Greg Daniels

24:59At three o 'clock, I'll come by with my new car. I go out and then you had bought a very sensible Toyota Corolla. Mm-hmm. So I got the one with no air conditioning. And then I also compounded my problem by getting a car that would last forever. Would have no air conditioning for years and years. And I got in and you were a little defensive. I got in and there was a giant hole in the middle. This is a brand new car and there's a giant space that you could put a watermelon in, in the console. And I said, what goes here? And he went, well, that's normally the air conditioner, but I didn't get that.

25:35Sorry, do I sound like that? No. What the fuck? I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I forgot. I thought I, I'm sorry. This is a version of Greg. I thought that I partnered with Niles from Frasier. I apologize. No, but Greg said, oh, I didn't, I didn't get that. And Greg was like, I didn't get that. Right, yeah. What the fuck? How you doing? How you doing? Hey, don't diss the pussy wagon. I was like, Craig, please.

26:03He said, come out on vag patrol. I was like, Jesus, Craig. But he said, I didn't get an air conditioner. And I said. There's only two settings. Yeah. And I said, yeah. I said, I don't know. Don't you need air conditioning? It's fine right now. And it was, of course, it was February. Yes. It felt really good in the car without the air conditioning. After that, anytime we went to a meeting, he was covered in sweat. He looked like he was having a nervous breakdown. I remember going to, I drove to, I think to see you in Chicago. Yeah, I did a happy, happy, good show with Robert Smigel, Bob Odenkirk.

26:38And I was going to see you, it was like August, and I drove from L.A. to Chicago, and I had to sleep during the day and drive at night because it was so hot. I made the mistake of leaving a cassette in the car, and I came back, like when I went to get a hamburger, I came back, and it was all curly-cued from heat. It was a nightmare car, but I had a long time. At least you had a hamburger, though. You treated yourself. Yes. I'm dying. And so I need a hamburger. I do remember we used to do very strange things to entertain ourselves. We have to sit down and we have to together write all this down sometimes.

27:13Yeah, I don't know what you've told folks here. Like one of my favorites was - You're insane. And I was held back from my life as a fucking suck master. Oh no, God. Fucking suck master. By the way, to Greg and Judy Daniels, to Aaron and Judy Daniels, I hope you're enjoying the podcast. See, I was a good influence. We redid the beginning four times and we won't redo this. That's got to stay in. I'm not redoing this. I'm proud of this. Oh, my God. I was just remembering the bit where we got into our first kind of argument with the costume designer. Yeah. This is Saturday Night Live. That's Saturday Night Live.

27:56And they went to Lauren and they said, fire these two or I'm leaving. and uh and lauren was like this is my costume designer you know she's you know terrific and got all these awards and everything so he called us into the his office and we were a little uh nervous yeah we thought we were getting fired yeah and he sat down and we just had this conversation he said you gotta we gotta stay in here about 20 minutes um so she thinks i'm yelling at you and yeah it was terrific it was great he was like i have to be here for 20 minutes and you're in here too. And just so you know, I'm yelling at you right now, but he wasn't.

28:31And we didn't get into a fight to be fair. All we did was we wrote a sketch and it had these elaborate costumes and we checked on, we went to the place where they were manufacturing them just to check on them. Cause we thought that's what a good writer producer does is check on things. And that apparently was us overstepping our bounds, which, okay. I didn't know. We didn't know that we were brand new. So yeah, I don't remember us. We never got into fights with people or yelled at people. No, no, no, no. We just ignorantly stepped on toes. Yes. That just seems normal, though. I bet now that's normal.

29:06I don't know. It was one of those things where we were new, and I don't think it would have been an issue if we had— We had a bad—I mean, I think we were pretty nice people, but we had a lot of, like, bad instincts for Hollywood. Like, I remember before we got to SNL, we had an opportunity to possibly do a movie rewrite, and this was very rare for us. We had never, ever been offered anything like this. So they sent us this script and we read it. And we had this one meeting. We came in and for some reason, we were really concerned that the studio had wasted money because we didn't like the script at all.

29:39And we spent the whole time going, can you get the money back? Is that possible? We were interested in the studio getting its money back. And we weren't playing the game. And also, I remember the first meeting we ever had with an agent was, no, it was Howard Klein. Yeah. We had a meeting with Howard Klein and Howard was like, OK, well, you guys, there's a good word on you. You're doing a good job. And the next step would be for you guys to do this and this and this. And I cut him off and I said, what if we how does it work if we want to write new lyrics to existing songs? And he said, what do you mean?

30:12I said, well, you know, Elvis Presley had that big hit with Suspicious Minds. What if we just changed it to Suspicious Brains? Can we get paid for that? And he said, get the fuck out of here. I don't know why Trying to tickle our own brains And be happy Well you had this thing You had this thing Where you wanted to put in our contract That if Bob Hope died Yes We would be released from our contract Rules of comedy would have been all different You know there's all this boilerplate We got our first contract And it was just you know We were staff writers on Not necessarily the news And there's just this stuff that Of course Greg got out his magnified glasses And was looking and saying It says here, well, according to Peensley T.

30:57Peensworthy, it says here that Article 4, Section 9, and it says things like that's been in contract since the beginning of time, literally biblical stuff about fire, plagues, locusts, act of God. And I said, well, there needs to be, I said, Howard Klein, we want a clause in there that if Bob Hope should die, comedy as we know it would be forever changed. And this contract is no and void. And again, he said, get the fuck out of here. Oh, my God. I was like, I was kicked out of his office like 15 times. Bob Hope just kept living. Yeah, he died six hours ago, the age of 150.

31:33But I will say I have so many happy memories that I wouldn't have had. I'm an anxious person and I put a lot of pressure on myself. and Greg was really just a great. Just happy-go-lucky. Well, not smoking. Just think Owen Wilson. Yeah. Greg should be played by Owen Wilson from the stick era. No, we just had a lot of fun doing weird things that there's a whole story. It's probably a screenplay where you and I decided to just, I think we had seen in the news that Lady Diana or Princess Diana and her husband, Charles, had just been to Vancouver for like a fair. And we decided - There was the expo.

32:26The expo. It was like Expo 87 or something. And we saw an ad where they made it look amazing in the ad. And I think you, as a historian type person, knew about the Chicago Expo of like 1904 or something that was very impressive. And we just managed to convince ourselves that if we missed Expo 87 in Vancouver, we would regret it for the rest of our lives. I still stand by that. And by the way, the Expo was over. The Expo was over, but we thought, we'll see the remnants. Oh, no. So I remember we flew to Seattle. It was like all business, too. It's just like Xerox had a thing because they had a new copier.

33:11Yeah. You know, there's a new kind of asbestos they were coming out with the paper. And you're like, we got to go. We got to go. So Greg and I fly. I mean, other people on their weekends are I'm in L.A. I'm going to get on a boat with all my friends. And we did know people, Billy Kimball, Ian McStone Graham, who lived in a cool house. They all were writers. They would go out on they would rent boats and all split it. And on the weekend, they'd go out and wear yachting caps and have fun. And there were women on the boat. And you're like, we're like suckers. Xerox has a new copier. So we're gonna be the first to see it.

33:47We're gonna have our pictures taken with the new Xerox copier. So we flew, we fly to Seattle, we fly to Seattle and then we drive in a, of course the cheapest rental car you can get. Oh my God, I'm dying. The Hyundai bulb and it's a light bulb. They turn into a car and we drove that from Seattle to Vancouver. And then we're watching, we're in our motel room quickly sussing out that, well, this expo isn't really happening and it's raining a lot and all the exhibits are closed and there's a half a Ferris wheel. What are we doing here? And then we're spending a lot of time. We got hooked on - Beachcombers.

34:25There is a Canadian content show that ran for like 50 years. It's like the bold and the beautiful of Canada called Beachcombers. The Beachcombers, I think. The Beachcombers. And Bruno Gerusi was the star and creator, I believe. I'm glad you got that right. That's some mail I don't have to answer. And we decided we had to go watch it be filmed. And we just became completely obsessed with this film and with this show. And with one particular character. We decided there was one particular character on it who didn't have many lines. And we decided we have to meet him. and we made a promise to ourselves we're going to shake his hand before we leave Vancouver.

35:09And then we went and we got reporters' notebooks and we're interviewing people all over town pretending we're reporters and then someone... We went to the CBC. We found out they were shooting at Gibson's Island, which I... Now I'm like in that community a little bit because I shot Upload up in Vancouver. And so I... You've returned to the scene of the crime. I've returned, yes. People send me like Beachcombers, shirts, like all the crew that I worked with there. Yeah, so we had to get to Gibson's, like in time to go back to Seattle to get our flight. And we were running out the clock trying to figure out how to get to the set.

35:48And we missed the ferry that goes to Gibson's. And it was the last ferry. There would be no way to get there. So then we went down to the docks and we started talking to fishermen. And we explained our situation. Yes. And we paid some guy to go faster than the ferry in his little fishing boat. And we're so excited. We jump in this boat and we're beating the ferry. And we're like, yeah, we're going to get to the island before the ferry. And then we get on the island and then someone tells us the character we want to shake hands with. He says, oh, yeah. No, I think he lives over on Mapleton Avenue.

36:30You and I fan out and you take one. We're pounding on doors. We're pounding on doors randomly going, you know, where? Open up. And so Greg took the north side of the street. I took the south side of the street and we just both, and then I'm banging on like my seventh door. Door opens. There's the guy. And I'm like, hold on a second. Greg, Greg, Greg. Greg comes running. We both shake his hand. He doesn't know what's happening. He's just accepting that he's got fans from LA that, you know, have made the pilgrimage. He's happy. And we did this. So, and then, but then we have to get on, the ferry has docked and is putting on cars.

37:05And that's our last chance to make our flight to get back to that ferry, the one that we beat. And we start running down the street trying to get to the ferry. And this woman in a Jeep picks us up. You remember that? We hitched like this woman. We explained it to her. She completely loved the, got into the spirit of it. She like gunned it towards the ferry, went into the wrong way down a street because like the ferry line for the next ferry was already there. And so we had to kill her. No witnesses. That was the plan. Still unsolved. But, you know, so flash forward years, Greg's gone on to create half the TV shows people have watched.

37:47And I've gone to my foolishness. and one day I get this, someone tells me, Ari Emanuel, the famous Ari Emanuel's on line one, agent to the stars. He's like, I just talked to Greg. He told me the story of you guys. He thought it would be a movie. And he said, it's a movie. And I said very calmly, no, Ari, it's not. It's an anecdote. It's two nerds doing something very nerdy. Yeah. If anecdote film starts making films, then maybe, but. But Ari's got really good instincts and so I don't know. Maybe that should have been the next project. That'll be the next thing we do. So I knew early on that you were very interested in what turned out to be stuff that most people like, which is character development, story arcs.

38:33And I was always like, what? You know, it should be a sketch that's three minutes long and should have a masturbating bear in it. And you'd go, uh-huh. Yeah. But what happens to the bear over time? And so we decide you start. I remember initially you were writing. I did an extra season on SNL. You start working on a screenplay. Then you start working on these different things. I know that you worked, you did work on The Simpsons. You did work on, for Seinfeld. And then you team up, you and Mike Judge do King of the Hill, I think was the, was, and, which was Yes. Fantastic. And. Thank you. That was a lot of fun.

39:15And it's coming back. Yes. August 4th. Yeah. Season 14. Yeah. It's coming back. And you are in this period right now, a real purple patch, which is. I don't know what that means. Purple patch usually means like a very creative sweet spot because King of the Hill is coming back. You are also launching a season. Upload is coming. Final season. Final season of Upload. August 25th. August 25th. You showed me the other day your pilot episode, the first episode for the next generation of The Office. It's a new documentary by the same crew. That's how we're describing it. Yes. It's not a reboot. It's nothing like that.

40:01You showed it to me, which I loved, by the way. I really loved it. I like to slip you things. I remember showing you and Beckett Parks and Rec. Yeah. And I get good feedback from Conan. Beckett said no. Really? This can't work. Oh. Yeah. He said cartoon in Texas? That's not going to work. And he was really vehement about it. And he was like five. Yeah. I saw this latest, the episode for this latest show, the pilot. And it starts, if I'm allowed to say, we can cut this out if it's not cool. But there's a moment that's very powerful where the documentary crew is trying to find. Well, it starts with them trying to find out what's up with Thunder Mifflin.

40:42And they find out some stuff and it leads them in a new direction to a different city. And in the different city, they stumble upon this historic newspaper, which has kind of turned into a ghost newspaper, which I don't know if you're familiar with that. But that's when some other company buys a local newspaper and fires all the reporters and keeps it going selling ads. But they just print wire stories. Wire stories. Yeah. And so they see this and they kind of go, oh, that's an interesting subject for documentary. And then this guy comes and he doesn't really have a lot of journalism experience.

41:17He's been selling toilet paper at another division of the company. Yeah. But he loved being on his college newspaper and he wants to revitalize this newspaper. He wants to bring it back to a real paper. There's just a great scene in it that's, there's a lot about this new show that is putting a light on how much things have changed. So there's old documentary footage of the old newspaper in Toledo, Ohio. Yeah. And then they contrast it and you just see 150 people working really hard on these giant machines putting out the paper. And then you see this young woman who's an important character, but she's working at the paper and she's explaining to the documentary crew what they do.

42:00And she's just dragging and clicking AP stories and dropping them. And then a lot of it is just clickbait. There's a thing that automatically tells you, is this too big an article for this page? Yes, it is. And then she has to pick a different article. And I thought, very smart to make it about this, right now especially. Well, people have sort of counted out newspapers. And there is something in the tone of the office that this sort of poignancy of people doing their best in a situation that is not very hip or people have kind of counted them out. And this new show has got a little more maybe bad news bears energy because they are trying to accomplish something.

42:46And, you know, they are more inspired than the team that worked at Dunder Mifflin. And you're working with a guy who started out with me, Michael Komen. Michael Komen is one of my, shout out to Michael Komen, one of my all-time favorite late-night writers. Brilliant guy, really funny, and he has enough on me to put me in jail. Because he was... Everybody does. I was going to say more than so. I think I tackled him 50 times, physically tackled him. Yes, I've seen the battery, the salt and battery, things that he hasn't filed. He's absolutely brilliant. And I love that you guys are - He's the guy behind Nathan For You.

43:27Yes. And when you think about, you know, a show like The Office that takes like a reality format and gets high comedy out of it. I mean, to me, Nathan For You is like the pinnacle. So I'm very excited to be doing this with him.

43:50I'll think of myself occasionally as being very busy. And then I look at what Greg's doing and you're doing 15 times the amount of work that I'm doing. It's very rare that they all come out the same month. I mean, that's like nuts. The paper is September 4th. So between August 4th and September 4th, I have three things coming out. But they've been years in development and working on them and stuff. It's just random that they're. Right. Well, I noticed that. I get at least I get an invitation here. I have to do three shows. I don't know what some of the other guests do. All three. I can't imagine they have three shows coming out.

44:24The only guests I interview have an Emmy, a Golden Globe, you know, the whole thing. An EGOT, Tony, Oscar. Yeah. I've been rooting for you to get on this. And I've been waiting. I know. It's up to Paula. When will Greg's career. He said he called out Paula. That's what that's what Conan's been saying. He said, I want to get you on, but Paula. Paula Davis, who we met at SNL. At SNL, yes. We met Paula at SNL the first day we showed up there in February of 1988. And I started talking to Paula and she was sitting behind a desk and she was really funny and quick. And I said, oh, she reminds me of my sister Kate.

45:11I like this Paula. cut to her me hiring her the summer of 1993 to be the head booker at late night and she's still with me a barnacle that cannot be removed um it's funny i i think about i don't know about you but i drive around los angeles and when i'm in new york new york less so because it doesn't have the same associations, but in LA, 85, 86, 87, I'm constantly passing things. And I have a very strong sense memory of you and I being there. You went off to get your ridiculous car. I decided I need to get a different car than this piece of junk we bought at the airport. No, I got a 90. I decided I need a Oh no, yeah.

46:00You got a cool car. Well, it isn't like a Dodge Dart or something. It's a Dodge Dart. It's the car they drive on Dragnet. Yes, that was a good one. I wanted a car that looked like I was a NARC from 1972. So I got, and the thing about my, it was a Plymouth Valiant, which is the same thing as a Dodge Dart pretty much. And it was mustard yellow with a black interior bench seats. Yeah. And when you turned it off, the engine dieseled, which means it kept going. and i remember going on a date and getting out of the car to go open the door for the for my date and opening the door and i had turned the car off it was going and then we're like and just watching it and thinking well this isn't going to happen for me tonight well i had a window air conditioner in the passenger side for my dates the car's a little It's a little side heavy.

47:05I'm trying to think of, I'm trying to think of, and you know what's really fun, which is a really nice memory for me, my hosting the Emmys. And I thought of this open that connected all the different shows that were Emmy nominated. And my favorite transition, I always wanted to think of a cool way to get from one show to the next. At the time, Lost had just had its first season was a huge hit, big show. Everyone's talking about it. So I wash up on The Lost. I'm going to the Emmys to host. My plane crashes. I wash up on the beach and I make myself a hairdryer and get my pompadour going. And then I walk through the jungle.

47:48I meet Hurley from Lost. We find the, what's it called? The hatch. The hatch. We find the hatch. And he said, we don't know what's down there. And I said, well, I'm gonna find out. and I lower into the hatch and I went to Hawaii and shot this. So you can, I think you can look this thing up online. I go down and suddenly my feet kick through something and you cut to my feet going through acoustical tile on a office ceiling. And I fall down onto Dwight's desk and it's the entire cast, that original cast of The Office. Suddenly I'm in the confessional area where I'm giving my testimony, whatever.

48:24Well, you'd been, you'd actually been like our one celebrity guest star up to that point. That's right. You guys came to 30 Rock. We went to 30 Rock and Michael was in New York for a meeting and he was like showing all of his favorite things like his local pizza place, Sbarro's. And he thought he saw Tina Fey going into 30 Rock. But it wasn't Tina Fey. It wasn't Tina Fey. It was just somebody who looked vaguely like her. But then you walked by and the camera saw you, but he missed you. He missed me. So I'm going by. And I remember it was doing like two takes and I came downstairs from my show, but that was magical for me because our different worlds, which are very diverse, came back together again.

49:06And you were directing me in your big hit show, your second big hit show. And I was, it was cool. It was really, it was like a nice happening. Like, wait a minute, we're the same guys that - Well, maybe it's being the same age. I don't know. There's a couple of things that go like that. Like you hosting the Emmys when we won an Emmy and there was something, what were you saying right before? We were both arrested at the same time. Yeah. No, but there's like things that, things happen like that. No, but there was a lot of neat little, that was a moment getting to work with you on that. And then I remembered Steve Carell.

49:45That's what I'm remembering. The upfronts. This was hilarious. You were hosting the NBC upfronts the year that we came out. Yeah. And I guess there was an enormous amount of overlap there. But this was so funny to me because, and this is probably inappropriate, but the show that they were really pushing hard was Father of the Pride. Do you remember this? Yes, I do. It was the cartoon. A cartoon based on Siegfried and Roy. And Roy had just been, it was about their tigers. It was like, the idea was to take the Siegfried and Roy's tigers and do a family show about them and it's animated. Dreamworks, I think.

50:22yeah and uh and uh and then roy got literally a month before it came out one of the tigers nibbled on roy's face nibbled um he just had a nosh and uh and um and they were like nope this is actually good for the show yeah i remember they were just like no they cut to him right like you were on stage with all the advertisers and they decided they'd beam in roy in bandages saying It's okay. It's okay. I don't have any ill will to my tiger. And he was to show that the tiger was with him too. Heavily sedated, jaw wired shut. Anyway. Yeah. There were all these moments where then we were, our careers would come back together, but all this time, I'll tell you one thing is I've, I've learned a bunch of things about Greg.

51:15One is that he doesn't want to just meet me at a restaurant and have a meal. He wants to meet me while we're doing something where our heart rate is up. So you're always saying - I like walking with people. I like walking with people. I don't love having to look into people's faces when I'm talking to them. I prefer some faces. So different. I don't know. Sona, I might make an exception. Friendly face. But it's better. It seems better to walk like parallel, right? You can talk more. Sometimes it's a little insane where I'll say it'd be really nice to sit down and I'm hungry. I haven't eaten. You haven't eaten.

51:52We could sit down and you're like, no. I bring a bun with condiments for you. He has a big backpack filled with 33 cent buns and coleslaw and pickles. Something's never changed. Yeah. And it's just that's still what you want to do. That's what you wanted to do in 1985. My dad always said people don't change. They become more so. And I think that's the case. I think that's why that's what I like about character comedy, just to talk about that genre. I think that's what people like about it is that you feel that way about your own friends. And then to see somebody on TV, you get to know what their character is like and to see them act in character over and over again is very, you know, makes you feel like, oh, I know them.

52:35That's just like Conan. Conan's Conan going like this with his vein popping. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Have you guys seen that? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. We've seen it. I've been medicated since. Yeah. we've seen it. Well, yeah, we were back. I mean, I don't know about you, but I've, I've enjoyed, we have a culture that, uh, you know, says, oh, you shouldn't get, getting older is not cool. It's not good. And I just know that I'm happier now because. Well, you're older than me though. So, yes, this is, yes, but I was on the lampoon first. uh, Greg, there's a two month. And I'm two. April to June. April to June.

53:17It's a lot more than two months. It's an eight-week difference between our birthdays. And Greg's favorite time of year every year is when I'm 50 and he's 49. And what he does is he calls me on my birthday and he says, How are you? Are you okay? And this goes on for eight weeks. And then my favorite thing is when that time elapses and it's his birthday, I call him up and say, Ha ha! This is really cool. This art kind of banter, doesn't it? It is. This is like, you got to imagine Bill Burr's doing that with his friends. Right? He's doing much cooler things. No, I don't think so. He's doing much cooler things.

53:59I think this is maybe like what Jack Benny would do. Nope. With George Burns. We have. What is it? Maybe two Mormon comedians. Yeah. I remember a present. Very polite. It was Greg. Speaking of birthdays. is I'll just, we were in Westwood together. We were walking around doing nothing and it was Greg's birthday. And I said, I've got a birthday present for you. Let's pretend we're firing our talent beams at each other as hard as we can. And he was like, what? And I said, just each, we'll be firing our, and I blasted you and nothing happened. Then you blasted me and I stepped, I threw my coat off like I had been vaporized and stepped behind a light pole as if you were so much more talented than I that it vaporized me.

54:41And I remember you were pleased. this was this was Conan's idea of a birthday present to me yeah to one day a year suggest that I might have some talent that yes I could do a joke better than some was this recently or was this like it could have been recently I was gonna say I don't know this is like 1986 but it could easily have been a couple of weeks ago easily nothing's nothing's why I'm asking I don't change that much. I was going to say, I mean, as as a comedy fan, I think the reason people want Greg on here is because the fact that the two of you work together for so long before the two of you went on to astronomical success on your own is it's very rare and it's really cool.

55:25I mean, it's cool for me to be in the room with you two just talking about this stuff. It's funny to me that because I think back to Greg just brought up, I am a, some would say, demonic, I have various demons, and I would sit and I would be anxious. And so I would grind my hands together. And if something wasn't coming, an idea wasn't coming, I would grind. Greg would lean back in his chair and he thought that by whipping his head side to side, it would get blood into a part of his brain and create an idea. So I'd be sitting there. If there was a fly on the wall or a secret camera, it would have seen me pushing my hair through my crazy long, pushing my hands through my hair.

56:12It's very like with Neil and I, the two of us. There's a fun reference. Yeah. We were, I was grinding, I was grinding my hands, my eye vein, my forehead vein coming out, giant hair flying everywhere. And then Greg is - I'm trying to concentrate. Greg has his eyes closed and is going, anyone who came in there would say, you got to medicate them both immediately right yes medicate these guys um well i don't i mean usually i end these by saying hey excited about the new project but you can't do that with greg daniels because it's last season of upload um continuation of king of the hill you have a a new show that picks up where the office it's it's the documentary crew that filmed the office has now gone forward and they're exploring this newspaper, which is tangentially related to Dunder Mifflin.

57:10Did I forget anything? I could talk about a few other things. Oh my God, it's insane. I'm connected to this show, Common Side Effects, that people like. I love that show. You know what? I haven't talked to you about Common Side Effects because you were out of town when Beckett and I binge watched it. I didn't even know you were. I watched the first episode and loved it and then saw your name yes so i didn't know that you were involved uh mike judge and i started an animation company about i don't know five six years ago and um so we are producers and of course he's very involved in this because he's a he's a voice uh and it's uh done with this amazing animation uh god named joe bennett and steve healy who was a writer on the office who you might know and um yeah it's a really good show i uh i watched it with my daughter nev who loves anime so we watched the first one and then again we were like well the next one then the next one then the next one absolutely fantastic and i started watching it not knowing about your guys involvement but have you seen it i absolutely love it seen the whole thing um and Yeah, similar thing.

58:23I watched it because I love Scavenger's Rain, which I think Joe Bennett did before. And the CEO, I was like, God, that sounds like Mike Judge. Yeah. And then I was like, oh my God, it is. And Greg Dana, what is this? It's an amazing show about kind of conspiracies. It's very funny. The animation's beautiful. It's also really sweet. It's the best animation I've seen in a while. It's incredible. Because without giving anything away, watch Common Side Effects. and I've seen it on a bunch of lists as if you're, it's everywhere on these lists, these critics' lists of if you're not watching this, then you're an idiot.

59:00And a shout out because I know you're not just a fan of Upload, David. Oh, I'm obsessed with Upload. Oh, thank you so much. It's so good. The whole concept of it and like just everything about it. It's one of those shows that once the season would end, immediately Google, when will the next one be out? I know. It's tough. Did you see season three? I did. Because season three is, you know, dropped during the writers and actors strike. Right. And I think there's a lot of fans out there that may not have seen season three. Oh. The first two seasons had a lot of, you know, push behind them. And then we weren't able to publicize season three.

59:38So season four is the one coming out August 25th. And that is the final season, wraps up all the stories. And, you know, if you haven't seen season three, you can go check it out now. This episode drops August 25th, too. Oh, how do you like that? Comes out today. Upload comes out today. Oh, what a co-winky thing. I wonder if a publicist was involved. Greg's publicist is Greg wearing a wig. This was cut out on the tree, if I tell you. Now let's all go to Flaky Gates for a bath. You're the Mrs. Doubtfire of publicists.

1:00:16Yeah, that is... Um, and I cannot end this without saying a big shout out to your parents because your parents, and I've said this before to them, but your parents, they love you. Well, they, they, and they were, they said to me, finally, the son we've always wanted. Exactly. No, they, uh, they let us use. They still want you to go to law school though. I know. They think I fucked up. So they, your parents let us use their apartment that first crucial summer when we had no place to live. And I think if they hadn't done that, I don't know what our chances would have been. But that's where we started really working together.

1:00:59It got me out of Boston. It got us both working together seriously. We wrote our packet. We sent it off. Your parents too, though. I remember working out at your parents' house and we went to see Spies Like Us. They were not. Yeah, that's right. Boy, did we have fun. Yeah, that was a big deal. Yeah. Remember that movie? Yeah, we would see those kind of things. We would go see movies if we thought a girl in a bikini was in it. Greg would see an ad somewhere and he'd be like, there's a girl in a bikini in the movie. We were true creeps long before the internet was invented. Spies Like Us, there was a girl in the poster in a full length fur coat.

1:01:37and we were excited. She could see her face. There's a nun in it, but she's a girl.

1:01:46I could see her hands, they poke out of the sleeves. We went and saw a witness because we went for the action.

1:01:58That barn was erotic.

1:02:05Greg, we gotta do this again. this was we've scratched the surface no I'm serious there could be maybe 15 episodes where we talk about us in 85 86 alone and people would love that but whatever remains to be seen let's see how this goes well there's a lot of talked about us alone 85 86 you may get some comments this is the most boring I don't think so Adam can weigh in this is this is what people want to hear Yeah, this is what they want to hear. Sadly, it's what they want to hear. Because you know what? It makes them feel better about themselves. Finally, you're humanized. Anyone listening to this suddenly feels like, hey, I'm a stud.

1:02:46These turds didn't do anything. I have a couch. That car has air conditioning. I have an air conditioner in my car and I have a couch.

1:02:59I'm still going out with the Mrs. Fields girl. Well, Greg, you're go with God. You're killing it. You're killing it. And I couldn't be happier for you. Thank you. You too. Yeah. I love the show. And you love me. I know you love me. And you're going to end by saying you love me. I'll say it. You didn't say it yet. No. I love you, Greg. Love you, Greg. Love you, Greg. Yeah. Love you, Greg. All right. Love you back.

1:03:26Peace out, Tupac. Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend with Conan O 'Brien, Sonam Avsessian, and Matt Gourley. Produced by me, Matt Gourley. Executive produced by Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross, and Nick Leow. Theme song by The White Stripes. Incidental music by Jimmy Vivino. Take it away, Jimmy.

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