Tim Meadows: Perspectives

24:29And he don't remember things. You go, you know, and then you create new bits whenever you hang out with him. He loves to laugh and he loves to do bits. And I think he's one of the funniest people I know of just talking and hanging out. We can be ourselves with each other and we can also, you know, the dynamics of who you are and who I am never really play into it you know what i'm saying um like one time he we did this bit for like three months we were at the knicks game and uh what's his name um he was seven five african basketball player he was like not my new bowl my new bowl was i know it was a new bowl that's amazing yeah so my new bowl was playing in the game and me and sandler were like just watching him like because he never got into the game and then uh he we saw him whisper to one of the other teammates and then i said to sandler i go what do you think he's saying and then sandler goes oh no what happened was we saw him whisper to a teammate and then the coach called him into the game and he was like surprised and got up and that became a bit with me and sandler for like six months where we would go, what was Manu talking about before he got into the basketball game?

25:58And we just do things, make it. He's going like, listen, my friend, there's a great soup recipe. You got to try this. This is amazing. Hey, Manu, the coach is trying to get your attention. Yeah, man, that's cool. Listen, let me just tell you, you got to have some beans. You got to have onions and carrots. Oh, shit, man. This guy wants me to get it. And so we did that as a bit like, what do you think? And we did it for like, it would be just like sitting around, hey, what was Manu talking about in the game? And one of us would do the bit of what Manu was talking about to the other player. But, yeah.

26:37He's the funniest man. And, yeah, I love hanging out with him when we can do stuff. It's always good.

26:45Rob Lowe:I love that he has his Mercury players of people he loves and continually puts in movies. And I love Adam. I don't know him well, but I've always, he's just always such a decent dude. But you know, my phone has never rung. I'm just saying. And you can help me with this. You're an insider. Let's unwrap this here. Can we do a psychiatry moment here? Well, let me just tell you, He has never said a negative thing about you to me. So let's go from there. Okay, let's start there. That's good. Yeah. Okay. But like, you know, I feel like there could have been a Rob Lowe-esque character somewhere in the Adam Sandler universe.

27:41Rob Lowe:Is it that he thinks I'm Mike's guy? is that it um i don't know i don't think that matters anymore no um but no i don't know why i think i think one thing those guys this is just my opinion i'm not this is based on nothing but i think those guys my or our more successful friends sometimes look to see who's working and who's not working. And I think sometimes that is the deciding thing. You know, let's, you know, give that person a call. Let's throw a fucking spade a bone. Fucking spade. Throw that motherfucker a bone. Spade needs the money, man. Spade, we all know. Every time I listen to a podcast, it's a spade commercial right before the podcast.

28:32I'm like, what the fuck? This dude, he's amazing.

28:36Rob Lowe:He might be. he might be the funniest person i know he might be yeah he is very funny i always say if there's very few people from snl that i would drive across the country with spade is probably in my top three or four people that i can do that with oh that's a really good litmus test yeah that's a super good litmus test maybe that's what maybe that's what manu paul was doing you know there are not so many people, but I will say that I have two or three that I would go across, but some only to St. Louis, and then I would put them on a plane. This is who I would go across the country. William Shakespeare, I would love to drive across the country with him.

29:24Also the guy who draws the Simpsons cartoon, I think he would be lovely. And as someone to cook, someone like...

29:33Rob Lowe:Someone who knows their way around. a falafel too good tell me about doing Walk Hard I love that movie so much Walk Hard that's where it meant me and Besser actually became better friends was doing Walk Hard he played in the band in that movie yeah it's weird like I gotta say Walk Hard is actually on, I'm plugging Samsung but it was on the Samsung on TV channels or whatever they got. You know those channels where you have a Samsung TV? Yeah, yeah, totally. But Walk Hard was on one of the movie channels and I was like, my wife was like, never seen it before. And I was like, we got to watch it just a little bit, you know?

30:22Yeah. And so, and the thing that I was most proud of with Walk Hard is how good I look at playing the drums. I worked really fucking hard on looking like a great drummer. I learned every song.

30:36Rob Lowe:What was your regimen? How did you do it? How many hours do you have a coach? I broke it down into this. There's only a certain number of songs I got to learn. So I don't have to learn how to play a bunch of songs, just these 12. I only have to learn how to play from the waist up because they're not shooting my feet. And so that's half the job right there. And then I just realized, like a drummer is like a 17 year old teenage boy at the lunch table like just yeah you would get two fingers you know yeah yeah and so i was like okay well that's what it is it's just you you know and so yeah i broke it down learned the songs we had to cook some coaches that sort of taught us the instrument a little bit and then i just focused man and there's this one shot i was so proud of.

31:27I made my wife watch it over and over. It was like this one section where we're playing a punk version of Walk Hard and the camera is coming around me while I'm drumming really hard and I had the beat fucking down. I had it down, man. And it looked like I was playing a punk rock song on the drums. But of all the comedy stuff in that movie, it's fine. I love it. you know people stop me all the time and go you know i don't want no part of this or you don't

32:00Rob Lowe:want no part of these drugs or whatever yeah yeah it's so funny the thing i'm most proud of is my drumming i get that i there's you know i mean there's something about that like uh you know people still ask me about my fake saxophone playing but in inst almost fire years ago but you you actually sounds like you were actually playing i was just blowing fucking air did you even have a read in the saxophone? No, of course not. Yeah, I love that you know. Yeah, no, that read comes out. I play sax, that's why. No, that read was out. It's just your tongue going into this little black, like, plastic thing.

32:38Rob Lowe:Yeah, exactly. But I've got a good aperture, though. That's what sells it. Well, that's good. You look like you should have a saxophone in your mouth, which is, Yeah, that's all that matters. And you fake the neck vein coming out. Yeah. And you're totally good to go. Did you listen to any saxophonist, like in your research? Oh, I followed around Clarence Clemens, the big man from Bruce Springsteen. And the only takeaway I got, and he was the best. What a great man he was. But the only thing I ripped off from him was most saxophone players, they have a strap where it's right in front of them. Yeah.

33:29Rob Lowe:It kind of creates a triangle on their chest. Right. Clarence had his rigged up like a guitar strap. So he had it clicked in up at the top and then way down around the bottom. So it was over his shoulder. Right, right. Which also enabled me to wear my saxophone thrown over my back like he does on the cover of Born to Run. Yeah. Which, by the way, is the most inefficient way to carry a saxophone. Yeah. And you'll break it. Yes. Yeah. Any saxophone player would tell you they have never held their saxophone over their back. Well. Like a rifle. Yeah, over your back like a rifle. I mean, Clarence did it on the cover of Born to Run.

34:15Rob Lowe:And I'm like that. And by the way, one of the great truisms is it's all about like how you look playing an instrument. Like you said, I learned how to play it. But that's not really what you just drilled down on. You drilled on it. I looked. Yes. Yeah. You know, like you see some of the prodigies on the piano, like gnarly prodigies. and they're not moving around at all. Yeah. You know, you got it. You got a little theatricality showmanship. Yeah. Well, I wanted this guy, even though it was a stupid comedy, but I wanted it to make sense that this guy was with Dewey Cox for his whole career. And so I thought to myself, this guy must be an amazing drummer if he stayed with them all of this time.

35:11And so I just took in my mind that I'm going to make this guy as good as I can. I'm really going to focus on it. And then once we started shooting, and it was more about improvising the line. So it wasn't like, oh, I got to go home and learn the scene for tomorrow. It was like, oh, no, the scene tomorrow is just us sitting around with the Beatles talking about getting high. Okay, now I'm going to practice my drumming. Yes, exactly. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's what I would do. And I took a few songs, like a White Stripe song, to sort of practice with and stuff.

35:50But, yeah, it was really fun. I did a Conan show a long time ago when I was doing that movie. And Max, I told him I could play drums from the waist up. And Max Weinberger? Max Weinberg, yes. Max Weinberg. From the street band, yeah. He said, yeah, that's right. He said, I said, can we do a bit where I sit on your lap and you do the bass drum and I do the thing? And he goes, yeah, let's do it. And so on Conan's show, I went over and I played out a commercial, you know, sitting on his lap playing the drums. He did the bass and I did the cymbals and it was really fun.

36:29Rob Lowe:That's true.

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40:17Rob Lowe:have you ever seen armison's whole drum bits that he do that he does fred armison's i saw like a small thing of like the latin character that beats and goes i like he leans on the top hat uh when he says a joke that i've seen that he does an entire an entire set an entire comedy set Yeah. On his drums. And my favorite bit he does, it's so stupid, is all of a sudden the famous intro to the Phil Collins song, In the Air Tonight. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's that incredibly slow. Yeah. Incredibly. I can feel it coming in the air tonight. And it goes on forever. ever and he now he's been playing the drums now in the set like for 20 20 minutes and so people are like the anticipate anticipation and he's he's got he's walking around he's preparing the drum sticks and he's sort of stretching his arms out and everybody's waiting for that amazing drum fill yeah and he walks down and just at the right time he sits down and then he plays a fill that has nothing to do with that song at all.

41:32Rob Lowe:Nothing. It's so dumb. I saw him do this one bit where he does the drummer from doing the Diana Ross song, I'm Coming Out. Oh, it's the best. Yeah, where the drummer's like, what, do you want me to do something here? I can do something. How about a little... Oh, that's not good. And he adds it all in. It's very funny. And those ideas, the thing I like about those ideas, there's no jokes. it's no jokes like hey you know my wife hates me it's all conceptual it's all just a bit you know what I mean nothing that you would go oh that was the setup and this is the punchline I love those kind of bits you know first of all that drum fill is so sick that opening so guys if you haven't heard Diana Ross's classic I'm coming out do it immediately and then google Fred Armisen I'm coming out I would feel like that would be really hard to learn because the whole point of it is I wouldn't want to have to learn yeah I mean it's sort of like all over the place in the beginning and then it gets into the song it's so good I do this thing where because I'm a big baseball fan I do this thing of like if I had to have a walk up song Yeah.

42:59Rob Lowe:Like, what would this a bit I do with my sons? And at one point, I thought it would be the opening drum solo to I'm Coming Out. Yeah. Now batting the second baseman. Bravo.

43:14Rob Lowe:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be great. You know, nothing says badass more than that. Tell me about the DMV. Your new show's coming out on the 23rd on CBS. Yeah. Well, there is nothing, there's nothing funnier than just, you had me at DMV, by the way. Yes. I go, you know what I love about that? I go, I know exactly what that is and I am there. Yeah. I hear you. As long as it's smart and not like talking down to me, I can figure it out. like any episode that you tune in for you it's not much to like you know you don't have to watch the pilot you'll get it you know but yeah it's really fun takes place in the west hollywood dmv present day um i play greg a sort of burnt out former teacher who now works at the dmv sort of winding down his days in life, basically.

44:16Amazing. He's very unhappily married, but in a stable, unhappy marriage. But the show is about this ensemble of friends that work at this DMV together. So yeah, it's like Harriet Dyer, Tony Cavallaro, Molly Kearney, Alex Turan, Gigi Zimbato are the other people in the cast. And, you know, you've done these kind of shows before. It was like an ensemble and you find out. One thing I really, you know, loved was that the writers, they were writing the characters in the beginning, like the first few episodes. and then they got to know us as actors and people and saw our dynamics with each other and then they started adding that within the show and so like the second half of the season i'm really excited for people to see it because they really do capture like the comedic vibe that we have with each other like off camera um and i don't know if you found had to have that experience like and we're like on parks and rec and stuff but like at a certain point like sometimes i'd go oh, did you guys hear me talking?

45:28Right. Yeah, because this is something that I would say or an attitude that I would have. So yeah, it's a lot better. And it got a lot better. I didn't even say that it wasn't better before, but I think we just found what we were doing. And we, as actors and as writers and directors on the show, we could just get to it quicker because we all knew, oh, this is, we know what we're doing now. You know?

46:23Rob Lowe:So, yeah. that thing. Because that is the thing about ensembles. They're all about chemistry and they're about you're finding out where your sweet spot is. Yeah. And like, you don't, you really don't get the opportunity to do that. And this is just one of the sort of, this is my thought about having to work in Montreal. Like we would all love to be in LA and be shooting it in LA, but we shoot into Montreal. But the thing that's been really good for this show is that all we have to focus on is the show. so we socialize with each other we hang out with each other go see movies and football games and you know hockey games we have dinner together kids play together and we don't have you know oh i can't i gotta go to a premiere or i gotta have a meeting with somebody you know it's like you're up there and you're like just focused on the show and it really made our cast tight and like maybe we're going to work fun.

47:26You know, it was really a blast. Also a great city. Yeah.

47:31Rob Lowe:I mean, particularly if you're there in the springtime. Holy moly. Holy moly. Yeah, I loved it. And we rented a pre-war condo, you know, and it was just a blast. I love old homes. Yeah. I do. I just love old architecture and stuff. But, and just getting around the city, it was just beautiful. And like, started picking up little French here and there. But, you know, you get so used to saying bonjour and au revoir and merci for seven months. When you come back to the, when we came back to the States, we were saying bonjour to people just naturally. They're like, that Tim Meadows, he's so pretentious.

48:22Rob Lowe:I gave him his Starbucks and he was like, Merci! Whatever. Merci beaucoup. But you know what's funny? People say chow all the time or like as if it's nothing. Jagops. Yeah, right? Oh, I didn't want to say it. I didn't want to say it. I'm glad you said it. I'm saying it. And what's the other thing they say all the time? What's the thing, the Italian phrase before you're supposed to start eating that everybody always says and drives me insane? Abadanza? isn't that from a commercial what is it thank you is bon appetit Italian maybe it's French yeah well you know what it is well people are doing an even worse version because they're taking bon appetit which is French bon is good appetite good eating and they're making it they're putting an Italian thing on it.

49:20Rob Lowe:Buono appetito. Or whatever the fuck. And I just like, let's just eat. Can we just eat? You want a good old American phrase to say. Well, the other thing, I always feel like it's a little bit of somebody, what's it? When you steal someone's glory. It's a little bit of. Appropriation? Yes. It for sure feels like somebody's appropriating the meal. I'm like, unless they made it, Listen, I think you should only say the language of the food you're eating before you start eating it. Oh, I like that. So if it's Chinese food, you have to say whatever the Chinese phrase for happy meal or whatever. If it's French, you got to say bon appétit.

50:09Rob Lowe:This is another thing that Manu Ball was imparting. I'm thinking later of going to eat Chinese food, but I do not know how to say happy meal in Chinese Bon Appetit it's not Bon Appetit, is it? no, Manu, I don't think I think the coach is calling you to the game but I do, is there a dictionary perhaps that you could help me with? so stupid Can you imagine that being a riff for like three months? That was a riff for three months. But that's also like a writer thing too. It's like you guys are the drudgery of staring at the blank screen of the page and you just end up riffing and hoping that funny vibe will find its way into what you're supposed to be writing, right?

51:07And I think also having something just to play that there's no weight on it. This will never be on TV. This will never be something that we... This is just something that only you and I think is funny because we were there in the moment. But yeah, Sandman is funny. He's a funny dude. um i'm about to go do a go do a movie uh up in vancouver and his wonderful wife is

51:39Rob Lowe:starring in it as well and then he's threatening to come up i'm like i don't think i've ever seen a sandler sighting in the snow i don't think i i i when you think about that yeah it's like have you ever seen bigfoot cross a freeway or like i've never seen it like there's certain things you don't see together and I don't think I've seen Sandler maybe it's Sundance I think maybe like back when we were in New York I'm not sure that's an urban that's too urban that just qualifies yeah you're talking about like Revenant type deal yes yes cabin in the woods yeah no I've never seen that side of him I don't know if you can wear basketball shorts when he gets below zero.

52:32I know. My character wears basketball shorts.

52:34Rob Lowe:He's like Hawaii. He's like a Hawaii dude. Yeah, it's too funny. Well, I'll tell him you said... I'm going to hit him with Manute Ball. Dude, I'm going to hit him with Manute Ball. Yes. Tell him to Manute... I don't know how to... You got to line it up. I got to line it up. We got to figure out how to line it up. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know if you say... God, I love 80s basketball. You know who I loved in 80s basketball? I had season seats to the Lakers all true and I used to watch Manute Bowl but he would never get into the game but he'd always be fucking talking to somebody and just see if his eyes get big right?

53:13Rob Lowe:I think that's a good way in don't you think? that is so good and then like I wonder what he would be saying to like the guy sitting next to him and then what if the coach called him in like while he was talking he'll just be like he'll think he's having like a deja vu out of body experience. Yeah, that is so funny, Rob. That is so funny. Well, it is 11.15 a.m. Yeah. And it is Tim Meadows and he says Manute Bowl. Fantastic. Fantastic. Do you know that they say that Manute Bowl is the inventor of the phrase my bad? No! Yeah, that's like an urban mess. Wait, this is great. Is this true? I believe that I've heard this before.

54:08Not just from me, but I've heard this. I've heard this. He said it in the game or in practice. My bad. He made a mistake. And then other players started mimicking it, and then it became a thing.

54:23Rob Lowe:well I will tell you that makes sense because the first person I ever heard use it was Shaq early early in his career which would have which did overlap with Manute and they were obviously both big men so yeah I like this oh we've learned something today yeah I hope I'm right but I know I have learned I've heard that before I'm going to attribute it to him say that I did it say I created you know Tim Meadows created my bad well that's what Manute was actually saying he was leaning over to the guy going what if I said my bad a lot would people remember it long past my playing career time yes they would yes they would you know I think the coach is trying to get your attention well my bad oh there you go That's right.

55:20Rob Lowe:There you go. It works. Tim Meadows, ladies and gentlemen. DMV, CBS. That's right. Coming up. February 23rd. It was great having you on, man. It was great.

55:39Rob Lowe:Well, I'm going to watch DMV because that guy is a joy, or as they would say, a pleasure to have in class. thank you all for listening there's some actionable stuff today I thought in the podcast for you guys to go listen to the Diana Ross thing there's some Google stuff I asked you guys to do I'll be curious to know call me on the lowdown line tell me if you enjoyed any of it and I will see you next week right here on Literally

56:15You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Sean Doherty, with help from associate producer Sean Calvano. Research by Jeff Fox. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel. Our executive producers are Rob Lowe for Low Profile and Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross for Team Coco. Booking by Catherine Cook. Music by Devin Bryant. Special thanks to Hidden City Studios. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally.

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