Rob Reiner
2024-02-22 02:03:26
Hi, I’m Dax Shepard, and I love talking to people. I am endlessly fascinated by the messiness of being human, and I find people who are vulnerable and honest about their struggles and shortcomings to be incredibly sexy. I invite you to join me as I explore other people’s stories. We will celebrate, above all, the challenges and setbacks that ultimately lead to growth and betterment. What qualifies me for such an endeavor? More than a decade of sobriety, a degree in Anthropology and four years of improv training. I will attempt to discover human “truths” without any laboratory work, clinical trials or data collection. I will be, in the great tradition of 16th-century scientists, an Armchair Expert.
Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert. I'm Dan Rather and I'm joined by Lily Padman.
Good morning time.
We have a legend today as our expert. Yes. Rob Reiner. He's an award-winning actor and filmmaker. Of course, as an actor, all in the family, Meathead.
Yeah. Jeez, Lily. Classic.
Textbook, 70s, 80s, TV. 70s, I guess. But as a director, he's directed like an impossible amount of incredibly seminal movies that everyone holds dear. This is Spinal Tap, the first mockumentary. Stand By Me, When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride.
Oh my gosh. One of the greatest, most rewatchable movies of all time. He has a documentary out right now. that was very, very good. I watched it and loved it.
I would have watched it on my own, even if he hadn't been a guest. God and Country, about the rise in Christian nationalism. And we get to it right out of the gates with him. But this is a very pro-Christian. This is an anti-Christian.
This is anti-Christian nationalist, so big, big difference. And this is in no way a takedown of Christianity.
This is such a treat of an episode. We get some really fun stories out of Rob.
It's a very Hollywood episode in a fun, fun way.
Very fun. Yeah.
Enjoyed it. Please enjoy, Rob Reiner.
He's an objects man.
He's an objects man.
He's an objects man.
So we just started in here and there wasn't a door. And then, once in a while, you get hit by lightning. You've been hit by lightning a few times.
Six or seven times.
Yeah. And then you get superstitious. I don't know why this worked. It's working beyond all expectations. Let's not tamper with anything.
And even that building you saw that's almost done, that was being built to be the new studio. And this was going to get torn down. And Monica was like, I don't think we should tamper with this.
I don't want to mess with this.
So you're going to stay here. Forever, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Do you have any of those superstitions, or have you over the years?
I've noticed that I have some OCD. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think everybody does. You do certain things in certain orders and you just get used to that. And then you think, if I don't do that, something bad could happen.
Absolutely. The shoe will drop. And I also think if you endeavor on anything that has a low probability of you controlling the outcome, this is most present in athletes, right? You'll see these pictures and they've got like a 12 minute routine.
Okay. So here's a great story. I was playing in one of those celebrity baseball games prior to an all-star game. This is in Pittsburgh a few years ago, and we're in the locker room before the game is starting. And there's Bill Mazeroski.
He was a second baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He hit a very famous home run in the 1960 World Series against the Yankees. He was not a home run hitter. He was a singles hitter, but he got up in a critical situation and it won the World Series for the Pittsburgh Pirates. I come up to Bill Mazeroski and I said to him, I'm responsible for you hitting that home run in the 1960 World Series.
He says, really tell me how. I said, I was 13 years old. I was in high school and they let us listen to the World Series on the radio during gym class. And I was rooting for you guys because the Yankees always won. They won every year.
And if you looked at that series, the games, the Yankees won 14 to two, 11 to one. When the Pirates won three to one, two to zero, it got down to the seventh game. I'm like this in gym class. I'm holding my knees with my hands in a curled up position and I'm rooting for the Pirates and the Yankees pull out to a lead. And then all of a sudden I get into this position, the Pirates start to come back.
They're coming back. They're coming back. They're coming back. And I said to my friend, Bob Lowe, sitting next to me, Bob, get in this position. If you get in this position, it's going to do it.
He gets in the position, Pirates still coming back. He starts to move. I said, don't move. Get back in that position. I stayed in the position.
Mazeroski hits the homer. I tell him the story and he says to me, thank God you didn't get out of that position. He says, no way do I hit that homer. if you get out of that. That's the kind of superstition that you have.
If you're Sue Pine. I can relate so much. When I used to be super into basketball, what has happened on more than one occasion is same thing. They're down. I go to the bathroom.
They hit two three-pointers in a row and they're back. And then I sit down and I'm watching, and then I go to the bathroom a second time and they have another run. I have sat in my bathroom listening to games before.
You have to do that. There have been Superbowl games. I was a big New York Giants football fan and there were times when I wouldn't let my wife back in the room. She could not come back in the room.
You got to protect the team.
Yeah, you got it.
Did you have any kind of routines, though, that you, or let me ask you this as a better question. You've done a bunch of different things. You've done a lot of writing. You've done a lot of acting. You've done a lot of directing.
Of those three, which one is prone to give you the most anxiety?
Anxiety, directing, and also the most pleasure and the most satisfaction. Acting is fun, but you don't have the responsibility. I remember years ago, Ron Howard called me up and said there was a part in a movie that he thought I'd be good for. It was called Ed TV. It was with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.
I said, okay, I'll do it. And he said, well, I'm going to send you the script. Don't you want to read the script? I said, no, no, I don't have to read the script. I said, if it stinks, it's not my fault.
I'm just acting in it. You don't have responsibility. For the director, you have responsibility for everything, but it is most satisfying.
I bet you've had the experience I've had too, where it's like, I had just directed a movie and then I had a very marginal role in another movie. And I'm sitting there and I'm watching the sun go down and I'm like, they're fucked. They're going to have to kick two of these scenes to God knows when, next week. And I wasn't scheduled. And I'm starting to think about all the stress and anxiety of that.
And then all of a sudden I was like, oh, not, my problem. I literally got to stand on this dot and say some fucking words.
I did a part in a Woody Allen movie called Bullets Over Broadway. And I show up on the set. The first day was an outdoor scene at night at a cafe, an outdoor cafe down in the village. And I'm looking around and I'm seeing, ooh, I don't know if there's enough light here. I said, unless they've invented a new film stock that I'm not aware of, it's not going to show up.
ISO 2000.
But I'm not going to say anything. I don't want to say anything. It's Woody Allen. It's Carlo De Palma, you know, this great cinematographer. So I don't say anything.
I just do the scene. Then I get a call. the next day at the hotel. We looked at the dailies. It's a radio show.
It's totally black. You can't see a thing. We got to redo it.
Oh my God. If you were acting on a movie, it'd be so stressful for the director to know you're there.
Well, that's what I was going to ask. They know you're a great director. And so I think they've been inclined to want to maybe include you more, or they feel like they want to be respectful. Like, I know you understand how this works, but you're actually going like, oh, I love that. None of this is my problem.
Yeah. But I'm also aware of the fact that they're the boss and I have been in their position. I don't want to do anything that's going to cause them any more anxiety than they already have. And for me, it's fun because I get to see how other directors work. I did a part in Wolf of Wall Street with Martin Scorsese was directing.
Fuck yeah. You get to be around Martin Scorsese, and he does it the way he does it. I'm not going to tell him what to do. He's a great director. You just watch people and let them do what they want.
And even ones that don't have as much experience, you say, I don't want to cause them grief. I just want to be a team player. I want to do what they want me to do.
Yeah. I don't want to lower their confidence. Now to Scorsese, I've watched all those movies. There is this weird magic that exists in all of them. How does it come about?
I could care less if they cut me out of the movie. I would love to just see what does happen that has this most predictable outcome.
First of all, he's got an incredible eye and a credible composition, and he knows how to use the camera better than just about anybody.
Technically, he's one of the masters, right?
He's absolutely brilliant. Then, with the actors, he lets you go. If you look at scenes from Raging Bull, there's the improvisation. It's not exactly scripted that way. And he lets you go.
if he knows you can do it. And I remember seeing that I did. I would play Leonardo DiCaprio's father in it and Jon Favreau, the director. He was playing the lawyer, Leo's lawyer in this thing. And Leo's character, Jordan Belfort, he was going to get arrested and sent to jail because of all the stock manipulations.
And we're looking at his beautiful estate and there's his wife and the little daughter on a horse. I said, what are you doing? You don't want to throw this away. You've got a great life. And the lawyer, Favreau, was telling him, you make a deal, a plea deal, two years, I can get you off.
And I said, listen to him. And this is what Leo says. I hear you. And that was the scene. And then I said, I don't think you do.
I don't hear you hearing me. I felt like I was in a Scorsese movie, because I'm saying that line. And I actually said, I feel like I'm in a Martin Scorsese movie. He said, all right, cut, cut. That's enough.
That's enough. It's enough out of you.
That couldn't be more perfect. You actually had the experience where it's like, it felt like you would hope it would feel.
Yeah, I felt like I was in. And then the scene where Jonah Hill, they're talking about their Spence account. They got $20,000 for dinner. And he says, well, we ordered sides. I said, what?
$20,000 for sides? I said, what do these sides do? They cure cancer? And he says, yes, these sides do. You know, it's just improvising.
Fun.
Pretty wild that both you and Favreau in one frame while Scorsese's directing. Do you also have this? If I am on a set as an actor, I'm wondering when we're getting out of here. I want to know if we're moving. I have that sense that I'd like to go home at some point.
And when I'm there as a director, I'm like, I wish this day were 55 hours. You're making the same thing, but the point of view is so different. And I'm so grateful to have had it, simply because, to your point, I think it's made me a lot easier with directors.
Yes, it does. I did a couple of movies with Michael Douglas, but what I love about working with him is that he had produced movies. So he knew what was at stake. So not only did he not cause any problems in that way, but he would often have ideas of how to skin the cat. In other words, how to make the day.
He said, wait a minute, what if we do this, that, and the other? And it would be good creative ideas that you could get everything you needed within the day and not go over budget and all that stuff. It was like having.
an ally. When you were younger, were you singular set on any one of these? I'd imagine having the dad you had, you would have intuitively known that all were an option that you wouldn't.
have to pick per se. When I was very young, I didn't think about any of this stuff. When I became a teenager, I started going with my dad to the Van Dyke show when I was off for the summer at school. But when I was little, I didn't think about that. What were your fantasies?
I love sports. I thought, you know, wow, I'd love to play baseball. My dad told me this story. I don't really remember it, but he told me that when I was like eight years old, I came up to him and I said, I want to change my name. And he thought, oh boy, this poor kid, you know, he's like drowning in the shadow of the shadow of, you know, he has to live up to, and all of that.
And he said, well, what do you want to change your name to? And I said, Carl.
Oh, Rob. That's so sweet.
I wanted to be like him. I just loved him, you know.
You had a great Stern interview, by the way. So much of it I have memorized, but you tell a bunch of different stories along that period. One of them being your dad. didn't see that you were really funny, but weirdly, Norman Lear happened to watch you interact with his own child.
Yeah. I was about eight years old. Norman had a daughter, Ellen. She was nine and we were at the beach house and I'm teaching her how to play jacks. For those of you, you might be too young.
It's a game. You throw up a rubber ball, you pick up these metal things. And I was teaching her, showing her how to play. I don't remember, but he said, boy, you were so funny explaining the rules to her. And he told my dad, he said, you know, your son, he's a funny kid.
And my dad said, that kid? He's sullen. He sits in a corner. He's a mopey kid.
Yeah. Yeah. Melancholy.
Yeah. So he was the first guy that said, okay, that kid's funny.
And then, when you're going to the Van Dyke show, you are witnessing that this hill, should you try to climb it, is so hot. You said he's writing like 25 scripts a year.
Yeah. 20 to 25 scripts every year by himself. And I remember at age 13 or 14, they'd be down on the stage and they'd be staging stuff. And I wanted to be so much like him. I snuck up to his office one time and I sat at his desk and it was all alone.
and there's scripts laid out and I'm looking at them and I'm thinking, I can't do this. You know, and I felt so bad. I mean, I was only 13,, so how am I expected to do it? But I thought I'll never be able to do what he does.
Yeah. It's quite intimidating.
Yeah, it was. Except I did grab Mary Tyler Moore by the ass. Oh, you did? Whoa, whoa. I was actually 14 years old and I'm not telling things out of school, because Mary put it in her book and she told the story on The Letterman Show.
So it wasn't like. I'm telling it, but I was 14 and she must've been 24, 25.. She was gorgeous and she wore these really tight capri pants. My hormones were raging like crazy. For sure.
And I just, I don't know, the devil or something. And I just went up and I just-.
The devil moved your hand.
Grabbed her tush, you know?
Okay, what was her response?
You know, she went and told my father on me because he called me into the office and he said, uh, did you grab Mary Tyler Moore by the tush? I said, yeah. He says, don't ever do that again. Now there's a great payoff to this. You have to know the Van Dyke show to know what the payoff is.
But if you know the Van Dyke show, she used to go, oh, Rob, all the time with Rob Petrie played by Dick Van Dyke. So now they're doing a reunion show and I've already now made some movies. I've directed, I've done all the family and stuff. And I walk onto the set, they finished a scene and I said to the camera, I said, just keep rolling, keep rolling. And I walk out there and there's Mary, she's in an evening gown.
Dick is in a tuxedo. They had just come from some affair. And I go up to Mary and I said, Mary, I just want to apologize to you. I feel so bad that when I was a kid, I grabbed you by the tush and I just really feel bad about it. But you know, I was young and you were so beautiful.
Not that you're not beautiful now. I said, if I wouldn't get arrested for sexual harassment, I would do it now. She then bends over, she bends over, I grab her by the tush and she goes, Oh, Rob. And the place went nuts. They started screaming.
It was a good payoff many years later.
Yeah. You set that seed a long time before.
Yes. Pay it off.
I wonder if some part of that interaction for you was that she was on TV. There's something very abstract about her being a thing on TV and then her being in front of you. Confusing. We shared this in common. We're both Bruins.
Oh, you went to UCLA? I did. Okay.
I graduated in 2000.
Were you in the theater arts program?
Anthropology.
Oh, anthropology. Interesting. Yep. What year did you... I was there 64, 65, 66, and part of 67..
So selfishly, I'm so curious what it was like then. Because I obviously had an experience that was 23 years removed from that.
Yeah. I was in the theater school. So the film school, Coppola had already done his master's. There was a lot of heavyweight people. My friend, Phil Mishkin, who I wind up writing with and we started an improv group together.
He was getting his master's degree, MFA, and he was directing a play, El Camino Real. It's a Tennessee Williams play. And Jim Morrison was there at UCLA. No. Wow.
Attending UCLA?
Yeah. And Ray Manzarek. Oh, wow. They were both there at UCLA. And Jim auditioned for that and he auditioned facing away from the director with his face.
and he's just reading the book. And Phil said, but maybe you want.
to turn around and they could see.
Maybe you want to turn around. And one time I went to see The Doors. They were playing at this club on Sunset Strip. Halfway through the show, Jim Morrison just walks off. He just leaves.
And I go backstage. I said to Ray, I said, Ray, what's the story here? Well, he says, we finished the show a lot of times without Jim these days.
Oh, wow. He used to perform, also with his back turned to the audience, right? Yeah.
He did that a lot.
It's kind of his signature move. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was his Kramer entrance.
Yeah.
So between graduation in 69-.
I actually didn't graduate. I left. What happened was I started an improv group at UCLA. Myself, Larry Bishop, who was Joey Bishop's son, was in it. And Richard Dreyfuss, he was in a movie called Inserts.
And Inserts was kind of an indie movie where Dreyfuss played a Wunderkind director who was down on his luck, like Orson Welles. And he was doing these softcore porn movies. And my mother and father went to see the movie. And my mother turned to my father and said, Carl, I don't want Robbie playing with Ricky anymore.
I guess that's a testament to how believable he was in the movie.
Yeah. Anyway, it was this improv group called The Session. We rehearsed in the basement of Royce Hall until the cops found us. They kicked us out. But then what happened was we got auditions.
We got our own theater up on Sunset. So I was already doing what I wanted to do. So I left school.
Did you have any writing, directing aspirations at that point?
Well, that's what I did. I directed the show.
Oh, okay.
I directed and I was in it. That's what I always wanted to do from the get-go.
Right. Funny. you would say that, not to be self-indulgent, but I was in the groundlings. I was making tons of video bits. That was my favorite.
And that was before YouTube and before people made that. And I was like, oh, this is very stimulating. It's funny how it's always been there, but you don't know, it's always been there.
I was 19 when I started that, but I also directed a play. It was Roxbury Playhouse or something in Beverly Hills. And Dreyfuss was in that too. I did a production of No Exit. My father came backstage and saw that.
That was the first time I ever got a real compliment from him. I was 19.. He looked me in the eye and he said, that was good. No bullshit. And that was a cool thing, because he said, whatever you want to do, you're going to be okay.
So I always wanted to direct.
You have many layers of these moments with dad. There's stepping stones, right? There's never the complete one. There's the, you pitch a joke at 16 that they like. That's a moment for you.
That was a moment.
He sees you at 19.
And he says that.
We have this fantasy, right? That one magic thing will be said, but it is a long road.
And it doesn't work that way. And people always ask me, did he give you advice? There was never a moment where he sat me down and said, son, you just watch the way people live their lives and how they behave. That's the advice you're getting.
He modeled the advice.
Yeah, he modeled. I mean, but it's not intentional. It's just who he is. And I was lucky enough to have him and Norman Lear as role models, as models that I could say, okay, this is the way you conduct yourself and live your life.
It's almost chicken or the egg. You were so impressed by your dad. So maybe that made you more interested in directing and acting, or were you impressed by him because of his prowess at that?
I was around it. I saw him doing it. The people that came to the house, Mel Brooks and Norman Lear and Larry Gelber. I mean, it was funny people. So I think I was around that and that seemed fun.
People always ask me, what was it like at your house? And I say, well, I thought it was normal until I went to my friend's house. And so it wasn't so funny. It was a little funnier here.
Well, I was going to say it's a two-sided coin, because on one hand, you're exposed to all this greatness, which is informative and helpful. And at the same time, you start in the tiny pond. You're not the kid who goes and sees another shitty band and goes, well, fuck, if they're up on stage, I could be up on stage. So it's really two-sided. Because I also would imagine, as you're defining your identity and you're trying to build and muster your confidence, and the people you're comparing yourself to in the living room are like, your father becomes a father figure to Steve Martin.
Yes. And if you look at the people that were the writers and the performers on your show of shows and Caesar's Hour, which is where my dad got his start, it was a satire show. Everything that you ever laughed at in the second half of the 20th century was probably generated by one of those people. Because it was Mel Brooks. It was Woody Allen.
It was Neil Simon. It was all these brilliant people. And these are the people I saw and it's hard to live up to. So when I, at 16,, came up with an idea for a joke for them, it was like, wow, they took it and they went on the Ed Sullivan show with it, or Howard Ballas. I mean, wow, that was a big deal for me.
They created a paradigm that we still live in, basically. They broke the original format and blueprint for all that stuff.
Yes. I mean, when everybody talks about, now, Saturday Night Live's been around since 1975, it's been around forever. But show of shows, that was the, I mean, yes, there was comedia before that and there was Punch and Judy shows and stuff. But for television, that was the first time anybody did satire and really took off on political things, or mostly they did on social things and art of the day.
Yeah. After college, you start writing on the Smothers Brothers show. Again, that was before my time, but I am around people nonstop. That too was very informative for a whole generation.
Well, yeah. I mean, we were cutting edge like crazy. I mean, after I did my own improv group, I got into another improv group called The Committee. The Committee was out of San Francisco, it was an offshoot of Second City. And they came and did a production in Los Angeles and I was asked to come and be part of the company.
And I was part of that company for a while. And Tom Smothers came one day and he plucked me and Carl Gottlieb, who was one of the writers on Jaws, they were actually doing a summer show. It was for Glen Campbell. It was called The Summer Brothers Smothers Show and Glen Campbell hosted it and we were hired as writers. But then you're around these great writers and you're on this cutting edge.
And listen, I didn't know, I was an idiot. I was like 21 when I started working there and it was the 60s, and there was a civil rights movement. There was a war in Vietnam going on. There was a women's movement. All these things were happening and Tommy wanted to be cutting edge and he was.
And we, as young people, were saying, come on, I couldn't understand why he didn't get this sketch on or that sketch. I didn't realize the pain that he went through with the censors and with the network people. But we did some amazing things. We had the Pete Seeger anti-war thing. We did religious stuff.
We did all kinds of things.
And did you feel like, because you were participating in that aspect of it, that you were participating, or did you have some sense that you should have been at more rallies or been more involved?
No, because we were always a politically active group, but we felt we were doing what we could do to call out the wrongness of the war in Vietnam and all those racial inequalities that we were trying to get across on the show.
Yeah. So 1971, All in the Family comes along. And I'm curious at that stage, what was your fantasy of what that thing might be? And then the reality of it, and how much dissonance was between those two things. People that don't know, it was the number one show in America for five years straight.
And I've always said it's odd because you couldn't tape anything. There was no DVR, TiVo. So if you wanted to watch the show, you had to watch it when it was on. That was the only time. So here we were a country of maybe, at the time, 200 million and 40 to 45 million people every week watched the show.
So you had this communal shared experience. A quarter of the country watched the show. And people were talking about all the issues that we got into. Now you've got a country of 335 or whatever. If you get 10 million, 50 million, that's a smash.
It's a smash. And they don't all watch it at the same time. I can't tell you how many dinner parties I've been. I'm sure you have too, where you start to talk about a show that you're watching and they said, don't tell me. I'm only on season one.
I don't know. So you can't talk about any show.
Oh yeah. Game of Thrones. What are you talking about? It's a decade ago.
Yeah. I didn't see that part. But when we came on, we thought this is too hip for the room.
Had Norman had a lot of success before that? Forgive my ignorance.
Well, he had some success. He wrote, he was a writer for Jerry Lewis for many years, and he had some shows that he worked on. This was the big thing, though.
He wasn't a Larry David yet.
No, not yet. But he did. He was partnered with Bud York and they found these two projects. They were both British shows. One was Steptoe and Son, which became Sanford and Son.
And the other was Till Death Us Do Part, which became All in the Family.
I had no idea. those were first British shows.
Yeah, they acquired the rights to that and they did American versions of it.
They feel so American, both those shows.
Yeah, yeah. But we had no idea. We thought this isn't going to succeed. Nobody's ever done anything close to what we were doing then. And CBS put a disclaimer when it first came on that said, the views expressed on this show are not the views of the...
Basically saying, you want to watch this show, fine. But we don't know how it got on. We don't want to have anything to do with it.
Take your complaints elsewhere. We too don't want it on the show.
Yeah, yeah. But it's on.
You're coming out of an era where husband and wife slept in separate beds on TV. Right. There's a completely different landscape before that show arrived.
In the first episode, there was a toilet flush, which was the first ever.
Oh, it was huge.
Because nobody went to the bathroom on sitcoms.
Oh, my God.
It's so wild, how much.
. But it's true. The actors that played in sitcoms in those days didn't have assholes.
So they didn't have to go to the bathroom. That's right.
That's a little known fact.
This is behind the scenes.
The assholes were not adopted until the very late 60s.
No, not until much later. The Screen Actors Guild had a whole thing about, hey, come on. They have to go to the bathroom. What are they going to do?
Yeah. The assholes wanted representation. They did. They wanted to have a guy. And they got it.
They did.
So we've talked to a few people that have been in this situation, but generally people ramp up a little bit. They were third on the call sheet in a movie, and four people said hi to them that month. I have to imagine if ever there was a light switch that happened in someone's career in life. I mean, what a fucking light switch.
It was weird because I had done a number of shows. I had been on Fat Girl, and Gomer, Pyle, and Andy Griffith, and Hey Landlord, and all these shows. But, like you say, guy number five. And then this comes on, and the first 13 weeks, nobody really watched that much. So it wasn't a big deal.
Then they played the first 13 again. So we were on 26 weeks in a row. And after that period, you couldn't go anywhere.
It might've been the first, what do they call it?
Water.
. Yeah, yeah. Water cooler.
Probably was, right? Because it was provocative.
People talked about it, and everybody discussed, what happened on All the Family last night? What did you see?
And do you think part of the premise was a bit of a cake and eat it too? Which is, if you were conservative and watched it, you were delighted. And if you were super liberal and watched it, you were delighted.
That's true. And I think that's why it was successful. Because people tuned in to see Archie's point of view, the bigot, or Mike's point of view, the liberal. And Norman Lear had said this, and I've mentioned this a number of times, but he said that one of his favorite plays was Major Barber, which was by George Bernard Shaw. And George Bernard Shaw was a liberal.
But if you didn't know he was a liberal, and you went to that play, you would say that the hawk and the dove positions were equally presented. And you'd leave discussing. And that's what Norman wanted to do with All in the Family.
Yeah. Who was it? Were you reading the paper and you say, like, oh my God, so many such and such people were stabbed this year? And he goes, would you rather they was pushed out of windows? I can't remember what I said.
Archie Bunker.
Oh, oh, oh, oh.
Would you rather they was pushed out of windows? Like as a little kid, I remember these lines.
That's funny. Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.
How did you respond to the immediate loss of anonymity? And did it give you any compassion or understanding for an experience perhaps your father had had or people in your life?
Well, the lucky thing is that my father, because of doing The Sid Caesar Show, was famous. I saw how people would come up to him. So it wasn't so alien to me. And I saw how he handled it. Always very gracious to people.
So I thought, okay, that's part of what you do. So it wasn't that big of a shock. Although I must say, there was a moment where Gene and Sally and I were at the airport and we walked into one of the restaurants at the airport, and the whole place stood up and cheered. That was a weird feeling that everybody in that place stood up.
Okay. So to your point, 45 million people are watching that. I was on a show that 5 million people watched on MTV. They were all my age. And again, I hadn't done anything.
All of a sudden, I was on the show and I was in every episode. And so on a hugely reduced scale, I was at a Fuddruckers and I have the very, very visceral memory of going, seven or eight tables are staring at me. I no longer can watch. I'm going to be watched. And that felt very claustrophobic.
And I had a very panicked feeling of like, wow, I hadn't anticipated this. In fact, the great joy.
of my life was watching. Yeah. You get recognized. People are seeing you. They come up to, you, want an autograph.
You go back to your home, your life. And then time goes by and then you go out in public again. You forget that you're somebody that they know. Right. Because you're just you.
So you just walk out there and then you go, oh yes, you're that guy that they know. So that's.
a weird thing for me every time. It is. And that was the thing that caused the panic attack is that I have lost control of the decision. Like the horses are out of the barn. Right.
I can't choose to be famous when it's fun. Right. And then not when I feel awkward that I'm eating solo at a fat burger in Austin, Texas. And they're thinking, oh, this guy's a loser. I thought he was on TV.
Those kind of thoughts. Right, right. But then I'll add something that's even grosser. to admit. That show was 20 plus years ago.
The experience has infected my memory in a way that I now I actually don't remember. not being that way. In some bizarre way, I feel like I've always been.
It's interesting you say that because I was having lunch one day with Warren Beatty. This was many years ago. But he said to me, you know, I've been famous longer than I've been a person. I thought, wow, what a statement. It is a statement.
But that means he's had to be this person that's.
a famous person. Yeah. It also means being famous is contradictory to being a person.
That's an interesting framing of it. Those are two different things. Yes.
And in so many ways they are. Because the fact of the matter is, nobody is anything other than a person. But if you do something that causes fame, because Johnny Carson once said this. He was from Nebraska and he'd go back to his hometown and they would say to him, do you feel like you've changed? He said, I haven't changed.
The people around me changed. They change in the way they behave around me. I'm the same guy, but now they're acting differently around me.
And, by the way, both things are true. The thing I'm more interested in now is acknowledging. clearly I've changed. How could I not? I react to things.
My world has changed.
Well, you might be more guarded. I find myself a little bit more guarded than I used to be. But as I get older, you don't get to recognize as much, but it's always weird to me that somebody still will come up to me at the airport or wherever and say something. Oh yeah, I'm that guy again.
Of course, of course. When this show ends, do you have... I'll give my own experience. I was on a show for six years and both things were true. I never wanted it to end because it was the most wonderful family and I'm a factory worker at heart.
I love going to the same place. And then also I was very excited for it to end, to see what was next. And I was very scared for it to end. Where were you at? as it was ending?
I had always wanted to direct. Did you direct?
any of those episodes? No, because I'm in them. You can't direct, because it's done...
Oh, different day. With tape cameras. You can't watch playback.
No, but I wrote on four of the episodes with my partner, Phil Mishkin. So I got to do that and I hung around the writer's room a lot. But since I wanted to always direct, after the first two years, I was like, oh no, I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my life. You got scared a little bit. I got a little scared.
By season four, I made a piece with myself and I said, okay, you're going to be doing this for a while. Let's go to school. Let's learn as much as you can, hang around the writer's room, go up into the broadcast booth, look and see what they do. And I did, but I still, when it was time to leave, it was good and I was ready to become a director. But then they don't want you to be that, because you've now established this character and they throw a lot of money at me and Sally Struthers to keep doing those characters.
And I'm saying, no, I don't want to do that. I want to do something else.
Is that why the show ended?
Carol wanted to end the show. initially. Carol said, this is enough. And then, when we did this final episode where they have Mike and Gloria moved to California, he then said, well, maybe you wanted to do more. So I think they did two more years of Archie Bunker's place or something.
like that. Oh, you just said something that cued. You learn it. I lost it. I lost it.
It'll come back.
It'll be a week from now, but it'll come back. Can I have your phone?
Here's the thing. You're way younger than me, but trust me.
I know what I wanted to say.
It's going to get worse.
It's accelerating. I can feel it already. As is time. I know. what I wanted to say was that you, maybe more than any other, I don't know who matches it, but Meathead, you said, if I live to win a Nobel Peace Prize, they would say-.
Yeah, the headline would be, Meathead wins Nobel. I still get that. I still get it.
Meathead wins a Nobel. Okay. So the show ends in 79.. You don't do Spinal Tap to 84.. What happens in those five years?
Well, we shot Spinal Tap at the end of 82.
. It came out in 84.. But from 78 till 82, I did a special on television called The TV Show, which was satire of just a guy sitting in his chair flipping the channels, and we'd cut in little bits and pieces of every show. Telethons, half hours, dramas.
And they were all parodies of those things.
One of the things we did was a parody of a show called Midnight Special, which was a late night rock and roll show, and it was hosted by Wolfman Jack. And I played Wolfman Jack, and that was the first time Spinal Tap ever appeared. Chris, Harry, and Michael, we created this thing. They were doing a song called Rock and Roll Nightmare, and Russ Kunkel played the drums, who was Jackson Brown's drummer and Linda Ronstadt's drummer. We had a band, and they started improvising in characters, these British rockers, and we just didn't think much of it.
Then Harry and I said, hey, maybe we can make something out of a rock and roll tour. We had an idea called Roadie. It was all about road managers behind the scenes. Then a picture called Roadie came out, which was with meatloaf. And then we said, okay, forget that.
But meanwhile, Chris and Michael had done this little sketch about two rockers who run into each other in a hotel or something, and they remember vaguely that they used to play in a band together. Really funny characters. So we came back together and decided, okay, let's see if we can do something together. And the idea was to do a fake documentary. I got a studio to fund a script, but then we realized we can't write this thing because it has to be improvised.
It has to feel like it's really happening. So I went to the guy, and we had $60,000.. I said, give me the money, and I'll make some of the movie for you. Backstage, some performance bits, some interviews, and I added some money of my own, the boys, we all added. And we made like 20 minutes, and then we couldn't sell it anywhere.
Nobody wanted it. It went on for years. We would get close, and then they said, no, no, no. And they would scrap it. And then one day, they were making a movie at Avco Embassy called Take This Job and Shove It.
Oh, yes. And Robert Hayes, who had been in Airplane, was going to star in this thing. And they were looking for a director. And this agent, who wasn't my agent, he had seen this 20-minute thing floating around town. He suggested me to the executive.
Her name is Lindsay Duran at Avco Embassy. And she said, well, what has he directed? He hasn't directed anything. Well, here's this 20-minute thing. Maybe take a look at it.
She looked at it, and she said, well, forget this. Take This Job and Shove It. What about this? Let's do this. I said, well, I don't have any money.
I don't have anything. She said, well, I think I can convince the head of the studio to distribute it, and maybe that'll help you find some money, which it did. And I found some money. I went to put it together. They were ready to go.
And then Jerry Parenchio and Norman Lear bought Avco Embassy, and they scrapped every project that they had, including this. And I went to Alan Horne, who's a dear friend. And Alan and I, and Andy Scheiman, and Martin Shaffer, and Glenn Patton, we started Castle Rock together. years later. Alan later became the president of Warner Brothers.
And the president of Disney. He's like a brother to me. He's a great guy. So Alan says, I'm sorry, we can't do this. I said, Alan, please, let me talk to Norman.
Please. So they get a meeting, and there's Jerry Parenchio, Norman Lear, and Alan, and a couple of other people from the company. And I'm making this insane pitch about how this, you've got to, it's going to be the thing. And I'm screaming like this. And I leave.
And what I'm told after I left is Norman turned to everybody and said, who's going to tell him he can't do it? Right. This guy's lost his mind.
So they let me do it. Well, now this is where you enter my life, basically. Because when it comes out, I am nine years old. My brother loves it. We're now in an era where we're approaching VHS, we're approaching cable, maybe on TV.
It's on. Did you dig it? Did you understand it? I totally did. But it was the kind of get it.
The only thing I can compare it to is watching Raising Arizona, where I was like, why is this movie so different than everything I've seen? And what are the mechanics of what's happening? Well, very few people did get it. Well, this I loved learning. I would have never guessed this.
But, well, first of all, you're inventing a genre in the mockumentary. The improv movie is not a thing. You're doing.
a lot of firsts. Yeah, we did. We improvised the whole movie. And people said, I can't believe your first movie, you do it as an improv. I said, to me, that's the easy part.
It's a scripted movie. where where's the camera going? This was easier for me. And you had hired a real documentarian that had made some rock films. Peter Smokler, who shot a bunch of rock and roll films, including the horrible Altamont with the Rolling Stones, where somebody died.
But we're making the movie. And he says to me at one point, I don't understand what's funny about this. I said, this is what they do. I said, yeah, but it's a little, we're twisting it a little bit. And then we screened it in Dallas.
That was the first place. Nobody got it. They didn't understand what the hell was going on. People come up to me and say, why would you make a movie about a band that nobody ever heard of? They thought it was real.
And one that's so bad. Do something about the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or something.
And I don't mean to be disparaging to anyone, but I will say, similarly, my wife just did this Netflix show a few years ago that was called The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Woman in the Window. It's clearly a parody of all these psychological, right, gone girls. And it's preposterous. There's a 20 minute set piece where she fights a six-year-old and people will come up to her and go, I really like that thing that twists. And I'm like, some significant percentage doesn't see that this is a parody.
I know, it's tough.
And you don't want to be disrespectful, especially if they liked it on its own merit. But I'll tell you, it's funny. you ask, did I get it? At first? you don't.
It's dead, real. I don't know these people. I'm young. The rock stars I'm seeing are old and I don't know who they are. It's the cocoon, right?
Him getting trapped in the cocoon on stage, where all of a sudden I start going like, well, this couldn't possibly be what happened, right? This is clearly stupid as hell. And then it kind of took off for me. And then it's one of these things that you just watch over and over.
We're talking about doing the sequel now. And we go to New Orleans at the end of the month and we start shooting in March.
Oh, you are doing the sequel?
Yeah.
Oh my God, this is such wonderful news. A lot of sequels are bad ideas, but aging rock stars couldn't be more right.
Well, we have an idea. For years, people said, do another one. We never had a good idea. But now I think we have an idea. And one of the things is they are old.
There's no getting around it. They are old and we'll see what happens. I think it'll be good. We have some good people in it.
Fun.
You then go on to direct Stand By Me. I mean, look, I want to get to your new movie, but I just want to touch down on a couple of these. There's only a few people that went on a run like this. There's just one after another. that's just memorable.
It's in the canon. But Stand By Me, of course, I'm probably most curious in, because as a young man, I just was so drawn to River Phoenix.
Well, you were right around that. I think. Stand By Me came out in 86..
Yeah, so I'm like 11 years old. I'm the age of the-. You're the age of the kids, yeah. Absolutely. And not only that, I'm wrestling with the thing.
I imagine, the way you describe yourself as a young boy, which is like, I have all these emotions and they are unacceptable. I don't know where to put them, but I know I can't have them on the playground. I can't have them when talking to a friend. What am I fucking going to do with these?
Yeah. There's a great moment in the movie where they're walking on the tracks and Gordy turns to Chris Chambers, played by River Phoenix, and he says, do you think I'm weird? And River says, yeah, but so what? Everybody's weird. And it's that feeling that you're talking about, which is something's happening in your body and you don't know what it is, and you feel odd and out of it.
And if anyone sees it, I'm going to be excommunicated, which is my greatest fear. Yeah, it's the outcast story and it's incredible. I have, of course, as you have, I've been around a few actors. One example would be Heath Ledger, where I came to know him a little bit. And obviously he was so exceptionally talented.
He's an incredible actor. But that was obvious, since, just being around him, there was a depth and weight he was carrying around. that was palpable. Yeah, you could sense it. It made me insanely compassionate towards him, even when things were going well.
I just could acknowledge, I don't have as much weight on my shoulders. I can feel it. And I just am curious, is there anything about that experience with River, where you just felt like? this is a very.
special human being? Well, yeah, because he had a very strange background upbringing. His father had struggled with alcohol and they lived out of a VW micro bus. They were hippies. They were members of communes and stuff.
Communes and culty things. And the whole family was, I mean, Joaquin Phoenix, I don't remember his name, but there was River, there was Sky, there was Summer, there was Leaf. I think he was.
Leaf. Oh, then.
Yeah, they all had these.
. I used to make the joke all the time because I was introduced to people. And this really said, this is Sky and this is Oxygen. So I said, well, then, you're 80% of her.
20%, whatever.
But they were all from that world. I would be totally guessing, but my hunch is the stability of that. experience must've been very appealing. You must've sensed that. And you had to have some compulsion to rescue her.
Well, yeah, I mean, but the weird thing about it,
Dax, was that the film came out and did very well. And then, a couple of years later, River must've been 17 at the time. And we hung out at a hotel in New York. I could tell he was using, and it was not good. And I thought he's going off the rails here.
And then, when I was doing that, Wolf of Wall Street and Leonardo DiCaprio told me that he saw River that night before he was at the Viper Room. And he said it was a strange thing to see a guy go in that direction. And then the horrible thing of him dying. Because when I saw him, I thought this could be another James Dean here. I mean, he's like this kind of talented guy.
You could sense. And I said to Leo, I said, you know, when I first saw you, the first couple of things, this boy's life and what's eating Gilbert? great. I thought, oh my God, this guy has got insane talent. I hope that he has some kind of stable background.
And he said, yes, even though his mother and father got divorced, they were stable with him and he was okay. And he didn't get into drugs or anything like that. But when I saw River doing that, I said, oh my God, here we go. He's off the rails. And you try to talk to the mother.
I mean, you can't really. And then this happens to him. And then you look at the film. now in the film, he disappears out of the film. Yeah.
He's the only one that dies. It's a bizarre shadowing. Well, we don't know. Just a weird thing to look.
at the film now. I guess all that just to say that we are in a business where you get to interact with some very special artists. It often comes with quite a bit of weight and it can be heartbreaking and then so special, and you just got to be grateful for the time you got to see what they do.
And I saw this kid, there's a scene there at the campfire and he has to tell the story about how he was accused of stealing the milk money, even though the teacher had taken the milk money. And the first couple of times we did it, he didn't get to it. And I just took him aside. I said, I want you to think about a time in your life when an adult let you down. Just think about that.
And he only had to go back to that more. I said, I don't want to, you don't have to tell me what it is. Just do. And the take that you see in the movie is right after that.
Princess Bride, have you ever met Seth Green, the actor?
I have, but only briefly.
Okay. I hope this will be yet another feather in your cap, but I went to his wedding. His wedding was at Skywalker Ranch. He's the nerdiest of all nerds in the most beautiful way. They say I do, and they literally go, now, please join us in the theater.
We went from, I do, directly into a movie theater and watch the Princess Bride.
No, that's so amazing.
That is his soul, his religion.
We've got stories about people building their weddings around Princess Bride, where they have on their wedding rings, it says, as you wish, and all of that stuff.
Yeah. So I just thought, oh, this is the most special thing. And it was so fun. And then we went to the reception, but the very first order of businesses, we all watched this movie together.
I've had a million Princess Bride stories, but one of the best was two stories. One was Nora Efron and Nick Pelleggi took us to this restaurant in New York, an Italian restaurant. And it was known that John Gotti, the mobster, every Thursday would come in. And sure enough, at eight o'clock, in walks, John Gotti, with six wise guys around him. And I look over there and I don't really want to pay too much attention to him.
I don't, yeah, hello, how are you doing? Don't look at me. We finished eating, we go outside and there's a big limousine parked outside, with a guy that looks like Luca Brasi from The Godfather standing right in front of him. And he looks me in the eye and he says, you killed my father, prepare to die. And I almost went on the sidewalk because I thought, oh, he says, I love that movie,
The Princess Bride.
Oh, that's epic. I did miss one thing I just wanted to point out, because again, we already talked about the kind of steps in your life, but Stand By Me, for you was very formative. It was a moment where you actually said, okay,
I am my own man. I am not in a shadow. Right. And it's true, because people have asked me all the time, what's your favorite movie of the movie you made? And they always say, they're like, all your children, you love them all the same, even the rotten ones.
But this one meant the most to me, because it was the first time I ever did anything that was so far field from anything. my father would have done. Spinal Tap, even though he probably wouldn't have satirized heavy metal, he certainly was in the world of satire. And The Sure Thing was a romantic comedy for young people. This was the first time that it was something really reflective of my personality.
It had humor in it, but it also had some melancholy and nostalgia. And so I thought this is really the kind of thing I want to do. And then the fact that it became successful, it validated. It's like, okay, okay, I can do some of these things.
And then just great shit just starts flying when Harry Met Sally, which is so incredible. What I was shocked with in hearing you talk on Stern is just how many of these movies, the lead was the ninth choice. Not maybe because of your doing, but maybe because of studio pressure.
or whatever else. I love hearing these stories. It's true for every director. I've had conversations with Steven Spielberg about he didn't get his first choice. on a number of movies.
That happens. They're not available. They don't like the script, whatever the reasons are. But then I always say that when the movie starts and the cameras start to roll, now they don't have cameras rolling, but they put the chip into the thing. Whatever the start, there'll be somebody.
in front of the camera. And then, what's even crazier is this thing happens where that's who you got. And then, on the backside of it, you're like, I can't imagine that it would have been anybody. When I read the list of people, he had to go to Tom Hanks, Michael Keaton, Albert Brooks, Richard Dreyfuss, all these people for when? Harry Met, Sally.
And, of course, in my mind,
this movie only works as Billy Crystal. It works with Billy because he can play the edgy part, but he's sweet. It has a mixture and he's great. And I didn't go right away to Billy because he was like my closest friend at the time. And I thought, oh man, what if this doesn't work?
It's a complication you might not want when you already have so much on your plate.
But then I'm so unbelievably happy that he did it, because not only is he great in the movie, but he gives you freebies. You get little gifts. I'll have what she's having. That's a line that.
Billy wrote. And that's his mom, though, as well. That's my mom. That's your mom. That's someone's mom.
And then Scorsese has his mom, and the Goodfellas do it.
The last speech in the film, where Billy runs in to see Meg and says, when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible. And that was Billy. Billy wrote that stuff.
God, what a movie. All these movies you read. I mean, it's like-.
It's impossible.
They've also stood the test of time. When Harry Met Sally is still a huge movie.
Yeah. You're not even born yet either, or you're just born. What year were you born?
87.
Well, yeah. When Harry Met Sally came out in 89..
You were two years old. But it was a huge rom-com for me.
88, I think.
One years old.
I was one years old, but it's carried through.
Now, would you intentionally pursue projects that were mirroring what was going on in your real life? Because I know Misery for You was one of these moments where the lead character, again, James Caan, who's like the 15th choice as well, this is a writer who's been defined by something and wants to escape it. And no one will let him, to the degree that they'll break his ankles.
Right. And that's what I wanted. I didn't want to be a sitcom actor. for the rest of life. I wanted to direct.
So I did relate to that character. I try to find my way into a movie. I can't be a traffic cop. I have to have some kind of emotional connection.
You got to anchor it.
Yeah, somehow.
All these questions you get into when you're directing, where it's like. it's 51% to 49%. You don't know, but you need that tether.
Well, what draws you to something? You feel connected to it.
Yes, exactly. That makes your decision for you. You ultimately go, well, what would I... Yeah. Which is helpful.
And then, of course, just A Few Good Men. You told one story about this that I think is incredible. At the table read of A Few Good Men, Nicholson does it nearly identical to how he does it.
He came to play, as they say. He sat down and he had all these great actors, young actors, Kevin Bacon and Demi Moore and Tom Cruise. And when he starts to do the table read and it's full out performance, it sends a signal to everybody else. We're here to do this thing. It brought everybody's game up.
I always liken him to somebody like Magic Johnson, because they know that if the other people are doing their best, it's going to make him look better. He's definitely out there to make everything better.
Talk about some lines and scenes and performances that just get completely stamped into our shared consciousness.
You can't handle the truth.
Yeah, yeah.
People who don't even know where it's from know it.
Here's my favorite thing of all. I'll have what she's having, and you killed my father. Whatever the things are, from Spinal Tap, this goes to 11.. Elon Musk-.
Made it into Tesla.
I DMed him today because when he first Tesla came out, he showed me, he said, look, the radio goes to 11 because he loved the movie.
Oh, my God. Did you not know that at all? I did not know that. Oh yeah.
And yeah, for any Spinal Tap freak like me, I was like, oh, this is fucking incredible. This thing made its way into a real product.
So the thing that gets me more than anything is I did this film called The Bucket List, which was Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. And they're both guys who would-.
Sean Hayes is a friend of mine.
Dying from cancer, and they're going to do all these experiences. They have a bucket list. Everybody thinks that. that's a term that's been around for a million years. It was made up for the film.
That is crazy. I mean, I saw the movie, but in my head it was just a ubiquitous, but no, it was made up. It was crazy.
I only have one thing like that, which is people will go, are you punking me? That's like in the vernacular. I'm getting punked. It wasn't a thing.
Yeah, it wasn't a thing until it was a thing. And everybody says, well, it's on my bucket list.
Yeah.
Okay. We're off of your incredible movies. By God, literally just thank you. Those are like some of my favorite experiences in life. sitting and watching those movies.
We're both obsessed with Russia, I think.
Yeah. I had a website during the 2016 election. It was called the Committee to Investigate Russia. When we had heard that the Russians were playing in the 2016 election, we found out that they were. And Trump was fine with that.
And so that was the beginning of a real string of corruption that he started and continues to this day.
Have you watched any of the front lines on him? Because they are among my very favorite docs I've ever seen in my life. In particular, there's like a three hour one about how he came.
to power. Oh, you mean Putin?
Putin. How he came to power.
Yeah. He was a functionary, KGB guy. He was Yeltsin's right-hand man.
And Yeltsin brought him in because he had been the right-hand man of the St. Petersburg governor. Right. And the long history in Russia is every time these guys step down from power, they get tried on embezzlement and they all end up dying in prison. And Putin masterminded an exit of this St.
Petersburg governor. He got him out of the country. They faked a medical episode. He put him on a plane and Yeltsin said, I want to step down. I don't want to rot in prison.
I need this guy. I'll just add it, because it's so fascinating, but that Yeltsin very much wants to be able to hand over the power to Putin. And so he funds this huge campaign to raise the awareness of Putin. and it's getting nowhere, because Putin has no personality. It's not working.
And then, lo and behold, mysteriously, three apartment buildings get destroyed and blown up by, quote, the Crimeans. I don't know what we call the Chechenians. And later revealed some of the armaments didn't go off in a fourth apartment building and they were all discovered to be Russian armaments. So they blow up these three buildings with their own civilians. And then he puts Putin in charge of the invasion of Crimea.
And then all of a sudden, the people want him to be president. Like what? You couldn't write an.
origin story for a bad guy. I know. And Yeltsin was struggling with alcohol and he was a mess.
And then later came to regret this and had spoke out about some of the anti-democratic things he.
was doing. And if you look at what happened in the 2016 election, it didn't take very much to swing it, because all it took was three cities, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia. And the aggregate of those three cities of 79,000 votes. And all you had to do is suppress the black vote in those three cities, which they did. And then you flip and all of a sudden, even though Hillary has 3 million more votes, she loses.
And that's what I'm afraid of now. Yes. And that's what your.
new documentary is about, God and country. Okay. I think the most important thing that we say up front is that this movie is not anti-Christian. Oh no, it's the opposite. It's pro-Christian.
It's very pro-Christian. It is included many, many trusted, outspoken members and leaders.
of Christianity. That was important because my name being associated with it, first of all, I'm Jewish. Second of all, I'm a Hollywood libtard. Yes. That's what I am.
You're as bad as it gets. Right. So we wanted to make sure that this movie, which is about Christian nationalism, in no way diminishes Christianity. And so we have the most respected, conservative, devout Christian leaders talking about not only the danger that Christian nationalism poses to the country, but to Christianity itself. That this is not a religious movement, it's a political movement, and it is basically destroying Christianity in that it completely negates.
the teachings of Jesus. Yeah. So quickly, I think people have heard the term white nationalists. Everyone's pretty clear about that. Those are people that would like to see an America that is just white.
It's their birthright to be here, and no one else's. Christian nationalism is by.
and large white. It's over 90% white people. And that element of racism that you're talking about.
is there. As we'll find out, it's foundational to the formation of the Christian nationalists. Yes. But what I didn't really know, and I think I'm up on this stuff, is that Christian nationalists are people who believe truly that this should be a Christian nation. We should have biblical laws.
I'm talking, if you think Sharia law is bad, this is Sharia law, but this is anti-gay, no marriage, this is anti-abortion, this is anti-books, this is anti-secular education.
This is a dramatic, draconian approach. Yeah. They don't believe in separation of church and state. They will tell you that there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. Well, the words separation of church and state are not per se in the Constitution, but the idea of separating church and state is mentioned three times in the Constitution.
In fact, it's so fully.
articulated that we use the term separation of church and state to just condense what is.
written in there. That's exactly right. And the reason for that is the founders of the country, many of whom came from Europe and were running away from religious persecution, wanted to make sure that the country would not have a religion, that you could pray however you wanted, and it's in the Bill of Rights, that there's no test for a religion into holding public office. All of that was very intentionally done, so much so that the first words in the Constitution are, we, the people. Which was revolutionary.
Revolutionary. That had never been done. It's always been, it's all divine. They were saying, we, the people, will govern ourselves, self-rule. And so they don't believe in that.
They don't believe in separation of church. They'll tell you there is no separation. And they believe that we should be living toward whatever their ideas are, the rules of God. But it certainly isn't Jesus' teaching, because nowhere do I see Jesus saying, take up arms and kill somebody who doesn't believe what you believe.
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
Okay.
So it starts, I think, on the surface, people, myself included, would have assumed that this got organized in the wake of Roe v. Wade. But there's an interesting history that actually predates Roe v. Wade. And the kernel of this movement really gets started with the beginning of desegregating schools.
That's exactly right. In 1954, you had Brown versus the Boys, and Brown versus the Boys, which said that we have to make the schools desegregated. We have to make sure that blacks and whites can go to the same school. Well, that wasn't liked very much by a certain group of people. So they decided to make these religious schools and not allow black people to come to their schools.
And that became the galvanizing issue for the beginnings of this white Christian nationalist movement. The problem they had is it's really ugly to say, we're going to base a movement on racism.
It wasn't going to work even in 1954.
Well, that was the thing. And they resisted it. It's an extension of the Civil War that was fought over blacks not being allowed to be free. And so, all of a sudden, in 1972, 73, Roe v. Wade comes along and they went, ah, here's something we can build a movement on.
And they used that and they built this movement. And it's gotten incredibly powerful. It's very well funded. It is not the majority of Christians. The vast, vast majority of Christians don't like this and don't believe in this.
But, as you know, any political movement, if you can get 25, 30% of a country, particularly with a system that we have here in America, the electoral college, only have to pick off five or six states and you can win an election, even though you may lose the popular vote by 10 million votes.
And this is in the documentary that of the 15 most populous states, only 30% of the citizens live in a rural setting, yet they control 70% of that Senate outcome. That's right. It's enormously lopsided and it's inherently anti-democratic in a sense.
When the founders formed the country, they gave two senators to every state, and that's okay. But the constitution has been amended many, many times and it's time to amend the constitution and have the electoral college done away with and have a popular vote. Whoever gets the most votes wins.
Yeah. We have the technology to do that. It's plausible.
Yeah. But the problem you have in order to do that is very difficult, because you have to get two-thirds majority in the House, two-thirds majority in the Senate, and then it has to be passed by simple majorities in three-fourths of the state legislatures. That's a big, heavy lift, because Republicans, the way they are now, they know that if you change that system and let the best man win, best woman, whoever gets the most votes, they'll never win an election based on the ideology that they have.
It also ignores the demographics of 1776.
. I don't know the numbers, but I know that far more people lived in rural areas than lived in cities. And so it really ignores this enormous migration and where the actual citizens live.
Yeah. Well, you got, let's say Maine or Vermont. Vermont, they got a million people, or Rhode Island, Montana, they got a million, two senators, California, 40, some odd million, two senators.
It's kind of crazy. So I grew up, obviously, post this movement coalescing around Roe v. Wade, obviously, Jerry Falwell is a big figurehead in this movement. So I grew up in an era where evangelicals were outspokenly against abortion, but I was shocked to learn in the documentary when Roe v. Wade, that was a very split thing, even among evangelicals back then.
Well, evangelicals, there's no mention of abortion in the Bible. And the people who believe that religion should be practiced freely don't feel that you should impose your ideas on other people. You can make the arguments if you want, but you should not use religion as a way of imposing your will. And so most evangelicals, they may believe, and they have heartfelt beliefs, that you should not have abortion. And you have to respect that.
I respect that. But they're saying, don't impose that will on somebody else.
That's. the distinction, is that although they still were dramatically majority pro-life, they didn't believe at that time that that should be the rule of law.
Right. And what they felt was, it's a decision a woman makes with her doctor and her family and her God. And that's a decision that's up to her. They would say, think twice about it. Maybe you want to put a child up for adoption.
Maybe we can find a way of providing. But they don't say that. They're just saying, you can't have an abortion. So you wind up with a 10-year-old girl having to leave Ohio in order to get an abortion. And now you're seeing, is the dog that caught the car?
All of a sudden, this issue, which played very well for them as a wedge issue, is playing well the other way. Yes, that's so true. People are saying, we don't want somebody who was raped by their uncle or their father.
One of the experts you have in the documentary says, I personally held this position until I represented a 10- or 12-year-old girl who had been raped by her uncle and was carrying a baby. And she said, I had to really confront what this really is in some cases.
That's right.
So this movement gets more and more fervent and more violent by nature. It's really fascinating to watch you show the progression of the sermons and this very popular notion in Christian nationalists of Jesus as a warrior. They really home in on revelations. You're showing the covers of these books in the doc, and it looks like a spinal tap creation. There's a ripped Jesus, and he's out hell-bent for blood.
Yeah, the muscular Jesus. And it's explained perfectly by Russell Moore, who is the editor of Christianity Today, one of the most respected people in that field. He says, Jesus believed, you fight with the gospel. You don't fight with weapons and guns. You fight by convincing people.
Conversation.
Virtue.
That's how you fight, not killing people.
Right. Now, I guess I wouldn't have made this connection until I saw this movie. When I looked at the Capitol riots, I looked at the people that were attending. My first thought was, what's binding this group together? I can't figure out.
There's so many different signs. You've got, don't tread on me. You've got this over here. What I was kind of missing is how many Jesus save signs, how many crosses were being held. And I didn't know this part, that all of that was preceded the day before by the Jericho marches of January 5th.
You know about those? I don't. That's really what this film is about, is that the Capitol 6 riots or insurrection was fully organized by these Christian nationalists. Yes. And that there was steps to this.
And the Jericho marches, which was recreating the storm of Jericho, where the walls fell. They would have been advertised and promoted. And this was all part of the same thing. They got on buses. They got Roger Stone preaching at that thing.
All the piety in Jesus is like, what?
Yeah, yeah.
I didn't know that connection. My assumption was they were mostly Christians, but not that they were Christian nationalists first.
Yes. And we're not saying that all the rioters of January 6th were Christian nationalists, but they formed the nucleus and the foundation for what happened on January 6th. I mean, you had Alex Jones out there screaming about, God is on our side.
We're going to war. We're going to go to battle. And you see the amount of people that were at the January 5th Jericho march. It's a lot of people. It's clear to me that certainly a good deal of those people hung around for January 6th.
And you see them praying on the floor of the Senate.
Yes, when they seize control, in quotes.
In the name of Jesus.
And the Speaker of the House, where he sits. or she sits, there's a bullhorn and he's leading a prayer.
I don't feel like people talked about this much.
Well, I think the problem is there was a January 6th committee that looked into all of this. But if they had talked about Christian nationalism, first of all, it's a term that not a lot of people understand. They think, if you're saying that you're bashing Christianity in some way. Right. And I think that the January 6th committee understood that.
That if they put that there was a fervent fight from Christian nationalism, then it would have made people not listen.
It would have further perpetuated their own narrative that Christianity is under attack.
Under attack, exactly. And you notice all the people that spoke there and all the witnesses, they were all Republicans and they consciously did that, but they left out this part of it. And I think there was right to do it, because we have to spend an hour and a half in this film explaining to people what Christian nationalism is and why it's a danger, not only to the country, but to Christianity.
Yeah. It's very comforting to hear so many of the leaders in the Christian world be so outspokenly against this.
And a lot of people are starting to understand that now. There are even people in the film, Robert Jeffress, he's gung-ho Christian nationalist. I've read some things where he's starting to back away and say, maybe I didn't think this through because they want abortion to be overturned. And that's the thing that they feel they achieve. But what are we doing now to people?
And how far have we gotten away from the true teachings of Jesus?
Well, and you also acknowledge that because their story about Trump was he was the chosen one. Right. You have so much news footage of these people right in public saying he's the chosen one. And so if the chosen one doesn't win the election, clearly God wanted him to. There has to be a conspiracy, but you have no other choice.
If God's backing this candidate, then what choice do you have but to believe? It's like they painted themselves into a corner.
That's right. And it also gives you permission to do anything if you're doing it in God's name. What's interesting is this movement has been around for a long time. It's grown, it's gotten more powerful, it's more well-funded, but it all of a sudden had a mouthpiece.
He's pandering like a motherfucker.
Yeah, because he knows that at this point, it's his ticket to get out of prison, get out of jail free card. I mean, that's what he's looking to do. So it's been amplified by his voice. And he's more than happy to keep saying, I'm the chosen one, I'm your retribution.
Why do they just believe it when he holds the Bible upside down and when he's saying the craziest stuff and just his history? Why are they so susceptible to believe it just because?
he says it? Because he's saying out loud, Christianity is under attack and needs to be saved. I'm a true believer. He is playing to the audience.
Yes, and I'm going to be the one who is going to make this a white Christian nation. I'm going to shut the borders down. I'm going to have a Muslim ban. I'm going to make sure that there's a wall. All of those things are to feed that.
But think about this for a second. The guy wins the Iowa primary, wins it handily. Yeah, handily. And the next day, he goes to a trial where he was found that he had raped a woman. I know.
This is the person that these Christian nationalists are all in favor of, a guy who raped somebody.
Yeah.
Weirdly, the doc did answer a question, because, let me just say, I don't think the right's crazy. I don't think the right's bad. I don't hold that opinion.
I don't either. Nationalism is a different thing.
I totally agree with you. But I was genuinely perplexed how people were buying into the stolen vote narrative. You have Republican governors saying, no, there's been no fraud. You have the makers of the machine going, here's the data. So what was missing for me was answered by this, which is, if God picked Trump, that's how I can overlook all this stuff.
Yes. Because I was not clear. I'm like, well, how are they perpetuating this belief?
Right. And it's amplified by the fact that you have some very spineless Republican elected officials who know. They know it's not stolen.
Listen to Tucker Carlson's tags.
They know. They know. They all fucking know. But they feel this is their ticket to maintain power, and they'll stay with them.
The funding for this is a billion dollars. There's a billion dollars on the table to fund this.
Well, more. They just gave this guy, Leonard Lee, he got a billion six. The money is there.
But you have to tip your hat to this group because they're explicit about it. They're not hiding it. They're like, here's how this system can be exploited by us. Right. They know they're a minority, and they know that they could be in power, and they have the playbook, and they're not hiding it.
No. And the way our system is set up, they can be in power with a minority.
Yes.
Because all you need to do is get that guy in the White House, and then he starts firing all the civil servants, putting in political loyalists, and then there you have it.
Yeah. Well, it's a really, really well-made documentary. I loved watching it so much.
Good. Well, it's going to be in theaters February 16th.
And then we have a Spinal Tap 2 coming.
Oh, that's so exciting. But that was not for a while.
That's a while away. We can get excited. What a discovery today. All right. The last thing I want to end on is, I'm listening to many interviews of you last night laying in bed.
I'm sorry.
I know. I enjoyed every moment of it. And my wife's walking back and forth throughout the bedroom, going to here, going to here. And at some point, she goes, why are you having Kimmel on again? You just had him on.
And all of a sudden, I went, oh my God, that is your voice.
You mean I sound like Kimmel?
Yes. Obviously, Kimmel sounds like you. You're older.
Wow. I got to listen to Kimmel a little bit more. I'm trying to hear that.
I got to let that sound in. It's pretty crazy.
I was curious if you ever had gotten that prior to this.
No. This is the first Kimmel reference, and I'm going to now start comparing contrasts.
You should be calling people and saying, this is Jimmy Kimmel, and just make a mess of his life. I think that's what you should do. Well, Rob, it's an incredible pleasure to meet you. Yeah. Great for coming.
This has been so fun. You're a great interviewee.
Thank you.
So prolific and an icon. I know you know it, but it's so fun for us to get to have people like you in here.
Truly, truly, truly, truly.
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