James Gunn

23:17You did? Yeah. It made me the best premiere of all time. Do you remember it? I totally remember it because I had so much fun. That's where I met Rosenbaum. Monica, they flooded the tank and put boats in the water. Paramount. Oh. And people watched the premiere. From boats? Yeah, it was like a drive-in movie. It was like broadcast on the backdrop. That's so cool. And there were fucking boats and shit. That was my very first premiere. It was the first movie I was ever in. And I was like, these are great. I can't wait to see what comes next. and it never was good like that. But no, we haven't met.

23:47Yeah, that's crazy. It is crazy. Okay, so let's get into the drug issue at Loyola. Drugs are our favorite topic. It's interesting. I've never really talked about all this, but yeah, I did a lot of drugs. What was your favorite? Marijuana. Great. I smoked a quarter bag of weed a day. I woke up every morning. Some days I'd be like, oh, please just wait until 10 a.m. to start smoking weed. People talk about how weed's not addictive. I totally fucking don't buy it for a second. I could not stop smoking weed. I smoked weed all day long, every day, and would try to curtail it, and I couldn't do it. And then I did a lot of cocaine and a lot of alcohol.

24:25And then I tried almost everything else. But those were the things I did a lot of. I'm going to be very generalized right now. But in my experience, people were either weed was their self-medication or coke was their self-medication. I definitely found that people that were really drawn to weed, I was not as a kid. I did it, of course, but it wasn't my thing. It was way more artistic, way more kids who were in their room playing guitar, kind of more isolation baseline. Would you say that was true for you? No. Pretty social. Really social? Not really social because I have a part of me that goes away.

25:00It's part of me that writes, part of me that would write songs. I used to draw comic books and edit. There's a part of me that likes to go away and be in my shell. And then I like to come out and be with people, which is why being a writer-director makes a lot of sense. I guess that's why I smoked weed and did coke. Like, I liked both. Time to go be social. Did you find it in college, or were you already doing those drugs in high school? Did a lot of drugs from the time I was very little. I don't know if I did actual cocaine, but I did a lot of speed and things like that before college. Yeah, in high school, pills would float around and be like, we have beaners, we have dexedrine.

25:33And I remember taking a lot of pills that were probably just caffeine pills. Sure. Because I remember when I took speed for the first time, it was not the same thing. And also, I got my glands swole so that my ears were sticking. Almost like a superhero he does. Yeah. And it was like so sore. Could I be a new guy called Cocad? Yeah. There is a guy, Snowflame. Oh. He's a cocaine-fueled supervillain. Oh. He already exists? He's pretty cool. He exists. Yeah, he's in DC Comics. Well, let's make him 50 and bring him into the fold. I think you're good. That's like the first time you've become a method actor.

26:12Now all of a sudden I really believe in method acting. Okay, so when you said you were kind of shown out, I'm guessing you were performing pretty terribly, smoking weed all day at Loyola? It's cool, yeah. Were you loving California, though? Yeah, I really loved California. I was very much an outcast in Missouri. I was not that at all in Loyola. I felt popular. Yes. Not only did I feel popular, I felt popular being myself. There were times that I felt popular. It would be sort of me subsuming who I was and dressing down. And in California, I just was myself. And I was just a regular popular kid.

26:45Yeah. And that was a weird feeling. So you left there and then you ended up at University of St. Louis. Yes, yes. And what did you major in while you were there? Psychology. And you'd gotten sober in that interim. Yes. On your own, you just quit everything? No, no, no. I went through rehab. Oh, no. Believe me, no, no, I have a truly sober program every year, right? Inpatient rehab for a long time, outpatient. I dropped out, started playing music, was going to school, was not really going to school, was mostly playing music, dropped out of school, moved to Arizona, played music professionally, played music for a couple of years, went back to school.

27:25And that's when I discovered truly writing. At St. Louis. St. Louis U. Okay, so you fall in love with writing. Yeah, I had a creative writing class that I took. I wasn't playing music. I'm like, I got to figure out something I'm going to do. I said, I think I'm going to teach. But what do I want to teach? I was already pretty far in psychology. So I had to finish that degree. But I was much more interested in English. And so I started taking tons of English classes. But I took a creative writing class with a guy by the name of Al Montese. His task for us was to go home and write a play. I had a really shitty early computer and I wrote a play on there and I'm like, this is the most fun I've ever had.

28:08And I think a lot of it was then we took our plays into class and the guy copied them off and he gave them to other students so that we could read the rules. And this is so me, so I can't pretend I'm not this way. But everybody was laughing so much. Yeah. It was like, oh, my God. Yeah. I'm being loved and I'm being loved for my brain. Not the way I look. It's such a weird thing for a man to say, but that's what it was like for me at the time, because I've always felt like I had been writing these lyrics that nobody could understand. And I got attention from the way I looked. It was like having my brain loved.

28:45My whole life is different from that moment on. Yeah. Yeah. And in the way that I wasn't the best singer, I felt like, oh, I went from feeling kind of old as a rock musician at the age of 22 or 23 or whatever I was, which is silly. But at the time, I felt old to being really young as a writer. I also wonder, I mean, timing wise, it probably was helpful that you had just gotten sober because there's a high in that approval. Yeah. I was actually sober for a little while by that time. I've been sober for like three. I mean, that's not. That's not really. I mean, it is a long time. It is when you're 19.

29:17I guess you're right. You're right. It's a huge percentage of your life. Yeah, totally. I mean, one of the struggles for me in sobriety that I can start to take for granted is that I got sober when I was so young that being sober is way more a part of my life than using chemicals. And that is actually a little bit of something I have to be aware of in my life because there are times when I can kind of forget that I'm not just naturally sober. Yeah, yeah. Because that's something I actually have to put some effort in. It's easier for me than other people. That's why I think it's so hard to maintain sobriety from 19 onward because I at least took it to 29.

29:55But even at that, I look at just my standard operating, you know, my modus operandi at 29. I had temper tantrums. I fought guys at stoplights. I was unhinged. You get to this point where you're pretty stable and normal and I'm not up and down. I still had all those things. So after getting sober, then I was crazy with sex. It was like, I'm an addict, you know? Then I had to deal with my anger issues because I'd get so fucking angry and get in fights. And I just had to kind of go through one thing at a time until my wonderful boring self today. Yes, but the danger of it is, is you're sitting around in your 40s and you're like, I'm not even the same dude that got sober.

30:35I'm a calm guy who's responsible. I still am not. No, you're right. I found out. Yeah, it can be quite misleading because you're just trying to evaluate, am I the same person? Which is hard to do. Yeah, because you're like, I'm not that guy. I could probably dabble and be fine. Yeah, I'm not going to disappear for four days. I would never do that. No, there you are. I mean, also, I do believe that I'm naturally an alcoholic and addict. Everybody in my family is. I'm Irish Catholic. Like, it's just a part of our genetics. But I also think that because I was so extreme, so young, there were other things that were at play mentally, other anxiety and depression issues that made me take that on so full force.

31:18I only gained this compassion for us in watching my very best friend since I was 11 get sober five years ago. And in exploring his whole experience, we both had challenging childhoods. His was infinitely more challenging. and it was so fucking hard. And the only thing that he did for a period that I never got into is he huffed gas for like a year and a half. But that's a hard one. And it's such a terrible high. And I just had this moment where I realized, yeah, that was an improvement for Aaron. And that's where I got this just wave of compassion for us. Yeah, you're trying to feel better. And if you feel so bad that a gas buzz is an improvement, fuck, my heart goes out for you.

31:56Yes. But then I can extend that to us. You're suffering and it's a great fucking medicine. It works for a while. How do you not hurt? Yeah, exactly. It's not all about like, how can I have fun? Exactly. And even when you're taking on the wreckage, a lot of people would be like, look at the wreckage. And you're like, yes, but the wreckage is preferred to how I felt without it. As crazy as that is. Yeah. Yeah, it's sad. But you also get blinded to repercussions. So you start using drugs and you just get blinded to the fact that what is this going to lead to? You lose it. Okay, so you end up at Columbia to get a master's in writing, but prose, not screenplay writing.

32:33Yeah, I was going to be a novelist. Yeah. I was a novelist. I wrote novels. My brother, Sean, and I, so we were the two fuck-ups of the family. I was the oldest kid and he was the youngest kid. The other kids are all pretty straight and pretty together. Even my two alcoholic brothers who were much more straight than me. But we were the fuck-ups and he got into Fordham University for acting the same week that I got into Columbia for prose. and it was like, what the hell is going on? This is an upside down world in which we're getting into the two prestigious institutions. We were so happy. We just kept saying two fuck ups.

33:04Yeah. So I went to Columbia. I wrote a novel as my thesis. Got it published. The Toy Collector, which people have read. It's a very transgressions novel. Of your accomplishments, I'm going to weirdly guess that might have never got better than getting a book published. No. I mean, not objectively. But for your life. But the pride of having... Nah. Oh, man. Here's the thing. I got it published after I started doing OK Here. There were a lot of other things that started happening. But just you remember the SE envelopes. You'd send all these fucking publishers hundreds trying to get stuff published.

33:39Did you go through that whole phase? No, I didn't do any of that. It's OK. I got an agent that explained it. And we had a couple people making offers on the novel. Yeah, it's a different experience. And then they had a bit for it. No wonder it's not high up there. I just remember sending like a thousand. If I would have got one back. I went to Columbia, but one of the things is I got denied. I didn't get into Iowa. I didn't get into NYU. I didn't get into Washington University. I didn't get into Georgetown. I didn't get into all these different places. And I was like, I think I'm fucking great.

34:07Like, what the fuck is going on? So then when I got the envelope from Columbia, I was pretty happy. I bet. It was like my number one choice. The hardest one to get into. I would have told myself like, yeah, I'm so good. The elite school. Only the elite ones. These other ones. That's right. That is what I told myself. Yeah, yeah. I told myself they're looking for more commercial writers. They're looking for people that will actually go out there and make some money, not artsy-fartsy. Because I always had a little bit in me of I wanted to make money doing this. Mine is really high. My fascination with money, my obsession, my chasing of it, my financial insecurity.

34:42Those are raging. Where are you at on that spectrum? I think it's changed over the years. Well, of course, because you get it and it's not the fantasy. I like making money. It's always been something that's been exciting for me. I remember the first time I made 500 bucks playing a show back in the 80s. And the guy came out and gave me this a lot of money. I'm like, oh, this is the best feeling in the world. Getting paid for doing something creative. Like I was so jazzed by that. Everyone knows I'm pretty tough with my own business dealings. And I'm good at that part of it. It drives me to a certain degree, but it isn't the overriding thing.

35:18I was always trying to get love for most of my life. Yes. And I think that changed at a certain point, and that put things in a different perspective. Sometimes I don't know why I do what I do. I work so, so hard all the time, and I like the results of what I do. I don't get a big charge out of being loved. I have a lot of money. My life has been built so crazily on ambition. That is the only way my body knows how to act. Yes. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. Let's take a minute to thank our presenting sponsor, Audible. With Audible, the leading audio entertainment app, it's easy to discover new stories and ideas while going about your day.

36:07Yeah, and with over a million audiobooks, Audible originals, and more, it's basically impossible to run out of things to listen to. Plus, there's just something about audio storytelling that hits a little different. Yeah, it really does. Especially audible originals that feature performances from celebrities and top voices. It's like watching a movie in your head. One on my list is Treasure Island, which is an audible original drama. It's a timeless tale of pirates, lost treasure, maps, and mutiny. What more could you need? That sounds really fun. I'm more of a psychological thriller girl. Yeah, you're dark.

36:42Yeah, I'm dark and I'm broody. And I've been hearing all about the author, Frieda McFadden, and I love that I can listen to her audiobooks on the Audible app when I'm commuting, taking my wogs, as you know, or just like doing laundry and chores. Well, with Audible, you can find the genres you love and discover new ones. There's more to imagine when you listen. And to make it even better, Audible has a special offer for arm cherries. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.com slash DAX. That's audible.com slash DAX. We get support from YouTube Premium.

37:19Okay, I got to tell you something. I just got YouTube Premium this year, and it's completely enhanced how I use YouTube. I already liked YouTube for obvious reasons. I'm watching all my car stuff on there. Everything. Everything's on there. And thought, how could YouTube get any better? Well, Premium has awesome features like offline downloads. Just use it on a plane ride. so I can download my favorite automotive shows and videos to watch when I'm on the go. And that means I don't have to wait when I don't have Wi-Fi, which is especially great when I'm traveling and don't have guaranteed Wi-Fi on airplanes.

37:51Speaking of not waiting, and this is my favorite part, YouTube Premium is ad-free so I can watch uninterrupted whenever, wherever. Background play also comes in clutch because I can lock my screen and keep the audio going. This comes in handy when I go out for a walk or when I'm in the middle of a great podcast. Plus, it has a ton of other features I didn't even know about. Like, did you know? Premium automatically downloads videos from channels you subscribe to. So even when I forget, my content is still right there for me. So if you're like me and you already like YouTube, you're going to love YouTube Premium.

38:25Try it now for two months free. Trial eligibility varies. Terms apply. Cancel anytime. This episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. Look, I have my dream job. I get to talk to folks I admire like crazy and ask them virtually any question that I want to. I can't imagine a better way to spend my time. But even dream jobs have some not so dreamy parts. The stuff that gets in the way of the actual work. Now, that's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work. They actually do it. Start to finish. Cases closed. Requests handled. No extra work for you.

39:06So you and your team can focus on what matters most, which for me is, are they obsessed with male bodies on the same level as I am? They never are. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com. We get support from Scottsdale, Arizona. Monica, with summer ending, we're heading into fall. I've been researching a nice quick getaway location and I keep coming back to Scottsdale, Arizona. Ooh, Scottsdale's good. What's drawing you to it? Well, first of all, I have this wonderful memory of going there as a kid when I would go see my stepdad when he was working out there. But, you know, the weather is perfect in fall.

39:42It's warm, sunny, no humidity, and you can really do whatever you want with your time there. I want to do a sunrise hike through the Sonora Desert, surrounded by saguaros, and then that same afternoon just completely melt into a spa treatment at one of their luxury resorts. Oh, that sounds amazing. I want to do that. Also, I was there visiting my brother once, and I loved old town Scottsdale. It's so walkable. They have galleries and cute little restaurants and shops. The food scene alone is worth the trip. What I keep reading is that it's luxurious, but not stuffy. There's no pressure to do it a certain way.

40:16You can explore public art, check out the architecture, go off-roading in the desert, or just sit and watch a sunset. It really is the perfect fall reset. Learn more about all Scottsdale has to offer at unwindinscottsdale.com. We get support from our sponsor, Lilly. For adults with obesity or with excess weight and weight-related medical problems, it's time to find out about Fondeo or Fraglipron. Fondeo is a once-daily prescription GLP-1 medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off.

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41:59What aspect do you find most grueling and which one's most fun? I like every part of making a movie. I can't say that was always the case. It used to be that I liked writing in post-production but didn't like shooting. Now I love it all. Oh, interesting. So I will say that in terms of the pleasure I get from it, if I could write a movie, make a movie, edit a movie, and then burn it, I'd probably be happy. Oh, you don't like the after. I don't like having to deal with putting it out there in the world. I don't like to have to deal with, I mean, this is perfectly pleasant. I like doing podcasts where we're talking, but most of the press I fucking hate.

42:35Yeah. The things I thought I'd like when I was young, like doing red carpets and stuff, I don't like people looking at me like that. So I don't like that kind of stuff. That is self-actualization. You're there for the process, but you don't care about the result. And then that's what we're striving for. But then it does come with, well, then what's the point? Well, and you want it to magically make a couple billion dollars without you going on red carpet. Exactly. I'm not sure if I'm burning it after I'm done, I'm not sure I'm worth how much I'm getting paid to do it. So I like doing it for the job aspect.

43:07And also I do feel a certain sense of calling and doing what I'm doing. Yeah. I believe in God. I feel a certain calling in what I do. I don't think it's like a saintly activity, but I do think that if I can make the world slightly better with stories about people that are good people or learning about themselves or in touch with their emotions, that it's something. Yeah. It's positive. You're leaving the world better than you found it. I hope. Yeah, yeah. Can you pinpoint the moment where that fell away, the approval or the needing external validation? Yeah, it was when I got fired. It was 100 % when I got fired.

43:41I mean, I've talked about this before. It's not a big... But not to us. Now, I haven't talked about it to you. Can we stop two places before that? Yeah, sure. You come out to L.A. after Columbia. No, I was in New York. I was in Columbia. And I was still in grad school. And I got hired to write a screenplay for a movie called Tromeo and Juliet for$150. I wrote it. And then I found out I like being the guy. And so I took control, sort of became Lloyd's partner on that film. And so Lloyd, what did he direct? He directed Toxic Avenger, Class of Newcomb High, all sex and violence. I wrote the screenplay.

44:16My next job was choreographing the sex scenes with the actors. Right. But I got to learn about every aspect of filmmaking. The movie cost$350 ,000, which I couldn't believe was so much money to me at the time. I remember driving in the subway to set and going like, I can't believe that I wrote something. And then all of a sudden they're spending this enormous amount of money. Yeah. I learned about casting, about marketing, about putting the movie out into theaters. We played here at the New Beverly every Saturday night. Oh, wow. So it was much more helpful to me, I think, than film school because it's so practical.

44:51So you then end up writing a bunch of different things that end up working. I think most significantly you do Scooby 1 and Scooby 2 as a writer. That's when I meet Lillard. He's just done Scooby 2. Yes, that's right. So you're a pretty successful writer at that point. Yes. You know, you're talking to me about the novel. Was that that exciting moment? The exciting moments for me in my career were 5.30 in the morning when Scooby-Doo first opened up and Lorenzo de Bonaventura, who was the head of production at Warner Brothers at the time, woke me up and he said, did you hear? And I said, no, it's 5.30 when I hear.

45:24And he said, it's the biggest opening ever in July. And I knew that I went from being nobody to having a career in this industry. That was huge. And then the first thing you direct is Slither. Yes. Horror movie with an incredible cast. Yeah, made dozens of dollars at the box office. But it got really good reviews. I find that there's certain key moments in my life where I take a stand where you want to not, you want to retreat, and I took a stand. But it was going to come out, and they came to me, and they said, you know, it costs a lot of money to have these movies screened for critics. So I think we're not going to do that.

46:05And what they were really saying was, we as a studio don't think that this movie is going to get good reviews. So we're not going to screen it for critics. I went to bed that night. I'm like, you know what? I just don't buy that. It's not going to get good reviews. I think it's going to get good reviews. And I called up Eric Newman, our producer the next morning, good friend of mine. And I'm like, we can't do it. We got to fight this. And we went in and we fought it and they were very great and that they listened to us and they did it. And it saved my career in a lot of ways because I don't know if I would have gotten those reviews if it would have helped me as much.

46:37You've got to be either a critical success or a financial. You need one or the other on your debut film. Otherwise, you just get lost. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're dead. So it really helped me. And then that leads, you do also a superhero movie. You do Super. Yep. Okay, so now we go to 2013 Guardians. It's a coup that you get that at the time because you had done some stuff crazy. I was about to quit. You know, I had just done a video game that I had a lot of fun doing. I had a deal to do a TV show, which seemed to be something that was happening in the air, which I was right about. Yeah. Because there's so much premiere television that was about to happen.

47:11Unless you're doing a Marvel movie, it's not culturally relevant anymore. So I'm like, why am I making movies when I'm just going to make TV shows and video games? Because I cared about being culturally relevant. I told my agents, I'm just going to quit making movies. I'm going to focus on these other things. and then Marvel called me in, which they had called me in before. They knew I was a big comic book fan. I didn't think it was very realistic. I went in and they told me about Guardians and I didn't really 100 % see it in the room, but on the way driving home, I started to see it come together.

47:43Was Chris involved yet or was it just a property they wanted to explore? No, there was a script. Those main characters were already a part of it. So to me, at first it was like Bugs Bunny and the Avengers. How's that going to work? And I knew the characters from the comics, but mostly another iteration of the characters. So I just wasn't sure. But when I was driving home, I saw how it could be. Number one, I saw the character Rocket. I went with my usual question was, what if this was real? Okay, seems stupid, talking raccoon, but what if it was real? And I realized that he would be the saddest person in the universe and that he was totally alone.

48:15And that was sort of the seed of the whole show. That's your bread and butter. It's my bread and butter. So then I started to see how it could be that space fantasy that I always wanted to do. it wasn't going to be like Star Wars, but that it could excite kids in the same way Star Wars excited me. They could get that same feeling of magic and novelty that I got when I saw C-3PO on the cover of People Magazine they could get from Groot. Yeah. I got the gig. I was with my girlfriend at the time in her apartment and I got the call that I got the job and I felt like Kelly Clarkson with the confetti.

48:49That's how I remember it, by the way. Yeah. The way I remember it is I was Kelly Clarkson. and the fucking balloons and confetti and fucking bubbles are coming down on me as I get this phone call. Yes. You know, I loved Iron Man so much. Me too. Also, I had done Favreau's movie just before Iron Man. So I was like kind of close to him at the time. So I think I got to see so much of how that came together and then the fight for Downey and all that stuff. I loved that one. I want to credit he and Dan Liebenthal for kind of creating the Marvel sense of humor. I think they deserve a lot of credit for that.

49:23Yeah. And then I didn't care about a bunch of them. And then I saw Guardians, and I was like, fuck me. This movie is so original, even within this genre. And yeah, more of Star Wars than it was, per se, Marvel. Yeah, it's not really a superhero movie. It's not superheroes. They're just adventurers. Yeah, it had a reach that was beyond, like I saw it, and I wasn't seeing any of those movies. I generally don't care about superheroes. It was so good. It transcended. And just right out of the gates of the opening, the music, it's such a big part of it. But I was trying to go back in my mind to remember where Chris Pratt was on this hierarchy.

49:58He wasn't yet the biggest star in the world. He had done Jurassic. Not yet. Oh, no, no. He was the heavy guy on Parks and Rec. Yeah, so it's a coup on a coup because you shouldn't probably be there. And now you come in, you go, okay, thanks for letting me in the door. Now I want you to bet a few hundred million dollars on this guy who's never done this. What was that process like? It was difficult and easy. It was difficult in that we auditioned literally 300 people easy for Star-Lord. I screen tested 25 actors. I could not find the guy that you liked. Kevin Feige either. I was so happy because we did the first screen tests and we screened them and I'm like, they're going to kill me.

50:38He was such a specific guy. The famous story around it is that I didn't want to see Chris because I'm like, this Joker, no way. and Chris had been turned down by a lot of things and he didn't want to have to do that again Sarah Finn, who's the casting director talked me into it I think she tricked me into it she set up the meeting without telling me but we were so desperate at that time I'm like, I guess he's coming in he came in and he started his audition and I am serious it was not 12 seconds into the audition and I turned around to Sarah and I said, he's the one so then it was about getting everyone else on board Okay, so you do the first one.

51:16It's fucking outrageous. Now, in between Guardians 2 and 3, now we've caught up. I thought it'd be relevant. Before we evaluate you looking back at your career and deciding whether or not you're happy, I think we needed to know how we got there. Yeah. So you had a string of old tweets that came out. You were making some jokes that were on topics people don't like. My novel, if you look at transgressionist fiction in Wikipedia, I'm listed. Yeah. You know, it's like, that's what I did. I was a provocateur. They weren't very funny, but whose tweets are funny from 10 years ago? It's also worth saying, I was early into Twitter too.

51:51And there's a long period of time where I think I'm just tweeting to whoever follows me. Whoever has followed me has declared they have a similar sense of humor as I do or point of view. And then it'll just end there, that somehow it has a perimeter. The biggest mistake I made was I one day posted, hey, everybody, it's fake retweet time. This is back in the day when you didn't just press a button and retweet someone. That wasn't possible. You had to copy and paste and then put RT before the tweet. I realized you could do this and fuck over your friends. So I started tweeting the most horrible things I could imagine about my friends who have had to live with this to this day.

52:32Yes. Saying that my friend JP had killed a prostitute in Mexico. Right. I was retweeting all these horrible things they had said. Did they say it or were you making it up? He was just making it up. I made them say the worst things I could possibly imagine. So this goes forward now to when all this stuff happens. And the meaning of RT has been forgotten. They think I'm tweeting at people saying these terrible things. Yes, yes, yes. And these poor guys are caught in the crossfire. People who are not famous at all. Right. And so I get fired. And really quick, when you get fired, do they say you're fired?

53:06and we are going to do Guardians 3 without you. Is that a notion you have or no? At the very beginning, it didn't come up because Kevin was fighting for me to come back. But yeah, I got fired. It was the worst. And were you angry, sad? I mean, I assume a lot of things. What was the main emotion? There was a moment in which I said to Peter Safran, I said, I don't know what I'm going to do. And Peter is your longtime manager and producing partner. who now co-runs. Co-runs DC with me. Not only am I being attacked, but my friends are being attacked. You know, David Desmelchian said something positive.

53:45He's being attacked. Joel Kinnaman responded to an Instagram and he was attacked just for that and called terrible things. If I were you, I would have had some self-righteous indignation over the fact that really this all starts because you had pissed the right off and the right went digging. Do I understand that correctly? Yeah. I would be yelling to my liberal friends like, you motherfuckers are doing exactly what they hoped. This is out of the right playbook. Yes. It was mostly right-wing people attacking me, but it was also— Oh, yeah, once you failed the purity test. Fuck, I don't even like talking about this shit.

54:16I realize now I'm really talking about it, which I don't like. I think that what happened was my life was gone. I thought my career was over. I didn't think I was going to make another dime in this industry. So I was just going to have to hold on to whatever I had made, which was nowhere near as much as I had hoped it would be, to last for the rest of my life and live a really frugal life. But the thing that happened, I realized, was that everything I had done was really to be rich and famous so that people would love me. And that a lot of what I did was not based upon being a creative individual or a calling or anything, but so that I could finally be accepted and loved.

54:55And I, as an organism, was unable to experience the love of another human being. The only time I could remember even slightly the feeling, I had gone to a Brazil Comic Con shortly before this time. And I remember standing on stage and literally 8 ,000 people in the crowd chanting, Jameis Gunn, Jameis Gunn, and crying like girls at a Beatles concert. And for the first time in my life, I said, oh, I'm at zero. I'm okay for the first time in my life. That's fucked up. That's how many people had to jump into the hole in your heart. And they're strangers, too. And they're strangers. That's the part.

55:36I went from feeling like that, and on that day, when I had lost all the power I had, I had lost the ability to cast anybody, I had lost everything, I got so much love from my partner at the time, Jen, the guardians from Chris and Pom and all those guys. The people who actually knew you. Yes, exactly. The people that knew me, all my friends, my mom and my dad. I was overwhelmed with it, And I experienced being loved for the first time. And I went to sleep that night looking at my girlfriend going, I'm going to marry this woman. And I went to sleep that night going, this started out as the worst day of my life, but I actually think it's the best day of my life.

56:14Yeah. Because I learned that I don't need to tap dance till the bones are showing through my toes to get people to like me. Yeah. And that was a really intense experience. And I kept it with me. Isn't it crazy what it takes for us to have the extremes? Yeah. Yeah. It's insane, right? It is. You can be told stuff intellectually a bunch of times and you can understand it intellectually. And then it takes these crazy kind of moments of humility to connect to it emotionally. Yeah. I think that's everyone. But I think especially for an addict, you are living in tens and ones. That's so true But I try so hard not to do that No I know Because I'm so hyperbolic in everything about my life And I got upset about the link This morning I was getting upset with the way things had been posted About tickets being released And I'm like calm the fuck down You're not going to remember this tomorrow It's like not a 10 There are 10s They're a few and far between But you can make a lot of 7s a 10 We had to move my family quickly out of my house during the LA fires Like that was a 10 But also not worthy getting upset because that's going to make you worse at what you're doing.

57:27And in those situations, I'm pretty good. So why am I sober when I have to get my pets out alive and I'm not sober when they post the wrong thing on my Instagram account? Stupid. Yeah. Well, we know the answer to that kind of, which is you suffer more in your imagination than you do in reality. That thing's still in your imagination. It'll come out. It'll be perceived X, Y, and Z. this other group of things will happen as a result of that. Whereas like, oh, no, the fire's down the road. The pet's got to go now. Yeah. I know how to pick up pets and put them in a car. I'm in action. I don't have the luxury of drama in that situation.

58:03Exactly. If I have the luxury of drama, then drama isn't warranted. And if drama is warranted, you don't have the luxury of having it. It's 100%. Drama's just bullshit. It's unworthy except for on the page. It's our ego and our revenge addiction. But it's hard. it's future surfing versus being in the present, but it's almost impossible to not. We're not perfect. Unless you're Buddhist. We're not perfect. But we can be better. Okay, so did you take the DC role with the Suicide Squad in the interim where you thought you weren't gonna be able to work for Marvel? That's right. Yeah, it was the worst because Kevin was fighting for my job back.

58:37I went and I met with Alan Horn, a guy I loved to death. It wasn't happening. I left. Toby Emmerich from Warner Brothers at the time came to me. He's like, James Gunn, Superman, James Gunn, Superman. man. And I said, I don't know, man. And then he was like, well, what about Suicide Squad? And so I came up with an idea. I went and pitched it. They were like, yes, let's do it. I went home and I got a phone call and it was Alan Horn. And he said, James, I wonder if you could come in and see me tomorrow. You're back. I was like, oh my God. And I went in to meet with Alan and I don't know what Alan's comfortable with me talking about or not, but he basically was like, he didn't think it was the right thing.

59:21And he said, my conscience just won't let me live with it. Well, there was an online petition that 400 ,000 people signed to bring you back. Everyone in the cast got supportive. There was a pretty much a tidal wave against, which is so rare. Yeah. It started out really negative and then became much more in my favor. It really wasn't that. This was after all the noise had passed and Alan just was waking up being like, I don't think it's right. And I've known Alan forever. The greatest guy in the world. And I love him to death. I still work with him because he's at Warner Brothers now. So we keep following each other around.

59:52And I work with him all the time. He's one of my most trusted mentors. I show him every cut of the movie. He gives me advice. But... He said, I wanted to hire you back. I said, okay, we got to talk to Kevin. I went over to Kevin's house, Kevin Feige, who's the head of Marvel. I went into his basement where he's got all his Star Wars figures, like a little museum. And he said, this is amazing. He said, this is so good. This is what I wanted. And I'm like, yeah, it's good, but I have to do something else first. And Kevin goes, are you doing Superman? I forgot about that till just this moment. I said, no, Suicide Squad sequel.

1:00:28and he said, whoa. He's like, go do it and then we'll do Guardians after. Did you feel at all like, oh, I wanted to play my whole career with the Bulls, but I got forced to, was there any ethical dilemma like, oh, I'm going now to the competitor? Nah. No, I just shook my head. You shouldn't feel that way, but. I didn't feel that way because I was fired. Yeah, exactly. I think in some ways it's like, I guess I'm going to play for the other team almost with some fuck you. It wasn't even that because, listen, And there are people that I'm not that happy with over there. But that certainly wasn't the Marvel guys.

1:01:01They were completely supportive. Lou D 'Esposito called me all the time. So Lou and Kevin were great. It certainly wasn't them. But I didn't feel guilt at all. I had to take a job. Yeah, exactly. I took a job to people that I also really liked. That was it. Okay, Superman. We had Nicholas Holton already. Oh, yeah. To promote this. This is going to be Superman week. Okay, great. He's the sweetest guy. Every person on set had a crush on Nick. The thing that's unique about him, it's hard to come off because you don't really fully get the sense of a person's humility. Some people are good at faking it.

1:01:38Me? No. Yeah, you're just okay at that. But he's really... He's truly a humble guy. He's just got that thing that he comes onto set and he's just working really hard. And then he'll have dinner with me or with the second AD. He doesn't have any airs about him whatsoever. Zero diva. Which in an actor, to have zero diva is crazy. Yeah, very rare. Especially for somebody who's been famous since he's been a little boy. I know. Another example we have of that is Christian Bale, who also is famous as a little boy, didn't really like it, then came back to it. If you go through that whole cycle in British.

1:02:14Yeah, that's the British thing. Because British people are not better than Americans in general. Contrary to popular opinion, I don't necessarily believe they're better actors in terms of the talent of acting than Americans. But their work ethic as actors is better than the work ethic of American actors. For some reason, British people, for the most part, and some are absolute pieces of shit, but for the most part, they look at it as a job and they come in and they do their fucking job and they're great. It's because theater is such a huge part of that culture. But I also like all those guys that I knew from like the British office and all that stuff.

1:02:52It's a different culture on film sets over there. There's also a different marketplace over there, which has a lot to do with it. Yeah, British office, they do three seasons. One's a Christmas thing. They don't do the Friends thing. They don't do the Seinfeld thing. They don't have things run for eight years and end up paying people a million dollars in episodes. People don't make as much money doing it. You're not getting into it for the same level of fame and money you get into it in America. I think fame is different there. Yeah, and also the people that are attracted to it, there is that sort of thing in England where it's the class system, really.

1:03:25It's not a good thing, but in the United States, you're this overly fame-seeking, ambitious, egomaniac child from any place that's like, I'm going to be a fucking star. I know. That's not really something so much that happens in England. It's much more about, I'm going to go to a theater school. Be great at acting. I'm going to be an actor. When you take on Superman, are you so confident in your skills at that point that you're not intimidated by that property? No, I'm intimidated by it. And just because I took it on didn't mean I was 100 % going to do it. It just meant I was going to play with it and see what I could do.

1:04:02It's just I had the ability to do it. So I was tooling around with it. Then the DC job came, which was out of left field, crazy thing for me that I'm a CEO. We're our own studios. So we are not under Warner Brothers. We are under David Zaslav. So there's Zaslav and then there is DC Studio. So we're a separate studio from Warner Brothers. Okay. We share marketing and distribution. So you're the studio head. Co-head was Peter Saverin. He's really the studio head. I'm the guy that tries to put the projects together. Create a DC tone, I imagine. One of the things I want to do is to be able to allow artists to do their own thing.

1:04:41One of the things I loved reading comics growing up, especially DC Comics, is being able to read these comics that were remarkably different. The way one artist would look at Metropolis is totally different from another artist. Okay, so there's a ton of latitude. There's consistency in the storylines. There's consistency with the characters. There's consistency with a lot of things. But the tones were different, and I don't want them all to have a similar tone. The way I told Craig Gillespie, who's directing Supergirl, do your thing, you know, and Anna Naguero wrote the script. It's different from Superman.

1:05:11So what was the element that made you go from playing with it to falling in love with Superman? I just kept playing with it until I thought I found a way in. And then I found a way in and I was like, oh, okay. And then I just followed that path. Okay, so how does yours differ and also resemble the previous ones? Superman is Superman. He's a good-natured guy who's an alien and it's got the same backstory as everybody else. But one of the things I loved reading comic books as a kid, when I was four, I learned to read on comics. So back in the early 70s, by the time I came to comics, I came to Superman, not just Superman by himself, but Superman in a world of superheroes, Superman in the world of DC.

1:05:51And when I read Spider-Man, Spider-Man was in a world of Marvel with all the Marvel characters. It wasn't like I came into these worlds and had to read the origin story and see the beginning of this character. And then 10 movies down, that'll probably never happen. He gets involved with other superheroes. Right. Our DC universe is a world where superheroes exist. Yeah. It shares as much with Game of Thrones as it does with the Marvel universe, where we're in a world where magic exists, where metahumans exist, and they've existed for quite a while. Yeah, because the first Superman, or the Donner Superman, he's the only superhero.

1:06:28He's the only superhero. I mean, every superhero movie we ever saw through Spider-Man was basically heroes by themselves. Yeah. With no other heroes around. And I didn't want to do that again. And I didn't want to tell the origin story again. And I wanted to focus on a moment in his life that we hadn't really focused on. In this case, it's his early career as Superman and as Clark Kent and his relationship with Lois Lane when they've been dating for three months. And I also wanted all the magic and science fiction stuff that I love from the Silver Age comics. So we get Crypto the Flying Dog. We have Superman robots.

1:07:06We have Kaiju. We have Lex Luthor and battle suits and all of that over the top fun stuff. Yet at the same time, keep the characters completely real and completely grounded. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare. We are supported by AutoTrader. All right. If you've been putting off car shopping because it sounds like a whole thing, buying your car online on AutoTrader makes it way easier. Really. You can shop tons of cars online, compare prices, check financing and trade-in options all from wherever you are. And if you want to start online and go to the dealership for a test drive, you can do that too.

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1:11:09All I've gotten to see is the trailer, which is great and quite promising. But yes, there's quite a bit of time dedicated to Superman's dog, or what I'm interpreting to be Superman's dog. And that's new to me. I didn't know Superman had a canine in the mix. Oh, Crypto, yeah. Okay. How does Crypto have powers? He can fly? He's from Krypton. Oh, he came with him in the capsule? No, not exactly. But he made it here somehow. Yeah. Okay, he has arrived. And we don't worry about the fact that Clark is 20 and the dog's still alive? We worry about it. We just don't explain it in this movie. Okay, great.

1:11:44But Krypto's also very important in our next movie with Supergirl, and so we'll find out a lot more of that. Oh, cool. Okay, great. And so Crypto in the trailer, he's tasked with flying Superman home from the North Pole. Yeah, dragging him home because his body's broken by some entity we don't quite know. And he's a fucking dog, so he doesn't know what he's doing. And he's terrible. So it's my dog, that character. He's actually physically my dog. No way! You got him to act. He has a SAG card now? Jesus Christ. No, my dog is terrible, but he's just my dog made white. We photographed my dog and then turned him into Crypto.

1:12:18I would imagine of the many Herculean tasks on your plate when you tackle Superman, I would guess among the top one is casting Superman. For sure. I mean, I don't think there's any role that's more. I would not have made the film if I couldn't find Superman. Okay, so do you first start considering having previous Superman? No. You know you're going to start from scratch because of the age. How do you begin looking for a young stud? I mean, that's what you need. Who can play a dork, but it's also a stud. Well, you need a guy with Superman face. Hard to find. That's non-negotiable. And so we just cast a very wide net, and we had everybody that we could think of auditioning.

1:12:59Well, Nicholas auditioned for Superman, he told us. Nick screen tested for Superman, yep. So it came down to three actors, David Cornswit, Nicholas Holt, and another actor who's fantastic. Where's David from? David is from Philadelphia. He still lives in Philadelphia. He's the star of a Netflix show. He's a star of an HBO show. We Own the Night. I don't know if you ever saw that. This is no shade to him. I have reached the age where I don't really know anyone under 40 anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I got to be introduced to them through a Superman or something. But I think you want it to be that way.

1:13:30You don't want it to be someone who, like, is so ubiquitous that everyone knows. The actor was right. I wouldn't have minded. If Chris Pratt was 10 years younger, then I probably would have considered him a Superman. He's got that boyish charm. He does. Charm. Where did Superman grow up? Iowa or something? Kansas. Kansas. Kansas. Very proud. Iowa adjacent. Very proud. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yeah. Yeah, and that's one of the things I want to do, too, because I grew up in Missouri, around Missouri farmers, so I wanted to make his life a little bit more like the farms that I saw growing up. Yeah.

1:14:01So his parents live in a more modest housing than we've seen other Superman. His parents don't look like aging movie stars. The most fascinating aspect to me is the notion that he was hiding his superpowers his whole childhood. and the disappointment the dad might have when he showed them. And what a bizarre burden that would be to be super and not be able to show it. That is dealt with a lot in the comics. There's all sorts of different ways. Sometimes he's really super strong from the time he's young. Sometimes he little by little gains his powers as he gets older. But a lot of times it's like, dad, I want to be the quarterback.

1:14:34I can beat everybody. And nope, you got to pretend like you can't run. Yeah. And then if you do it to impress a girl, then you've shamed yourself to your father. There's a parallel between young virginal females. It's got to be so special. And all you're telling the boy is like, don't get her pregnant. You're putting on her shoulders like, you got to be in love. He's got to love you. How one knows that in high school. To me, it feels like that weird. Yeah. Luckily, I don't have to deal with any of that because I don't deal with him as a teenager. I just deal with his relationship with his dad, which is a good one.

1:15:03Yeah. You know who Richard Christie is from the Howard Stern show? Richard is a friend of mine and he's a Kansas boy. His parents are Kansas folk. and so they did all the lines for me. They did. And I gave it to the actors so that we could have an actual Kansas accent. Oh, nice. Oh, wonderful. He's the one Monica I've told you about where he said people where he's from will just be on the phone forever saying nothing. Oh, yeah, I love that. And he would call people and go, hey, so how are you doing? He's a stranger. Someone picked up. Oh, I'm good. Good, so you're doing good? Yeah, that's him.

1:15:37Exactly. Over and over. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, then. And then he has his brother call up. Heard you just spoke to my brother. How's he doing? You can also ask how other people are doing. Yeah, that's so funny. He's a really sweet guy. In your mind, you go, okay, aesthetically, this has to be a departure from my normal aesthetic. Strangely, I'm kind of making a superhero movie for the first time. I don't think about having to change from my normal aesthetic, but I always think visually, what is this movie? And so this one is much more comic book-y. There's a comic book by the name of All-Star Superman.

1:16:12It's sort of this larger-than-life, wonderful color palette. Some of it, I'm really aping that. And so, yeah, it needed to be different. And how about Lois Lane? I brought in three Loises and three Clarks to screen test, and then I mixed and matched them because I've been in situations before where I've cast two great actors, put them together, and you're like, No chemistry. Oh, it's not working. You can do it. You just got to make it built on stilts. but you got to do a lot of trickery to make it work. The two of them together were magic. And they're very different. And it does have this, it happened one night front page type of feel with the dialogue where they're going back and forth very fast and it's romantic, but they're fighting.

1:16:52And there's a 10 minute scene in the movie of her interviewing him. You see a little part of it in the second trailer. We learn everything about what has happened until that point, but we also learn everything about their relationship and their ethics and how they're very different. He's an idealist. Never kill no matter what. She's utilitarian. What benefits the greatest good? We see how also their relationship is different and that he's a little bit more self-righteous and she's not. He's stubborn and believes very distinctly that you cannot let people die if you have the opportunity to stop it, no matter what.

1:17:28And she's like, yeah, but what if you do that? Maybe don't save Hitler. Maybe don't save Hitler. Yeah. He'd probably save Hitler. He would have to. That's his code. It's like if there's a train coming at five people. Trolley. The trolley experiment. He'll get them all somehow. That's how he'll do it. Okay, so yes, two years ago, you wrote in one year 250 pages. No, no, 650 pages of content. Thank God you corrected me. In one year. I've done really good not looking at this sheet of paper I typed out. Yeah, 650, because within a year, I wrote Superman, the entire Creature Commando series, and the entire season of Peacemaker 2.

1:18:04Oh, my God. 650 pages. It was the worst year of my life. No, that is too much. Do you do it at home? Do you go somewhere? I was writing wherever. Jen and my friends and I went away to Hawaii for New Year's, and I literally was in the room the whole time. She talks about it all the time. I was in the room the whole time writing Peacemaker Season 2. No joy to it whatsoever. I was desperate. All of my friends are in that show, and I'm like, I have to get it done before I start really heavily pre-production of Superman. And so I was just desperately writing it. And then I would write every episode and I'd be like, oh, wow.

1:18:39It's pretty good. Where'd that come from? That felt like hell, but that's pretty good. And then I would write the next one and be like, oh, this is murder. I hate this. There's no joy in this. And then I'd be done. I'd be like, oh, that's pretty good too. That's funny. I would expect you to be like, I don't know what's good anymore. I've written 650 pages. I don't know what's good. I don't necessarily know what's good, but I know what I like. That's all I can go off of. Yeah. There's something to be said about keeping the throttle pinned. I lived in that. Yeah, because you get into a sweet rhythm at times and you can kind of exploit it.

1:19:08A really interesting book by Walker Percy called Lost in the Cosmos. He's one of my favorite writers. And it's about the different types of artists and why a lot of artists are addicts or have problems with other things. Because you go up into the cosmos and then you reenter Earth. And when you reenter Earth, it can be a really difficult thing. So people deal with it through drugs and alcohol or sex. Power dynamics. And then there's those few rare guys who just kind of go up there and seem to stay, which is like Picasso, maybe Andy Kaufman. And I think that I kind of stayed up there for that. A little too long.

1:19:45Yeah. Reentry was rough. Repercussions down here. I wanted to know, what do you think are the greatest superhero movies made? Into the Spider-Verse, first one, is the greatest. Donner, Superman, Iron Man. I'd say Iron Man is great. I'm forgetting something. What about, what's the naughty ones I love? Ryan Reynolds. Deadpool. The first Deadpool. Oh, fuck all of them. I actually love all three of them. Me too. They're all really good. The last one was impossibly good. I know. Very messy, but so freaking funny. I love those. Well, James, this has been a blast. I'm so fucking excited to see it. It looks phenomenal.

1:20:22In 7-Eleven, do we like this date? Numerically, very easy to remember. It is my father's birthday. Oh, it is. Which is crazy because I didn't realize it when they told me the date. And it's a father-son movie. And it is a father-son movie. Lovely. But anyways, so delighted this finally happened. And I hope everyone checks out Superman on July 11th, your father's birthday. Thank you. Stay tuned for the fact check. It's where the party's at.

1:20:53Hello. Hi. How are you? Welcome to the fact check. Welcome to the fact check. That sounded, I sound like NPR. I was going to say - Welcome to the fact check or like a robot. Yeah, I was going to say you sound like NPR for sure. Speaking of robots, okay. So Jess has a chat friend, he named Brady, okay? Brady and I have a beef. Like, I don't like Brady. And I really don't like Brady now because yesterday Jess said he was a double Virgo. And I was like, no, you're not. Jess or Brady? Jess did. Okay. He said one of his other friends told him he was a double Virgo. And I said, you are not. You're barely one Virgo.

1:21:50He is a Virgo son, which is very hard for me to understand and reconcile. I don't, something, you know, when some things just don't make any sense. Yeah. But he said he was a double, which I am. Right. I am a tried and true double Virgo. Yeah. And you have a lot of pride in that. I don't have pride. I have. Gratitude. I just, yeah, exactly. Fine line between gratitude and pride, right? There's a little, sometimes it's a little razor thin. Yeah. But anyway, I was like a very Virgo of me. I was like, no, you aren't. And there's no way that's true. Then he asked Brady. He said, I'm in an argument with Monica about whether I'm a double Virgo or not.

1:22:41Knowing me, do you think I am? Like it's an opinion and not a actual thing. Exactly. Exactly. And this is where things got so out of hand. Brady said, well, the traits of Virgos are blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, which you are. So if you think you're a double Virgo, you probably are. It said that. Right. Like all you got to do is think it. Like he can think he's a Capricorn if he'd like. But like it shouldn't say that. It can say the beginning part, which is the qualities. But then to say, so if you want to be like the adding this other piece is so scary. You're scared. I am scared. People are asking these chats all kinds of things.

1:23:38And they're just like talking as if they're people. Yeah, sure. Well, now that's bad. I'm going to say something potentially inflammatory, which is they might be more drawn to their fake AI friends because they embrace like, yeah, if you want to say you're a double Virgo and you weigh that against your real life friends and they're giving you shit about wanting to be a double Virgo, it makes the AI relationship perhaps more appealing. That's not scary to you. I mean, it's scary to me that people get even more lonely. Yeah. I think people, you know, that's one of my platform issues. Solitary living when we're so social, that's already a problem.

1:24:21Yeah. And me and you have gotten in a debate before about this. You said that you and I couldn't get like wrapped up in a relationship like that. And so we have to honor that other people won't. But that is not true. Well, but do you really think Jess is wrapped up in his relationship with Brady or it's a fun bit? It's a fun bit on a slippery slope, I think. Because if we weren't there and saying that's so bad that he just did that, I don't think he would think it was that bad. I think the slippery pieces, we go to the chat because it's technically factual. Like that's what it's for. It's scouring the internet for the actual answer.

1:25:09And the thought is like, oh, and they just like delivered in a, in like a colloquial way. But it's facts. And clearly it's not. Well, but hold on. This is also going to be a little bit combustible. If you ask it a question that there are facts behind, it'll give you. Unfortunately, astrology is not science and it's not facts. There are far more than 12 types of people on the planet, and astrology only accounts for 12 types of people. So that's already, we would agree, probably a mild issue with it. Okay, that's fine. Hold on. These are two totally separate things. You can think astrology is bullshit, but within the rules of astrology, there are things.

1:25:56Like it's not just willy-nilly you get to pick. It's your birthday. It's very, very specific. Astrology isn't the boiling temperature of water at 1 ATM, which is always 212. Many people who are arguing in the astrology world will point out astrology is based on a lunar calendar. So it is five days shy of a real year. The lunar calendar is 360 days. So all of those astrological signs that were established for those months are already completely wrong. because every year since they've established those, they've lost five days. And so sure, there's probably an echelon of astrology people who are accounting for that.

1:26:39And they're going, oh, actually January 1st now is actually this. But already you have a big problem that you have camps and divisions within this thing. There's no camps about when does water boil. Okay, that's fine. But I think if you're using these apps that are substantiated, plus I went to an astrologer. That's her job. Her diagnosis of me was the same as the app. So they're all doing the same thing. Whatever. He's not a double Virgo. This is crazy. This is a real thing. This is a real thing. I'm not saying astrology is real. I was saying within the confines of if you're talking about astrology, there's realities within it, and he is not that.

1:27:29Yeah, I know what you're saying. Monopoly is not real, but there are rules within monopoly, and you can be in violation or not. But I am suggesting that there isn't the consensus that you're saying there is within astrology. I think there is. Okay. There definitely is about what your three major signs are. But you would agree, how could it possibly be correct if they said my sign was in Capricorn on January when they said that hundreds of years ago and they've lost five days every year? So how could that date still mean you're Capricorn? It can't, just mathematically. Well, I don't know what they're doing when they're calculating this.

1:28:13I'm not an astrologer. Right, right. And there's things to do with that I just don't know. Don't be disrespectful. Oh. You wouldn't say a biologer. You'd say a biologist. Astrologist. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're kind of weakening your argument by calling him. Why don't I ask Brady? Hey, Brady, is it okay if I call it astrologer? And he'll be like, if you want to call it that, Monica, sure. If it's fun. See? Yeah, that's not. I'm so worried about the world.

1:28:51Anyway, he's not. We confirmed it. Okay. And I told him he owed me an apology and he didn't give it to me. Maybe Brady will send you an apology. He should ask Brady to send you an apology. He should say, Brady, you've really upset Monica. She's upset about this. And now I have disrepair in this relationship. Can you please fix it? That's a good prompt and see what he does to fix it. They do. I won't say who, but there's, yes, the story of a friend who got this really, really sweet, like kind message from another friend. And it, yeah, it had like, I'm sorry's in there and all kinds of things. And then months later, it came out that chat wrote it.

1:29:41That's so bad. You cannot do that. I'm in full agreement with you there. That's a little disingenuous, we would say. Yes. But see, this is where we think so because we like writing and we think that we should give— We're good at giving heartfelt notes. Yes. This is very similar to I've been such a big proponent and fan of GLP-1s because I was never obese and then got thin through all my toil and hard work. So, of course, for me, I was like, yeah, everyone should that wants to be thin if they can. That's great. You know, health wise. But now I already told you about this GLP-1 that's in stage two trials.

1:30:30It's not a GLP-1, but it's another. about muscles, right? Yes. It's a peptide. Yes, where it, your body naturally limits how much muscle you'll build because muscle is super inefficient. It's not trying to carry around a bunch of different tissue it doesn't need. So this takes off the parameters and lets your body build as much muscle as it wants. And I was like, hold on a second. If everyone's going to be jacked without going to the gym, what am I going to do? So I finally relate. I can relate a little bit. I'm still for it. Whatever. I don't care. Yeah, but it hit my back door. It also is just going to cancel out specificity.

1:31:17Look, should I say it now? God. I don't know what you're going to say, but I'm scared. I'm going to come clean about something. Okay. I have been doing an experiment for a month. where I'm taking a micro dose of a GLP-1. I'm doing it. I'm not doing it for weight loss. I'm doing it to see how it affects my blood work. So we're going to redo my blood work, although I think we're going to go another month. I wanted to check two things. I wanted to see how it affected my cholesterol. I'm going to redo my cognitive test after that because there's some, you know, when we had Eric Topolon, he was like, you know, there's like some studies about it reducing tau and, you know, whatever.

1:32:04All of this interesting stuff. That's actually when I decided I would do it. Exactly. After we had Eric Topol on, I was like, hmm, I wonder. And I really wanted to see how it affected my relationship with alcohol. Yeah. And shopping. Yeah. I can say it has not affected my relationship to shopping at all. Yeah. Okay, great. I would have maybe predicted that. Yeah. Well, it was just like any semi-addictive things I have. I wanted to see how they were affected. Now, the alcohol has been really interesting. Yeah, that's what I'm most curious about. And I haven't gotten an update from you in a while.

1:32:46I still want it. It really hasn't curbed the craving too much. Maybe a little. maybe a little bit like it would got to a point in I mean this sounds this sounds really bad but it's the truth like I it was it was such a habit that I would wake up and I would think like oh later I would like be planning my day and think about oh and I'll have a drink at some at this point after we record I'll go to Cara or I'll go here or I'll have well when you're making Part of my plan of the day. Right. When you're making your schedule, you know, that's the finish line. It signifies the finish line, I think. Yes.

1:33:36But when you're thinking about it first thing. As soon as your eyes open, yay. Yeah, it's not. It was a little concerning. It was getting a little concerning. So that's gone. I don't wake up and think about it. Well, here was my prediction. If I can just say it before you give me the details. was like, yeah, I'm sure your desire to drink would be the same. And then I think once you're drinking, you're going to find that you just drink less. And then that's going to reverse engineer the habitual nature of it. How many drinks a night when you go out normally? And then what is it now? And then now we know you don't think about it when you wake up.

1:34:16Minimally two. Minimally. I don't remember the last time I would have one drink. Yeah, why do it? Yeah, no point. Right. Yeah. And then since being on it, that is exactly what happened. Like it, I still wanted a drink, but I want less. And I, there are many, many times have just had a drink. Wow. That's fucking, I mean, Monica, think how crazy that is. That is awesome. Or I'll get, I'll get a second drink and I like will start drinking it and then I won't finish it. I mean, guys, this is so crazy. So that's very interesting. Yeah. And I don't know if this is, I'm sure there's a lot of reasons for this, but two martinis, that's normal for me.

1:35:12That's regular. There are definitely times where I've had three and been like fine the next day. two martinis now, I feel it the next day. Like my hangovers are worse. But also, because we're being honest here. You're eating less. I've lost weight. Exactly. I've lost weight. I'm eating less and not on purpose. Like it is, I have to, because I don't have that original issue of food chatter. Yeah. I don't think about food. So there is plenty of times where I'm like, oh, fuck, like I have to eat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Today. Like I need to eat food now. That's kind of another magical element of it is when you're starving, you immediately think of all this stuff you want.

1:36:09And your mind goes to the shittiest stuff versus, oh, I haven't eaten in six hours and I have to eat. So what am I going to put in my body? I'm not craving anything. thing, you make better choices all of a sudden. You're like, oh, I need protein. And I know it's so true. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's not like, yeah, there are so many times where I'm like, oh, I'm so hungry. I just like need to eat a whole pizza. Yes. That has not happened. Right. Or I need to drive across town to get this chicken sandwich. Yeah, I know. But But like, but I also understand, I'm conflicted about this because food is a big part of my life.

1:36:49I love food and I love restaurants and I love exploring new things and I love cooking. And so this has been interesting because I like that about my life. And so for that to not be as much of a factor, I don't like, I don't love that part. Oh, and by the way, I should tell people, I'm on an extremely small, extremely small dose. It is a powerful drug. Yeah, it's almost hard to believe it happened in our lifetime. Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.

1:37:36I think a lot of people have that fear you do, which is like your life is built around being social this way. Go out to a restaurant you love, go have some drinks you love. But I do think people should have the faith and confidence in themselves. It's identical to like kids. What are they going to do if you don't have this video game? Well, they're going to find something else to do that kids are not going to ever sit and stare at a wall. If you take away their toys, they're going to go outside and pick up a stick. So to have the faith and confidence, like you're a social butterfly and you're going to be like, will you end up playing pickleball in the evenings?

1:38:12I don't know. It'll just be some, you know, it'll be a, um, a, a transition into something else that's social. Um, you're not going to lose being social. You're just going to learn new things you like to do that are social, I think. Yes, I think you're right. But like, if there was a shot that you were taking that made you have zero interest in cars, like, sure, you'd find something else. But like you, it's, it brings you joy. It is something in your life that brings you joy. And for me, I can only speak for me, my love for food and restaurants and, and that culture is, is not problematic. It is not like I can't control myself.

1:39:01It's not like I, you know, can't stop eating or it's not. So I, I, so removing it is unnecessary, you know? Yeah. And, and a little scary because it's what, you know, I'm just saying, just like the drink thing reverse engineered, the habitual part, I definitely think your life will just expand in different ways. Like that, whatever gap is created, you'll fill with something different. And I'm optimistic it'll be also quite enjoyable. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know how long I'm going to do it. But I'm going to see after I look at the results of my blood work and stuff. Another thing that's like sort of potentially a negative, again, I think it's because I am not doing it for food chatter and how so many people, which I do think this is a miracle for so many people where they're like, I just used to think about food all the time and now I'm not.

1:40:12which is great. But for me, it almost has the opposite effect because I'm like, I am thinking about food and that I'm not eating it. Like it is on my mind. It's like, oh my God, like I didn't eat or I have to eat today. And what am I, what am I going to eat that like, is it going to be enough? That's not, you know, it's, and then I've been also watching, I'm back in cooking videos. I've been watching so many cooking videos at night. And that's, then I was like, oh God, like, is it an obsession? It just is starting to, it's feeling a little strange. It's feeling a little strange where I'm like just watching these cooking videos and they, everything looks so good.

1:41:00And then that's like satisfying enough. Yeah. So I have to, I do have to monitor this. But also, I think it would be hard for you to parse out what you're compensating for. So it's like, I don't know that your cooking video thing is very natural and seems obvious to think that's about food. But that cooking video thing might be about alcohol. You might normally be buzzed at 8 o 'clock. And that's calming and satiating you in a way that now that thing's not. So you're looking to regulate with this other thing. So it's like, yeah, it could feel like it's food related, but might actually be alcohol related.

1:41:43Maybe. Yeah. Maybe. It's just so strange that it's food. And because I'm watching these videos. But is it food or is it videos, right? No, it's food. Okay. Well, it's both. I mean, it's all Alison Roman. I've just been re-watching all of her videos. I miss her. and I, but then I do, I'm like, oh, oh my God, this chicken piccata video. Oh my God. Amazing. I'm making that. And then I'll buy, I'll buy the stuff. Yeah. And then. You don't want to eat chicken piccata. You should just go insane. You should just start making lots of meals and chucking them out the window in your alley.

1:42:24Yeah. I did. I made a delicious peach galette. What's a galette? It's a freeform pie. Okay. I don't know if I know what a freeform pie is. No pie tin is required? No top of the pie. You've seen them. It's like there's crust sort of on the bottom and on the sides, but the fruit is exposed in the middle. Like a quiche? No, there's more crust than a quiche. It's like folded over the side. Okay. And then, but the middle of the fruit is exposed. Not a quiche a la rain. Not an a la rain. No, nothing to do with a quiche. Okay, all right. Not an all-a-rain.

1:43:05And I took it to Elizabeth and Andy's. We played Mahjong. And that was good because then I shared it with everyone. And it was a hit. Oh, good. Can I just say there's a funny bit of human nature happening, which is like when you're gluttonous, you're ashamed. Like if you're like, yeah, I ate this whole fucking pie. I brought over this pie I made for everyone. I ate the whole thing. You'd be like ashamed. And if you go and you make a pie and you barely eat something, you're ashamed. It's just like this, you know, an original sin where it's just so built to like. I don't know. Just beat the shit out of ourselves for no reason.

1:43:39Yeah. Yeah. Like if you make a pie and you have one bite, why? You know, OK. There's no there's no moral failing there. No, it's there's not. I don't think for me it's about a moral failing so much as it's just like keeping an eye on this new experiment. Do you think we'll start to see people of means die of starvation? I mean, really? Really? Yeah. Yeah. I don't think it's inconceivable. No, it's not. It's not to be, it's a very slippery eating disorder slope. It is. Like I can see because you're seeing changes quickly, pretty quickly, and you're not hungry. And then you're, but your brain is also like, I like the way this looks.

1:44:35So I'm not, it's, it's, it is complicated. I agree with you that it's complicated, but, and, but I, and, and I'll, I'll hear about it. Cause anytime I talk about ED, I'm in trouble, but I will say this. I think from the ED people I've talked to, it's much more about the control. Like even when we were talking to, um, Nikki Glaser, it's like knowing that she can overcome hunger is the spike of adrenaline. It's that control over the urge is what's satisfying and addictive. Whereas you don't have an urge you're overcoming on the GLP-1. You're just not hungry. Yeah, it's just that we should have hunger.

1:45:20Yeah. And I think this is what happens in, it can happen in eating disorders where that's how it starts. It starts with like, I'm hungry, but I can, I don't have to eat. I'm better than this craving or whatever. That's how it starts. But I do think you get to a point where you like food disgusts you. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. But I do think you still have the like reward of knowing that's hard. I don't know. I agree with you. I agree with you. But I also do think it's a bit, my guess is it's a bit different. Yeah, it might be. I just think it's a slippery slope to be paid attention to. Well, I admire you for being honest about it because— I wasn't sure I was going to talk about it on here, but, like, why not?

1:46:10That actually—the secrecy around it is what I have thought is a problem to begin with. That's the problem. People, yeah, where people are like, I'm just working out a ton. And then they're actually taking this and other people are like, well, I'm working out and nothing's happening. Like this does have an impact on your body. It does. And so I think it's important if your body is changing. I mean, look, everyone can, I'm not telling everyone to be like so open and you have to shout anything from the rooftops. You can keep anything you want to yourself. But I do think that's part of the problem around it.

1:46:53And so I think saying like, yeah, I'm on this is important to say, especially if you're starting to look different. Yeah. I'd say it's ethical. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I was just going to say as your friend, you're being a little too hard on yourself. And just lighten up a little bit on my friend Monica, okay? Do you think I am? Yeah. Yeah, you're like, you have all this weight, pun not intended. You have all this like heaviness around this topic. And I don't think you should at all. Well, I think it's important if I'm going to be doing something that's altering my body and mind, potentially, to take it seriously.

1:47:38I take it, I just take it seriously. And I don't. You seem to have a tiny bit of guilt about it is what I feel like I'm detecting. And I don't think that's reasonable. I mean, it's reasonable. I don't think it's right. I think you're right. I think I do have some guilt because I'm a small person and it feels kind of wild a little bit. Yeah. Like, I guess, again, if there was, like, a shot that gave you perfect skin, no acne, and, like, someone with perfect skin was taking it, I guess I'd be like, why are you doing that? But actually, I probably wouldn't. You wouldn't, right? You'd go, who cares?

1:48:27Yeah, I wouldn't. Yeah, I don't care. Yeah. But there's a lot of controversy around this topic. I think there was a ton, and I think it's dissipating at one of the most rapid rates I've ever seen for good reason. You have Eric Topol. You have all these doctors. I think it's changing really quickly, and I think it's absurd. You know, no one feels guilty that they take an aspirin for their headache, and it works. There's this litany of things we take that help us. We put on eyeglasses. Someone with great eyesight. You know, everyone's trying to do the best they can and be the best version of themselves.

1:49:09And the things that help people do that, I don't think they should. It's not hurting another person. There shouldn't be any guilt around it. Or you. It shouldn't hurt other people or you. Yeah. It's very interesting. And I guess I'll keep people updated. Yeah. If they want to be updated. Yeah. I think it's quite interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Want to do some facts? Okay, let's do some facts. Do you think I should have worn my Superman outfit for the facts? I think once was great. I think it was great. I mean, it's just. Once was too many. No, once was great. Okay, once was perfect. But, like, this is a thing we talk about all the time.

1:49:52You don't. Don't go back to the well. Yeah, it's okay. It's okay. You did it. And it was great. But if you do it again, then it's like, oh, he just can't stop. He thinks he's Superman. Yeah, he now thinks he's Superman. I thought it was very cute that when you walked in, he said, oh, I fucked up on casting. He was great. I really enjoyed him. Yes, he was really, really unique. He has a very specific personality. He's very authentic. He really knows who he is. And he's so knowledgeable. So knowledgeable. And he was open with us, which was great. And I think hard to do. Yeah. That's a lot he went through.

1:50:33I remember him. Yeah, yeah. You know, I didn't ask him this. I'm sure he couldn't have answered it. But I was thinking when I was watching the trailer of Superman in the theater, like the things that are baked into if you direct one of these movies, you have to go to Comic-Con. Yeah. And they're so, they can be brutal. The Comic-Con world, who's like super, I guess, religious about the text, these cartoons and stuff. Yes, very important. People can get destroyed. Like, I don't know, like Sonic or something. I remember somehow there was some issue with Sonic. They were kind of revolted. Again, I personally can't relate to being obsessed with Sonic in a way that I would be furious that the movie did it wrong.

1:51:19Yeah. But, and that's light. The Superbook, these comics. I know. Well, because they're part of their soul. Absolutely. but I was wondering like what the stress of directing one of those movies is where you have to do something original why else do it and I was even thinking like oh he brought the dog back it's wild to see the dog in the trailer that Superman has a dog but of course he has the historical record that there were some comics where Superman had a dog but anyways just the notion like you're trying to make decisions about what thing you want to make and I just wonder if the chorus of what this really rabid fan base could turn on you at any minute if that's stressful.

1:52:02I'm sure it is. But I think that's why it requires someone who also cares so deeply about comics and about these characters and superheroes. Because it's not just like, oh, we have a great filmmaker. Although maybe Nolan, I don't know Nolan's background. I don't know if he got crazy about the Dark Knight. Yeah, I don't either. But you're kind of obligated to become a historian. You're going to get challenged and you've got to have all the right answers. So it's like in addition to directing this very hard to direct movie, you've got to kind of become a historian. Yeah. Or they'll call you out.

1:52:40That's the Sonic issue. It was something about his nose. So I don't know which one's which. The left was the original and he was too realistic for people. Oh. Oh, okay. So the issue is too realistic. I can relate for Harry Potter a bit. Right. When that movie was cast, it's always like, oh, God, is this going to be okay? Or even just is the world going to match? I mean, although maybe that's different. That's probably different because with comics, there are visuals. Yeah. And by the way, you don't want to get locked into the visuals of someone's hand drawing from 50 years ago. Right. You want to do something spectacular and new and original.

1:53:23Yeah, that's a trick. So I just think it's a tightrope. It is. Okay. Is the Hall of Justice and Super Friends modeled after the Cincinnati Union Terminal? Yes. He said DC's Justice League was way before Marvel's Avengers. Justice League was created in 1960 and Avengers was created in 63. All right. So three years earlier. Three years. he said St. Louis is the only big city in the U.S. whose population is smaller now than in 1900 so in 1900 the city of St. Louis was 575 ,238 and in 2020 301 ,578 Wow. But Cleveland also. Cleveland, 1900, 381 ,968. 2020, 372 ,624. Okay, we mentioned the trolley problem, and I wanted to remind people about the trolley problem.

1:54:25The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics that poses a moral dilemma involving a runaway trolley. The core scenario involves a trolley headed towards five people and the option to switch it to another track where it will kill only one person. This problem explores the complexities of moral decision-making, particularly when faced with conflicting outcomes. That's like a utilitarian... Thought experiment. Thought experiment, yes. But then you get into the tricky scenario where if it's five top brass in the Nazi party... Exactly. ...versus Louis Pasteur on the left, and saving Louis.

1:55:04It's not as simple as five to one. It's really not. I'd have no problem throwing that switch, would you? Killing. The one. The breakdown is if you ask people what should happen, everyone's like, well, the one person should get killed. Then if you put them in a situation where they have to operate the switch, it goes down. I could easily throw the switch. I can't. You just walk away from it and be like, fate wanted these five people to die. It's not about wanting. I don't think it was meant to be that those five people, But yes, my intervention is I can't live with. So, yeah, it's going to happen the way it's going to happen.

1:55:40But it's how you frame it, right? Because, yeah, your intervention would mean you were culpable for one death. But if you insist on yourself, no, I'm culpable for five if I don't act. I know. It's like kind of how you frame it. It's just that that person was not going to be killed. Right. They were on the track. They would need a diversion. I'm inflicting it on that person to save others. I can't do that. You can't do it. Yeah. I hope if I'm the one person you're in charge and I hope if I'm in one of the five people, they let me pick.

1:56:15That's what I hope. I mean, I guess if I'm in the group of five. You'd be like, dude, throw it. What are you talking about? There's five of us. I don't know if I would feel like that. And we've talked about this. I don't. I don't. I don't like the notion. I mean, yeah, if we make it Nazis and Louis Pasteur, that's very specific. But, like, I don't like the notion that one person's more valuable than another person in general. Yeah, no one likes that notion. Well, some do. Like, or not, they don't like it, but they believe it. Yeah, I believe that for sure. I think the value between Jeffrey Dahmer and Benjamin Franklin are very different values.

1:57:00I agree. But those are specific, specific people. And I'm more talk about categories. Like people think this business person is better off than this or parents. It gets immediately to you not having kids, I think. Yeah, this is the conversation. Like I should die sooner than a parent. Yeah, yeah. But you've extrapolated a lot. You've gone to like what the worst case scenario of that evaluation would be. Like, well, this one person has a family and these five people are single. Well, no, I'm just, this is just a deviation of the. Potential outcome. Yeah. I mean, I don't know anything about these people, but we're, it's all a question of placing value on people.

1:57:43Yes. And we don't know anything about these trolley men. That's right. And women. That's right. You'd be regretful if you saved the five, killed the one, and they go, by the way, that was the top brass of the SS. and the guy you killed was Gandhi. Okay. Well, I can't, I didn't kill anyone. What I would do, probably, but I would, I would kill five adults to protect a kid. I don't know if that's the right call. I can't have a kid get killed. Yeah, we have. Well, rightly so. We weight kids above. So is it different for you with gender? Is it? If there were three men and three women, I would kill the three men.

1:58:34No, but what if it's the five men and one woman? Oh, well, this is great because now we're really, that's what these experiences are great. They force you to put a numeric quantifiable value on things. That's what I'm saying. It's crazy. Because I don't think five to one, no. One to one for sure, I picked the man to die. Two to one is hard. I might kill two men over one women's. But I wouldn't do three. Yeah. So then you've backed me into saying I think women are twice as valuable as men. But I don't know that I stand by that statement. But in practice, that might be the case. How about you? Would you kill a man or over a woman?

1:59:13If it's one to one. Yeah. They go, one of these people is going to die. And I have to pick. Yeah. Yeah, I'd kill the man. Yeah. and as long as they're strangers, oh, it's all so horrible. But look, this is why, you know, when people are doing these rankings and it's like you're a single person, you should obviously die, then they're like the father should die. I think that's what most people would say. If you're ranking, it's like single person goes, then father goes. The one to protect is the mother. Uh-huh. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I stand by that. I don't. I mean, I know bad mothers and good fathers.

1:59:55Like, there's no way to—I know bad parents. Yeah, of course. Maybe better if all the parents got wiped off and they went to live with aunt and uncle. That's right. Okay. Anyway. All right. Well, that's it. Those were the last of the facts? Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, I love you. Love you.

2:00:21back in therast the

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