Episode 131: Talk w/ Emmy Award winning writer David Mandel (VEEP, Clerks: Animated Series, Eurotrip)

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1:32 Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Uncle Dad Talks. I'm Uncle Dad and with me as always is the ever so handsome, the ever so well-drawn, the one and only Mike Hampton. What's up, Mike? Oh, it's been the day. I'm going to do a recap of my day so everyone can know what type of page I'm on for this episode. But I'm great. Yeah, I'm here. I'm excited for our guest today. Our guests well hey whenever they listen it's whatever time they're in so at some point it might be right right yeah what time zone are we in yeah what day is it uh but we are with somebody who i would say arguably is fairly legendary i think his work is very iconic he has worked for some pretty amazing writing credits not only that he's also just done some great stuff all together and Mike you know before you introduce him I gotta ask you this question how excited are you right now I'm excited I'm very excited he knows I'm so excited I've been trying to get this gentleman on on the show for I don't know maybe two years we've been like going back and forth and he's busy filming tv shows and and accepting awards and nice you know things you know so we we have him he was a i'm going to go through some of his accolades here not all but some he was a writer on snl a writer on seinfeld a writer and a director on curb your enthusiasm.

3:10 He's the executive producer of white house plumbers and executive producer of the emmy award-winning show veep which is so funny drum roll please uncle dad's been wanting to use this drum roll so we're finally going to throw it in here here we go easy as it sounds let's have it here we go the drum roll we have dave mendel on the show yes yeah hold on hold on hold on hold on all right now now we're officially so like like a morning zoo radio show thank you bravo i'm trying i'm trying david please i'm just trying you know. Can you hit the cue for Take This Job and Shove It? We'll get going.

3:53 And then I Don't Want to Work, I'll bang on the drum all day. We'll just get it all going. Yeah. Thank you. That was beautiful. Very heartfelt. The drum roll and the applause. Thank you. You've earned it. Hey, guys. Hey. That's a real talk. Yeah. And one of the things I didn't mention in the intro, and I'll explain part of why that happened. Yeah. He's also has a very, very fun podcast to listen to called what dreams are made of. And, uh, stuff dreams are made up. And I listened to a few episodes and I was just listening to, I listened to maybe about half of the Rob Liefeld episode when you guys are talking about comic book art and you know, it's so, it's just so fun.

4:40 There's so many fun things and we're going to get to all that. That. But Dave, so you do a podcast, you travel a lot. You know, today, I originally woke up at 5am on the East Coast to arrive where I'm at right now in Sacramento at 12 in the afternoon and have a day to do my things. And anyways, I missed that flight. I barely made it to my hotel room to get the internet going, which it didn't try to fail. And then realized that my whole notes that I've have been compiling for this interview are left either in the plane or on the lift car on the way over here so i'm gonna kind of go i can answer that it was the lift car and his show is called can i give you a lift and i just did an hour with him and he was they were fucking great and they asked some really interesting questions they'd really done their research really really likes we cried we cried that day we got deep we got we cried so yeah good work good work yeah yeah all right well i'm happy to help you out everyone who needs help you're losing my phone.

5:46 Well, one of the other things that you worked on that was also very fun, because it's just celebrating its 20th, 20-year anniversary, is the now acclaimed cult classic, right? Finally, finally acclaimed. You give something long enough and it's a cult classic. Just give us another 20 years and it'll be an Oscar winner. But keep yeah cold classic euro trip euro trip which which wasn't originally called euro trip and i don't know how many people know this i remember seeing the script, but when it was still called or when it was you know what was on the script was ugly americans yeah which to me after re-watching it a couple weeks ago fits fits it better because that's That's exactly what these kids are in the film, right?

6:40 The movie wouldn't have been any different. And quite honestly, I think it still would have been a, you know, a bit of a bomb that eventually maybe became a cult classic. But in my mind, and again, I know I'm wrong. If they had called it Ugly Americans, you know, from the get-go, it would have been a giant hit. I know I'm wrong. But yeah, I know we always, we have gotten used to Eurotrip over the 20 years. I wrote it and co-wrote it and co-directed it with Jeff Schaefer and Alec Berg, who were my longtime friends, writing partners, everything. We went to school together. We wrote together on Seinfeld. We wrote together and directed together on Curb. We did that. We did a whole bunch of other movie stuff together.

7:23 And we just always preferred Ugly Americans. And really, when we were in sort of pre-production, not pre-production, sorry, they never loved the title. They were worried about... Dumb members of the audience would think we were calling them ugly and that it was somehow unpatriotic also. That was the other slam on the title. And honestly, it just came down to a point when we were trying to get the movie out. Like it existed and they kind of hated it. And we were struggling to just, you know, get the test numbers where they wanted it to. And they more or less, we finally did, but they more or less put a gun to our head and just said, they're not putting it out if we don't change the name to Europe Trip.

8:08 Because they were trying, can you remember the movie Road Trip with Tom Green and all those guys? Do you remember Road Trip? they were trying at one point they were hoping to get tom green to like make an ad for our movie like like almost like hi i'm tom green you remember my my first group of friends and they went on a trip at college these are my new friends and they're in they're on a road they're in they're on a europe trip so even without the tom green shots or whatever they were trying to trick their Their big strategy for the movie, this was DreamWorks' major marketing strategy, was, tricking people into thinking it was a sequel to Road Trip.

8:50 That was their entire marketing strategy, tricking people. And again, you get used to a title, it's two years, whatever, 20 years of its EuroTrip and people, and now that it is a cult hit and people do like EuroTrip, I don't know. It just, I would have, yeah, Ugly Americans would have been the title I prefer. Yeah. When was the last time that you watched the film, like sat down and watched the whole thing? Has it been a while? It was a long while. And then sometime in the last, I don't know, I'll say year, but it may have been a year and a half, quite honestly, because it might have been, might have been. God, yeah, it's probably been over a year. My daughter, who is 16 years old, finally watched it, and I sort of was half watching it with her.

9:37 I wasn't watching it with her, but I was sort of listening and watching, if that makes any sense. Like, cause I was curious, I wasn't particularly worried about it. It wasn't like, oh my God, the language. I mean, Lord knows she's heard worse or anything like that. But I was kind of just curious as to, I guess, look, I'm not going to lie. I was curious what she laughed at. You know what I mean? Like I wanted to see, what can I say? A 16 year old girl who, you know, knows nothing about it. You know, maybe it heard one or two lines around the dinner table, you know, where we explained something to her, like just to see what worked and what didn't work. I think of her as sort of a sophisticated comedy goer. She has good taste, the things she likes. And I just wanted to see like, you know, if she found it funny and she, she seemed to, which was good, but she laughed and like what I consider to be the right places. Yeah. Okay.

10:26 Did you watch the unrated version or the rated version? You know, I, I, it was whatever was on, whatever was on the streamer, which I have to assume unfortunately is the, is the rated version. I have to assume because I feel like they're bad about that kind of stuff. Like a lot of those special versions are lost to, uh. Are kind of lost to our sort of whatever physical list media world you know where you don't get those director cuts or the extra five minutes of zodiac or whatever it is anymore unless it really once in a blue moon it'll explicitly you know talk about like this is the donner cut of superman but those are things that got maybe more of an official release i i just feel like all that that extra stuff is gone sorry that was a very long-winded answer to a simple question the rating cut yeah i think i like that i mean i love your answers they they're always very well.

11:23 Articulated appreciate that you know yeah it's like i had so many dvds yeah that were unrated and this cut and that and i'm like i just got rid of them when everything started to become streaming because i just assumed everything would be available streaming and that's not the case that's not but it's but it is funny and by the way i'm not sure i can't sit here and tell you you were wrong to get rid of them because you could also be me which is to say you know if we could kind of turn this thing you would just see like a giant like these two giant like like file drawers full of dvds and then on top are the ones that didn't quite fit do you know what i mean and so they're all here and they're about 11 feet from my television and i never put one in so So they're, you know, which is, which of us is smarter?

12:12 I don't know. At least you, at least you have the space for books or something else. I, mine are here and it just, there's, I don't know what would have to happen to get me to put a DVD in. I mean, honestly, like a, like a, like a power failure of some sort, you know. The internet would have to be down for some period of time. Yeah. Yeah. One of the things that I know everyone loves about the film and part of what makes that that cult classic is having Matt Damon do his cameo of, you know, of the punk bands, you know, singing Scotty Doesn't Know. And I'm sure you've told this story a million times, but tell our listeners.

12:53 He was already in Prague where you guys were filming, and he was shooting Brothers Grimm. Yeah. Do you guys just roll up on him at a bar somewhere and go, yo, Matt, can you do this? Or how does that happen? How do you guys meet? It's very funny. When we were making Hero Trip, which would have been 2003, there was a tremendous amount of bad luck, which is if you look at the date of whatever it was, winter and spring of 2003, you've got the Iraqi war going on. And like, I think there was even like a, I can't remember. I feel like there was like a, like a disease too. So nobody, nobody wanted to travel. It was the idea of like, Hey, why don't you come and come to, you know, Prague? Like people were like a little scared.

13:38 I mean, it was a long time ago, but it was just like, just didn't seem like an ideal travel time, but we got very lucky and went in, in two facts. One that Prague at that moment was a real center of bargain filmmaking. making. So people were going to Prague like anybody's business because it was just cheaper to make stuff there. So that was good. That was number one. And so because of that, we did keep running into people, but, but again, we knew them. So meaning it wasn't that you could run into like, you know, Jeffrey Tambor, uh, who he ran into for at different points. And like Jeffrey Tambor was there making Hellboy. And it was like, we'd worked with him on the Grinch that's so Christmas was was like, Hey, Jeffrey Tambor, do you want to be the dad?

14:21 Absolutely. I'll be the dad. That'd be great. And with Matt, it was sort of the same thing. We discovered he was there making the brothers grim. He had gone to college with us. I didn't pretend to know him well, Jeff and Alec knew him a little bit more than me. They had known him a little bit of college, but they'd gotten to know him after school. He had lived near them in like a house with like Ben Affleck and a couple of their other buddies. And so, you know, they, they, they knew each other. And so it was very very easy to kind of go, Hey, you know, would you do this? And he was there and he was willing and he had one free night and it turned out to be the shortest night. It was a, just a summer night and it was just like incredibly little daylight which was just madness.

15:05 And he was willing to do it which was fantastic and you know he did it and it was great but we didn't know him yeah so okay that well that's fun another guy who has a cameo or a couple cameos in the movie and i didn't even really realize it was him until i saw the name in the credits it was fred armisen of portlandia who wasn't in portlandia didn't exist yet no he was relatively yes he was the the creepy italian guy which is sort of one of those funny things where when we were putting the movie together when we were writing the movie neither jeff nor alec nor i had ever like done forgive me the euro trip none of us had whether it was after high school or college we just you know we went to college and then we got jobs as comedy writers so we never did the let's go to europe thing but we had many friends that did and so a lot of this movie is just talking to people who'd been to europe about like you know funny things that happened and the one sort of across the board and you know you'll forgive me people of italian heritage was was every girl basically had been molested or attempt molested by like a creepy Italian guy on a train in the middle of the night in Europe.

16:26 But basically like there just wasn't anybody that didn't try and go to sleep and wake up with a guy like feeling her up basically from Italy. So that goes into the movie. And originally there was this idea, the producer of the movie was Ivan Reitman, Ghostbusters, Animal House, et cetera, et cetera. And he had this idea that we attempted, which was that we would. Try and get genuine, I'll say comedy stars, but at some point it was also just the idea of like genuine people from the countries that we were going to. So the idea being the creepy Italian guy, we would find an Italian actor, someone to play that role and that, you know, the German guy would be a German and that the, you know, the French waiter would be French, et cetera, et cetera.

17:14 And it kind of didn't work at all. I mean, there's definitely something, there was sort of two things going on there were there were definitely people that were just offended by the broad stereotypes of the movie you know so there was like a french actor that we wanted that was just like this is garbage and you guys are criminals basically like i like how dare you the french are not like this of course you know the rudest response ever to a part being about a rude french guy so there was that and then you just also really had a there were definitely you know Countries, and I don't know, I guess I'll say Italy was one of them, where sort of what was comedy to them, their style of comedy was just a very different thing.

17:56 And certainly the Italian actors just seemed bigger and broader in a certain way, and they just didn't really fit in. So we did all of this auditioning. We hired casting people to do all this auditioning in all these foreign countries. And I guess the one thing I will say that we did actually find the girl that plays Mika, Jessica Boers, was actually German. She was like a German pop star, soap star, and she worked out fantastic. So that worked. And the other Germans worked out. Germany worked out well for us. Her dad was like a German actor and the crazy truck driver. He was on their German police procedural. He was like the Dennis Franz of Germany. He was like from NYPD Blue, but of Germany.

18:40 So Germany somehow worked out. I don't know if they were giant stars flying. Changed our business in Germany, but the notion of finding these people. And so it was very last minute where we just got very lucky. And of course, for all of our European searching, we ended up casting JP Manu as the robot man out of the groundlings, I think in LA. And Fred at that point was relatively new to SNL and, you know, had, had the time off. And basically We grabbed him from SNL, but I think it was in the early days before he really was Fred Armisen. So we kind of got very lucky there. For a very long time, I think he was, for a little mini moment, he was probably best known for being in Eurotrip.

19:30 And obviously that soon changed because he's so talented and did all this other stuff like Portlandia. But anyway, it was a very brief shining moment, but yeah, very cool. Cool i know uncle dad's also a huge fan was a huge he's a huge fan of this movie did you have a question i want to i want to tell you i hope you you should live happy knowing you created one of the greatest fight scenes ever to be filmed on scene and that is that is robot fighting like no other i i i die every time and it's such a trivial joke but it's such a great joke when he gets kicked you know kicked on nuts and he falls down and that little touch at the end when he says, terror, error. That was like such a, just like the full encapsulating because he could have broke character, right? He could have been just angry.

20:16 No, he stuck to his robot guns. Yes. There's just such, was that intentional or is that something Yes, I'm very intentional. I mean, very intentional. Like I said, we got very lucky. The actor, J.P. Manu, came in, had mime training, so he was able to do it. But really, in the way great improv comedy actors can do, he really turned it into a character and made it that the ridiculous commitment to the roboting really came through, I think, in a great way. So yeah, that kind of worked. Yeah i think it's one of my every time i watch that scene i just can't help but like just die laughing because it's just so smart it's such a smart like it's silly but it's just done in such a smart way and you know mike i i i don't know how you feel but every time i see the hitler kid too the hitler baby just makes just i just die every time now that i have to ask you do you think that would be something almost impossible to release nowadays i mean the difference i guess nowadays is is you put that out and like half your audience.

21:21 Would jump up and zeke heil i guess and join in i guess so that's part of the problem i guess you know like who knew that you know nazism would become so popular here in 2024 2023 2022 the trump the post-trump era or the trump era so i guess that's i don't know maybe it would be a giant hit maybe eurotrip would have been the number one movie with people be like look it's not that funny but go see it for the there's a a nazi in it and we really appreciate that so there's nazi propaganda nazi propaganda in this movie yeah that that that that it's funny because i i noticed in several things that i that you were working on that there's the the nazi i mean it's it's it's funny especially in this episode of curve with the well i forget what what at what season and what number it's in my notes that you you talk to with the other guys um he's he's doodling the the swastika yes the swastika that's the with the kid season finale of that's the season finale it's the michael j fox episode season six i think or seven something like the six like six i'll say six yeah the michael j fox episode yeah where he's doodling the swastika and the kid learns the swastika the kid who who is sort of pre-gay, I guess, is what we call him on the show, yeah.

22:46 And then he does it on Michael J. Fox's father-in-law. Father-in-law's picture, yes, exactly, yeah. So, and there was another one I remember, With Larry David doing another kind of joke of that, is that like a, is that like a running joke between you guys all? Like, I mean, it's funny. I laugh every time it's on there. I think there's a certain amount of, I'll say a couple of things. I mean, first of all, for Larry, Larry's fearless as a comedian, meaning he's just, he's willing to make himself look like both an idiot. He's also willing to sort of say just about anything, you know, so he's looking, whatever's funny, you know what I mean? So let's start with that.

23:27 So just whatever is funny. So there's, I think that. I will say without, I don't know, maybe getting too self-analytical, there do happen to be a lot of Jewish comedy writers. It's sort of a rich tradition among the Jews, and I am one of them. And, and I do think part of it is, you know, a little bit of, you know, I'm sure there's a very sort of very serious answer about, you know, you know, speaking truth to power and making light of the things that are just so horrible to try and make light of them is sort of, sort of the Jewish thing to do. And there's nothing more horrible than the Holocaust. And so the idea of sort of not finding comedy, how does one say this?

24:11 It is not finding comedy at the expense of anyone that was a victim of the Holocaust. It is certainly not making light of it or pretending it didn't happen, which obviously is a very popular riff these days. But finding sort of comedy in the horror, I think is what's really interesting and kind of, I don't know. And so we do that. I don't know what else to say. We do, we do that. And I think that's, that's, it's more of that than any private joke or anything like that, if that makes sense. Yeah. Well, I mean, we can make fun of it now because they lost. And I think people forget that they lost, you know?

24:53 No, I mean, It's the craziest thing because you just, I mean, again, now we're talking about just, we're talking politics and you, you know, on the, on the, the far right, which, you know, again, it used to be a little perhaps hidden. And now, you know, they just had the big, the big CPAC conservative conference. And I mean, they're just open out and out Nazis, like not even hiding it now. And you do kind of go like, do you guys, I mean, you're, you guys remember world war two? Like we, we, we fought them, we beat them. I mean, it's fucking bananas, yeah. Yeah. Well, back to the other part of that, you mentioned Michael J. Fox. Let's go to that. What was it like working with him? Because I know you're a fan of Back to the Future. You know, it's funny. I was thinking about this the other day.

25:39 I watched, I recently watched, even though it's been out, I think, for over a year and people haven't watched, I highly recommend it. I watched Still, which is the Michael J. Fox documentary on Apple TV. And it's very much about, you know, his Parkinson's, his ongoing fight against Parkinson's. And it's a brutal movie. I mean, it's, and he talks about this. It's, you know, there are moments where he's sitting there and when he's sitting still, obviously his speech is affected, but then he moves and you see him walking on camera. And the second he starts moving and stuff, you just are taken aback because no matter, I don't know how, when he's sitting there, no matter how rough he looks, you kind of turn him into, you know, Alex P.

26:21 Keaton from Family Ties, you turn him into Marty McFly and somehow he's whatever, 24 again, but he's not. And in the movie one of the things that's going on is he'll come and sit down for an interview and all of a sudden he'll just have a black eye and they'll be like what's going on he's like oh i fell and his hands broke i fell and you i mean you feel you're not necessarily seeing these accents but you feel everyone it's it's quite it's both heartbreaking but also at the same time his philosophy and the way he talks about it the way he's willing to talk about it is really really, really amazing. When we had him on curb, I think it was certainly not great. He was on a medication of some sort that had a timing sequence to it.

27:05 So he would try and take the medication, allow the medication to sink in, and then he would sort of be quote unquote better to work for a period of time. But, you know, it has certainly progressed so much since then. And I I will be very honest. I'm the biggest fan in the world. And I certainly spoke to him about scenes we were doing. I spoke to him about stuff we were doing, but I stopped myself. And now I sort of regret it, but I sort of don't. The idea of wasting his time with, I love Back to the Future. I don't know. I felt like I just didn't want to be that person as much as I love Back to the Future and wanted to tell him about things in my collection and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

27:51 And I just, I didn't. And I just didn't feel like I wanted to, like, again, like it felt like this man is on a limited time clock of life and he doesn't need me wasting six minutes of it with, you know, it's like six minutes he won't have for something else. So I loved him. I respected him and I stayed out of his, I just stayed away from him. It's sad, but truth. I just didn't want to bug him. Yeah, I mean, he's such a great sport because some of the jokes you guys do with him is so fun. He loved doing all the Parkinson's stuff, and his timing was exquisite. I mean, his timing, you know, the brain is sharp, and nobody had timing like him.

28:33 And even then, I don't know if you remember him with the big boots and the jumping, where Larry's like, what's all the noise, whatever. And you see him jumping around. And I mean, he's even he's a guy with Parkinson's doing physical comedy that says, you know, good as anything he ever did on Family Ties or, you know, anyway. Stone City. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Is it the shake or the Parkinson's shake? I love that. So that line is so fun. Pissed or Parkinson's. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So and so. OK. And so you, you know, of course. First curb is larry's larry's baby but his first baby was seinfeld and you and your your your, high school homies got to work with with larry first on seinfeld because you guys were already punching up scripts and and and no funny enough um the the guys it's actually we we all met in college actually not high school we met in college and they were a year they were a year ahead of me They were one year older.

29:38 They were class of 91. I was class of 92. And initially everybody kind of stayed East and I, and ultimately, you know, they were around and then they moved to Los Angeles and I went to New York and I was doing SNL. And then they came back to New York and they were doing the Conan O'Brien show, the early days of Conan O'Brien. So we were all working in 30 Rock, but just on different stuff. And we were talking to each other and looking at each other's stuff, but not officially looking at each other's stuff. stuff. And then they, they went back to LA basically to clean out their apartment and move to New York full time when they got Seinfeld.

30:18 So then they were on Seinfeld for a full year when I was still on SNL. So I would go out to LA to visit and I would hang out in the SNL offices. And then a year later, I officially joined the staff. So I was, we were sort of separate that we kind of joined, although obviously I, part of how I got in there was hanging out with them and meeting Larry and Jerry and whatnot. So sort of an answer there. But yeah, no, it just was honestly, you know, that show had started. It was a couple of seasons in. It had become the hit it was. And, you know, it was really one of those things where, You know, on Thursday nights when it was, you know, airing, you just like, it was like nothing we'd ever seen because it was just so different.

31:03 I mean, now I'm not sure anybody, like if a young person watches Seinfeld, I'm not sure you realize how much it changed television because most sitcoms now are just very, most of them are very different because of Seinfeld. They are doing the way they do a story, the way they kind of the characters talk. And I'm not saying every show is Seinfeld, but just a lot of shows do the Seinfeld thing. And Seinfeld was shot in front of a studio audience. You know, it's a multicam and obviously we had crowds and stuff. But as the show got more and more complicated, we were constantly shooting stuff, you know, like on like our fake New York streets and whatever.

31:47 And so all of that was not shot in front of the audience. And as the show got more and more complicated than you would have in a given week, often four characters with four different stories and they're intertwining and stuff. But even though the show was shot in front of an audience, it became more and more like a single camera before there were all the single camera sitcoms. And really it kind of bridges that gap like you don't do shows like you know the office and whatnot all those single cams that now are you know it's all anyone does a single cam but again i think seinfeld is that sort of magical bridge and it just you know so many shows that just kind of again i don't want to say lifted but just kind of you know did the seinfeld thing so yeah no it was It was very much just like, you know, this is the best show on television.

32:38 I can't believe I've gotten a job here. This is great. You know, it was really that sense of things. Yeah. Yeah. And it's cool that you got to do it with your buddies, you know, like how awesome is that much more fun? Yeah, obviously. Yeah. It's like the trailblazer, you know, of, of those types of shows, which, you know, and, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I watch Veep and, and there's the similarities of, of, of how people communicate more like there's DNA. It's like the DNA similarities. And by the way, you know, Larry really taught me how to write a sitcom in terms of, I'll say a couple of things. First of all, number one, what is a story? What actually is a story?

33:19 There's so many things a story isn't that other sitcoms make the mistake. Often, a story is a location to them or a story is a holiday. Larry obviously had characters with real stories. And I think one of the things I brought to Veep is I sort of, I think in my, I, cause I did not create the show. The show was created by Armando Iannucci. He ran the show for the first four seasons and then he wanted to spend more time back with his family in London. He was looking to sort of, you know, step aside or I don't know, maybe possibly end the show. Julia wanted the show to keep going. HBO wanted to keep going, the show going. going, he was, Armando was open to it and was very, just really gracious and wonderful when it was sort of decided that I would take it over. I didn't work there before that. I was just a fan.

34:04 And when I took it over, I do think there are things that I brought to it, you know, in terms of the, some of the storytelling, but also, you know, we started doing, I think more plots, you know, we started doing two and three plots. It's not exactly like Seinfeld, but in a similar way, more plots that were bumping into each other and things like that, because that's just, That's what I know. The other big thing with Larry was always that every scene has to move the story forward. And that's something that just works for everything I do, whether it's a movie, TV, whatever, which is... In any given scene, there can be things that are funny. There can be lots of different things, but there needs to be new information. The audience has to be hearing things because either something is happening or someone is telling someone something or whatnot.

34:49 So the story is moving forward. Stories are no longer moving forward. The show starts to feel stagnant and dead. And one of the things about Veep, maybe even more so, dare I say, than Curb or Seinfeld, was I just also pumped the speed up. So my show got faster and faster and more and more information and just kind of kept jamming it. But the DNA is pure Larry David Seinfeld. I mean, it just is. So, yeah. And I have that from working there. There are a lot of shows where they just kind of start doing it. You know what I mean? I mean, look, even, I don't know, I'm not saying I don't think anything crazy, but even if you look at like a show like Friends back in the day, they were doing Seinfeld-esque stories.

35:34 That was not by mistake. Now they did it differently. They had people that were, you know, dating and falling in love more, but a lot of their, you know, New York City stories were very Seinfeld-esque. And in fact, Courtney Cox had been a Jerry girlfriend. That's part of how she kind of not, not the only reason she got that part, but she, you know, and, and over the years of that show, you would see people would be on Seinfeld in a funny guest starring role and then eventually start going on to all the other shows playing similar parts. Like all of a sudden like oh that nerdy guy's now on the on friends as a nerdy guy and you know what things of that nature and again it's not there's nothing illegal about it i'm just simply saying it just people don't quite realize what an influence seinfeld was i think at the time especially if you're just watching it on netflix now where it just seems like one of many shows that have this kind of voice no it was the first one anyway yeah yeah yeah i mean that that those Those shows, all three of the ones that we're talking about, are some of the only shows that really make me laugh out loud, genuinely laugh out loud at the television, you know.

36:46 And then you win an Emmy. Is that like one of your most crowning achievements of your life? Or is your kids more than that? I mean, certainly, look, I'm going to put a lot of things in front of it. And look, obviously, I have a lot of work experiences where we didn't win an Emmy. You know it's funny i don't know i you know at some point or another i think i was texting with jerry seinfeld it was a funny thing the night i won the the night we won the first emmy for veep, Larry was the presenter. Curb was not on at that moment. There was no Curb. He was on a long break. And so obviously as a huge comedy guy, he was chosen to give the award out.

37:30 So he was the presenter, which was just pretty amazing, just somewhat magical, dare I say. And i obviously there was no way i you could know you're going to win or anything like that and oddly enough uh alec berg one of my former writing partners was up for it as well he was doing a wonderful show silicon valley at the time and so he was up for it as well so there was a two and five chance that larry was going to give the emmy to basically one of the you know basically basically the, the, his disciples for lack of a better word, which was sort of kind of, you know, fascinating odds. But anyway, long story short, I did win it and Veep won, which was great.

38:13 And Larry handed it to me, which was very special. And oddly enough, that year, Jerry had been nominated for comedians and cars getting coffee, which maybe had just switched networks or something. So now it was eligible for an Emmy. So anyway, long story short, I get up to, and I, And all of a sudden, you're up there in front of the lights. And really, the only person I can see in the front row is Jerry Seinfeld. So it was this very funny thing where Larry handed me the Emmy, and now I'm staring at Jerry. And by the way, it just was one of those very funny things. So afterwards, I think we texted a couple of days later. And I think Jerry had written me something because I had said something about, you know, learning from Larry and Jerry and he wrote me something about that.

38:55 And I said something to him about how it had been. I thought it was a crime that Seinfeld won the Emmy once, basically. And it was before I ever got there. I mean, we were nominated every season. We would win Writers Guild Awards, Directors Guild Awards, all these other awards. And we never quite won the Emmy again. And I sort of said to, you know, to Jerry, like something along the lines of this was wrong. This was, you know, whatever. And he had just a very, you know, sanguine sort of like very, very philosophical reaction. He just sort of said, nope, it's perfect. You know, it's almost like he enjoyed the fact that it was like, that it was so stupid and so wrong that they only had the one. He's like, I prefer it that way. And I was like, okay, I get that.

39:37 So the honest answer is I worked on a tremendous number of shows, SNL at some point, Seinfeld, Curb, all of which had been nominated and I'd been many, many times and not won for shows that I truly believe should have won. And I, I, you know, the idea that Frazier won so many Emmys and I mean, I'm not sure anybody, and by the way, I was about to say, no one even remembers it and they have a revival on right now. No one remembers that. And they beat, they beat Seinfeld year after year after year. And yet, you know, how crazy that is. And I'm not mad. I'm not sitting here seething about it. It's just, it's just kind of crazy.

40:19 So, long story short, I will say that taking over the show and taking it over, and again, I obviously had an amazing writing staff. I had Julia as my really almost like my new writing partner in a way just because she and I were really a team in doing the show. But i will say being the solo showrunner taking over the show and you know people i think thought it was going to you know get so much worse and all of these good things that happened and winning for that yeah no it was pretty great i mean it just kind of is you know and but no not not as good as my kids but maybe one of my two kids but yeah right yeah yeah and she's so great in the the show no she's incredible and you know you have no idea i mean i don't know what to say obviously you watch the show you get to see how funny she is but you have no fucking idea how good she is yeah there's another show you worked on that uncle dad is a huge kevin smith fan okay so the clerks he loves it all yep and uh i think he wants to well i just you know.

41:26 I love everything Kevin Smith, everything. He's probably like, one of the reasons why I do a podcast is because of Kevin Smith. I mean, I mean, listen to his podcast since I was in high school. No, I think honestly, if Kevin, I mean, obviously he's obviously all his podcasts are great, but if Kevin had like put his name on like a microphone kit, he could have sold them. Yeah. I mean, he's very smart about marketing himself in general, but his great failure was to not do a Kevin Smith at home podcasting set because you are not alone in the world of people People that sort of listened to him, love him, and then started their own. So yeah, he would have made a small fortune on it. I have to tell you, one of my favorite highlights of his career, if you will, and I guess your career, is the Clerks animated series.

42:09 I loved it. I thought it was incredible. It's a shame of what happened with Disney and that stuff. I mean, in my sort of my very Jerry Seinfeld answer now is no, it was it was good. It happened because like, you know, it was only because it was we got so like, you know, violated basically that like we sort of are still talking about it. But no, one of the things I loved it. I loved it as an experience. There is comedy that we put into those six episodes that I think was, you know, I don't like talking about my own stuff this way, but I think there was some of the best stuff I've ever done is in those shows. And stuff that was just again i hate saying it like this i think really years ahead of its time like jokes that nobody else was doing that like six years later shows would kind of do a version of our joke and of course nobody knows we did it first six years ago but like i don't know it just always sort of made me laugh there were things like i don't know like the judge reinhold stuff and whatever other shows did years later were you like wait a second family guys doing that we did Anyway, not the point of the story.

43:13 I loved it. And I'm always really happy when I run into Kevin. Kevin lives sort of vaguely in my neighborhood. So, you know, when I'm walking and he's walking his dogs and stuff, we get to kind of run into each other just enough that it's always, you know, just like we always get like a sort of a good time and put a smile on each other's face. And I think, honestly, we both really enjoyed it. I never want to speak for him, but just all these years later that he's still talking about it too, makes me very happy. And him and Scott Mosier and kind of getting to know Muse and Brian. I just, I, you know, I, I got to, you know, and I've since then I've popped up, I've gotten to be an extra a couple of times in a couple of the Jay and Silent Bob movies and, you know, you know, whatever.

43:54 And so i always get to feel like like i'm in the view askew universe i'm like a cousin like i'm a cousin from a far so far away city and i get to pop in every now and then which is a is perfect for me but i'm always very touched that i'm like a i'm a distant relation so yeah no it's a nice feeling yeah well speaking of you askew mike may i show him my hat yeah show away yes all right we We were going to go to the Cruises queue. Oh, that was like last week, right? Yeah. And, you know, I made that hat and we were going to bum rush Kevin with it. Were you going to bum rush him hoping that like he'd want to make like an order for his store kind of a thing? Was that the secret, secret hope? Yeah. Yeah.

44:39 By the way, your hats are wonderful. I'm not sure I've said that to you in the last 10 years, but I thought that was really cool. You've done good. You made good. I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. It always goes back to Mike's hats. Maybe we'll send you a hat and you can pass it to him when you bump into him when you're walking your dog or something. Oh, Kevin, look what I happen to have that I've been walking around with. Just wandering around with this. I want to ask one last question real quick. Yeah, go for it. When you did that show, remind me, because I'm a vague memory. I don't own the DVD anymore. But as we talked about, getting rid of media.

45:20 I know. And by the way, the shame of that one is, I will say, I think the six commentaries on that, which we recorded right after they fucking canceled us and whatever. Those are six long hours of therapy where Kevin and I really go through the ringer emotionally. Emotionally and it's just like two just angry motherfuckers just furious at abc and everything and it's like it's i mean i don't think anyone listens to commentaries anymore but those are good those are good commentaries yeah i that's literally what i wanted to talk about was those commentaries because i don't have the dvd anymore and that was my favorite thing because it really opened up my perspective of everything i mean it was i mean you remember you're sure you remember It was just such a process of what happened and what they did to you guys.

46:10 I mean, I don't know. I just think it's insane, too, to just do two episodes and just pull it, I think. Right. Like, it's just, you know, it wasn't it wasn't it just, you know, again, it's like, you know, I'm dating myself. It's just like you guys just can't know what a giant hit and what a game changer who wants to be a millionaire was. Yeah. And we, you know, we sold the show to ABC when they were basically in third place and kind of open to anything. And I believe we were the definition of open to anything. And then unfortunately, before we ever, you know, got to air, they started putting on who wants to be a millionaire and it was on, you know, like. It was on like 11 nights a week. I mean, it was on just like they were making up new days of the week to put it on.

46:53 And no matter how much they put it on, the ratings were just bigger than anything that any of the networks had. I mean, it was crazy. So when our show, which was certainly weird and off and the idea of them doing, I mean, forget about even if it had been the most mainstream show in the world. You know what I mean? Like just the idea that they were going to put any show on or even an animated show on, but a sort of, if you will, Kevin Smith ask, I, it just, I mean, it just became such a, it just became such a bad joke, but the worst part of it. And again, all these years later is not that they, you know, found a new show and they didn't want us and all of the things that are again, you know, very, you know, whatever, a very Godfather, you know, it's just business. It's just business. Okay.

47:39 That's all fine and good. It was just how despicable and unhonorable they were, their inability to tell us the truth, the lying that they did to us about why it wasn't going on or like the way they even told us it wasn't going on, which was by not telling us. I mean, we read about, like, we read about the fact that we weren't going on, you know, in, in, in, in like a, you know, like in an article online. I mean, it just was, it was, the behavior was despicable. You know, it's like you, if you're proud of who wants to be a millionaire, be proud of it. Go for it. Congratulations. But I mean, I hate to say it, just don't act like, you know, just don't act like a, just a, I don't know. Just, just.

48:20 Don't be a dick. Yeah. Don't be a dick. One of the, One of my favorite, and I think a lot of people's favorite episodes of Seinfeld was your Bizarro Jerry episode. You know, and there's a Bizarro statue in the Bizarro Jerry's apartment. And I'm wondering, was that yours, personal one that they use as a prop? Or do you have that as a prop? So it's a hard answer. at the time there was no such thing as a bizarro jerry statue there was no bizarro statue like dc comics did not make a bizarro they have subsequently bizarro has sort of come back a little bit into fashion which i'd like to think was thanks to me because you know it was just very much a character that was kind of gone and by the way it was a word that was kind of gone and i think nowadays you know you will read an article and it'll say like it's like bizarro world and i think people have learned the term because of the episode so to answer question number one because jerry had the superman statue in his apartment we wanted a bizarro statue which unfortunately as i said did not exist so that was something that was purchased at at the time the warner store the warner brothers store was a superman statue and our wonderful prop guy in art department kind of turned it into a bizarro they kind of painted the face white they scraped away with like

49:52 a file at the hair and stuff and kind of you know made it sort of spiky and whatnot and then they fashioned a bizarro number one like little little amulet and like put it around his neck with like a i think it was a stretched out paper clip honestly making it like that and that that obviously sits in the same spot that the bizarre, the, the, the sort of Jerry Superman statue is funny enough. The Superman statue, the. Was mike i don't know if you remember from your old comic days was a randy bowen statue that also i think was for sale at the at some point at like comic shops and the warner brothers store he went on to do all those like busts of all the marvel heroes and stuff so he has like a kind of a statue empire of just some of the great he's a great sculptor i got to know him later on because in a weird way because we sort of put this bizarro statue in and people started talking about the superman statue some way or another i found my way to randy bowen found his way to me and i met him and his wife at the time and they came to the set and they took pictures with the superman statue long story short he had said to me oh i wish we'd known each other i'm sure i could have made you a quickie bizarro statue you know on top of the superman one to make it work it's like oh but anyway long story short we made this kind of crazy looking one and as the episode is ending You could probably see me crawling on the floor in the back of the scene to grab it and take it home with me.

51:25 I got it. And actually, at the time I took it over, I got all four of the cast members to sign the base of it. And I have that in my collection. That was really awesome. You know, I am a I collect now movie props, among other things. And the stuff dreams are made of is very much about my movie prop collection, TV prop collecting in general. It's me and Ryan Condal, who's the new Game of Thrones show, House of the Dragon. He's a prop collector. I'm a prop collector. We talk about prop collecting. Back then, that was me really, on the one hand, grabbing just a piece of, I guess I'll simply say, personal memorabilia. You know what I mean? I was taking it because, obviously... I wanted to have it as I wrote this kind of a thing, but inadvertently it was some of the first props that I ever actually put into my collection.

52:15 I just wasn't thinking of it as prop collecting if that, I hope that makes some sense, but yes, I, I have it. I have it to this day. It is a treasured possession, as they say. So yeah, one of the questions I wanted to ask you was what was your first prop that you collected? My first, my first prop, I mean, like I said, as I took a couple of odds and ends from SNL, I definitely took some things from SNL, took a couple of Seinfeld things. So I definitely was taking things from things I worked on, but they definitely were a little bit more in the same way. Like you go on a vacation and you buy a nice tourism tchotchke. You know what I mean? Like they were mementos of a work experience more than I was sort of prop collecting my first, I guess.

52:57 What's the word I'm looking for? proper prop where i was basically wanting to own something from a movie that i loved that i did not work on do you know what i mean like the first time i ever spent money like on a prop and really the piece that probably got me deep into prop collecting in general because all of a sudden when i got it i was able to go oh my god i have this thing and there's more of them was a storm Stormtrooper helmet from Return of the Jedi. So, you know, a Star Wars Return of the Jedi helmet. And the idea of owning like an actual thing from Star Wars kind of changed my collecting like life, I guess, just the idea that you could have something from Star Wars.

53:42 And if you could have something from Star Wars, could you have something from Raiders? And if you could have something from Raiders, could you have something from Aliens? And as I sort of made the list of, you know, the movies that kind of, you know, sort of formed me, I, you know, and then was able to get, you know, pieces from some of the ones I loved. It just really, that was my, that really just got me hooked. I mean, really. I don't know if you remember this, the time I was at your house, I was there. It was, I think it was for an LA Comic Con of some sort. Sure. And it was your, it was your apartment. And I was there with Steve Wyatt and Adam Hughes of all people. And it was the four of us and you were kind of showing us around your apartment on all the props and i my head exploded maybe both heads uh you had a a darth vader helmet from i think empire if if i'm right you had a a ghostbusters trap you had the the letter that marty writes doc yep warning him about exactly yep you had a doc ock spider-man 2 piece of a tentacle yep big arm tentacle.

54:46 You had pieces of the Death Star on the floor. You had, I think, was there a Cylon Warrior in there? Yep, he's still there. He's still there guarding the door. There's some Star Trek tasers and, Those were some of the things I remember. And I remember geeking out. You were, I think Wyatt had already seen a lot of it. Steve had definitely been, Steve had been in and out a lot, obviously. I think that was the first time Adam was seeing it. I think Adam was really over, especially to see the Star Wars stuff. And so that was, I don't know, it's too long. I definitely remember it happening. I'm guessing that was sort of vaguely the point was like getting Adam to see the stuff. He'd wanted to see it. So I'm sure some version of that.

55:27 Yeah. Yeah. And we got to see it and he and I were geeking out. And like talking and looking at each other and like becoming best friends. And then the next day I went to go talk to him at the convention just to say hi, really. And he didn't even remember who I was or pretended to not remember. No, I think he just honestly just didn't even see your face. You were there talking to him and he was just looking at a stormtrooper. You know what I mean? It's like you'd come to him in a white stormtrooper mask. You'd have been like, Mike, how are you? But yeah. Yeah. That's fair. Yeah, I probably look like every other guy at the convention anyway. Yes. So a lot of those props, and you've gotten many more now, that's the nucleus of your podcast.

56:11 Yeah. And it's... So like how how do you start a podcast like that and you're you're doing seasons so like you record a bunch at once and then release them all or like no we try and we you know we'll look we're both busy guys you know we're sort of our our running joke or our latest version of the joke is you know like it's sort of like the the you know how everybody adopted a dog during uh covid you know it's like we started a podcast you either adopted a dog you started a podcast oh yeah yeah Yeah, exactly. And so, yeah, we did that so that we did that. And at the same time, you know, he's working on House of the Dragon and I was for a long time, you know, now we're a year beyond.

56:53 But for a long time, I was finished making and then, you know, editing and then finishing and then releasing White House plumbers. And so we have jobs, you know, so when our seasons are sort of more like we kind of do the show every week, you know, and we're usually a little bit ahead and we kind of just do it until we get a little bit of time. A couple ahead and we're just exhausted and like the rest of our real jobs and our real live work kind of catches up a bit too much so for example we kind of we we came out of the gate really strong last year and we did a bunch of shows like september october november and we managed to have like a show recorded for december and then it was just like we need a break you know like his work got crazy and everything and so yeah i mean we're not we're never that much far ahead but honestly we just really you know we enjoy talking about props we enjoy talking about upcoming auctions we like sort of educating people we'll pick topics like you know how do you display your props we do about you know what do you do with a mannequin we just did a big episode this year talking about fakes in the prop world and like what to do about fakes and why and how bad you know that's becoming more of a problem as of course you know prices go up and there are more more fakes and whatever.

58:06 And it's, you know, it's a little bit of the wild, wild West. And I know we just. It's a fun conversation. I mean, it's the same sort of, I could easily do a comic art podcast. I could do this. I enjoy talking about these sort of nerdy pursuits. And it's just fun. It's really just two guys talking about movie props. And then every once in a while, we bring our wives on to kind of make fun of us and yell at us about the money we're spending. So that's basically the podcast. Yeah, Stuffed Dreams are made up. I i have to ask you this so i actually own one screen use movie prop oh do you guys remember tremors 2 yes i mean i do i feel like all of a sudden you know this is the week that dune 2 just came out and i feel like all of a sudden because of the the sand and the worms yes yeah i've seen more tremors references than i've seen in like a hundred years like the like it's somehow dune Moon is helping the Tremors franchise.

59:06 Yes. Yeah. So the props that I have, and I actually have a question for you about it, is I don't know if you remember now, but they were making, and that little town was making money off the Tremors. Yep. And they had merchandise. Okay. In the background, somebody's selling a orange Frisbee that has like the logo of the Tremor on it. Oh, that's cool. I actually own that actual one. Well, that's very neat. Yeah. How do I display it? Tell me. Well i mean it's an orange frisbee and everything's sort of on the front right so it's like there's nothing really on the the back of it so honestly i mean the the easiest thing you could do honestly is just put it in a frame just put it i mean by the way steve wyatt could frame it for you steve is still a great framer but honestly just do just do just do a frame i mean honestly because i think it would be three-dimensional because obviously it's thick it's not a painting but it would just Just frame up, you know, with like, you know, even if you did like a white mat or something, it would just be right dead in the center. That would look really good.

1:00:04 I think the, the next, the next step, a different version of things, but sort of similar, but good is you could get like, you'd have to go to like a plexi place. I mean, I don't know, Steve might be able to do this, but you certainly could go to like a plexi place and have like a nice plexi box made. And then if you will sort of lean it almost like on a, you know, like on like a, like a picture stand kind of a thing. So it would be kind of leaning a little bit, but then in a box. So it would sort of be standing on a lean, like basically like on your counter or whatever, and do it like in a plexi box. Both of those I think would look really, really nice just off the top of my head. So there you go. Oh yeah. And that is why they need to listen to your podcast.

1:00:47 There you go. Yeah. Those are the tips, but you know, look, obviously in this case, you are also talking about something that is thick and plastic and not going to break and not brittle. And we don't need to worry about like, well, how are we going to support it and all of these things. And, but that, changes based on the prop if all of a sudden you were like i've got this you know whatever 20 year old like you know something that's made of rubber and it's drying out and whatever well then okay now we got to talk about can we get conservation on it how do we support you know so every prop is different but that that one will lend itself i think in a really great way to to frame it up and whatnot so yeah i think that'd be great i think you're oh no please i think that'd be so cool one of the things that you guys are talking about and i know they're they're kind of a sponsor of yours is the the heritage they're doing heritage auction is doing the the planet hollywood yeah they're calling it treasures from planet hollywood we have two sponsors we have heritage and prop store but heritage is doing the big five-day planet hollywood auction yeah and uh and bruce willis was one of the original guys right and i don't know if you know but i'm a i'm a huge bruce willis fan i have a bruce willis tattoo oh i didn't know i knew that they have I mean, the three main guys.

1:01:57 Schwarzenegger, Stallone, and Willis, you get really a sense that on certain ones of their movies, they just let Planet Hollywood back the truck up and take everything. I mean, this is a bad joke, but there's more cliffhanger stuff. There's more like Judge Dredd. If you've ever wanted to remake Judge Dredd, just go to Planet Hollywood. They've got everything. thing for Willis where it really hits is it's a couple, it's like the, uh, It's Die Hard with a Vengeance. Is that the third? That's the third one, right? With Samuel Jackson. They got a lot of stuff. They have a couple of things from Die Hard 2. They have a couple other odds and ends of things, but they got a lot of Die Hard with a Vengeance.

1:02:39 They've got some other stuff too, but there's a lot of Die Hard with a Vengeance. And I think there's stuff that... How does one say? The one thing about these big auctions, which is great, is there's a lot of price points. Like you could probably grab something from a diehard movie that Bruce, you know, touched for like a decent number. It may not be, it may not be his main outfit, but there's stuff to be had. Yeah. Not his bloody messed up tank top. Yeah, the bloody tank top. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, that's, that's where I was going to ask because I know a lot of this stuff, you know, can get really pricey. But can I, you know, a guy that's, you know. Very much so. So, I mean, I hate to say it, but there are, there are, I don't want to call them bargain pieces because I think it's not necessarily that they're a bargain.

1:03:20 I just think there are shitloads of price points. I think, you know, you can, you can, you can be a lower level collector and still find really good stuff. Yeah. Tremors 2, baby. Tremors 2. Tremors 2 and Die Hard 2. Yeah. One is slightly better than the other. Only slightly though. Yeah. Yeah. And you guys, you've had some good guests on. I know you had Anthony Daniels on. You've had like, who are? I had them in my notes, but they're, you know, in the car. So who are some of the other guests that people could hear that you guys had on? You know, we've had a bunch of, I mean, obviously, you know, it's, you know, the guests end up being very prop centric. So we've had like a lot, we, for example, we had like, you know, one of the FX guys who does all like the dragon writing from house to the dragon.

1:04:04 We've had some of the great sword makers from like the Lord of the Rings movies that talk to us about, you know, making Lord of the Rings stuff. So those have been sort of our, those are the kind of guests we get in a good way, you know, and really, you know, it depends on the topic of the week. You know, we're always trying to like, like, we're always trying to talk about some aspect of prop, the prop industry that would be of interest both to people that are way into it, but also maybe to people that are just starting or thinking about it, or just maybe you're into collecting and not even specifically props. And then it's sort of like, okay, well, let's talk about what can we talk about? Well, let's talk this week about like, I don't know, like swords on the set, you know, and we kind of go for that. So yeah, I mean, I wish we I wish I could say to you, we've had the most incredible, like, like, like, biggest stars in the world. We have not. Yeah. So, yeah.

1:04:51 Well, I know you guys just put out season seven. Yeah, just went live. So it's just tell everyone that's listening to us. The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of is available on wherever podcasts are available, you know, all the biggies. You can follow us online on social media at Props Podcast, which is we're on Twitter, mostly doing a lot of Nazi stuff there. But we're on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. And we have a YouTube channel. You can go to YouTube and do a search for the stuff dreams are made of, and you can see the videos of the podcast. We use this fine Riverside program as well. You can see videos of the podcast. We're starting to try and do some live podcast, live podcast as well.

1:05:34 So you can find those through YouTube. And when we are, these big auctions are coming up, depending on where they are, Ryan and I will occasionally. So in this case, me, cause everything was in LA. I got to go over to Heritage and kind of, you know, play with a bunch of the really cool stuff and the Planet Hollywood auction. And then I went over to a prop store and I got to see the stuff that they had as well. And so, you know, got to really give everything sort of a look over and really like, you know, really check everything out. So that was really fun. So yeah, check it all out there. So yeah. Yeah. There's some good stuff on the video. Like you get to play with the Barbasol can from Jurassic Park. Yeah, the Jurassic Park can is just so incredible. And of course, wherever this fits in, of course, that was Wayne Knight played Newman on Seinfeld all those years ago. That's right.

1:06:20 Circle is complete. Circle is complete. And one last thing, since you brought us Seinfeld again, this was in my notes as well. Man hands. That was your phrase? You came up with man hands? Yep. Yeah. It was... That's you. Oddly enough, my wife was born on a farm. She lived on a farm in Maine. And as women... Often sort of do about certain aspects of their, I guess, body or physical appearance. My wife always sort of hated her hands. She did not like her hands. She felt like they were rough, kind of like growing up on a farm and having worked on a farm, she always felt they were kind of rough and a little too dry or whatever.

1:07:00 They were not horrific man hands, but that was her kryptonite, her weakness. And I took that idea of, She used to call them farmy or farmhands. And I sort of took the farmhands and kind of stretched it. That's what we would do in Seinfeld. You kind of take the germ of an idea and stretch it into a bigger idea. And I kind of took farmhands and farmy and turned it into manhands. And this idea of these sort of, I thought that was a funnier way of saying it. And then that became, okay, what if we get like this very beautiful woman? It was Kristen Bauer, who was later on True Blood. but we went of course when we cut in for her hands it was like one of the guys on the crew you know and so it was just big big thick meaty palm and obviously both the visual of that hand touching jerry's face along with the phrase you know man hands it kind of became a thing so yeah yeah yes but technically a love letter to my wife so yeah oh that's beautiful last week we had the guy who coined the phrase happy wife happy life on jeff allen and now we we have the guy who coined manhands on. So here we go.

1:08:08 Dave, thanks so much, man. You're awesome. Thank you guys. This was very fun. I'll come back again. I'm sorry this took so long, but very fun. Alrighty. And we will, we're not uncles. We're not dads. We're just someone you can talk to. Isn't that right? Yep. And we'll see you all next week. Take care, buddy. Music.