This week’s Hidden Netflix Gem: “Bottle Rocket” (1996)

Before Wes Anderson was a household name (at least among movie buffs), before receiving Oscar nominations for The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Moonrise Kingdom, before The Darjeeling Limited, Rushmore, and The Life Aquatic, yes, before all of that, he and Owen Wilson co-wrote the screenplay for Bottle Rocket. It was based on a short film of the same name they’d made in 1992 and released in 1994. Bottle Rocket was Anderson’s directorial debut and marked the first appearances of Luke and Owen Wilson, as well as their lesser known older brother, Andrew. Leslie Mann, now famous for her many roles in husband Judd Apatow’s films, even had a small part, though it was eventually left on the cutting room floor.

Anderson’s first film is an interesting look back at the development of filmmaker’s now signature style: the methodical cinematography, with its bright coloring and compulsive need to center-frame the actors, along with humor so dry you’d better pack a canteen. Though a commercial failure, Bottle Rocket served as a launching pad for the careers of all those names above, so easily recognized here in 2013. But the film is worth a watch on its own merits, even for those who aren’t intrigued by the idea of taking a look at the early work of a couple of future A-listers. Thanks to Anderson’s burgeoning style and its innocent, humorous characters, Bottle Rocket has been certified fresh and holds an 80 percent rating on the TomatoMeter. If that’s not enough to sway you, Martin Scorsese named it his seventh favorite movie of the 1990′s. Yes, that Martin Scorsese.

Alright, enough blabber, onto the film itself. Bottle Rocket is a caper comedy about a couple of twenty-something Texans (just like Anderson and the Wilsons were when they made the film) determined to become master thieves. It begins when Dignan (Owen Wilson) aids his best friend Anthony (Luke Wilson) in “escaping” from a mental hospital. In truth, Anthony checked himself in voluntarily and it happens to be the last day of his stay, but he goes along with the charade to please his friend. Dignan, who is both endlessly optimistic and endlessly naive, then shares his “75-year plan” for a glamorous life of crime. Hopefully you’re beginning to see the style of humor the film employs.

Dignan’s scheme includes a few small-time heists before meeting with a Mr. Henry (played by James Caan, perhaps best known for his role as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather), whose landscaping business Dignan worked for (and was fired from). Dignan seems to believe Mr. Henry is some kind of criminal mastermind, though whether or not that’s the case remains in question for much of the film, and the truth of the matter is best left unspoiled. Anthony goes along with the idea for much the same reasons he allowed Dignan to “rescue” him from the mental hospital—he doesn’t want to disappoint his friend, who’s oh so excited, and hey, he’s got nothing better to do.

Along the way, the two recruit Bob Mapplethorp (Robert Musgrave) as a getaway driver, because he’s the only person they know who owns a car. Although in fact, the car belongs to Bob’s wealthy parents. The eccentric trio endures a great deal of mockery from Bob’s brother, John Mapplethorp, aka Futureman (Andrew Wilson), whenever he crosses their path.

After they rob a local bookstore (in hilarious fashion), the guys hide out in a cheap motel near the Mexican border. There begins another major plotline, as Anthony falls in love with a Paraguayan maid named Inez, though she speaks little English and he no Spanish. That alone is a fantastic indication of Anthony’s character, and it makes it all the funnier that he’s the voice of reason in the film’s merry little band of thieves.

Bottle Rocket is great entertainment whether you’ve heard of Wes Anderson or not. Dignan, Anthony, and Bob are lovable misfits, and their interactions make for a great deal of subtle, witty humor. If you’re familiar with Anderson’s work and aren’t a fan then this one may not be for you. However, I recommend you check it out nonetheless. He’s the type of director that can take some time and understanding to appreciate. If you’ve put that time in and still don’t like his work, well, there’s no accounting for taste. I mean, anyone who disagrees with Marty freakin’ Scorsese on the subject of film is probably missing the point. Anyway, watch the damn thing and see for yourself.

Check out the trailer below and follow the writer on Twitter @NateKreichman.

Starring: Bob Odenkirk, Fred Armisen, Zach Galifianakis, Brian Posehn, Nick Swardson
What you missed out on: After Bob Odenkirk and David Cross decided to put a bullet in their HBO sketch comedy series, “Mr. Show” (that’s right, it was their decision, not the network’s), the guys attempted to go their separate ways, with Odenkirk setting up shop at Fox with a pilot for a new sketch comedy series. If you think the above names are impressive, consider that several other “Mr. Show” alumni were in tow as well, including Jerry Minor, Jay Johnston, and Jill Talley, with Patton Oswalt also participating in some capacity or other. And, yes, if you’re wondering, Cross made an appearance in the pilot, too. So what happened? Apparently, Fox basically flipped a coin to decide which new sketch comedy series they’d add to their lineup, and “Cedric the Entertainer Presents” won the toss. Oh, what might’ve been…

Starring: Jason Segel, Amy Poehler, Kevin Hart, and Judge Reinhold as himself
What you missed out on: Judd Apatow has never been ashamed to admit that the only reason that this pilot ever came into existence is that Fox refused to let him cast Jason Segel as his lead in the short-lived but highly-regarded “Undeclared,” but you can’t say he didn’t do his best to surround Segel with top-notch talent. Segel, Amy Poehler, and Kevin Hart played roommates, with Segel a struggling actor, Hart a struggling actor/comedian, and Poehler serving as Judge Reinhold’s personal assistant. There’s a more detailed look at the pilot here, but the long and the short of it is that, although Apatow admits that he really didn’t know if there was a decent series to be had in “North Hollywood,” he thinks the pilot’s pretty decent, but its tone didn’t match the sitcoms filling ABC’s lineup at the time, so they took a pass on it.

Starring: H. Jon Benjamin, Sarah Silverman, Todd Barry, Mitch Hedberg
What you missed out on: Created by Loren Bouchard, best known to animation fans as one of the creative forces behind “Home Movies,” “Saddle Rash” seemed to have all the elements necessary for a successful Adult Swim series, so why didn’t it make it beyond the pilot stage? Was it that westerns weren’t exactly in vogue at the time? Was there some sort of stigma attached to the project because they brought in country artists to continued voice work (including Waylon Jennings as a very special guest in the pilot)? Whatever the case, the pilot got aired – no doubt mostly because Adult Swim has a tendency to air just about every pilot it orders, whether it actually ends up going to series or not – but that was the end of the trail for the series.

Starring: Nathan Fillion, Leighton Meester, Moon Bloodgood, Geoff Stults, Rockmond Dunbar
What you missed out on: Director James Foley has got kind of a weird track record, having helmed “Glengarry Glen Ross,” “Who’s That Girl,” “At Close Ranger,” and “The Corruptor,” but there’s enough good stuff in there to make you take note when he directs the pilot of a series. Yes, it was probably at heart just another cop drama, but there’s no denying that there was going to be plenty of talent in the squad room. There was, at least, a happy ending: series co-creator Barry Schindel went on to serve as a writer and executive producer on “Castle” a few years later. Guess he and Nathan Fillion got along.

Starring: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Alyson Hannigan, Sara Gilbert, Ed O’Neil, Christine Baranski
What you missed out on: The premise of the series involved Hewitt playing a single-mom sports producer who ends up as highly successful on-air talent, but despite taking two stabs at a pilot, the show never gelled properly. On the other hand, while she was filming one of those pilots, the producers of “Ghost Whisperer” came by and pitched Hewitt their show, thereby providing her with an instant fallback position which she was more than glad to take when “In the Game” fell apart.

Starring: Peter Dinklage, Dave Foley, Busy Phillips, Tina Majorino
What you missed out on: Although I loved him on “Threshold,” I certainly couldn’t begrudge Peter Dinklage for moving onward when that show was canceled and taking a shot at headlining his own series. Given that it took place in a high school, the possibilities for “Testing Bob” would seem to have been endless, but it never got off the ground.

Starring: Paul Giamatti, David Hyde Pierce, Patton Oswalt, Molly Shannon
What you missed out on: Unlike the rest of these pilots, the one for this animated series actually received a DVD release, thereby showing the world at large just how completely bizarre it was. It’s not like anyone can possibly be surprised that even Sci-Fi thought the show was too kooky for mainstream audiences to ever embrace it, but at least we can take comfort in the fact that it’s built a small but loyal cult following over the years.

Starring: Heather Locklear, Illeana Douglas, Peri Gilpin, Brittany Robertson
What you missed out on: Several years before Scott Bakula, Ray Romano, and Andre Braugher offered up their TNT series, the opposing gender had already made an attempt at getting on the air under a suspiciously familiar title. It would’ve been nice to see Gilpin somewhere other than ABC Family’s “Make It or Break It,” but it was not to be.

Starring: Paul Reubens, Jane Lynch, Bruce McGill, Matthew Lillard
What you missed out on: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to guess the premise of this sitcom: it was intended to show all the shenanigans that go on inside the top-secret government base reputed to be the home of alien lifeforms. Did we say “reputed”? Given that Paul Reubens was credited on IMDb as “The Alien,” maybe it’s not so reputed after all.

Starring: Joseph Fiennes, Blythe Danner, Robert Wagner, Carrie-Anne Moss, Jonathan Groff
What you missed out on: Nowadays, you’d be hard pressed to find a network that would take a pass on anything with Ryan Murphy’s name attached to it, but in his pre-”Glee” days, Murphy was mostly still viewed as “that weird ‘Nip/Tuck’ guy,” and this series – about a married man with two sons who has to tell his family that he’s a transsexual – probably didn’t do much for that particular reputation. Probably the only surprising thing about the non-pickup for “Pretty/Handsome” is that the network that turned it down was the same one that put “Nip/Tuck” on the air in the first place. Presumably there were no hard feelings between Murphy and FX, though, given that it remains the home of his “American Horror Story.”

Starring: Catherine O’Hara, Mae Whitman, DJ Qualls, Gary Cole, Jeffrey Tambor, Eddie Kaye Thomas, Treat Williams, Marilu Henner
What you missed out on: Based on the New Zealand series “Outrageous Fortune,” “Good Behavior” would have followed the life of a family of criminals who decide to live life on the straight and narrow after their father ends up behind bars. If the premise sounds familiar, it’s because it ended up being revisited a few years later as “Scoundrels,” which only lasted eight episodes. You’d like to think that “Good Behavior” would’ve lasted longer.

Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nate Corrdry, Molly Parker, Adam Scott
What you missed out on: Although HBO is known for putting some seriously great series on the air, they’re pretty picky about what makes the final cut. For instance, this show about three siblings – played by Gellar, Corrdry, and Parker – adapting to life after the death of their parents, never saw the light of day. On the other hand, though, if it had, then Scott (who played Gellar’s ex-boyfriend) wouldn’t have been available for “Party Down,” so it all worked out in the end.

Starring: David Tennant, Jerry O’Connell, Abigail Spencer, Jane Curtin, Jeffrey Tambor
What you missed out on: In the waning days of his stint on “Doctor Who,” David Tennant decided to expand his horizons and make a break for American television, headlining an NBC series about an attorney who, due to his recurring panic attacks, starts coaching his clients to defend themselves in court…or something like that, anyway. Tennant put on his best American accent – you’ve got to have one if Jane Curtin’s going to play your mother, haven’t you? – and teamed up with a solid supporting cast, but although NBC kept it in play for a decent while, the series never made the schedule.

Grooming habits have been evolving for both men and women, and it’s definitely something we all keep in mind now when it comes to dating and relationships. Any guy whose been dating since the 80s or 90s knows that many women today will eliminate every hair from their bodies. While they don’t expect quite he same for guys, the idea of manscaping is something every guy at least needs to think about. You should at least start by considering that back hair if that’s an issue for you . . .

On a less private matter, facial hair is making a comeback in some circles, as it’s been mostly out of fashion for years. In this area opinions vary wildly as you might expect.

All of this is covered in a new film called “Mansome” from Morgan Spurlock, with appearances by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Adam Carolla, Judd Apatow, Zach Galifianakis along with others. From metrosexuals to more extreme cases, Spurlock takes a humorous look at the subject.

If you’re looking to improve your game with women, you should definitely consider your appearance and grooming habits. You don’t have to do anything radical, but paying attention to it can help you with your confidence and improve your chances. Find a look that works for you, and subtle changes can go a long way.

For more ideas in this area, check out our men’s grooming channel and our dating tips page.

Aptly enough for a sports comedy, our interviewees today are a ragtag collection of lovable underdogs. Unavoidably geeky, Jay Baruchel’s starring roles in “She’s Out of My League,” “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” and “How to Train Your Dragon” have left him short of the A-list; he’s still perhaps best known as the lead alum of Judd Apatow’s beloved, quickly cancelled 2001 sitcom, “Undeclared.” Leading man Seann William Scott has worked in numerous films in a pretty wide variety of genres, yet to almost everyone he’s still obnoxious Steve Stifler of the “American Pie” series; he’ll be reprising the character for a fourth go-round in the upcoming “American Reunion.” Director Michael Dowse has some indie successes on his CV, but his last attempt to break into the mainstream, “Take Me Home Tonight,” was an unmitigated commercial disaster and, for the most part, a critical flop. (We, however, liked it a lot; so much for the Bullz-Eye bump.)

Already available on VOD, “Goon” is one underdog movie we’re definitely rooting for. Loosely inspired by minor league hockey star Doug Smith’s memoir and co-written by Canadian hockey fan Baruchel and veteran Apatow-scribe Evan Goldberg, the film focuses on Doug Glatt (Scott), a goodhearted bouncer of no great intellect who finds himself promoted to full-time hockey thug.

Featuring an outstanding supporting cast comprised of Baruchel, Liev Schreiber, Eugene Levy, Kim Coates (“Sons of Anarchy“) and Alison Pill as the dysfunctional love of Doug Glatt’s life, “Goon” doesn’t gloss over the ugliness of sports violence even as it humorously celebrates it. For that, it took some punches from the traditionally violence-averse British press on its earlier UK release. The Yankee press, however, has been kinder, and there may be some hope of a wide release if enough of you hit the initial U.S. screenings starting this Friday.

Low-key Minnesota native Seann William Scott, intense Montrealite Jay Baruchel, and matter-of-fact Canadian filmmaker Michael Dowse were still high on the afterglow of a successful industry screening the night before when a bunch of us journos met with the trio at the Beverly Hilton. Some amusing and informative highlights are below.

Jay Baruchel on creating Doug Glatt, the not-so-bright but incredibly decent hero of “Goon.”

My dad used to have this expression, which was “Don’t complicate a ham sandwich.” In my experience, a lot of the hardest guys I know are also the kindest and most mild-mannered and gentlest. This in no way means that [their kindness] should be mistaken for weakness. He’s a man who knows what he wants, or finds out what he wants and where he’s supposed to be. He’s fulfilled.

Seann William Scott on playing Doug Glatt.

He’s written to be such a lovable guy and so good to his core. It was written with that specificity and I consider myself to be a good guy, so it’s not hard for me to play that… I was always aware of wanting to make sure there were different colors. Anything that I could bring, but it was already written with that kind of code of honor that he has. He’s self aware of the kind of guy he is and where he is in the world, but it is kind of black and white.

Jay Baruchel on the casting of Seann William Scott.

There’s no movie without him and there’s virtually no alternative… We had no #2. With anything, it’s in your best interest to cover your ass and have your sort of top list of who you’d want. Literally, for Doug it was [a list of] one. It was that or maybe find an unknown, because there’s not a lot of boys in movies who look like they could kick the shit out of somebody that you’d find sympathetic, who would embody everything the guy has to embody. As slow as he is, he’s not simple in the least. I don’t know who can take credit for [first] mentioning Seann but it was a light bulb moment. When we all met him, within five seconds of meeting him we were like, “This is clearly our fuckin’ guy.”

Michael Dowse on why Doug Glatt — unlike real-life player and Goon author Doug Smith — is Jewish.

That was something that Jay and Evan [Goldberg] brought in there. It came out of Jay’s personal history. His dad is Jewish and played hockey. He had to negotiate that. It’s not a pretty picture, being a Jewish hockey player in Quebec.

Seann William Scott on how playing Doug Glatt fits into his (so far) Steve Stifler-dominated filmography.

["Goon"] would have been a movie that I would have loved to have done when I started off my career… I’ve been typecast for sure, but I still appreciate every job I get and you just have to make the best of it. [With "Goon"] I didn’t have to make the best of it. This was already great and I got this opportunity to work with filmmakers who believed in me as an actor…Then I got to go back and do “American Pie 4″ and I had an absolute awesome time. Would I love to go play a character like Eric Bana in “Chopper” or [Tom Hardy in] “Bronson”? That would be great, but I’m pretty psyched that I was in this.

Jay Baruchel on the “Goon” approach to depicting hockey, fights and hockey fights.

Everyone got a bit dinged up. Everyone tagged each other at some point. Not on purpose but I don’t even know how many fights we have in our movie. When you have as much fighting as we had with as many big boys together on skates, somebody’s bound to tag somebody.

… I don’t want anybody to smell bullshit because I think that hockey has, for the most part, been very poorly photographed in movies. I think it’s the lack of space and the speed and the size. For whatever combination of reasons, people have never shot hockey the way it should be shot in a movie, for the most part. We needed to nail that.

We [also] needed the audience to feel every punch. There are different types of fights in the movie. They run the gamut. Some are played more for fun; some are meant to be exhilarating. Some are meant to be straight unpleasant — as it is. We wanted people, when they sit down to watch our flick, that they’ll either experience on their inside kind of what it feels like to be out there or, at the very least, what it feels like to be in the stands. It’s a love letter to a very specific, strange job in professional sports.

Seann William Scott on learning to skate and fight like Doug Glatt, who initially doesn’t know how to skate at all but definitely knows how to fight.

I knew [how to skate] probably better than most non-skaters. I hadn’t put skates on since I was a little kid. I was able to move around a little bit. I did the best that I could before the shoot to practice. What you see in the movie — those are my highlights. That’s my A-game. The fights were pretty intense [and were harder to accomplish than the skating] but it was worth it. Watching the movie, the fights looked awesome… Surprisingly, there weren’t major injuries. There should have been.

Michael Dowse on improvising with Jay Baruchel.

Jay is a filthy improvisor. I knew he was talented but until you actually work with him on the day [you can't tell]. I mean, he disgusted me with some of the stuff that came out of his mouth. That’s saying a lot. I’ve heard a lot of bad shit. I would turn to [the continuity person] and say, “What did he just say? ‘Colostomy bag’?”

Jay Baruchel on hockey movies.

The only hockey films that have any influence on me would be “Slap Shot” and then it’s pretty barren after that. I’d also put what I think is at least one of the best sports documentaries of all time, a very under seen movie called “Les Chiefs,” following a minor league team outside of Montreal for one season in a fight league. That doc centers around this guy who was born to a family of doctors. His brother’s a filmmaker, and he has no interest in doing [medicine] and they all shit on him constantly for it. That, plus the book itself, Goon, and my dad. Just a bunch of different ingredients came into it.

Michael Dowse, who plays hockey, on hockey movies.

I just thought there was a need to make a really good hockey movie again. It had been a while and there’d been a lot of really bad hockey films. I don’t know why they make such bad hockey films. There’s always chimpanzees and tooth fairies and weird shit going on.

Seann William Scott on his work out regimen for “Goon.”

You don’t see me with my shirt off in the movie. There’s a reason for that. To be absolutely honest, before the movie got its money, I’d been training my whole life as an athlete or just to stay in shape. I said, “I’m going to take some time off.”

I’m the kind of guy who, if I don’t work out, I will get a little bigger and look like a guy who used to play sports. Then, when it looked like we were going to do the movie, it was a combination of already changing how I used to train and to gain weight, which was easier. I thought the only way it would look legit for me to take on these guys was to look bigger… It wouldn’t make sense for me to be a gym rat.

The first couple of times I watched the movie, [I'd say] “Man, I’m pretty big there.” But it works so well for the character and makes him more lovable. Now, when I watch the movie, I don’t notice how many Twinkies I ate that day.

Michael Dowse on re-teaming “American Pie” costars Seann William Scott and Eugene Levy.

One of my bucket list things is to work with every single member of SCTV and see if I can get them in a film somehow. So, to work with Eugene was a dream come true. We wanted to do something different, and I think he responded to that idea. Because of the history of Seann and Eugene in a movie together, we definitely needed Eugene to play it seriously. I think he’s actually shown some really great dramatic chops in this film… He kind of surprises people because they expect his eyebrows and all that jazz. What they get is just a really concerned father.

Jay Baruchel on the sense of validation he’s getting from the good response to “Goon.”

We weren’t paid any heed for a very, very long time or taken seriously at all [in Hollywood]. To show it down here last night and to have this sort of jaded L.A. industry crowd — a lot of agents and execs and shit in there, they couldn’t care less about anything… So, when they see our movie and it connects the way that it did, I was like, “Yep, see. Toldja.”

Sean William Scott on the inevitable question: What’s “American Reunion” going to be like?

I’m pretty excited about it, I have to say. We set out to try to just make a great comedy with these characters. Obviously, if I was going to play this role for a fourth time, I didn’t want it to be cheap. I’ve already been typecast — it doesn’t bother me, but if I’m going to do it again, I want it to be a standalone great comedy. It exceeded my expectations. The guys are in their 30s now; they’re dealing with a little bit more real stuff… I think coming back for the high school reunion, it almost feels like a direct sequel to the first one. I was surprised, when I saw it, that it has a lot of heart and a lot of romance for that kind of movie.

Seann William Scott on whether Steve Stifler has married anyone by the start of “American Reunion.”

[Snorting] Oh, no! He’s lucky to get a date.

David Steinberg began his career in comedy with Chicago’s Second City, quickly gaining fame as a stand-up through his appearances on “The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson” while also courting controversy by performing comedic “sermons” on “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.” In 1981, Steinberg began to shift his focus from performing to directing, starting with the Burt Reynolds film “Paternity,” and has gone on to become one of the more prolific sitcom directors in the business, but he recently stepped back in front of the camera to host the new Showtime series, “Inside Comedy,” which airs Thursdays at 11 PM. Steinberg spoke with Bullz-Eye about his new gig, detailing the trials and tribulations of securing classic clips to accompany his interviews, while also discussing some of his past efforts as an actor, director, and stand-up comedian.

[NOTE: All photos appear courtesy of TheDavidSteinberg.com.]

Bullz-Eye: This is certainly not your first time hosting a show where you interview comedians: you also brought us Sit Down Comedy with David Steinberg. Not that there isn’t still plenty of material yet to mine, but what inspired you to take another crack at it?

David Steinberg: I felt that I hadn’t really done it the way I wanted to. That’s why we first started this as a film. Starting it as a film was really good, because then you get so much material, and it’s sort of looser or whatever. And then I settled on this notion of putting two people together and how they connect, but not in any specific ways. They just go together by what they’re talking about. And once I arrived at that, I thought, “This is gonna be good!” [Laughs.] Of course, making it that good…it was time consuming, but it was great, great fun. I worked with some incredible editors, and there was a lot of archival stuff that we talk about that…well, they know that they’re talking to another comedian. That’s the bottom line. And then, archivally, I didn’t just do the clichéd version. I handpicked the clips that I wanted and then begged people to let me use them. [Laughs.] Archival stuff takes so long to get people to sign off on.

BE: Was there anything you wanted to use that, even with all of your pleading, you still couldn’t get?

DS: Yeah, for Jonathan Winters, I had a clip of him in an old Dean Martin roast where he’s roasting (Ronald) Reagan, and in it there’s a wide shot where you could see Dean Martin, Reagan, (Don) Rickles, Phyllis Diller, and… [Sighs.] You know, it’s generally not the original inheritors of the celebrity estates that are the problem. It’s the grandchildren, who don’t even know or understand what it means to be celebrating Jonathan Winters. They asked for so much money everywhere that we couldn’t use it. I ended up having to go with just a tight shot of Jonathan instead. So, y’know, just stuff like that drove me nuts. For the most part, though, I got everything I wanted. Some were just so exorbitant that I just couldn’t do it. But I’m happy with it.

BE: Speaking of Jonathan Winters on Showtime, he also appeared on The Green Room with Paul Provenza not so terribly long ago. It’s great to see people as yourself and Paul continuing to give him the props he deserves.

DS: That’s right, yeah. I will say that the younger comedians tend to look after the older ones. Richard Lewis goes out to Santa Barbara and spends time with him, and Sarah Silverman has done that with Phyllis Diller. It’s very interesting, the comedy community. It’s more surprising and tight-knit than you would imagine.

BE: When it came time to pull together your guest list for the show, did you have an even blend of close friends and a wish list?

DS: Yeah. A lot I knew, and a lot I didn’t. Like, I didn’t know Chris Rock very well, and he proved to be one of the more interesting interviews. There are a whole lot of interviews that are still in the can that are so good: Judd Apatow, Ben Stiller, Lily Tomlin, Carol Burnett, Dick Van Dyke… I tried them in the first round, and…they’re great, but it was how things matched up. But I’m optimistic that we’ll get a second year. The level of celebrity in these people is huge. They’re all the best and the biggest.

BE: What’s the percentage of Canadian content?

DS: [Laughs.] Well, Martin Short and I are the Canadian content. But I would love to have gotten Eugene Levy. I do use a lot of SCTV. You know, I put that group together in a show that I did in the ‘70s (The David Steinberg Show). So, no, not a big percentage of Canadians for someone like me, who’s so pro-Canadian. [Laughs.]

BE: When you appeared on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, you stumbled into some controversy with one of your bits on the show.

DS: Yeah, well, I was doing sermons. [Laughs.] It was something I’d developed at Second City: I’d take a suggestion of any Old Testament personality and do a sermon about them. I’ve got the background in that from my family and from having been at a yeshiva and all that, so I really knew it well. For a comedian, anyway. [Laughs.] Not for a scholar. So I did an album of the sermons, and it was very popular, but it was also very controversial even then. Tom and Dick (Smothers), Tom especially, just couldn’t get over the uniqueness of it, and he said, “Let’s put it on the air!”

So when he put one of the sermons on the air – I think the first one was Moses – I’d gone to New York, and I came back a week later and, because we were friends by this point, we were hanging out, and he said very excitedly, “I want to show you something!” And he opened up the door to this room, and there were just bundles and bundles of mail. And I said, “What’s that?” He said, “It’s your hate mail!” [Laughs.] As if I should be so pleased and excited by this! He was thrilled that it created such an uproar. But then he was told not to do another sermon. Of course, he says, “We love Steinberg, we’re going to have him on again!” Anyway, after I did another kind of Second City sketch with Tommy, he said, “God, the audience still wants more of you. Why don’t you do another sermon?” And the one I chose to go with was Jonah. And the rest is history: it became the reason they were thrown off the air.

You know, there were other political reasons. History sort of rewrites itself, and they say that…Tommy and Dick have sort of been playing down how the sermons were the reason for them going off the air. Because when you listen to them now, they don’t really sound that controversial. But having been the person who did it, it was a completely irreverent presence on television, probably the likes of which had never been there before. So they walked right into the trap of giving the network what they wanted, which was a reason to throw them off, because who isn’t offended by religion?

BE: Before you appeared on Comedy Hour, you were actually a writer on its predecessor, The Summer Brothers Smothers Show, correct?

DS: That’s right. Yeah, Bob Einstein and I wrote for the show. And before that, I was…I sort of broke as a stand-up comedian a couple of years before that. I was already on The Tonight Show as a sort of regular. In fact, I’d already guest-hosted The Tonight Show by the time I was working with the Smothers Brothers.

BE: You were – and, I guess, still are – the youngest person ever to guest-host The Tonight Show.

DS: Yeah, still am. [Laughs.]

BE: How weird was that, to find yourself in such a lofty position at such a young age?

DS: You know, I was so stupid. [Laughs.] You know, with the stupidness of youth, I thought, “Oh, this is pretty great, now I’m hosting The Tonight Show.” Only when I look back now do I go, “Oh, my God, what an incredible thing has happened to me…” At the time, though, I was, like, “Okay, so this is happening.” I was not a guy that was after stardom in any big way. It was just, like, “How do I get really good at this?” And so was the whole community that I was with. Tommy and Dick, they were happy to be stars and all that, because we needed that to be able to do what we wanted to do, but what we really wanted to know was, “How do we get better and better and better?” Comedy was breaking from its old formula, and we were sort of exploring new avenues in the late ‘60s.

BE: The Smothers Brothers managed to blend both comedy and music on their show. You did somewhat of the same thing not much later, when you hosted Music Scene.

DS: Oh, and the performers on that show were unbelievable. It was B.B. King, Janis Joplin…I mean, it was the biggest music stars of the era. Smokey Robinson. John Sebastian. It started out with a group of us from Second City – The Committee, which was a Second City offshoot – but they ended up firing everyone except for me and Lily Tomlin as the hosts. And we were married to Billboard’s Top 100, so every week, no matter what was the popular song, we had to parody it. It was kind of an early Saturday Night Live sort of thing, really. But what we never counted on was that “Sugar, Sugar” would be the number-one song for five weeks in a row. [Laughs.] After three weeks of doing increasingly lame parodies, we just couldn’t figure out what to do with it. But then Lily was whisked away to do Laugh In, and I was left as the host, and…we knew the show was going to be going off the air in about eight weeks, so they said, “You can have anyone you want as a co-host.” So I got Groucho Marx to be my co-host one week, Steve Allen another week…it turned out to be a pretty trippy show in the end.

BE: How was Groucho as a co-host?

DS: Groucho was incredible. We were really good friends. I wrote a draft of the play Minnie’s Boys, and I spent about six months with him. He was lecherous and funny…up to form, basically. [Laughs.] There was a thistle in his kiss, so to speak. He was as acerbic as could be.

BE: Of your standup albums, I think 1974’s Booga! Booga! is probably the best known, if only by virtue of the fact that Sony reissued it in the ‘90s, but there are three others. Is there any one of that bunch that particularly stands out for you?

DS: Well, Disguised as a Normal Person has pretty good material. It’s all the material I was doing in the late ‘60s, and that came out in 1970. Booga! Booga! is very honed. I’d started to get it down good. Before that is The Incredible Shrinking God (1968), a not-easy-to-get album, but that was just the sermons, recorded at Second City. But the last album I did, which got really good reviews and I think maybe even a Grammy nod, was a concept album I wrote with Don Novello. It was called Goodbye to the ‘70s, and we wrote it in 1975.It was about an Arab takeover in America, and I became the sell-out, the Bob Hope type sell-out who was best friends with the Arab President. And that was…maybe we smoked a little bit too much grass. [Laughs.] But I remember it as being very good at the time.

BE: You mentioned The David Steinberg Show earlier. I have to admit that I’ve never actually seen it, but I’ve often seen it referenced as a precursor to The Larry Sanders Show.

DS: It was. In fact, I think Garry (Shandling) even talks about it. But it was a precursor by so many years that you can’t really think of in those terms. But, yeah, I played a character who was an egotistical version of myself – which some people would say is a redundancy – and it was a show within a show. I was sort of copying the old Burns & Allen show. Marty Short plays sort of a sleazy lounge-singer cousin of mine, and John Candy played the Doc Severinsen of the show, Spider Reichman, who worshipped Dizzy Gillespie. It was written by Ziggy Steinberg, one of my closest friends, and…we loved it. We loved doing it. It was just great. It’s sort of an iconic show. Marty’s particularly amazing it. But, then, he’s just amazing, anyway. He’s the funniest human being ever.

BE: I know Dave Foley is also a big fan of the show.

DS: Yes, he is. And then he and I worked together on The Wrong Guy, which is probably one of my favorite things that I’ve ever directed.

BE: Yeah, he’s said it’s one of his favorites as well. But it’s a film that earns decidedly mixed opinions: either it’s a comedy gem, or it’s not funny at all.

DS: That’s absolutely true. You never know what people are going to like or not like. It was a real comedy writer’s film. I got more work as a director from that, just from show runners and comedy writers who knew that it was good. Good or bad, though, it probably still would’ve done better if the company hadn’t gone bankrupt.

BE: Speaking of directing, your first time behind the camera was for Paternity, with Burt Reynolds.

DS: Yes. Burt gave me my first directing job, which was not a little thing. He had to fight Paramount to get them to let me direct it. But it started my whole career. He and I were really good friends, and…I think Burt Reynolds was one of the most underrated comic personalities of the ‘70s. He was as good on The Tonight Show as any comedian who was ever on the show. Things sort of took a turn later on, but at his peak, he was quite remarkable. Yeah, Paternity was first, and then Going Berserk… [Starts to laugh.] It’s not a good movie. But it became a cable stable, and it was also shown as a midnight movie in places like Washington. Not quite Rocky Horror, but…

BE: What made you decide to make the shift from actor to director?

DS: Well, you know, I never really liked acting that much. I did like standup, but I just couldn’t be on the road anymore. I always thought I could direct, though. I always felt…I liked, when I was on the set, to help everyone. And I was a fan of films. I know my movies very well. So I just got interested in it, and…I was still doing comedy, doing gigs all the way through the ’80s and up through the ‘90s. I was still doing The Tonight Show every six or seven months or so. But the directing just built and built and built, and all of a sudden it was a career.

BE: You’ve worked on just about every major sitcom at this point. Who would you say was the most surprising person you’ve worked with, someone you knew about but, when you got the show, left you thoroughly impressed?

DS: You know, from an acting point of view, the women were so impressive that it was unbelievable. I mean, on a show that’s a little broad, like, say, Designing Women, Dixie Carter and Annie Potts, Judith Ivey and Jan Hooks, they were unbelievable to me. The acting chops were incredible. I always remember that in particular. I couldn’t get over the comic abilities and sensibilities of Paul Reiser and Helen Hunt on Mad About You, either. I’d ask them to talk faster, and they talked faster, to the point where it felt like we were doing a Howard Hawks film. That was great.

BE: Lastly, you’ve helmed several episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Given his seemingly natural state of crankiness, is it even possible to direct Larry David?

DS: [Laughs.] It is possible. It’s totally possible. Larry’s very collaborative, actually. He’s a much more generous guy than he plays on TV. [Laughs.]

Tiring as hell, but definitely entertaining.

“When (Johnny Carson and I) talked, after 12 years of writing him, in 2002 he finally actually called me, and I thought it was a joke when on the PA it said “Peter, Johnny Carson on 601.” And he said, “Peter, it’s Johnny Carson. I want to tell you, you write a damn fine letter, but I’m not going to participate in anything on my life because, you know what? I don’t give a shit.” He said, “One day something may get done, and you know what? You’re probably the guy to do it. But it will never happen while I’m alive. I’ve done everything I’ve wanted to do. I’ve said anything I want to say. There is nothing more.” – director Peter Jones on trying to secure an interview with Johnny Carson for the long-gestating “American Masters: Johnny Carson”

“To be honest, it’s one of two minutes in a 90 minute episode, and it’s pre the 9 o’clock BBC watershed. There is nothing that you see. It’s very suggestive. It’s very clever camerawork, and it’s just a character device. It’s not about nudity being displayed in ‘Sherlock.’ She’s a dominatrix. Nudity is nothing to her, but it was no mean feat for me to shoot it being naked for eight hours in just a pair of Louboutin shoes. (It) was a challenge…and one I’ve never met before.” – Laura Pulver on her nude scene in “Sherlock II”

“One of the things that is amazing is to look back at a song that is so inevitable, like ‘Over The Rainbow.’ That’s like a folk tune. We all know it so well. And I discovered that (songwriter) Yip Harburg was having trouble coming up with an idea for the words that proceeded ‘rainbow.’ ‘Somewhere beyond the rainbow.’ ‘Somewhere near to the rainbow.’ It just didn’t feel right. And then he came up with ‘somewhere over the rainbow’ because, as a lyricist, he realized that the ‘o’ sound sang well, and it was a pleasing for a singer. And, technically, it worked right, and it gave him the right setting for the word ‘rainbow.’ ‘Somewhere over the rainbow.’ And then I discovered that, the end of that song, they were having trouble with it.

“Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen, Arlen being the composer and Harburg being a lyricist, they were having trouble with the last line of the song. And they were working at Ira Gershwin’s house, and they couldn’t come up with the idea to end the whole thing. They’d gone through the whole song, and they couldn’t come up with the end. And they were working for hours at Ira Gershwin’s house, and he was tired, and he wanted to go to bed. So he said, ‘What about ‘Birds fly over the rainbow. So why can’t I?’ And they said, ‘Hey!’ And he gave him the idea, the whole end of it, and then he came up with this: ‘If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh, why can’t I?’ And when Mr. Gershwin was alive, I said, ‘Ira, why did you meddle in somebody else’s songwriting?’ He said, ‘Because it was late and I wanted to get to bed.’” – Michael Feinstein on “American Songbook II”

“I had great Italian American family that were in the grocery business. And it was during the Depression, and we were all very, very poor. The whole country, the majority of the country was really, really poor, a lot worse than it is today. And so my father died when I was ten and my brother and sister and I would entertain my family because my family all my uncles and nephews and aunts and relatives they all would come over on a Sunday and make a circle around my brother, sister, and I. And they were so knocked out with trying to make my mom feel good because she had to work on a penny a dress to raise three children, and the whole family felt so much for her, but they wanted to show her how much they loved her children. And they treated me and my brother and my sister with so much love, and they I remember at a very early age, they said to me, ‘Look at the way he makes us feel good, you know, and he’s so happy, and he’s always doing something to make us feel good, and look at the way he paints flowers and all that.’ I remember very clearly saying, ‘This is who I am. My family is telling me that I sing and I paint,’ and they created a tremendous gift in my life to continue that, and each year it’s become stronger and stronger. I will never retire, and, you know, if my voice goes, I’m still going to paint. I just want to keep improving as I go on, and it’s just taught me what a beautiful life it is to be possessed with. It’s not that I want to do it. I have to do it. And it will always be that way. I will never retire.” – Tony Bennett on the secret to his longevity

“They’re all saying, ‘Oh, my goodness! You’re 90!’ And I keep trying to explain, ‘Don’t give me any credit. I didn’t do anything to get to be 90. It just happened. I didn’t accomplish anything. It just came up on me.’ But I’m blessed with good health for which I’m deeply grateful, so for that reason, I feel so good. I’m just gonna have fun like, you know, always. Everybody else is far more excited about the 90 than I am.” – Betty White on her upcoming birthday

 “We just thought ‘Are You There, Chelsea?’ is a really kind of play on ‘Am I there? What am I thinking?’ There was all these little, you know, kind of different meanings to it. So we thought it was a funner play, you know. Not everybody is into alcohol as much as I am, so this is it’s not cable. It’s network. We wanted to have a broader appeal and make people feel like they could be interested in watching the show, whether or not they have as big of a drinking problem as I do.” – Chelsea Handler on changing the name of her show from “Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea.”

 “I don’t know if there are, like, any ‘Community’ fans, but…oh, this is a roomful of critics, so you are the ‘Community’ fans.” – Kyle Killen

“Well, I think with Cloris (Leachman), we’ve just learned that she’ll do anything we want her to do; she’s a gamer. If it’s funny, she will do it. And just on Friday it was: we had a tarantula crawl over her face while she was sleeping, and she didn’t budge. I mean, she’s sleeping, and the thing crawls over her face. And just like a pro, she kind of turns towards the lens so we know we can get more spider on the thing. So she’s great. The kids the babies hate the tarantulas. We put them all over them. They’re both a couple of pussies, really, when it comes down to the spiders. No, with the kids, I don’t know. We’re learning every day what we can do with them because, as they get older, just as, you know, with your own kids, it’s like one second they’ll sit and sit still, and another second, they won’t. So that’s just a constant kind of keeping an eye on the kids and seeing what we can ask them to do. And we ask their parents, “What are they doing that’s cute?” And then we try to write that in.” – executive producer Greg Garcia on the cast of “Raising Hope”

“I was super grateful, super thrilled, and I really was extraordinarily passionate about it. I was incredibly surprised. I think I described the feeling last year because I’d done a few shows before, I kind of felt like Goldilocks, you know, trying on different outfits and different places, like NBC was just a little too this, and ABC was just a little too that, and FOX felt just right, and it was all going along great. Now I’ve kind of determined that I’m a little bit more like Tinkerbell. It’s like when Tinkerbell was dying and Peter Pan was like saying, ‘Do you believe in fairies? Do you believe in fairies?’ And everybody in the audience was like, ‘Yes, I do believe. I do believe.’ And that’s sort of how I feel about the show.” – Christian Slater on the resurrection of “Breaking In”

 “I’ve always wanted to get in her pants, and every now and then she lets me.” – Steven Tyler’s comments on Jennifer Lopez’s wardrobe, which are fantastic when taken out of context

 “I did, like, a web series just out of school, but I had never had a proper professional television job, and I went to the pre read with the casting directors and felt like I did okay. And then I got a callback, and I met April and Gavin there, and I felt like it went well. And then I didn’t hear anything for, like, two weeks, and I, when I was in school, produced a feature length documentary that is still in postproduction but almost done, and I write. So I was, like, I’ll create my own work. And I was in a cafe working on a script that I was writing, and I got a phone call that was I testing for the show. And I had never tested for anything before, and so I was very excited, and to be kind to the other patrons, I decided to step out of the cafe instead of yelling. As I stepped out of the cafe, there was a step into the parking lot, and I fell and broke my ankle. ‘Oh, my gosh. I’m so excited. My ankle really hurts.’ And, you know, it started swelling, and I thought it was just a sprain, and I had a doctor like put me in this big sort of robo-boot, and I went to the test and hopped around in the boot and fortunately got cast and then found out it was broken and didn’t get recast, thank God.” – Erica Dasher on getting the lead in “Jane by Design”

“I auditioned against six other James Van Der Beeks for this role. I was lucky that four of them were not actors, and two of them didn’t speak English so by default, it was me. It’s this has been the most fun I think I’ve ever had doing anything. We came up with this character. By Episode 3, I thought it bore, you know, less and less resemblance to me, which just made it even more fun.I said to Natch and David at the beginning, I said don’t ever be afraid of offending me; let’s just always go for what’s funniest, and we’ll see where it takes us.” – James Van Der Beek on playing a caricature of himself

“I’m not going to admit everything, but there are some things that I do know that there’s that will not be offensive like, say, in Mexico, but it might be offensive in like Nicaragua or Spain or something. That’s true. There are some words that aren’t swear words for the Mexican culture, but definitely in the Dominican Republic, that’s a bad word. So for me, it’s just been kind of sitting back and going, ‘Okay. I think we’re okay.’ But we’ve been pretty what we don’t want to do is go out of our way to be offensive. I think we want to do a show that everybody can laugh at and enjoy and not, you know, find out that the Dominican ambassador is calling, you know, CBS.” – Rob Schneider

“I remember when I was, I suppose, about 29 or 30, I was having a cup of coffee with John Hurt, a great chap that some of you might be aware of, and we were bemoaning the fact that there were an awful lot of good, young actors beginning to appear, sort of 19 , 20 , 21 year olds. And I said, ‘Yes, I know, John.’ And we were aware that we were suddenly beginning to develop lines. We were getting you know, we were now no longer the young, bright new comers. And he said I said, ‘Yes, I have noticed that.’ He said, ‘Do you know what I’d do to them?’ He said, ‘If I meet one, I’d say, ‘You know, you have a wonderful voice. Have you ever listened to it?”And you know from then on they are fucked.” – Jeremy Irons

“We’re still promoting ‘Bridesmaids.’ When the fog clears, we will see if there’s an idea that’s worthy of doing (a sequel). We don’t want to be people who make something just to make it. It would be nice to have an idea. People like to set up projects without thoughts. But usually it’s way better to have a great idea, then have passion not about it. Not just, like, ‘Do you know how much money we could make if we did another one?’ That usually leads to ‘Jaws 3 D.’” – Judd Apatow

“I met Anthony Hopkins many, many years ago, and we were talking about, you know, what do you do when you’re not getting along with the director. And he says, ‘Never raise your voice. Never have a fight. On a sound stage make sure or wherever you’re shooting, make sure you’re shooting on the ground floor. When it gets to that point, you say, ‘Excuse me. I have to go to the bathroom.’ You’ve checked the bathroom out before. It has a window. You go in the bathroom. You lock the door. You climb out the window. You go home. You come back the next day. There’s no argument anymore.’” – Dustin Hoffman

“My father grew up in Salt Lake, Utah with the other 12 black people. And my mother was from a little town in Northern Illinois, and they met in Detroit. That was rough for my dad because it’s just the blackest city in the world, so that’s my background. It’s longer than that. I’m adopted, so it’s different, but it’s the same thing. My mom was white. My dad was black. They gave me up for adoption, and I was adopted by a couple where the man was black and the woman was white. I was a special needs child. It was like, ‘Here’s a kid with no arm. Here’s a blind kid. Here is a biracial kid. Let’s take the blind one.’ So because I’m high yellow, I’m special needs, which means I would dominate at the Special Olympics. I would win every award, lapping. ‘Come on, guys! Come on, Jimmy!’” – Keegan Michael Key

“The beautiful thing about Walter (Flanagan) and Brian (Johnson), they have no interest in this. They’re not here because they didn’t want to do the fucking TV show (‘Comic Book Men’). I called up Walter, and I was like, ‘Dude, you’re never going to believe this, but we might have a reality show on AMC.’ And he goes, ‘I don’t want to do it.’ I said, ‘Why?’ And he goes, ‘Because I don’t want to be fucking Snooki.’ I said, ‘You’re out of your mind. Everyone wants to be Snooki, at least for five minutes.’ He goes, ‘Not me.’ And I said, ‘Well, this could work as a really cool commercial for the store.’ And Walter always likes to see people coming through the door because he knows more people coming through the door, he still has his dream job working at the store. So he’s like, ‘All right. If it works like a commercial for the store, I’m in.’ And Johnson didn’t want to do it, but he needs knee surgery, so I said, ‘Dude, if you do the show, you’ll have enough money for knee surgery.’ He was like, ‘All right. I’ll fucking do it.’ So two dudes who have no interest in being famous will now have people coming in and taking pictures of them. And they’re going to act like the unprotected tribes and shit.” – Kevin Smith

 ”26-27 years I’ve been doing stand-up, and I’ve had two great years, probably five good years. So I had 20 years of just kind of uncertainty and suffering and ego destruction and poverty; all these things. So, that’ll always outweigh. There’s no way I’m ever going to catch up to the misery years with the good ones. It’s impossible, no matter how good it is. And also, of course there’s going to be a decline coming. It’s not like I’m just going to keep doing well. That’s not even — that’s not in the cards. I would guess I’ve got — if I’m not stupid, if I don’t do anything dumb or I don’t get a disease or something, then I’ve got like five to eight years, I think, where it will really be great, and then it’ll start to degenerate, like uranium, you know. So, no matter what, most of my years have been very hard. But I don’t regret any of them. I’m very grateful for all of those years.” – Louis C.K.

“’Pootie Tang,’ yeah, I don’t know. It was a tragedy to me. It was a very huge mistake. Never should have been made. I’m glad people enjoy it. I’m glad for them that they’re enjoying it. But it’s a little — I got a little scar tissue still from that experience.  It was very painful. I got kicked off the movie. I didn’t do a good job to begin with. I would feel really good if I had been making a great movie and then they kicked me off. But I was sucking at making the movie, and they rightfully fired me. And then it came out with my name on it, so. But it was a great learning experience. That was a good example of being in a very bad place and enjoying it. I was sitting in a chair, much like this one, in John Goldwin’s office in Paramount, and he was screaming at me. His face was really red, and I was sitting there going, wow, I’m really a movie guy now. In show business, being yelled at by a studio head. It was a thrill.

“I think that failing at ‘Pootie Tang’ is why this show is good. It’s one of the reasons. It’s that and a huge — just an army of failures that have wrecked my life, made me good at this. Because they didn’t wreck it. Because here’s the thing. You do something, and that was the worst thing that could have happened to me. I got to make a movie finally, which was my dream, and it was terrible, and then it got made even more terrible, and then it came out, and I was just hated. I mean, the first time I was known by a lot of people was because I made a bad movie. And I remember watching Roger Ebert say – I grew up watching Roger Ebert doing movie criticism, and he said, ‘I can’t even say this is a bad movie, because it’s not even complete. It’s incomplete. It’s not even a movie.’ It was the worst.” I think it’s probably the worst review he ever gave to a movie. And I’m sitting there reeling. And the pain you feel from an experience like that is profound. But the great thing is that after maybe a week, it just goes away, and all you’re left with is the forensic evidence of all the mistakes you made and all of the rocks that you’ve kind of crashed into, and you’re left with this beautiful map of where all the dangers are, and you repair all the holes, and then you’re so much better. And so, I’ve had a ton of experiences like that. ‘Lucky Louie.’ That’s a show that came and then fucking died a miserable death. But I produced a series of television that was on TV for a whole season and then was hated and then cancelled. And the information that you gain from a thing like that is unbelievably valuable.” – Louis C.K.

 “I can’t objectively compare myself to another human being. I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like to be somebody else. All I know is that my standup comedy is what my goal is, is to acknowledge that within each of us is a divine and beautiful light through truth and authenticity. And being funny, we can connect this light and change, I believe, the tenure and frequency of our consciousness. That may seem like a noble objective on FX, but we’ll give it a whirl. Rupert Murdoch is right behind us in this revolution. That man is sick of capitalism…” – Russell Brand

“This is what I know about that Mitt Romney, I know that he is so rich that even the 1 percent to him would seem like peasants. That he’s in the not point not, not, not, 1 percent. Like other billionaires must sicken him with their depravity. But other billionaires to him would seem like Dickensian street urchins eating gruel with fingerless gloves. And he’s a Mormon, isn’t he? I got nothing against religions. I like metaphorical systems for understanding mortality. I think it’s a good idea. Death is confusing. It’s good to have some infrastructure.

“I like that Mitt Romney got told off, like people are angry, Newt Gringrich which is a ludicrously amphibious bizarre name for anyone to have. He attacked Mitt Romney because he talked some French, like that’s really amazing. Like he said that makes him elitist and like a bit of a whoopsie. Like he was sort of speaking French in a boudoir, in a homoerotic fashion. It’s like it’s all right that there are other languages, and people say different stuff. This is so extraordinary to me that someone would be criticized for that. I love it. Just for using a different lexicon. It’s more important what someone says rather than the language they say it in, isn’t it? Like it’s so easy to whoop up hoopla over nothing, over nothing. That’s what I mean. It’s vacuous. It’s nonsense. It’s as sort of a pink gas being fired into our eyes out it’s like I consider contemporary culture to be like a sort of a pink pony trotting through the world shitting glitter into our minds.

Glitter affects the synaptic firing of our brains because there’s glitter shit all in the middle of our neurons. We can’t think. They’re filling our minds with shit glitter. A glitterating thought. So we talk about that nonsense, that rhubarb. And also them say like of course it’s bad for like I’ve spent some time with the marines at Camp Pendleton. I trained with them for a couple of days. They were fucking lovely. And the sense of fraternity among them was beautiful, and I liked it. I didn’t really do very well as a marine. The obstacle course is fucking difficult. You have to climb a rope. It’s really, really, really hard. So I’ve got a lot of respect for the marines.

Like but the end of this, I think where they peed on some dead bodies, huh? That was was that the marines? Because remember I’m a naive person, so I may make mistakes. So please don’t judge me. But you will judge me. That’s just the way that your binary minds function. I’m not criticizing you. I have a binary mind as well. It’s just the way we are. So it’s bad to wee on a dead body, right? But like it’s worse to kill someone. So it’s like why are we more shocked by people pissing on a dead body than killing a live body? Like say me, I’m alive at the moment, right? If someone said, “I’m either going to piss on you or kill you,” like if there’s some people, the pissing on me, I would be sort of into. I’d rather they did that than didn’t do it. But killing, you sort of think, “Well, I don’t know how my narrative will continue after dead.” That’s really troubling. After the termination of your life force, after this biological spaceship has deceased, might as well piss on me, do as you like. Go nuts. Have a ball. It’s the killing that’s the problem. That bit we won’t broadcast in case he goes into trouble. We do that and then Troy will go, ‘Nah, it’s too much. It seems like you’re endorsing it.’ Also very near the top, you implied strongly that you’re into golden showers. That makes you an unsympathetic protagonist for a mainstream show. A lot of people consider the old golden shower elitist. Imagine what Newt Gingrich would make of it. ‘He’s speaking in French. He’s getting pissed on. He shouldn’t be president.’ Or should he?” – Russell Brand