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.]

Jordan Peele: We’ve done a couple of these so far, Will, and I’ll just go ahead and pre-empt your request to have us announce our names…

Bullz-Eye: I don’t know what you’re talking about. It never would’ve occurred to me to ask you to identify yourselves before speaking.

JP: [Laughs.] Well, this is Jordan speaking, and…I guess I’m the one that sounds more like Bert. And he’s the one that sounds more like Ernie.

BE: I’ll try to remember that during transcription.

Keegan-Michael Key: [Laughs.] Yeah, just put B for one, E for the other. That shouldn’t be too confusing.

BE: Yeah, especially not when “BE” is the abbreviation for Bullz-Eye.

JP: [Laughs.] Well, just to be safe, we’ll keep announcing ourselves, anyway. You can also identify me as the tired one. I’m Jordan.

BE: Right. If someone’s slurring, it’s probably Jordan.

KMK: He’s Eeyore, I’m Piglet.

JP: Piglet? Oh, come on. You’re Tigger.

KMK: Oh, God, what am I talking about? Of course I’m Tigger. [Laughs.]

BE: So you guys obviously worked together for many years on “Mad TV,” but did you know each other at all prior to that series?

KMK: We did. Yeah, we met in Chicago when Jordan was at Boom Chicago, which is an improv theater in Amsterdam, in the Netherlands. [Laughs.] As opposed to Amsterdam in New Mexico or something, right?

JP: Hey, there’s also an Amsterdam in New York.

KMK: All right, all right. [Laughs.] Anyway, I was at The Second City, and our casts had a swap. There’s two theaters at the Second City, so one of our casts went to Amsterdam, and Jordan’s cast from Boom Chicago – which is just a really incredible theater – they came to Chicago. So they flipped, and that’s where we met: I was performing on the second stage at Second City, and Jordan’s cast had come in to visit us for a week.

JP: This was back in the day when…I had lived in Chicago for a couple of years but then had left, and in that time, Keegan had moved to Chicago and pretty quickly become the most talked-about, exciting improviser in Chicago. He won a couple of Jeff Awards just for his work on the Second City reviews, and I remember seeing that and…it was really inspiring, Key.

KMK: I didn’t know that.

JP: Yeah, it was so awesome. I saw a couple of characters that…

KMK: …that I subsequently used at “Mad TV,” yeah.

JP: So, yeah, we met each other, and we got along famously from the very get-go.

BE: So when you got to “Mad TV,” did you instantly forge a bond based on already knowing what each other’s strengths were?

KMK: Yeah, I think that’s true. Well, actually, not immediately, because we did a lot of…I mean, we improvised together in Chicago a couple of times and watched each other’s performances, but I had no idea what a consummate idea-man Jordan was until about a year into “Mad TV.” And then, if I wasn’t in a scene that he was in that he had written, I would just sometimes sit on the sidelines and go, “What…? How did he think of that?” Just really tremendous stuff.

JP: In both of our first years, towards the end, we collaborated on a scene where we played these two superstitious high-school or college basketball players who end up doing sort of fully-choreographed step dancing.

KMK: Yeah, anytime something “unlucky” would happen to them… Every scene would take place during an event in their lives, so the first scene was the regional championship for their basketball team, so, y’know, a black cat walks through, a mirror breaks, people speak at the same time, and they’re so superstitious that they’ve got to do a little dance every time to break the hex of whatever said superstition was. It was a fricking blast.

JP: In the old days, with Keegan and I, he was the guy that I knew… We both had the interest in sort of over-rehearsing before the table read, so I think we kind of bonded on the amount of work we were willing to put in. Everybody was hard workers there, but, you know ,we were just birds of a feather who had the same work ethic and everything.

BE: When “Mad TV” wrapped, did you leave with the agreement that you’d be ready to work together again whenever the opportunity arose?

KMK: I don’t think we’d formally spoken about it. We just knew that it was going to happen at some point in time.

JP: It was a given.

KMK: That’s a good way of putting it, Jordan: it was an unspoken given.

BE: So how did the series for Comedy Central come up, then? Was it something that was pitched to one of you and they brought in the other, or…

KMK: We were both working on separate projects at the time, and, um, both of the projects fell through. [Laughs.] Jordan was in a pilot that didn’t get picked up, and I was on a TV series that got canceled. And we have the same manager, so our manager said, “Would you guys like to do something together?” ‘Cause there was interest from Comedy Central and from…

JP: …from lots of different places. We were real fortunate to have had a couple of interested parties and be able to really be able to essentially pick Comedy Central as the perfect home for us.

KMK: Amen.

JP: And I think it really is perfect, too, because we like to sort of push things a little bit to a slightly irreverent point, but we also like making comedy for comedy nerds. [Laughs.]

KMK: And, also, we’re both comedy nerds, too. [Laughs.]

JP: Yes. I use the term “comedy nerds” very lovingly, because that’s what we are.

KMK: We would never say “comedy nerd” in a pejorative way. [Laughs.] But we’re also big lovers of…like, I’m a big lover of the classics, so I love silent comedy, physical comedy, pratfalls and slapstick and stuff like that. So the perfect comedy sandwich is to have a scene that has some nice and silly stuff in it that still might have some social bite to it.

BE: So what can we expect from the series as far as its content? I’ve seen the first episode, which is great, but since you guys have built a pretty decent stable of impressions over the years, will it be heavy on those, or will you be doing more original characters?

KMK: Um…that’s a good question.

JP: That’s a very good question. We’ve sort of developed a unique style. One thing that does sort of overarch our work is…we’ve got what we like to think of in comedy as a slightly unique point of view, being biracial and kind of living in between different worlds, sort of growing up and having to adapt to our surroundings. Well, not having to adapt, but choosing to adapt. And we sort of explore that. So we do a lot of racial humor, partly because, y’know, race is such an absurd concept in itself, and there are some aspects to it that we can tap that haven’t been overdone.

KMK: Or done. [Laughs.]

JP: Right. Or done at all.

KMK: I think, Will, to answer your question…I guess the best and most vague way to answer your question is that there will be a smattering of impressions. [Laughs.] There will be character work, definitely. The interesting thing about our job, especially in sketches, is that you have to wait a season before you have any idea whether or not a character catches on in the kind of “Saturday Night Live” or “Mad TV” vein. We’re not even really going for that. There are places where there are characters…where characters feed the conceit of the scene, and the conceit of the scene fuels the characters. But seldom have we done scenes in this season of the show where we were, like, “This is an outright character, and I just want to play it in a scenario.” Unlike something like Coach Hines on “Mad TV,” or Stuart on “Mad TV,” or something like that. I think the character of the show…there’s an overriding character to the show, as opposed to a bunch of well-recognized characters in the show. But you will get – and correct me if I’m wrong, Jordan – but you will get a healthy dose of Obama.

JP: Yeah, we do a good amount of Obama. Just enough. [Laughs.]

BE: I have to say, a show that is not necessarily a precise point of reference but which did leap to mind at times when I was watching the first episode was “Mr. Show.”

KMK: Oh, God, you just gave us the greatest compliment you ever could.

JP: Yeah. Thank you!

KMK: If a television critic wrote the words “a black ‘Mr. Show,’” I might quit my job. [Laughs.] Because we’d be done.

BE: And I’m not saying it’s precise – based on the episode I saw, it seems like it might be a bit more relationship-driven than “Mr. Show” was – but there are certainly some similar elements. Or, at least, I think there are, anyway.

KMK: Yeah, and you’ll see that, too, Will, that there will be episodes where – and I’ll use the word “smattering” again – there are callbacks, where characters will kind of appear and overlap a little bit. That’s an accurate depiction, wouldn’t you say?

JP: Mmm-hmm.

KMK: Not every show. But you’ll see that. It’s something that’s part of our pedigree.

JP: I think one of the things we really admire about “Mr. Show”…I mean, we’re fans of the great sketch shows in general – “In Living Color,” “Chappelle’s Show,” “SNL,” “Mr. Show” – but since you bring up “Mr. Show,” yeah, they do the heightening thing, where they’ll sort of latch onto a comedic game, and then they’ll heighten it through the roof in a way that I think no one had ever seen before. Or since.

KMK: You saw, Will, a good example of it in the first sketch of the show. Not the phone call, but after the live segment, where the two guys are afraid of their wives. I think that’s almost directly influenced by them. When I think of “Mr. Show,” I think of the scene where David Cross goes into the party store and asks Bob Odenkirk for change. Same thing. Like, I would say that this scene was influenced in my brain by that scene.

JP: The chef scene has that element as well, almost like David Cross’s famous audition sketch. The game doesn’t get past the first sentence without having to evolve. But, yeah, thank you for saying that.

KMK: We take that as a high, high compliment.

BE: Given that there are a fair amount of sketch comedy shows out there, what are your hopes for Key & Peele? From your perspective, what do you think will make this show stand out?

JP: Well, I think this show’s going to have a real new, fresh feel to it. It’s unlike any sketch show that I’ve ever seen before, and part of that is because we’ve hired some amazing people. Our director, Peter Atencio, has really made everything look very filmic and, uh, expensive. [Laughs.] We don’t have a lot of money, so we’ve done some really great sleight of hand. Also, our writing process has been so amazing. We’ve got amazing writers. So my hope, ultimately, would just be that people enjoy it, and that, at the very least, it becomes a cult classic. I mean, of course, the real hope is that we get hugely rich and famous. [Laughs.] If the comedy nerds approve, I’ll be a happy man.

KMK: I guess my hope would be that… I just hope that we’ve created a show – and I really do hope this – that we can be proud of, in the tradition of Godfrey Cambridge and Dick Gregory and Richard Pryor. I would really like… I want it to provide belly laughs and also be socially relevant. And I feel like we have an ability to do that, based on something that Jordan had mentioned prior, which is that we are representing a segment of the population that is new and is not going to stop growing. And not only is not going to stop growing, it’s not going to stop evolving. And that’s the biracial American, and, y’know, where do we fit in the fabric of the society?

JP: I’ve got another point that I’ve just realized. We’ve noticed something about black comedy, namely that most of our heroes as black comedians are stand-ups. Both Keegan and I were trained in improvisation and sketch comedy, so I think being so inspired by “In Living Color” myself when I was a kid, it would just be such an honor to be able to inspire young black comedians to go the sketch-improv route instead of stand-up, or to do it as well and just branch out. Because there really is just a wonderful world of comedy there. So that would be lovely.

KMK: That would be lovely. That would be a really lovely thing if that were to happen, yeah.

BE: You cited “Chappelle’s Show” and “In Living Color.” Would you say that your show is still going to be multifaceted enough as far as its comedy that it won’t just be black audiences who are enjoying it? Is it going to be across the board as far as the type of comedy goes?

KMK: I guess the answer to that question would be, “Absolutely.” It’s for a multicultural audience, definitely. I think there’s a few scenes that happen later in the season. Well, also, another example…like, we used as an example before the “bitch” scene – that’s what we call the sketch where the guys are afraid of their lives – and I think wherever they have wives they’ll enjoy that scene. [Laughs.] It’s just a very cross-cultural…well, that’s not even a cultural scene. That’s a human scene. And I think our show is populated with human scenes as well as specifically-targeted cultural scenes.

BE: And that’s the perception that I had from the first episode – even the first scene, with you guys on your respective phone calls, speaks to more than just a black audience – but it’s so hard to tell from just one episode.

KMK: Yeah, I know what you mean. But don’t you think, Jordan, that we tier things? It’s about…oh, God, this makes me want to talk about “Auction Block,” but I don’t want to tell him. I want him to see it. But…

JP: But you can guess with a name like “Auction Block.”

KMK: [Laughs.] And there was something about that first scene you mentioned that we really enjoyed, which is that it’s about putting on a façade. Humans put on facades. It’s just being filtered through a particular cultural filter.

JP: I think we give everybody a little bit of a jab at some point during the season. I think one of our comedy rules is, “You don’t make fun of the underdog.” There’s not a lot of comedy to be had by being a bully. You want to sort of…you want to take the rug out from under the people that have some sort of status in their community, or who are boastful or are bullies themselves.

KMK: Also, another thing is that…I mean, Will, I have to say that my partner, Jordan, is just extraordinary at this, to the point where it’s uncanny, but…there could be 100 people in a room, and 99 people would say, “Oh, look at the bloom on that rose,” and Jordan would say, “Oh, look at that leaf with that brown spot on it.” Do you know what I mean? He always sees something different than anybody else sees. And you’ll see that. It’s like he’s reading a defense in football, and he always sees the crack. And in our process, it has been invaluable. Just invaluable.

JP: That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. [Laughs.]

KMK: So I say that to say that there’s going to be, I think, some situations where you’ll go, “Oh, my God, I’ve never, ever thought of it that way.” Whatever “it” happens to be. [Laughs.]