Morgan Neville (documentary filmmaker)

Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert experts on experts. I'm Dan Neville, and I'm joined by Monica Morgan. I loved this. This was really really fun. You didn't, did you?

Oh He's in.

We're picking out candles together right now.

Yes, and Rob great. Where have you begun looking? I mentioned the h24 makes film genre themed candles, And they sent me a documentary camp. Yes, So now we're browsing the genre as a candle, what does the documentary? desperation is what I said.

Yeah, yeah, it smells like I just walked into, like a Thai restaurant in New York City, yeah, it's not strong.

So I've lit this candle and that's what started this whole thing.

Morgan, welcome. Thank you. You know, I'm embarrassed to admit this, but I wouldn't have been able to just know your name off the top of my head. But when I was looking at the amount of movies you've made that I've loved, it's pretty outstanding.

You are very prolific, but I've been an independent filmmaker for 30 years, which means you just hustle. this Summer is 30 years when I started my first film. Yes, And for the first 15 years nobody cared.

How do you explain that? I mean for me it feels like you had such limited distribution options.

Basically, it was PBS or maybe HBO. Yeah, right, and that was about it. and then

Theatrically, that's dicey as well, right? There were a few rare films like Roger me or.

9-11, you know the Michael Moore things, or maybe man on wire. There were kind of a few moments where people thought Oh, docs might do something, and then they just kind of receded. But there was home video and there were ways to kind of stitch together money to make films. and I ended up making a lot Of music films because I could get music films funded different ways, because at least you know There's some kind of an audience. Sometimes it'd be labels.

This is nothing to do with anything, but you just said Hank Williams. Yeah, have you seen? there's an Instagram account? I'm sure there's many, and one's called like I ruined it, I think and with AI, this gentleman, He's a bazillion songs, but the one I saw was Hank Williams singing NW a. oh my god.

Okay, a little bit overall, you know overarchingly, cuz I don't want us to be able to say like a Morgan Neville movie about this Water bottle, and then it's perfect, Like it's not fair. Well, I.

Guess, if you own the IP and you can just churn out like if Morgan did have the ability to type in my style Movie, that's right. You are on potato chips. Yeah, and then it came out exactly how he'd make it.

It's funny because when I did the Hank Williams documentary, There are only nine minutes of footage of Hank Williams that exist in the world. Oh, my video of film film. Okay, so I made a hundred minute film.

Nine minutes of footage. So did you do a lot of illustrations?

Well, I had a lot of photos, but then I was shooting all over Alabama and Tennessee, and then I actually got Hank three, his grandson, to kind of Hang out in a trailer and play music, and I shot all this stuff with him. So he kind of stands in for his grandfather. Did you reach out to Hank jr? I did, but he didn't pick up the phone.

Yeah, he's a wild bocephus. He's mercurial. Yes, of the nine minutes that existed, Was it all just one? or did you multiple like? was it all at Grand Ole, Opry or something?

No, he was on a TV show, the Kate Smith show, and there were, like him, doing two songs there, And then there were a couple of snippets of home movies of different things him in the Louisiana Hey ride and him playing it like a state fair or something. He was insanely young, right? What'd he die at 28?.

29.. Yeah, what a legend. at 29.. I mean, it's.

Incredible what he did, but the thing everybody forgets is when he died. Everybody was shitting on him at the time. Basically. He had just been fired by the Grand Ole Opry. He had just gotten divorced.

Yeah, everybody embraced him. Well, and hence the name of one of your films. They'll love me when I'm dead. They'll love me worse than well. Yeah, which is true.

It's a great way to rehab your public image. sweat. Gore Vidal said about Truman Capote when he heard he had died. He said good career move. Oh.

My god, that's okay. So that was another great movie of yours. best of enemies, Gore Vidal and William Buckley. We're like on opposite sides of the political spectrum and they would have these many debates. Yeah, so in.

1968, ABC, who was like the distant Network at the time that had no money, couldn't afford to do gavel-to-gavel coverage. so they get these two guys who hate each other, political opposites and Put them on television every night of the convention to argue with each other, and it becomes such a phenomena That they start doing it again, again, and everybody imitates it. and now that's how we have the debates. That's now basically cable news, you know people just arguing with each other, But this is the first time, but their level was incredibly high, Wow.

Yeah, it'd be like if Adam Grant was fighting with I don't know who would be right wing equivalent, Like intellectual, Yeah, but like really premier intellects of the time. It's a crazy story.

I loved making that film, but I still work for Gore Vidal. You did, Yeah, my first job out of college, and what capacity I was his fact-checker.

His Monica. Yeah, we have a fact-check on this show after each episode. Yes,

Yeah, Decreasing.

It's hard to do. there's so much out there.

I have to say, being Gore Vidal's fact-checker was maybe the worst job I've ever had, because he spouted so many facts. Not only did he have facts at his fingertips, which were amazing. This is before the Internet. Yeah, I mean he would remember passages from memory and he'd maybe miss a word or two. So my job was to call him in Ravello, Italy, on the phone and say gore.

He probably didn't love being corrected, even though he hired you to do that.

If you know anything about Gore Vidal, he did not like to get that job. How random. I went to work at the nation magazine and he started writing for the nation and They assigned me to gore and they kind of said this is about as difficult as fact-checking is gonna get.

That's why I'm very Gore Vidal, in that way that I spout a lot of facts. Far lower level of accuracy. I'm sure, than gore. Let's start in LA. It's always weird to me when someone is from LA.

Yeah, my mom was born here. Is she first generation, Angelina? Yeah, my grandparents were born in the Bay Area, Oh, yeah, but California, going back. Wow, Glendale. and what did she do?

Monica's new obsession. Yeah, obsessed with getting a Harry Potter.

I'm trying to get some first editions of lots of books, not just Harry, But yeah.

Our house was shelves, every room, floor to ceiling, except the bathrooms. mom wouldn't let my dad shelve the bathrooms and then our Vacations were basically going to places that had bookstores. and sometimes we'd be in a tiny town and my dad would go into a store. He'd say oh, I think we're gonna be here for four hours Because he'd be coming, because suddenly he's like I found something.

This is my dream life to be married to that person or be to be like.

Right on all vacations, like going into a little bookstore.

It was actually kind of amazing, and my dad became friends with lots of writers and he started a little press where he would publish Books. when he opened his bookstore the opening day, Charles Bukowski came and did a reading at my dad's bookstore.

Okay, you know how obsessed I am.

At our house.

Well, you have no idea what you. just I'm gonna try to not talk. just know that he did most of his writing three blocks. That way I know which is crazy. and then even crazier.

John Martin, who ran Black Sparrow, was in Santa Barbara, where we moved when I was a Kid, and we lived there for a number of years. Oh, really? And so John Martin was a friend of ours, and my dad became friends with Chuck, as I called him Bukowski, And the first time my dad really hung out with him, He was doing like a poetry reading or something in a coffee shop, and somehow they ended up on a bender my parents and Bukowski.

Right. Well now, really quick. Was your dad a pro or was he out of his depths?

He was totally out of his depth. Okay, my dad was good.

Bukowski, you know people would cooperate in that dog like Sean Penn's, obsessed with them all. just typewriter. the list goes on.

I know I mean there have been a couple of great ones. Taylor Hackford made one in the 70s. I don't know if you've ever seen it. I've seen a couple.

It's always a bummer, cuz there's a lot of terrible footage of him that exists. Yeah, he was rough with women and it's on film. It's gnarly. I hate it. Yep.

It's a very memorable line. It's not that I don't like people. I just seem to feel better when they're not around. Yeah, I tried to put him in my first documentary, which was this Mondo LA History documentary called shotgun freeway drives through lost LA. he was sick at the time and he ended up dying while we were making the film.

Yeah, so there's all post making Barfly. Yes, You know, 93, and he loved driving in LA. That was one of his obsessions, right?

Yeah, that whole documentary was me trying to understand LA history. I mean, I was a kid from LA who went back east to college and I would talk about LA History. you went to Penn. Yeah, I went to Penn, but people would laugh at me when I would say things like LA history. They're like, oh, that's an oxymoron.

There's a teacher I fell in love with at UCLA who taught LA Geography at a few different LA geography classes, and I found it to be insanely fascinating. It's a crazy fascinating History for a city. I love it.

My whole theory on LA history is it just doesn't look like normal history. It's not that it's not history, but most urban histories are like a couple hundred years, based around a city hall and power, and all the cities the 18th, 19th, 20th century city halls are right next to each other, and it's this power brokers and Tammany Hall and all these things. Yes, LA is like a really wide shallow pool. And so the amount of water is there. It's just really thin and really wide.

His reigning theory was like LA is a town defined by booms and busts. more than any other city in America, It's had so many waves of booms and busts, from oil to motion picture, Mass agriculture, all these different huge booms and busts that are pretty fascinating.

It's amazing. If you really look at it, how fast LA grew. up until World War two. It wasn't even the biggest city in California, San Francisco was, but it doubled in population every decade for six decades.

Which is crazy. Okay. Did you happen to listen to the Letterman episode since we were promoting your movie?

I did. in fact, I think, right after you taped that, I got a call from Letterman's Manager saying hey, we just did this podcast and Dave kind of butchered your name. I hope you don't mind. I was like mine. I love it.

Turned you into Morgan. I became Morgan Freeman.

But I enjoyed that so much, the Bono and.

They're all playing. that was magical. It was really one of those moments You're like, I can't believe I'm in this room. I can't believe this is happening in front of me.

It wasn't felt like you teleported into another life. I've had that experience a lot. I'm there.

I've been really, really fortunate, but that was one of those things. it came up that Dave Wants to do something with Bono and Edge and they don't know what it is. But they want to play some music and they're revisiting their catalog and what's it gonna be. and what I often do when I start A film is the first thing I did is I just said hey, let me just sit down with Dave and talk. So I sat down a room like this, recorded it.

I don't think I asked him. we talked about this moment in the film, But I have three favorite moments of that movie in that bar. because there's a look on his face That's just never been seen. It's him with like insane wonder in Humbled by what he's seen, and it's so outside of his own specialty to just be vibrantly alive out loud.

Unselfconsciously, it was great. I mean the thing I told him was you're used to being the host, You're the guest right, and it's like a different thing for him. This kind of event in the bar was put on for him and I think he understood that he was like This is for me that this is happening.

Then the other one is also a moment of great humbling, which is when the edge starts playing, the streets have no name. Yeah, that guitar thing. I think it overwhelmed everyone there, right? I'm sure you. yeah, clearly, Dave, that was incredible.

yeah, I've done a lot of films about really talented people and I Feel people have superpowers sometimes. Yes. That was one of those magic moments. We're like, oh, this person has this power. They seem normal and then they do this thing.

How much were you intending on getting of he and Glenn Hansard? Interacting? and then how much did you end up getting? did that alter from like what you thought you were gonna do and what ended?

Up happening. Yeah, you don't know what's gonna happen. Everything's a flyer. I'm a huge Glenn Hansard fan. I've seen him and I'd seen the frames.

And to me, it's so obvious why, which is their polar opposites. One guy is like all intellect and control and the other guy is just like walking around as a six-foot-three Heart with limbs and his fucking eyes, and he was a guest star on Parenthood. So I spent a week with Glenn in a studio, just acting and shooting the shit and yeah, the eyes and just the humanity.

Sweetest guy just humbled and wears his emotions on his sleeve in a way that is not Dave.

Of Dave and being so attracted to it and drawn to it, the fact that he just ended up taking a train ride with him Forever, and all these different things. I loved that part. It was great.

I mean that was just one of those things that was kind of magical. and then we get to the train station. at the end, At this station in Dublin, and they have one of those pianos set up like a public piano That's chained to the thing. So people can go, sit down and play very Irish Yeah, and Glenn starts playing in the station. the whole station gets quiet.

It is a superpower needs to be treated as such.

Yeah, I mean the first time I really clued into it is when I did the film 20 feet from stardom about backup singers.

I'm embarrassed to say I haven't seen. Oh my god.

It's not one of the Academy Award for good, but it's about these people who are basically the best singers on the planet. They're better than the famous singers, because these people have to nail anything anytime.

With no preparation and no support. they have to be a piano, they have to be like in tune.

They're magically talented, and I realized I'd be talking to some lady and I'd say, oh, yeah, Well, how did that go? and then they would sing something? I'd be like, oh my god. Yeah, you can do that on demand. So I got to the point where I was constantly being like, hey, how did that go?

Yeah, it's probably one of the very coolest things humans, as an animal, can do, like open their throat and let out.

Emotion and feeling. did you know when you were making that like? this is gonna win an Academy? Like, can you tell the difference when you're in these? you're making a stinker versus?

You've certainly made a stinker. I mean you've made movies. I've made some that were maybe less successful, but some are Colt records. Okay, it's fine. It's.

Whoever said that.

No, it's a very familiar phenomenon. in retrospect, everything is a success, but when you're making it, you don't know.

All right. Let's have two provocative dances. One is okay. They're the best singers on the planet. Yeah.

No, it's not just notes really. what that film becomes an exploration of is how There was a world of backup singing in the 50s and, like the Ray Conniff singers and the Hollywood Angelic, the perfect kind of soft choral sound. and these were all white ladies who sight read perfectly. and part of what 20 feet tells is there was this Revolution in the 60s, the studios in LA in New York, that started taking singers out of the churches in South Central or New Jersey. That's where sissy Houston and Dionne Warwick, and here in LA, Mary Clayton and Darlene Love and these people who are like Amazing gospel church singers, as rock and roll started happening.

Okay. Now, here's the other one. I want to dance about. I loved, won't you be my neighbor? Thanks.

Yeah, no, so Francois officer Clemens, the black police officer in the neighborhood, Yeah, who was gay and openly gay and it's part of one of the stories of the film said that he had Talked to Fred about it and that Fred was definitely not gay. and I have no position and zero evidence. Who knows, in another era, maybe he would have a different sexuality, but in the life he lived.

Yeah, and I guess you could say like why do I even care to have that part examined? But I also think it is a very relevant part of the story. in the same way that some people in the 60s and 70s, They were like, well, I can't live the life. I designed to live. So what version am I gonna?

and I felt like that's part of that, but he would have had to have acknowledged that in.

Order to be able to get there, and he did. I want to be ultra clear that what I'm about to say is I'm not Talking about pedophile priests, but I am saying that a lot of gay men found themselves in clergy just because they were gonna have a wonderful excuse for why They didn't have a partner. I'm not talking about the pedophiles that went there to pray on children, But I'm talking about the people that had to hide from their Sexuality, and we've interviewed several now openly gay men who had been considering the clergy because it's a good place to hide.

yeah, and I mean Fred got married early on and Became a pastor, and part of what I think we asked in the film is Fred certainly presented a different version of masculinity, yeah, that we hadn't really seen, and certainly a very different version of parenting and fatherhood that we had never seen before, and kind Of trying to model that which is beautiful. Yeah, because it's deeply empathetic and understanding, and I think a lot of people just said he can't be this guy, I can't be a straight dad. There's got to be something. Maybe what I'm succumbing to, I think part of it is just like he can't be that way, and I'm not saying that he maybe didn't have Struggles in some very personal way, but yeah, there was zero evidence of that. I talked to everybody, you know, And I read his letters.

It's beautiful, and it was my childhood is so many people that saw it, and I Dreamt of a man that nice in my life. My stepdads weren't like him. My male teachers weren't like I was my way.

That's part of why it's hard for you, though, because you didn't know men like that. I knew one man like that. We're straight. Mr.

Wood, right? Yeah. Yeah. He was very much like mr. Rogers and then, as I became an adult and I reconnected with them.

He certainly set lots of people's gaydar off. No dad, right, which is why you, then I would more.

I wouldn't be more interested in story wise, because it would make me even that much more Sympathetic to my hero that at the time he was alive, He had to live that way. if that was part of it, That would be a compelling and sad part of his story. And this is a man we love. I love, so that's why I would.

Want to know, but that kind of undercurrent of sadness. I don't think it was there. It wasn't there. I just don't think it was there. Okay me, you would have found it.

Right, but that he can't just be this guy, and that probably is a big part of my baggage, which is like catch. What's the catch? Why is someone so nice and kind?

It's funny because, particularly spending a lot of time at Pittsburgh shooting the film Everybody in Pittsburgh had Fred Rogers stories. today, day one, first shoot. I get in a cab. I say take me somewhere. He said what are you doing?

Maybe this just speaks to my ultra low opinion of heterosexual men.

So you go in Feeling like, yeah, I know one, you know, I'm mr. Rogers, not exactly, but I have a friend. Everyone for so long and still a lot of people do think he's gay and he's not. I know what you're talking about.

And yes, and I would say if I were saying what I'm saying about. Mr. Rogers, about a current person, I would think it's really shitty of me because I would have to believe your friend, I have to take someone at their word in the 60s. I don't know if I got to take someone at their word that stakes are so high to admit that a different time. Yeah, so it's like it is a different context for me to be suspicious for sure.

I mean, it's interesting that one of the stories we tell in the film it's Francois Clemens, who is a gay actor, who played this role of the officer, and he's the one who shared a little kiddie pool and They put their feet in together so they could have their black in the same water. But he tells the story that when he came out and started going to gay bars And word was getting out and Fred said you can't do that because we have sponsors, It's a kid show, and they had a fight about it, and Fred later Admitted that it was a mistake that we never should have done that many of their best friends were in the gay community, And Fred became a big advocate for gay causes later at his funeral. We have that scene where the Westboro Baptist Church are protesting his funeral, in part because he had been so supportive of gay causes.

Oh, we interviewed Megan. Oh, yeah, I don't know if you know her story. Yeah, I do. It is incredible fact that she found her way out of that.

Really sat with me for so long. Yeah, well, try making that for two years.

Kind of the emotional journey you go on making something like that. Oh.

Hard. Yeah, and you know, we've interviewed a lot of his peers, different chefs. Sure. We've known him and it's just unanimous. They all loved him.

Yeah, he drinks a little more than casually sometimes too. Yeah. I was a little bit like oh, that's interesting.

We're at least told you probably never gonna be able to do that. Yeah, like a gentleman, after you've been a junkie, He never did rehab right and he never really did a program. we're gonna meet.

No, I mean his way of dealing with it is, you know, he was an addict. So he was like, well, what am I gonna be addicted to now? Exactly. Yeah, Oh, work, the fact that he was, as a chef in Kitchen, Confidential. He was the most Strict, punctual person of all time and he said look, if I'm gonna be the restaurant 12 hours a day, I'm gonna be on time, no matter what.

Wrongly assumed when I heard that news. I don't know how often this happens, but Occasionally this happens and there's like a collective sadness about it. He was one of them where I think everyone felt sad, hundred percent, and I remember like how do you explain it? Because he's very successful and it seems to be having a blast on these shows. And of course I was like, it's got to be the addiction thing.

Yeah, he made all those choices.

Yeah, exactly, and he lost himself in that, as so many older men who date really young women and get lost in that whole thing. It's me. I'm like, oh, it's so powerful, It's as powerful as heroin or more, to see him lose confidence. that footage you have of him Like trying to celebrate her at dinner, and it's like the 80th time He said the same thing, and you can see on her face She's sick of it and you can see the desperation in his. it's as if you're watching someone who is.

Very fucked up from a drug. that relationship was another one of his hyper fixations, but it's dangerous to put that on to a person. I mean not only you're never gonna have a healthy relationship out of that kind of an imbalance, But in a situation like that, when he was so kind of untethered at that point, Yes, because he'd kind of given a domestic life a shot. you know, he tried to kind of be the dad with the white picket fence and just.

Couldn't do it of the whole thing. It really is, And he couldn't live like that healthily. No, and in his contract.

I mean I talked to all the people to work with him and he worked so hard a number of days. He was on the road. a year were 265 days here, or something crazy. He's in war zones for some of those days. Yeah, in late seasons.

Yeah, Jose Andre, sometimes on the top of buildings. Yeah, bombs are going off.

He could have done less work like in his contract. They said you can do half as many shows and still make a lot of money. Yeah, it'll be fine. And he always wanted that clause in his contract, but he never did it. He never worked less because that addiction number one, which is it will find being productive.

Reward of doing what I really want to do. This is the other tricky thing. Yeah, I think that works perfectly hand-in-hand Work addiction with other addictions, because you tell yourself you've earned it and really all you really want to do is earn it. the incredible Britney Spears documentary. to find out They wanted her to do a show every night as the part of this residency, and the agreement was they would double her Adderall Description.

I mean. the other thing I think a lot about with Tony is he was such a deeply curious Person, was, I guess, skeptical of everything. He got a tattoo when he was 62 years before he died. that said, in ancient Greece, I'm certain of nothing, and that kind of sounds cool in a way of like, question everything and I get all that. But by the time you're 60, there are certain things you shouldn't question the love of your child, the people who care about you.

It's time to trust a little bit. You have to trust. Yeah, and you have to be like, okay.

I will have faith that that is a real thing. Those are the things that give you root and keep you from being as Unrooted as Tony became. Yeah, I think in a little way He got lost in this kind of philosophical idea of what really matters and where the real things in my life, right?

Oh, I loved that one man. That was a heartbreaker. It reminded me of her the Spike Jonze movie, where I felt lovesick for like five days. Yeah, I had fallen in love and gotten my heart broken. This one was with me for a long, long time.

It's a mixture. The best answer is when an idea comes up, which could be me stumbling on something, just saying Oh, I have to do this when I don't have to talk myself into it, I just have to trust my gut because it has to stay me for a couple of years. There's this kind of snowball effect if I find it getting more interesting and me getting deeper into it. That's the good trend. many times There been something that's like that's interesting and I dig into it and it just doesn't get momentum.

Crash when you're making a doc. Well, listen, I don't know you well enough to say this, But I find it interesting. the subject matters you're attracted to? yeah, because they seem opposite of you a little bit. It depends.

I mean, it's funny. after I did the Bourdain film, the next film. I needed to kind of recover from that experience. Yeah, I bet so. I did a Steve Martin film which is coming out next year.

Oh, I saw one that was coming and it looked like it was a picture of any call. I helped produce an Andy Kaufman film. Oh, yeah, that's why. what's that one called? It's called.

Laka and Andy used to say that phrase, but Steve, I was like, oh, I get to do.

Somebody.

Angel playing and Steve's, a complex, interesting person to not all light in any way, and he participated. Oh, yeah, I went deep down the rabbit hole with him, which is incredible, But that was my antidote to the previous films. palette cleanser and people always think, when you make documentaries, You're making films about other people's stories. But of course, when you're making films, you're also making films about your own story.

Yeah, you know hundred percent. Well, the questions you're asking are very revealing, of you in your interest.

Yeah, and what I say to people, and like I said to Steve when I started the film, this process is going to be therapy For you, but it's gonna be therapy for me, too. Yeah, You know, and we have to share in that vulnerability to get to a place where we're making something true and honest and revealing, Because the more honest you get, the more you can relate to a person. That's the thing that I think about a lot, Mr. Rogers, or 20 feet from stardom, those films are really about very common ideas of things We're all dealing with in our own lives. I mean a film like won't you be my neighbor?

They don't have to be your top five. That's too much pressure. But will you off the top of your head? What are five of your favorite documentaries? I don't see if there's any overlap of other people's documentaries.

Yes, I've watched anywhere from 50 to 80 docs a year. Oh god, because the thing about a documentary is even a bad documentary. You're gonna learn something.

About a bad scripted. also like. I love 60 minutes. I love frontline. I love any real information.

Yes, but there was like the music festival going on and James Brown was there. I remember watching that film when I was making my first documentary Oh boy, and just being like Someday if I could make a film like that. that film just had everything that I wanted. and then Ali. it's virtually that film.

Villages and we're chanting. It's crazy. They captured as much. Yeah, it is, that could have been put together so much later.

There are a whole bunch of early films that made me think about wanting to make documentaries, f-for-fake, the Orson Welles film. Oh, I haven't seen. Oh my god. What's it called f-for-fake? Orson made it.

I've seen that movie more than any other movie. I mean there aren't that many.

Rollicking funny documentaries. Yeah.

We just watched something that was so reminiscent. Oh, we watched telemarketers. Did you watch? tell her yet? I want to see it.

But I mean apocalypse now is come on. It's incredible.

But if I only had gotten to see one in my life, I think I'd prefer to have seen hearts of darkness.

I mean, I would make the argument that burden of dreams. the documentary that Les Blank made about the making of Fitzcarraldo is a better film than Fitzcarraldo, and I Like Fitzcarraldo a lot. I don't maybe even love Fitzcarraldo, but the documentary about it, burden of dreams, go watch it. It is.

Amazing Rob. Will you write that down list of what we must tell? that's what I'm defining now, right now.

If you ever saw Fitzcarraldo, I haven't seen that. So, you know, Klaus Kinski plays this Explorer and there's there on the Amazon. You have to move a ship over a mountain in the Amazon. Wait, this isn't my best fiend. Hertzog made a documentary about his relationship with Kinski.

Yeah, and they wanted to kill Klaus Kinski. the natives there offered to kill him, and also the Cameraman like broke his entire face off when they're going down the Amazon on that boat.

yeah, all these horrible things happen and Hertzog is Completely. he's insane. Yes. It's the great thing about Hertzog, and, like my best fiend has this too, in the beginning He's telling you how crazy Klaus Kinski is, and about halfway into the movie. You're like, I think Hertzog's just as crazy.

They were made for each other. Totally made for each other. The title is so great. Yeah.

Have you ever felt in danger during any of these?

I can't say really, just because I know a lot of my documentary peers who do that really do that? I don't do that. Yeah, like they do that, so I cannot claim.

Anything like the kind of risk. You're not making a free solo. You're not on the side of a mountain top.

No, no, not even that. So we have a show with David Farrier. Yeah, we were just talking about it. Yes, Yeah, we love, we love David, and he puts himself in danger emotionally because all of his subjects hate. his guts are bad Narcissists who could?

Yeah, I mean I've thought about this a lot. I Would have a hard time making a film about somebody I truly despised or didn't respect. Not that it couldn't be a great film, But for me to give up that much of my life to something right that I feel that way about, it's just not Something that I want to do, and it's certainly not the opposite. like. I'm not into hagiography either, because those opportunities have come up.

well, there's a lot of ways to motivate yourself and you want to work through loving and being passionate about a story, and David is in ways like a sheriff. He wants to expose things. He wants to expose people.

Those are, I think, in his head the most complicated Types of people, and so he wants to understand a very complicated type of person, and those are interesting.

the things that I keep chasing in my projects again and again, which took me 20 years to realize it are create a process. thinking about how people engage in the work of Creativity is like something I come back to again and again, like it never gets boring to me. And the other thing is how does culture? Connect us? in a way, because culture is how we define ourselves to find other people.

Shooting wars start as culture wars. It's the data by which we use to establish in group out group, Which is the motivation and justification for all the biggest.

Atrocities of all time. roger ebert called movies empathy machines, which I think is great, But documentaries are the ultimate empathy. Like that's literally. what we're doing is we're trying to give you an understanding into other people And let you understand how they think and live.

I hesitate to bring this one up because it's so crushing, and I was crushed by it before I even had kids, But as far as a doc that I couldn't believe Real time the things were happening as they were making. it was, dear. Zachary. Oh god. That one is.

Another one we love is three identical strangers. We love that one. Yeah, we talked about that one. I mean, that's a great story.

I hope the listeners are driving their car right now. I hope they're at their desk and they can write down all these, and this is a good two months worth of viewing. We've just Okay, let's talk about the saint of second chances. I also loved them. watch the sound with mark ronson so much.

I love the sampling episode. That was fun. Did you ever see, shangri-la, this show I did with rick rubin?

So I saw the title when I was researching your day and I feel like i've seen it. It was a show.

or part miniseries with rick rubin.

I don't know that I did. I think I would remember, because I know rick was on the show. Yes, Yes, and I got to go there once with the ava brothers. Oh, yeah, recording there. So I went.

I mean we spent like a year and a half hanging out at shangri-la. That's not a bad place to report. No, it's gorgeous, Gorgeous across the street from the ocean. We'd all sit there and kind of wait for stuff to happen. You're almost like a nature documentarian at that point, totally, and whether or not it's the real nature or the nature in the studio, When suddenly something happens, right?

You're watching the zebra for days and days and days and days, and then all of a sudden a lion appears.

Oh my god, like the patience required. What if the lion never appears? I'd be so stressed out.

I bet sometimes they don't we see when the lion appears. But yes, if you're in a studio, the ava brothers, one, which was really good. Yeah, that's great.

It's incredible when they do that song and they, yes, no hard feelings.

But they had probably shot so much that wasn't no hard feelings. I mean that's part of the gig.

It's the stuff you don't see. so when they see a film, i'm like god, Everybody was so great in your film, or this was so great, that's because you didn't see the 20 people who didn't make the film and you didn't see the.

180 hours that didn't make the film to sit down with two years of footage. Is that the darkest part of the process?

It's my favorite part of the process. Yeah, so documentaries you make them Backwards from how you make scripted films. scripted films. You write a script. You shoot a movie, you edit Documentary.

I'm, glad it was that if it was another like person that was in a different, like, that's the same genre. I don't know anything about crime novels.

and he was kind of one of the great of the big three, dash mohammed james m.

Kane hearing all three of those things for the first time right now.

But they wrote think of every famous film noir. all those movies were based on books by those three guys. Okay, you know all the humphrey bogart and philip marlowe, the detective hud. was that written by anyone? Okay.

That's gotta be very hard to admit that to yourself and walk away.

Yeah, but it's also a huge relief and that's part of it is you're planting seeds. I mean not to transition to the saint of second chances, please do. but 15 years ago I was shooting a documentary in tennessee And I was listening to the radio, and it was on npr, and there was this guy telling stories about how important Fun was to the philosophy of how he wanted to run his baseball team, And he was just a great storyteller. and I got to wherever I was going and I pulled over and I was like Who is this guy? And I like said, oh, that was mike feck.

Okay, so the saint of second chances, which is out on netflix right now. You just mentioned it, but we would have to start with bill veck. Who's a super crazy, colorful, and what's neat about it is i'm not a baseball fan. I mean, I like going to games, but I don't know. the history of baseball never followed that much.

He owned different teams at different times. he was kind of like the pt barma baseball and people loved him and he would Hang out in the bars and the people loved him in the streets. and he had all these Friends and some of them were rich. and every once in a while a bunch of his rich friends would give him money to go Buy a baseball team. Wow, so he owned the indians for a while.

He was a huge drinker, monica slamming beers all day long, every day. There was a bar inside of the white socks comiskey park, the white socks stadium.

There was a bar called the bard's room. That was his office. Oh, wow, and he just hung in there.

He took all his meetings and he's in there, and his son at the time. who this is about? mike Is running and fetching beers for all these people and politicians are there, but it's the end of that.

Wild west part of not just baseball kind of all sports. Like you see, a film like winning time is kind of telling a version of the same. Yeah.

Yeah, yes, that jerry buss was one of the last of these great characters. sports today is such big business.

Corporate and we forget that there was a time where it was really people making it up.

And it was so much more a live event. There wasn't espn, There wasn't these huge contracts on cable for airing these things. So it's like whatever you generated at that arena of yours is really most of your money. So yeah, this guy Invented all this weird stuff that was still around right, tons of stuff.

I mean there's stuff like the exploding scoreboard, But he's the one who, for better or worse, got the dh established, who put players names on their jerseys for the first time, who did all kinds of things but also did things like Put a shower in the outfield.

For people to, yeah, Fireworks at a home run. They figured out like the home run happens. There's just two things. It's like you hear the crack, then you see it. go over the thing, then it kind of dissipates really quick.

He did a game where they said, okay, The bleachers are going to be the manager for the game and everybody in the bleachers had cards and they said, okay, Are we gonna, you know, bunt or hit, you know that everybody had pulled up a sign and say, okay, I guess we're gonna bunt. it was a total show and for a while when he owned the indians, you know, If a good hitting team was coming to town, he'd move the outfield wall 10 feet back.

he was just like.

He was a total character and most famously He put in a dwarf to bat eddie goodell.

Do you know? this just came up on a fact check of ours? Like a month ago. Remember, we're talking about the tallest baseball players and I had said randy johnson. Then there was someone that was 6'10 and then ron's like oh my god, There was somebody yeah, 3'10 or something.

What and only had one up at his jersey. his number was one quarter.

Oh my gosh, and it was because of him. Oh, weird. Yes, when I saw that, I was like, oh my god.

We just learned this. Yeah, there's animals out on the field. There's all kinds of crazy shit happening. So at the height of this, his son, mike, is now getting involved. He's been a runner, He's been working hard trying to show dad and he starts getting more and more responsibility.

Legendary debacle in baseball history. So steve doll, local shock jock in chicago, who has, like young rock and roll fans, Who's kind of an anti-disco guy? Is there a doc on that guy?

I mean, he's no, but there should be. I mean he is capital c character clip. you show of him as he's being interviewed somewhere. He kind of looks a little bit like john belushi, maybe, or maybe even more, chris farley. Sure, But he's like I drink every day.

Yeah, yeah. and he says if you don't make me famous by 1983, i'm gonna kill myself.

Okay, so okay, so that guy hates disco, okay.

And he's really popular. So they have this bring a disco album, you get in for 99 cents And it's a double header and in the middle. We'll blow up some records. Okay, that was the promotion and they're trying to get 15 20 000 people there for a game. So not only do 55 000 people show up and fill the stadium, There are 30 000 more people outside the stadium trying to get in, to start climbing the walls with grappling hooks, Trying to get into the stadium, and it shuts down the entire city of chicago.

Everyone hates that much. traffic has stopped for 17 miles. I think was the number after the first game of the double header.

steve doll comes out, they blow up some records and Then steve doll leaves the cops. Meanwhile, don't believe that these people are going to show up. So they send like 20 cops for the entire stadium and the audience looks at this and they're like, let's take the field.

By the way, these are very young people that are not. they're basically white punks from south chicago, right? You don't like disco, and the documentary is great in pointing this out, showing a lot of different articles that were written in the aftermath of it, which is, it was pretty intrinsically homophobic and Racist. what those people really clear or at least many editorials were written to suggest that why they hated disco so much was It was this music that had taken over the radio waves, and that's really motivating these People to get aggro because they went fucking nuts. They take the field, they set fires.

I mean it was a legendary debacle. They kind of destroy the field, So they have to forfeit the second game of the double header and it's like the fourth forfeiture in the history of baseball. like it's a huge deal and basically Mike is kicked out of baseball.

What, but that was a good idea. He had. it didn't go great.

It got people there, but it did, but he didn't. nobody foresaw and mike did not foresee That'd be a riot. what was gonna happen. It was dangerous. Nobody got killed.

Can't have custody because he's a fucking drunk and can't be around his kid.

He gets a call one day to start a minor league team, But not a real minor league team, like a brand new independent league, which isn't affiliated with anything, Not like double a or triple. No, this is like a high school team in a city that has no minor league baseball.

Which is st. Paul, minnesota, okay, across town. The twins have just won the world series, So it's seven miles away. The last thing they need is a fucking shitty baseball team.

But mike takes all of his dad's ideas And puts them into effect in this team. The stadium is like a high school stadium that fits like that's 3000 inches from train tracks. Yeah, the train track goes, you know, right off of left field, But it works. and it works not because they're playing great baseball, Because they created this sense of community, which is the thing his dad was always trying to do. Oh my god.

I'm gonna love this so up my alley.

Well, the dad is, in all these interviews, going. it doesn't matter who wins and loses. baseball's about fun.

That's our priority and I will say If you love baseball, great, but you don't have to care one lick about baseball to like the documentary. It's a film really about redemption, but also about family, how we redeem ourselves In the eyes of our parents or our children, one of the.

Sweetest stories in it. There's all these, like mini stories in it, between he and his son, he and his daughter, but daryl strawberry, It's really interesting now to look at that story From today's point of view, where we recognize addiction as an illness. You know, daryl strawberry was maybe the best baseball player alive, or at least had the capacity to have.

Certainly, if not the greatest, one of the greatest natural gifts as a baseball player ever.

And he smoked crack and got caught a lot in duis and he was completely run out of baseball at 38. It was kind of a shell of himself. And mike gets an opportunity to bring him to this stupid team in st. Paul And initially he's like I don't want this Druggy on the team. the town will hate it.

Was just have one at bat. That's all this guy wanted was one at bat, and he'd been writing letters to mike and saying i'm a real athlete, I just want to have one at bat.

And so daryl is in a game where he's already hit three home runs, He's up to bat and he has the opportunity to hit a fourth home run, Which I presume would be record-breaking, and he gives his at bat to.

my god.

Like. you couldn't script it. It's like no.

I'm, like there's two saccharine bullshit. There's no way fucking this guy would fall in love with it. Why is there a guy with no legs on the team? That makes no sense. Like none of it would add up.

He also had a female player on the team. Isla borders, the first woman to ever play professional baseball. Wow.

This is incredible. It's incredible. and then daryl, in interviews documented, He says that experience is what taught him to love baseball again, and he fell in love with baseball again during that season.

He was doing so well that the yankees called bring him back and he wins the world series that year with no, Yeah.

I have chills.

That's so awesome. And then there's the most beautiful story about his daughter. You know, he ends up committing in this profound way to his child, which is so beautiful.

Oh, I can not wait. It's a totally.

Unicorn kind of story. It feels so good. It feels impossible.

It's funny because when we were making it, people say oh, you're gonna make, it's like a baseball film. You think you feel the dreams and all these things, and I kept thinking this is like a fable. I kept talking about big fish, that tim burton movie. It's kind of like this hard to believe story it is.

It's almost like seven minor league teams and they ended up becoming the most successful minor league team in america.

From like the tiniest of tiny little teams. Oh, that's amazing. And then we did all these recreations in the film with charlie day, charlie day.

Oh, we love charlie young mike in it, narrated by jeff daniels. Yeah, I love so much michigan man. I guess you already knew it because you had already heard him on. npr, heard how gregarious and charismatic He was and had met him in real life. But I mean, when you have a subject like that, there's very few subjects and docs that can hold a close-up as long as mike.

Storyteller, and that's the thing, even the way we kind of shot it. It's kind of like you're in a bar and a guy comes down and sits next to you And just starts talking your ear off. You're like I can't believe the stories this guy has. well, let's be honest.

You wouldn't believe it. Yeah, unless we didn't cut to footage of it all happening, a pig would bring the fucking baseballs out a pitcher's mouth.

You.

That's one of those things where I knew we had this character who I was compelled by And I didn't know where it was gonna go, but i'm like, yes, Let's see what this is. and because i'm a parent too and it just started to speak to a lot of things, I'm always thinking about how many kids do you? two kids, boys, teenagers, one of each teens, teens Getting wild, whole other kind of terror. Yeah.

Oh Man, it's a beautiful story. Did that one take more or less time than normal?

We have like three movies worth of stories in this film. But yeah, It was kind of normal amount of time once we kind of decided to make it and got money to make it. Year and a half to two years is kind of what it takes.

Usually, okay. So here's where I get concerned for you. So you cut your teeth in an era where it was impossible to get a doc bought scene distributed. Now there are 6 000 outlets and there's an endless inferno that needs to be filled with fuel, which is now docs.

They're changing rapidly. Let's just say it's the golden era for docs. I think that might have been five years ago.

You do. Oh, really? Yeah, I think in the middle of a strike, when there's no scripted content coming.

I mean, I talked to a lot of my other filmmaking peers about this. Everybody keeps saying oh, people must just be dying to buy every doc they can. i've seen zero evidence of oh, really? The flood hose got turned on and tons of stuff got made, lots of great stuff and lots of so-so stuff.

But, as you and I agree, everything's worth watching. everything's worth watching.

But I think in general there's like a big reset of okay, We just don't need as much of everything. but, all to say, it's way easier to make docs now, and I would imagine for you.

It would be very hard to police yourself and not get out of the old scarcity mindset where it's like I gotta say Yes to everything and if I have an opportunity now You're in a position where you could really bury yourself and you gotta flip your whole. it's been my big project for the last decade. It's like how to embrace the no. Well, I know for myself is like dying to hear yes for 20 years. Yep, and switching to Saying no is way harder than people would think, and you're not sympathetic to it, naturally, because.

We all want to be asked to do shit, but you can kill yourself totally. and I basically was making docs for 19 years, kind of scraping funding, spending half my time fundraising, getting films made one at a time. And then, when 20 feet from stardom happened and I won an oscar and that was kind of the beginning of docs starting to Really come into their own? Yeah, and not be a bad word and people would be like oh, docs can be good. and part of it was, lots of people said Oh, well, netflix and places like that, We're gonna kill the theatrical documentary.

Yeah, that opened it up. a lot of these streamers. I don't visit often, I have them and I go there like I don't know what their scripted shows or I haven't heard anything. So I just go straight to documentaries. and like what docs do they have?

Inevitably, they all have a couple good docs for sure. And so there's that part of the business Which is good. I think. in the early days, after 20 feet, Basically, I had a couple of films that I was trying to finish. best of enemies of wonder.

It's a traumatic business. Especially if it's like steve martin. Yeah, i'll do. yeah. I'll do.

Subjects, and those are the ones I said yes to, right? Well, true, and there's some great ones that i've said no to. yeah, But I was like. I can't believe i'm saying no to this. if somebody'd come to me 12 years ago with this, I would have killed to make this film.

That, like everything, has to be perfect for this to happen. Do you have one that's just been sitting in the back of your mind?

There's one film i've been wanting to make forever. I don't know if i'm ever gonna get to make it show silverstein. Oh, That would be amazing, You must. that's the one I dream about. I love everything about him, his story, the complexity of his character, but his writing is just like, Yeah, the most perfect.

Yeah, obviously, all the books we love where the sidewalk ends. Yeah, I forget the giving tree, the tree, But we had a perverted one too in our house. Yes. Look, did you ever see that one's huge?

It had like naughty stuff in it. He lived at the playboy mansion for a time. He worked for wayboy. Hugh heff was one of his best friends. Oh, wow, You have to.

Complex life. Oh, man. Yeah, I want to see that bad. Yeah, When can you have that dog?

I don't know. I don't know if i'm ever going to be able because you have to get permission to an extent that I need to be able To use his words, right? You're gonna have someone on the inside talking to you, and i've talked to his family.

Do you have a wife and children? I don't believe it's hard to have a wife and kids when you live at the playboy mansion.

I don't think he did no, and I think his sister runs the estate and i've talked to his nephew and other people, but my theory on it is Silverstein still makes a lot of money. It's a children's author. Yeah, they don't necessarily want to remind people of.

Sure, sure, all the other rough edges. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's increasingly the case with everyone.

I hope that can happen, because that'd be so fascinating.

Yeah, that'd be a dream, and I could see even doing it, maybe all animated. you want to go into that world and live in that world.

Bring it back to ai, which we just can't get off the topic of you. feed those into the ai and then i'm sure it Could fucking make them. I hate to say it, but I think it could make.

Whatever you wanted it to a lot of people playing with animation, and that too, It's going to change the animation world completely. Oh, Already is profound, you know, so, labor intensive, and i've done a lot of different animation things for the docs, for docs.

Yeah, I would imagine You are so empowered if you have a camera and a microphone and you know how to get what you want, But when you have to deal with something that you don't personally do, is it challenging?

Yeah, but actually it's kind of the opposite, because I feel like you say empowered. But I think part of documentary is admitting you don't have power, Which is going into a room and not knowing what's going to be in that room and being like, okay, I'll figure it out, but you're kind of willing to surf through the situation and be like, oh, okay, That doesn't look great and that person's not very good. But this person's interesting. you're listening and adapting. So there's a kind of a powerlessness to it, but animators are used to controlling everything.

You have to match the imperfection of a doc.

100 a lot of times. what they say is oh, we'll make it perfect and then we'll mess it up.

Right, right. You have a lot of great source music in Second chance. Yeah, we got to use the replacements. Yes, the ending song so good.

I've been trying to make a replacements documentary for 15 years.

Wow, what a life.

I love this in a bizarre way. You're kind of an a a which is like you get A very, very inside. look at a lot of people's life, in their story and their mistakes, And i've learned everything I know about being a dad and a man From listening to other men talk about how they fucked up. I'm curious if you think you've been taught a lot about life Through submerging yourself in these other people's stories. Oh, my god, so much the choice that mike makes in the movie.

It's hard to hear. No, I know you're making a film about a workaholic and you're, like I want to be a workaholic, making a film about the dangers of being a workaholic, you know, Yes, but it's that part of the decision he makes and me thinking about what's really important at the end of the day Is this thing, and I really do work hard at being as rooted in my family and responsibilities as I can.

But it's helpful to see some examples.

I've learned so much, won't you be? my neighbor was a film that I went out to raise money for in the fall of 2016, before the election. Uh-huh, And I was going to call the film the radical. Mr Rogers, and the election happened that day. I was like I can't call this film the radical.

Wow, it was a reminder that there's goodness and like we.

Really needed it at that time. Yeah, it's our responsibility to each other. I mean neighborhood. What's our neighborhood? Yeah, it's our society.

Well, morgan, it's been delightful when good old dave letterman was confusing you with morgan freeman, I don't think I thought in that moment. Well, I bet i'll be sitting down with the real morgan at some point.

So this has been beautiful. I'm glad it's full circle. Yeah.

Thanks for putting out all these awesome. Truly. I mean.

Again, so prolific. It's crazy. So many of them i've loved and when listed in my favorite documentaries. So i'm delighted. You're a workaholic.

That's so exciting.

It'll be nice when all that coca-cola vintage sweaters start showing up. Oh my god, you're right.

That hasn't come yet, but it was shipped. the stuff you ordered shipped My coca-cola sweatshirt. Yeah.

It's nice to have a hand in that, because you didn't know about that. You taught me that it's very rare that I would teach you about a fashion thing. It has to be a very lowbrow fashion thing for me to introduce you to it, or vintage, Yeah, of your time, but you were too young to have known that coca-cola had a moment. That's what I mean.

It was more of your time, my age.

The disparity in age. Yeah, so, my little buddy, You're fresh from a harvest.

Yes,

How was the harvest? Let's start at friday. Okay, friday. You go get checked out. They're gonna do a game day decision whether we're gonna go 36 hours or 34, right?

There was a chance I had to go in thursday, Also last minute, which that wasn't planned on, because they thought maybe I would have to do my trigger shot on thursday. For people who don't know what the trigger shot does, after you've done all these shots for two weeks or whatever, It triggers ovulation. Oh, wow.

and so like a starter pistol.

exactly and then like exactly 34 to 36 hours later.

They retrieve them because they're about to drop, Yeah.

So it's all very specific. Okay, so thursday there was a chance They were gonna have to trigger a day early Because they were looking at my blood work and I guess one of the levels is supposed to sort of double every day. Okay, and it it wasn't fully doubled. Okay, not a fully, not a full double. No, like a, like a three-quarter.

Okay, I mean a one and three quarter. Uh-huh. Sure. Yeah 1.75.. Yeah, five times one month And.

That was bad. right, because We needed really another day of shots to try to get them bigger. So that was a little bit like We'll see when we get the blood work and basically that was good. They said it's fine. We'll do another day of shots.

I'm surprised they didn't just put a pic in you. at some point. They should have. yeah, They should have like I have. i'll see.

I go in. she's like, okay, we're gonna trigger tonight, but I don't know if I want to do 34 hours or 36 or 35 because of my weird body. They want maybe some time for it to like culture. Oh, okay. Anyway, a lot of words.

You're gonna, we're gonna. they're going like 35 hours, I guess. Okay, split the diff. Yeah, I was about to say s the d, But that sounds like suck the dick. Yeah.

Still sounds bad. Yeah, So, okay, so then they said eight o'clock and it has to be, you know, right on time. So I, I, of course, planned dinner.

Oh sure,

Big old cooking project. I do. No, no, no, no out dinner out. Oh, Okay, it's my last meal. So I have to.

So I planned a dinner. they're very good for fertility. i've heard yeah, because.

Bean, the beans and the rice complete protein. There's no right. I don't. I don't have add rice Complete protein. They do want me to be eating so much protein right now.

Oh my god, I mean a bunch of seniors over there.

I know it was early bird. It's plenty of time. So we eat the dinner and then I decide I want a milkshake. Okay, because there's still so much time, right? Jess and I go to bob's.

Bob's big boy. Yeah. Oh wonderful, Absolutely. Well, they have malts there. He got a mall.

Wow, what experience. and then and then it is, and it's nice. Yeah, have you ever had it backfire and it's like oh my god, I think there's too much malt. Listen. There's a couple.

Sentences I stand by. Okay, one is We're going through all my sayings right now. Yeah, In fact, I just ran this by the guys that were working out in the barn. Okay, I asked them have you ever in your life been sitting in a room watching tv and someone said TV's too big? It's never been said on planet earth.

It's a big. it is big, but it doesn't look too big. I'm putting my um privilege on blast.

I think that's the max, because then it starts to get excessive on cost. After 84, 84 is the kind. if you go to 100, it's 3x of what 84 is also 100.

Then why don't you just have one of those? Yeah,

So there's an argument to be made for that.

You used to have a projector in the old house.

And had to, like, have really good blackout blinds and you couldn't. it wasn't great at watching it in the day. We're so sidetracked, but they do now have this new projecting technology, which is incredible. I've watched some videos on it And if you can imagine the screen that you're projecting it on, If you were to look at the side of the screen on the profile, What you would see is like right angles coming out and then 45 degree angles going down in a diagonal. So it's like got teeth.

That was. that was really a sidebar, because you were talking about mall.

Thank you. Yes, I said no one is ever. It already wasn't so. it was a sidebar, and I said I was a hat on a hat. Yeah, so what I say about the malt, oh, It's never.

I'm, so. so on, malt, You are, take it or leave it. I think, maybe because my mom loved it so much. Oh, your mom loves them.

She loves. that's what i'll do. I'll take nermy out for a malt after the cafeteria run, after we go to lubbies or lubbies. Love that. Yeah.

I think she has limits. No, No, I haven't called them. So, oh, okay.

Okay. Anywho back to your trigger. Yeah. Oh, so you went to get them all the bobs?

Yeah, but not them all, but just got them all. I got a chocolate milkshake. We get it. Great. We're still great on time.

triple sidebar. It was friday night. Were all the old cars there? Yes,

Car show. Yeah, every friday night at bob's. I know I think of you when that happens, because I know you took josh.

Yeah, josh hutcherson hutcherson. Yeah, um, when he was just a wee boy, he was.

uh.

That's an old episode. if people want to go listen to that. It exists. Yeah, you could go dust it off and give it a.

Sniff, so I get in the car. I always put the map on, even if I know how to get there. I always do. in this case. It was a really smart idea.

Unexpected traffic friday night la.

Yeah, but still from toluca lake. It felt weird. So I panicked a tiny bit, but I was like, there's still plenty of time. It's fine.

Did it take you by the cemetery and then into griffith park to avoid all the highways? No,

Okay, when I was driving, I was like, oh, there's something wrong. The map is wrong, because I was flying by like nothing. There was no traffic. No, ish. Oh, it's great.