked up the call and he answered all my questions and was just so generous with his time.

And I will never forget to this day, like what, because it really did make a big difference.

It, you know, because I was learning as I, as I went and to talk to someone who's done it really as well as anyone in show business ever has.

I love hearing this story because I have so much respect for him, but I didn't know the mentor part.

Just,

just like pre-production and shooting.

Stand-up guy to end all stand-up guys.

Pre-production and shooting.

Yeah.

Wow.

I mean, literally right down to questions like, how many of your, how many of your dailies do you watch?

Like you have piles of dailies.

And it's like, you got to watch all your dailies.

Watch all your dailies.

You know, like, you know, how do you, at what point do you go when you look at playback?

At what point do you, you know, you know, when you're directing, how do, how do you

separate your directing brain from your

watches me while I'm looking through the lens in essence while I'm acting.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Who did?

Yeah.

So I hired an acting coach to to kind of be my conscience.

This guy, Aaron McPherson, who was wonderful.

And

he's been doing it for me in every project that I've acted in since.

To see whether or not, wait a minute.

Yeah, you did it.

You hit your marks, but you weren't really present.

Exactly.

Do it again.

Exactly.

You were cheating.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And

that's kind of,

it's invaluable and it's essential because it really is.

I mean, unless you're someone who has been

acting, you know, for so long that it's just second nature.

I will still say that I claim it's about 50-50 whether you truly show up in the moment.

And film is literally about, I'm giving you the impression of what I did last night, or I'm trying to repeat what I did then today.

I'm not sure how you get there, though, right?

No, but you are truly either there in that moment, surprising yourself and the person you're with, or you're not.

How much of it do you find is, like, how often is it like I nailed exactly what i prepared for and how much of it is that was an accident and that's the best thing i've ever done because for me it's most of the time it's an accident

well that's wonderful because because

well it's not because it means i it's like i it's like wrangling a horse that i just find that if you i mean if you do everything right all the preparation on

and all that stuff it's still for me 50 50 whether i truly am like i have no idea what's happening next and isn't this astounding?

Yeah.

Kind of thing, that downhill scheme kind of thing with acting where you just.

But can you access sort of like, you know, I've talked to actors who, and this sounds so

fundamental and

probably

just the most basic way to ask the question, but I've talked to actors who are like, yeah, no, I'm drawing from something in my own life or, no, I'm really believing what's on the page.

Is it kind of 50-50 for you or do you have like...

I i hope to get closer and closer to it's on the page yeah and that this is

not so you're drawing on something from your life yeah but you're putting yourself so fully under the imaginary circumstances that you can just use that and i don't i i still find it fascinating i love acting so much it's so cool yeah yeah well i mean you you never stop either like i mean you're you're you need to talk but

but but it's like you you always there's a show there's a film, like you're always, there's always.

I do love driving through the studio gate.

I do love crews.

I love writers.

There's always plenty of Ted Danson for America.

Or smidge too much.

No, no, no.

Well, no.

No, no, no.

People like it.

People like it.

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I've been on the road, so basically I've been eating in restaurants for the last month.

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Nick.

Well, Ted, I can cook a meal for you because I've been enjoying Home Chef.

Nice.

I'm looking forward to trying the Smoky BBQ chicken thighs, which is a good summer meal.

Smoky chicken thighs.

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How does it sound?

You got me coming over to your place.

Yeah, please.

Anytime.

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I want to rush through some stuff because then I want to, because I have other kinds of questions I'd love to see.

Tell other clients.

I get it.

Yeah.

But let me, all right, no, we're going to go there.

So,

Ted,

you know, I, but then that's just something that was just a fun moment that I didn't see you again for a while.

And then I think it was Family Guy.

For some reason, somebody reached out to see if I would do it.

Something, I think this was the order of things.

And I said, yes, but can you just do me a favor and pay whatever you're going to pay me and give it to Oceania, which is something that I care about and I do when I'm not acting.

Yep.

And you said something, I won't get into numbers, but you

said instead, how about about instead of that, I multiply it by this amazing number that you did and give it directly to Oceania.

You proceeded to do that.

Oh, that was Orville.

That was for the Orville, I think.

Was it Orville?

Yeah, I think it Orville, yeah.

Okay.

One of your many projects.

And it was almost 10 years ago or something like that.

And you have...

And you'll have to tell me and we can edit this because I don't want to

put a target on your philanthropic back.

No, that's that's a, that's such a great organization.

It is, but I, but your generosity is beyond belief because you've been doing that for the last 10 years, and um, which means a huge amount to me because raising money for someone you care about that makes a difference in the world and changes things dramatically.

And then somebody like you comes along and is that generous, it is,

it is, you know, you're changing people's lives.

You are.

It's funny, like I was, I was introduced to Oceana.

I was on a date years ago, and

she took me to the Oceana event.

I had no idea what Oceana was.

And it was this incredible event that was just

really educational in so many ways.

And so luckily when you, you know, when I found out you were involved, I was like, oh, yeah, that's, that organization, that's a phenomenal organization.

I mean, phenomenal.

And, and,

you know,

yeah, I mean, that's, that's, that's win-win.

You get well, it's the reason why you can ask me to do anywhere and I will go anywhere and you don't have to send me a script.

I would just want to come play with you because of who you are and how you, your generosity makes a difference out there in the world.

And I know you do this in many other areas and not just the environment, but I have huge respect for you.

Well, that's, that's, that's the one that, I mean, and I know you feel the same way.

It's like, that's the one that you just can't afford to screw up.

I mean,

you can recover from a lot of screw-ups, but if you screw up the environment beyond a certain point,

you're really in trouble.

And it's a game changer for literally everybody on the planet.

And if you think you're wealthy enough to dodge that bullet, you're seriously wrong.

You're fooling yourself.

Or powerful enough to dodge the bullet.

You're wrong.

You're kidding yourself.

Yeah, it's true.

Can I just ask a bunch of, you know, who the fuck are you random questions?

Sure.

What is your, if you had to go, oh, this is kind of my

North Star, or this is my mentor, if it's somebody, or this is somebody who, or some thought that keeps me on purpose,

knowing that, you know,

yeah, just that.

Yeah.

I mean,

I mean, look, it sounds so cliche, but like, you know, if

any decision that you make,

you you know is this is is this something my parents would approve of is kind of i mean my both your mom and dad come to mind when you say that yeah yeah i mean they were they were ex-hippies they were very altruistic they were very much um

you know

very very socially conscious and and so that was that still remains sort of a a

lingering

part of my conscience that's very much active that that is this is this something but as far as you know people who

certainly, my father, aside, I'll still call my father

to get his take on

certain things.

But

Anne Druyan, who was married to Carl Sagan before he passed away and who wrote Cosmos for us

is very much a mentor, is very much somebody who

what do you get from that relationship?

I don't mean get, but draw from.

I mean, it's, you know, there are very few people

you can say

this person is truly, is the legitimate genius, like a legitimate genius.

Like whatever her, and I mean intellectually and I mean culturally and socially, in every sense, this is somebody who sees the world

in a way that

is

pretty extraordinary.

And so she's become somebody who I...

see as kind of a

North Star, as you call it, you know, somebody who I can call and,

even with the most fundamental career question, hey, should I do this or this?

Or

is this, what's your take on this?

And you're always going to get something that's both incredibly astute and incredibly humble.

And

she remains a model of

the kind of person.

I mean, I will never be as smart as she is,

but uh remains a model the kind of person that i would like to

to to look in the mirror and see is there a uh

a rhyme or reason behind i'm sure there is so behind your uh philanthropy there are things that are really that are fundamental things like rainforest trust and things like oceana that that are just kind of no-brainers it's like well we can't we can't survive without the ocean.

We can't survive without the

rainforest.

Like we're going to be in trouble if we trash either one of those two things.

And so that's just, those are kind of no-brainers.

And then when you get into the

cultural stuff, when you're funding music, you're funding the arts, you're funding medical research,

it's then

it's discussions with

my team, the people that I work with, discussions with doctors.

What does that mean?

manager who I've become very good friends with and

with doctors that I know know who are involved with various types of

say cancer research.

And my doctor will say like, yeah, there's a friend of mine

runs a lab at USC that's working on this and this and this.

And they're looking for funding.

So it's just about having conversations and finding out what people are working on and what sounds interesting and who needs what.

And everything is a...

is a crapshoot.

When it comes to things like medical philanthropy,

I sort of go into it thinking like,

this is money I'm never expecting to, you know, I'm throwing it into a potential void because science is,

you have to be willing to just experiment and throw things to the wall and see what works.

But,

you know, still never a bad investment.

It's like if you've moved the needle in some way, even microscopically, that maybe you're never even aware of, it's still worthwhile.

Yep.

That's kind of the definition of philanthropy, I think.

Not knowing what the end result will be.

So it's not this transactional thing.

Right.

Right.

Okay.

So this part is: I don't,

these are my questions for myself.

You can either help me or express your own, and we can edit the shit out of this.

So it's really up to you.

How's your heart nowadays?

My heart is aching a little bit with the world,

especially here in L.A.

I have an ache that I haven't figured out.

I know that I'll just do my thing for two seconds.

I know that fighting dark with dark

does not work.

I know that for me in my makeup, anger in my body, rage is not a good thing.

And I never, I never,

I couldn't live with it like that, but it's popping up

right now.

So I need to figure that out.

And I need to know, is there a line in the sand that is

for me that I will then have to go, well, sorry, all bets off.

I now have to become, I don't know, Jane Fonda once more onto the ramparts, you know, kind of thing.

I don't know.

So that's those, I would love to know if you want to talk.

And if you don't, I totally get it.

I'm happy to talk about anything.

No, it's how's your heart?

It's what did somebody online say, but boy, I'm tired of living in interesting times.

That's great.

I heard somebody else say, No, you know, no, let my enemies live in interesting times.

Yeah.

Yeah, I, I,

it, it's a really good question.

I mean, I, I, I went back and

um

looked at old texts of, you know, how I was feeling in

the past

few elections.

And it's like every four years, it's like

this, this is the only thing that, that kind of put me on a little bit of a

rational track is that they're always existential.

Like it might be.

Good threats we face.

The way that I'm talking about it, but the way that I talked about it in 2024 was the same way I talked about it in 2020 and 2016.

Existential, existential, existential.

And

is this time different?

I don't know.

But I do know that my language didn't seem to change.

And so that gave me a little bit of a little bit of optimism that maybe

this is just kind of the way

people like us are.

That like we just, we do, we give a shit

and we should give a shit.

But it's also

something that

can get the best of us and can consume us.

So it's like, what is that Goldilocks on?

What is that balance of

caring enough to stay active and stay involved,

but not letting it drive you to the point where it's just wrecking your life?

And I get, guys, I know exactly what you're feeling.

And that's the struggle is that you're, how do you balance

altruism and philanthropy and caring about the world that you live in and caring about the world that is inherited by

the people who come after you?

Who's that philosopher that says,

if you heard that somebody 3,000 miles away in Europe, or if you heard that like a large group of people

were going to die and you could prevent it, would you?

It's like, of course you would.

Well, if you heard that people 3,000 years from now, as opposed to 3,000 miles away,

we're going to die and you could prevent it, would you?

And the whole question is, why do we have this

feeling of moral

responsibility when it comes to distance, but not when it comes to time?

And

look, this is the kind of shit shit we fuck around with on the Orville and why I love writing that show, but it's a great question.

It's like, what do we owe the future?

And I think we owe, I would say we owe the future

as much as we owe the present.

My father, who was a scientist, an archaeologist, the thought that came out of that for me as a kid was,

you know, a lot has come before you.

And hopefully a lot will come after you.

And this time

is not about you.

It's about your stewardship of what you've been given, which is similar to what you're saying.

Yeah, you're listening to me.

See, for some reason, I have, because

I've always let science lead the way.

If I get into an argument about

partisanship or

politics, I get very emotional, lose my way.

And I'm not.

That's not my happy place.

I'm happy to go, and I have gone to Congress and testified

about oil and offshore oil and the oceans and all of that.

And I'm happy if a Republican throws a brick at me.

I don't care because my job is to say, hey, this is the science.

This is what we know.

Do with it what you will, but there will be a consequence.

It's interesting because Republicans were once, I mean,

you look at the, they were once champions of science.

Oh, totally.

And my father was a Republican.

Yeah.

I mean,

it was something that they took pride in.

Yeah.

And I do think that if there can be a separation, but I mean, look,

when things like climate change are lumped in with other issues, as if it's like, if it's a, if it's a woke issue, that's where you kind of lose me.

It's like, look, we all have our feelings about how to apply, you know,

how to tax the country or what, you know, how to structure.

health care and the public and private of it all and

you know how to allocate these funds or these funds and reproductive care.

What's, you know,

what is ethical?

And it's like, all of these are, we all have our opinions and what we believe, but

they are, in many cases, opinions.

Like your opinion on how to best allocate health care may be different than mine.

When it gets into things like science, that's where it's like, God, we should all be agreeing on this.

This should be something like that we've all done.

as a society together, Republicans and Democrats, liberal consultants, like we've all, we've all

reached this point where we can,

you know,

you have a cell phone in your pocket that can give you

any information you ask for with the tap of a button.

And there should be no reason for any of us to be abdicating that, like that, to be abdicating that.

So I think that that's something that if,

and you know, you do read about these conservative groups that are that are concerned about climate change.

And they're, they're, I've, I, you, you start to see kind of sparks of that.

And I think it's a great place to start.

It's a great place to begin because it's not,

we can disagree about pronouns until the cows come home.

But

when you have something that is,

you can start with something that's that's so irrefutable.

I do think there's a there's a conversation to be had.

If we can just dial down,

if we can just dial down the

red in in our faces right and i almost i almost feel like i'm i'm i'm not going to talk about climate change anymore i won't let's not talk about that let's you agree you don't agree whatever beside the point at this time

and and

at this point in our lives it's beside the point let's talk about how can i help you develop a system that saves lives in parts of the world and country that are flooding so badly.

Because when people drag other people out of the water, odds are they'll be on different political sides of the fence, but they could give a shit because it's a human being reaching and saving another human being.

So let's find out how we can help save human lives together, forest fires, drought.

Let's do that.

Let's talk about, because it's here.

We don't have to talk about.

Yeah.

There was, I'll tell you, you know, even as a kid watching, and boy, they knew how to teach us this lesson in a way that we don't don't really, we're not as good at nowadays.

I remember watching

He-Man when I came home from school in the afternoon.

There was always the, there was always the moment where like Skeletor is hanging off the cliff and they've been battling and it looks like Skeletor is going to die and He-Man reaches down and pulls him up at the end of the day and Skeletor says, you did not have to save me.

Why did you say, you know, and it's, it's, that's, that's always the kind of person you want to be.

Wrapping up this whole thing, first off, thank you so much.

Thank you for all of the little interchanges and creative things we've gotten to do together, your generosity and all that.

But thank you for being here today.

I really, really have had fun talking to you.

But just to end this, you in some

quote or something talk about optimistic and fun.

Maybe it was looking back at the things that you enjoy, but you use those two words, optimistic and fun.

And that is

putting that out into the world, which you do through your work and your music,

is a contribution to this thing we're talking about, why our hearts ache at this point.

Putting that out is, if that's all you did in life, you can't discount that as moving the needle in the right direction.

That's why I did the Orville.

And that's why I, you know, we're, we're,

we're going to,

we still have yet to do a season four.

That's why I did that show, because when I was a kid,

Hollywood was providing that

voice through in various forms.

There was a lot of hope.

And we're doing a really, you know, some of the blame lies right here in this town.

Like we are, the dishes that we are serving up are so dystopian and so pessimistic.

And yeah, there's a lot to be pessimistic about, but it's so one-sided.

There's nothing we're doing that's providing anyone an image of hope.

I mean, look, I love The Handmaid's Tale.

It's a great fucking show, beautifully written, beautifully beautifully directed.

But

there's a lot more of that than there is of,

you know, what we used to get from

Captain Picard.

It's like there's, there, there's,

where is Hollywood's, they're certainly giving us a lot of cautionary tales, but where are the blueprints that they once gave us for how to do things correctly?

It can't all be just, here's what's going to happen to you if you fuck up.

You do need,

here's what you can achieve if you change your ways and do things right look at the joy and happiness and laughter you can come get if you go this direction exactly exactly we're doing none of that we're doing none of that i see it every day i drive down

you know

like driving down beverly boulevard today and looking at the billboards of what's to come and it's like yep dystopian dystopian horror negative pessimistic there's nothing that's that's

that's giving anybody kind of you know any any and now as an adult it's like all right i can see past that.

But when I was a kid, I, I had the opposite.

I had a lot of templates and, and,

you know, characters who were kind of the Gary Cooper in high noon of when I grew up,

you know, who would do the right thing, who would, I remember that movie, he would, you know, he's on his honeymoon and he's pulling away and he's like, well, shit, I'm on my honeymoon and I got to turn around and fight this bad guy.

But, you know, it's the right thing to do because I'm an altruistic guy and I just got to do what's right.

And television and film were full of those kinds of people and now it's all about the ever since tony soprano and again great show but it's all about the anti-hero it's all about the complicated up drug addled person who's like isn't this isn't this person a mess and you know

and you know i mean everyone on the white white lotus is brilliant but everyone no one is someone you'd want to be yeah there's nobody who you'd look at and say boy i want to i want to be like that guy if i was if this hit the fan i'd want to do what gary cooper did We don't do that anymore.

And I think if we did a little bit of that in this town, even just a little bit, we actually, that's the only thing really that Hollywood can do that's worthwhile.

Because as we all learned from this election, nobody gives a fuck what celebrities think.

Like we can tweet, we can talk.

Like people don't care.

They don't care.

What we do do well is tell stories.

And we're not doing the best job right now of telling those stories in a way that gives people hope.

And I think that's part of the problem.

And that may be like a way oversimplification of things, but I do think that that's it's incumbent upon us to take a good hard look at that and uh and see what we can do together.

And let me say, while you have those thoughts, listen to the lush life.

And I'm not just bringing this around in a circle.

What a pleasure, always.

Yeah, thank you.

My pleasure.

Thank you so much.

Yeah,

I don't believe in fretting and grieving.

Why mess around with strife?

I never was cut out to step and strut out.

Give me the simple life.

The fantastic Mr.

McFartin.

Check out his Sinatra album, Lush Life.

And you heard the man.

Consider getting the vinyl if you have a record player.

That's all for our show this week.

Special thanks to Team Coco.

If you like this episode, review and subscribe on Apple Podcasts.

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Visit youtube.com/slash teamcoco.

More for you next time, where everybody knows your name.

You've been listening to Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes.

The show is produced by me, Nick Liao.

Our executive producers are Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and myself.

Sarah Federovich is our supervising producer.

Engineering and Mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez.

Research by Alyssa Grahl.

Talent Booking by Paula Davis and Gina Batista.

Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Yen, Mary Steenbergen, and John Osborne.

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