(upbeat music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits. I’m Link. – And I’m Rhett. Right now at the table of dim lighting, we’ve got Mr. Steve Pink. We usually don’t do this. We usually don’t start with our guest. But we’re in, what is called, a time crunch, and so we are just hitting the ground running. Welcome Steve. – Thank you. – The director of Buddy System, season two. – Yeah. – Wow. – Thanks for having me. – We just wrapped, man. – I know, just the other day. – Like, we freaking just wrapped just a couple days ago. And we literally just walked off of the photo shoot. They call it the key art photo shoot. – Yeah. – Link is still in character. – Yeah, I haven’t changed back into Link. I’m still just Link. I’m Buddy System season two Link. – Right. – Which is kind of the that’s the Link that you know. – That’s the Link I know. – You pretty much know a Link with a mustache. – That’s all I know. – So when I shave this thing off in two hours – We’re gonna be complete strangers. – And then we… (Link laughs) And we go to the wrap party, everyone’s just gonna be talking about how I look different. I might not shave the mustache until after that. ‘Cause I don’t want that – Oh. – to be the thing I have to talk to everybody about. – Right. – Wow, you don’t look as good without the mustache. That’s not what I wanna hear. – Right. Well, they might not say, they could just go, oh, it could be slightly worse, because it would be more generic, like they might just say, oh, you shaved off your mustache. – Right, no comment. – Um, hey. – Again and again and again. – You shaved off your mustache. – Like a non-conversation conversation. – Yeah, ’cause they don’t know what to say. – Right. – They can’t, they can either say, “and it looks worse”, and if they say, “oh, and it looks so much”, well, some people might say, “and you look great”. But that also implies– – Right. – I’ve been looking horrible. – Right, so they’re– – For this whole show. – It does give people something to talk about. – Which I know, I have. But I don’t want people– – But it gives people something to talk about, which I think is– – Good. – I think giving people something to talk about is a good thing for a party. I’m personally, you know, as soon as we finish this, I’m going to a doctor’s appointment, because I’m trying to figure out what’s going on with my throat. I think it’s just stress. I think we just overworked ourselves. – Yeah, stress. – And I think I’m coming down from it, but I’m going to see a professional before we leave to go to New York just to make sure that everything’s okay. But I’m afraid of, like, party talk. I’m afraid that I’m gonna go to party, have a party talk situation and lose my voice. So if you shave your mustache, all the attention will be on you and I won’t have to talk about anything and people just come up to me and I just point at your face. So I think you should shave it. That’s my personal opinion. – Which, ironically, we’ve gotten very good at that. – Pointing at each other? – From not speaking and communicating. Not that that is a major part of a Buddy System episode. – I’m also gonna take my headphones off now. – So you don’t need them, you’re saying? – That doesn’t mean I’m disengaging from the conversation. It just means, I mean, I like what you’ve got going with the hat and the headphones, but mine is not really sitting really well for me, so– – Mine are kind of drawing my ears back in a weird way. – You don’t want it either? – I’m gonna try taking ’em off now. – Yeah, yeah, yeah, you should. Now that you know how it sounds. Now you can be the– – Now I’m in charge of, like, keeping you guys on mic. – Not necessarily. – You can’t self regulate anymore. You’ll be back here and no one will know that you’re just being. (Link groans) – Well, can we come up with a hand signal that you can unleash? – Yeah, yeah, like… – Bring it in. – This? – Bring it in. – Okay, looks like– – Bring it. – Counting money is what it looks like. – That’s right ’cause I get paid every time I tell you to bring it in. (Steve giggles) I just thought it would be, you know, it’s funny, we didn’t have that many times that many – To chill? – windows of opportunity to have, like, to just talk when we were on set, because, so we can talk about that, but there were these certain moments when we’d have, like, this flash in the conversational pan with Steve Pink. – Yeah. Very quick. – Where I’d learn something about the guy and would be like, “mmm, we gotta podcast that up.” And then we gave you no way out, because we ask you in front of everybody. Like, right before you’re like “Alright, is everybody set?” You’re about to call action, and we’re like oh, will you come on our podcast? (Rhett laughs) – Yeah, I didn’t– – And so, we didn’t give you any out. – You didn’t, you didn’t. Although we were talking about this– – Except the word no. – Yeah, could I have said no in front of everyone? I don’t think I have that kind of courage. – That would’ve been a bold move. That would’ve been a great set story from the whole crew. – Yeah. – Listen, this one time, I had these two guys making this show, and they asked the director to be on their podcast, and he said “no” just a– – And immediately afterward, “action.” (guys laugh) “Uh no, action.” – No, no, I don’t do that. – Great. – Aww man. Yeah, well that’s, you know, I perhaps should’ve done that, you know? – No, you shouldn’t have. – Well, ’cause I was saying, like, oh yeah, I’d love to be on their podcast, an then I’ve, you know, I’ve have had an anxiety attack ever since that moment. I was talking to my wife, like, why would I do that? Why would I be on a podcast? ‘Cause, you know, they’re other people who I recognize– – But it’s so dimly lit. – I do like that. And this is properly shaded. – Oh yeah. – Yeah yeah, perfectly. – So I feel like there’s some protection in that as well. – And Rhett is with you. Is that why you wore your hat, because you knew Steve was going to wear his hat? – Yeah, definitely. – I don’t even own one of these hats. – The reason I wore my hat is because I’ve got this going on, which, once you take my man bun off, it’s like cutting my testicles off, you know? It’s like, then I’ve got this weird eunuch cut. – So you’re telling me that in normal life, in your normal look, you don’t have testicles? – Right. – I agree. – No, when my hair goes up, it’s like, I don’t wanna keep going with a phallic analogy, but – Don’t. – It’s like a penis. – Well, take it back off – it’s like a lot of penises. – Take it back off one more time and just look at Steve. The back is, look even further, look past Steve. There’s a thing happening for you– – I call that my duck tail. – for you audio only listeners, which are the superior version of this show, you’re not missing anything except some weird back head hair situation. – Back head hair situation. – I remember we talked about, in one break, we didn’t have a lot of breaks. I don’t wanna complain about the nature of our show, but we, I mean I’m sure the three of us could sit down and commensurate forever about how hard we worked. – We could. – And, but it was– – But then, no one cares about that. – It was a pleasure working so hard for you and alongside you. – Thanks, likewise. – But at one point, we were talking about the classic question of if you’re stranded on a deserted island, or if there’s dessert there, it’s a dessert island. – A dessert island. – And you could only take an unlimited supply of one particular food, what would it be? I don’t know if that’s the classic question, but that’s the one you answered. That’s the one I cared about. – I don’t remember this. – But you had two– You weren’t there. – I insisted on two. I know this answer very well, ’cause I insist on two for some reason, which breaks the rule of the game right away, like right off the bat, it makes the game less challenging. – Well, now before you answer it, the thing that I loved about it, and the thing that I, one of the many things that I love about Steve, that I could tell, when we talked, it came up in conversation, but it wasn’t like I just posed the question to you and you thought of an answer. No, this was something you have thought about previously. I think it, actually, this was something you were pitching to us. – Maybe. – Which, with all the pitching we do to other people, and like stumping people, I really enjoy when someone’s really thought about something thoroughly, and then they bring it up and we get put on the spot. – Hmm. – But give us your answer now that I’ve built it up as being so well thought out. – Well– (Link laughs) well, like I said, I cheat the moment I, I proposed the idea, right, the concept? – Only one thing. – Right, yeah, you can only have one thing. If you could eat, if you could only eat one, I guess type of food, a category of food, on a desert island, and you were on a desert island, and you only had one category of food to eat for the rest of your life, what would it be? – Like would it be cereal for me, just ’cause I love cereal? – Right, and that’s it. You get cereal and milk and that’s it, you know, for the rest of your life on a desert island. And so– – I love peanut butter. Could it just be peanut butter? – It could be. – Could it be peanut butter spread upon anything that I could spread it upon? – Sure, sure, but then you couldn’t change it, right? So if you went, you know, with a graham cracker– – [Link] Oh. – That’s it. Although, like I said, since I cheat almost like the moment I proposed the game, then I think you could probably have, not only any type of cracker, but you could also have maybe a different kind of peanut butter or even an almond butter. – Really? What about a buffet? Is a buffet a category of food? – See, I, for some reason– (guys laugh) Well I get, you know, from some buffets, sure. Because there’s some buffets which are just that thing that everyone’s, like cottage cheese, like canned fruit, salad. – Mine would be like a, like the biggest, like, Golden Corral, like everything. – [Steve] Right. – I’d have the – That’s not an answer. – access to a Golden Corral. – It’s not can you take a restaurant to a deserted island? What restaurant would you open on a deserted island? – Golden Corral. (guys laugh) – Do you even know what a Golden Corral is? – I do, only because I went to one for the first time this year, actually. I went to one, and I was both, you know, judgemental and, you know, and snobby and superior about it, and then massively enjoyed it. – Yeah, its, i mean, it’s– – Right. – I was like, this is one of the best experiences of my life. – Yeah, but you can’t do it on a, I mean, there are people that we know from back home in North Carolina who could go multiple times a week. I mean, I can go, I can go once a year to a Golden Corral, and then Golden Corraled out, you know? So maybe it’s not a good answer, ’cause I’d have to eat it everyday on this island. – Right, that would be it. That would be it. So even that’s the thing. That’s the kind of tricky and fun thing about the game, because even when you say, okay, I’m going to cheat and have all this variety as my answer to the game, once you start to really consider it, right, then you feel limited by it, right? Even Golden Corral. Suddenly, it’s not enough options, right? It’s interesting. – You can’t escape the dark seal of humanity. – I still don’t know your answer. – Mine is sushi and cheeseburgers. – Oh, well okay. – Right, because I want sushi. I want the fine, you know, ’cause I like the, you know, I like the freshness of, you know, finely cut raw fish. Is that how you say it? Sushi cut fish? With rice, and then there’s all the fun, you know, kind of rice and fish combos that sushi provides, and then, but then I’d be like, oh, I’m really still hungry. I want something greasy and– – A guilty pleasure. – A guilty pleasure, thank you. – Yeah. – Yeah, I don’t want to be so refined. I want just some, I want a cheeseburger and fries and a coke, so– – From where though? ‘Cause I mean, I’m cracking open a whole other can here, but I mean, if you’re gonna have only one cheeseburger, you should probably choose where it’s from to make sure that it’s exactly how you want it. Where would that be? – That’s a whole thing in and of itself, which I think has emerged as a more difficult question to answer over the last few years, right? With the craft burger or whatever they would call it? – Right, you’d have to pick your category. – So you don’t, but do you have that answer? – You know what? I would say whatever they dropped off the C-130. Like if there was a plane that dropped it off, you know what I mean? – But if you could choose? – If I could choose? – I mean, would it be In-N-Out? Would it be the Steak and Shake? Shake Shack? – I haven’t had a Shake Shack. Is that all it’s cracked up to be? – Mmm. – It’s been a long time since I had one. I remember enjoying it. – It got, Lily went with a friend the other day, and she came back with a magnanimous report. – She did? – Where do they have one? – Glendale, homey. – Oh. – I would probably default to In-N-Out. But I would like to reserve my right to taste Shake Shack and then revise my answer, right? – I love a good cheeseburger. – I think I’d do Five Guys. – You would think, and a lot of people would say pizza, ’cause you might shift what’s on the pizza, and like– – That’s what I’d say. – You got a Hawaiian pizza– – If you’re taking about that category, and you won’t let me do Golden Corral buffet, pizza is the one that I would choose, because you’ve got– – A lot of loop holes with the pizza. – Yeah, you got a lot of food groups in one. – And I wanna point out with the sushi, that I mean, you can probably just swim off your deserted island, and like hand spear a fish, and, I mean, that’s pretty much sushi. – Yeah. – It’s gonna ruin it a little bit that there are all these fish swimming around you and you’re just eating raw fish – Right. – that’s being delivered by a plane. – Right, I’m unnecessarily giving away a category. (guys laugh) I could say pizza and cheeseburgers, and then secretly be like, and I’m gonna catch some raw fish and eat it. – Right, it’s almost like saying, I would like, on my deserted island, to eat just sand sandwiches, you know? Then you realize, oh, that was a little bit short-sited on my part. – Right. – As intrigued as I am by – Let’s move on. – this conversation, I do think we do need to talk about Buddy System some, really, right? – Let’s do it. – But before we do that, we need to– – Merch it up? – Merch it up. Let’s take a short break, and we’re gonna, where is that merch? Where is it at, Link? We’re gonna talk about the Good Mythical Summer Sale, right? Where is it? Would you get it over there? – Oh, right here, check it out. – So we got 20 percent off? – 25 percent off, am I right? – 25 percent off all Good Mythical Morning, classic Good Mythical Morning merch – Just for you, Steve. – Over at rhettandlink.com/store. – Look at this. – So we’re talkin’ T-shirts. We’re talkin’ beanies. We’re talkin’ hoodies, 25 percent off. Now, Steve, what of this do you want? Because you have to, 25 percent off for you– – 25 percent off. Can I see what the original price was? – There’s no price tags. – Well, I’ll just say that its 20, okay, well definitely, I like navy. – Okay. – These were my high school colors, by the way. – Really? – Yeah, blue, orange– – Navy and– – Navy and orange. – Orange? – Yeah, wild kits. – It’s like, it’s like Virginia. – Is that right? – Yeah, UVA. – So, I like that. And then, I wear my beanie a certain way, so I’m not sure that this would work, we’ll have to see. I don’t have a mirror or anything. Let’s see if it would work. I’m trying on, just wanna try on the merch– – Yeah yeah yeah yeah. – Yeah, you can try it on. – So it needs to be kind of a tight straight line and not too much top. – Yeah, well there’s a gratuitous tag, but that goes away. – But we encourage people to continue to wear the tags, because that’s what the kids are into now. – It could work. – I don’t know. Does it, is it straight across though? – It would be with a little assistance. – If we gave you a mirror, which we don’t sell, then you would look great. Alright, so that concludes our promotion. You’re thoroughly convinced. 25 percent off. Get that logo, guys. I don’t know if it’s going anywhere, but it’s commemorative. – It’s commemorative. – I think it might be shhh. – Okay, so I remember the first conversation that we had, right? We had a meeting. It was right in here in this room over here in our office. – ‘Cause we had to decide, who’s going to direct our, you know, our baby? – Yeah, and we wanted to have a meeting with you for Season One, but you were unavailable, on another project at the time, and so, and then your name came back up, and we’re like, he’ll never do it. He’ll never do it, but we should at least have the meeting with him. So, we had that meeting, and then I remember you didn’t, a lot of people, you know, you have a meeting with them and you can kinda tell that, they did the like, you know, the 20 minute skim before the meeting to kind of know how to talk about – [Steve] Right. – what they’re about to talk about. But correct me if I’m wrong, you had watched the entire first season? – I watched the first season, yep. – [Rhett] Yeah. – I watched the first season, and I read– – And beyond? You had watched other stuff too? – Yeah, online videos and some sketches. Just, well then it was random, right? I watched the first season. I was like, what else is all these cats about? You know, so then I just random video or sketch. So I did, you know, I just logged time, ’cause I couldn’t, after a while, I couldn’t figure out, like how, what logical order to watch things in, so I would just watch videos. ’cause I remember saying to you, like, oh, that was awesome. And you’re like “that was six years ago.” (Link laughs) Alright, you know, okay, so some things I watch, and you’d be like– – We’re ashamed of that stuff. – It was like, yeah, we don’t do that anymore. So, I watched some older stuff and some newer stuff, and then, you know, and then read the Wiki. That’s when we talked about– – Wiki is helpful. – Portmanteau. – Yes. – Is that how you say it? – Yes, uh huh. – Portmanteau? – The Wiki is extensive, man. That thing is out of control. – Yeah, I read the whole thing. – I don’t remember the Portmanteau. – The whole thing starts with that. – Yeah, and someone should look it up. And first of all, I’m not sure I’m saying that word correctly. I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing it right, but– – Internetainment? – It says you’re a portmanteau of dot dot dot dot dot. Yeah, and I was surprised, I was like, I don’t know what that word is really, and– – Internetainers. It means putting two words together, right? Isn’t that what portmanteau means? – I think I probably looked it up prior to the meeting, but have since forgotten. – I do that a lot. – Well yeah, I was going to ask you– – But you had an assessment? – [Steve] Yeah. – I mean, the thing that, I think, it’s hard to assess yourself, and when it comes to Buddy System Season One, I mean, honestly, one of the things we were disappointed with was it didn’t get enough attention from, I’m not saying we wanted like critical attention, but I guess I am saying that. I was very curious what, if someone who is critical for a living assessed our show, what they would say about it? And I would say that, when you came in, you kind of, you gave your take on it. And it was… It was very… I guess I enjoyed it. I enjoyed having someone that I respected their work, who took the time to look at our stuff and then had thoughts about it, and you assessed our style in a way that, like, when you’re in it and you live it and you just make it up as you go along, and you find yourself creating stuff, that you know, you can never step out of yourself and assess what you really think of what you’ve done. So it’s nice when someone that you respect that you don’t know, I mean, you could’ve said anything. It could’ve been lip service, but I could tell that, like, you had actual thoughts about it, and we really appreciated that. And you had good ideas to build upon it. – And that was, I probably mustered all that I could muster for that meeting. I was like, oh, these are all the good ideas that I have. – Well, it was plenty for us. – I put ’em together in a half hour and hope I get to work with you. – It’s a lot to decide in one, like, 30 minute meeting, so okay, we’re gonna get in bed together, creatively. – I don’t remember. Well, I wasn’t there for that either. – Creatively. You know, it’s quite a commitment. – Talking about what you’re going to enjoy on a deserted island and sleeping together, and I’m just out in the cold. – I guess it’s a commitment the other way too, which would explain why you actually watched our stuff. You don’t wanna just jump into a creative bed with somebody, with two guys, and then have to make their thing, or direct it, you know? It could be really bad. – Well yeah, it could be bad, but I mean, I think beyond, you know whether, well yeah, I guess I wouldn’t go to the meeting if I was like, this is not creatively my thing, but also then, you know, I’m always like, I always feel like, we try to avoid a situation where you want to kill the people you’re working with. And if you don’t like their stuff, and they don’t like what you’re about, then you’re just going to try to kill each other for most of the time you’re together, which beyond the creative process, is just not a wise choice, you know? – Right. – But I feel like, and maybe you can tell me what you feel, I felt like it was always trying to be deeply funny without trying too hard, and also be deeply interesting, which is a tough combination. Like, there’s plenty of stuff that’s just so funny and you just get it, you know? It’s just, you know, and a lot of the stuff that we did this season and that you do is just kind of, like, readily hilarious. But then there are other things that are readily hilarious and also something that you have to really, kind of, you know, absorb, or when you absorb, find that there’s other kind of levels to it. And that was what I liked most. I was like, oh, you guys are trying to figure something out. I don’t always know what it is, but you like the ideas and you want to explore what they are. – Well it’s funny, because we, you know, I kind of have, I’m of two minds about this, because there is the like, there’s a thing that I want to believe, which is like, yeah, I think this is a legitimately original approach to comedy. This in an original, like, we like to maintain a sense of originality and not have anybody be too, not be too referential. I mean nothing, you know, everything is remixed of course, but to not be able to just have people point out, you guys are just like this or just like that, or you’re a combination of this or that, so that there’s a sense of originality. But then I think that there’s this other part of my mind, and I’m sure Link has the same thought, which is just like, when are people going to figure out that we’re just posers? You know? I think every professional in entertainment business feels that way. – I feel like I’m posing right now. – Right, exactly. You’re like, when are they going to figure out that I don’t have any idea what I’m doing? We’ve kind of felt that our entire careers. Like, when are they going to figure out that we actually are just really good at making you think that we know what we’re doing? Right, but I think that’s– – Which is what I’m saying when, Steve came in with like a very intellectual assessment. Like, you really thought about the way that we had made the stuff we had made, and I was like, oh, we fooled him, so we’re doing the right thing. – We can fool other people too. – No, like specifically I remember, you made an observation, something about how we would choose to make left turns in things. I can’t remember exactly what you thought of it. Maybe you remember? But it resonated with us. It was like, we never thought about it that way, but yeah, we do try to do that. – Yeah, like the commitment to a deep dive digression, if guess is how I would say it, – Oh yeah. – which sounds kind of cool. But that is just kind of an area of comedy that I’ve always been interested in, and people have done in the past when I was super little, that the things that I thought was, what made me laugh beyond the jokes, like you’d see a scene and it’s really funny and then you’d laugh. And then the scene would take you to another place, which would not only make you laugh, but you’d realize you were going down some rabbit hole of the comedy you just enjoyed, and now you’re being forced to enjoy it on another level and then on another level all within the same laugh, kind of. So, like Monty Python did that. There was like a famous pet store sketch where John Cleese goes into a pet store, and says, I think it’s to Michael Palin, that his parrot’s dead, and it’s demonstrably dead, you know? It’s just like a stiff parrot, like stuffed parrot. And he bangs it on the counter and, you know, is trying to convince the pet store owner that the parrot’s dead, and the pet store owner refuses to believe it’s dead, because he doesn’t want to give the guy a refund. But at the end of that sketch turns into a song, because I believe, and my memory is vague on this, because it’s been a long time, but i believe the pet store tries to sell him in return, instead of giving him a refund, a half a bee. Like literally, a half a bee. – Of half of a honey bee? – A half of like a honey bee, which turns in– – A half a bee. – Yeah, a half a bee, which turns into a song, entitled “Eric the Half A Bee.” – Which he took home? I think that’s the point. – Yeah, and I don’t remember. – ‘Cause at that point, it’s a song about half a bee named Eric? – Eric the half a bee, I believe, and all the people listening to this can check my facts on this, because it’s been, I mean, I was eight years old or nine years old, but that’s just what I remember. Now, it could’ve been totally two different sketches and I put it in my head as something that was connected. – Hopefully not. – Yeah, hopefully not. But when I saw, you know, when I saw your work, and I saw that you would, you know, take these left turns and then go down that road as far as possible, leaving behind anything you might’ve set up to begin with, to me, was just, you know, great. – Right, like the belly button song. I don’t even know if you watched that one, but yeah, I don’t know why we did it, but it was like, alright, if we’re gonna add a second verse to this song about two guys discovering in their late 30’s that they have belly buttons for the first time, if we’re gonna continue that song through a second verse, well something else needs to happen, which involves selling coal plants door to door to children, – Right. – and I went, you know, it’s like if you look at point A and point B, it’s like how on earth could this happen, but it’s like, you know, okay, we got ’em along for the ride as long as they don’t click away. So it’s weird how, I think, there’s two factors that brought us there, was it was one, you don’t want people to click away, so you can’t retread. You can’t sing a chorus again. The chorus has to be new lyrics every time. But then also, I just don’t like, I don’t like knowing that the audience feels like– – They know where this is going. – They know where this is going, and then it does. I like ’em expecting it to go somewhere and then it never does. – And I think that’s true of, hopefully every episode – Oh, for sure. – of season two, is this like, that opening scene is not really going to be, I don’t know how you could figure out what the closing scene is going to be based on the opening scene. It just, even with the setup, you don’t really know what the overall punch line is going to be. But one, I remember one of the things that– – But even that, just to close a loop on that, when you, this was the conversation we were having the first time we met, I was like, okay yeah. But then you went, you started talking about a movie that was like a– – Well, I wanna talk about that in a second, but specifically with this, ’cause back to that same conversation, – Mmm hmm. – one of the things you said that we didn’t realize, again, having somebody that you respect and who has done a lot of work in this field that we kind of feel like, again, like we’re kind of like posing our way into, and I think that’s how anybody who’s going to come up on YouTube feels, because there still is this, from a critical standpoint, and sort of an industry standpoint, there is this, is this actually legitimate, you know, there’s still this struggle for legitimacy. But when you analyzed it and you said, you take these left turns, but your characters are always kinda just like shrugging, shrugging those left turns off. You never make a big deal out of it. It’s like you’ve faced this thing without any sort of fanfare at all. It just seems, oh this is natural that we would suddenly be here, and this is where we would be going. And I think that there’s a number of reasons, mostly just instinct, and it’s unintentional that we did, I think most of it was just like, oh, we just think this is really funny and it’ll be, it wasn’t really well thought out to be like, oh, and then when we go there, we won’t have much of a reaction to it. It was just– – Well, we thought hard about it, but I don’t know that I was calculating it. – Yeah, that particular element wasn’t calculated. But then we go back and look at everything we’ve done, and we’re like, oh, you’re right. We always approach things in that way. – We gloss over the absurd. – Right, the characters aren’t phased by the increasing absurdities that you– – Right. – surround yourself with. – Right. – Or any situation, and your increasingly absurd situation you put yourself in doesn’t necessarily, or correspondingly affect your character in some way. Like, you’re willing to accept the new circumstance. Like instantaneously. – Yeah, and we always want that new circumstance to come from a very relatable circumstance, which I think that, which is what, Link, you were about to talk about, which is, you began to tell the story about, what is the movie? – The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, – Yes. – like Luis Bunuel, yeah. – Yeah, and you just, ’cause you were talking about left turns, and– – That has some of the greatest left turns in movies ever, and I was amazed when I saw that movie again. I don’t know what I was doing watching this movie when I was, you know, I guess in high school, so by that time, I was like oh, I want to be cool and intellectual, so I’m going to watch a cool and intellectual things that are above my, you know, intellectual abilities. – But what happened? What was the digression? – Well there’s, it’s about a, you know, it’s about this kind of, like this aristocracy of characters, like this like, I think they’re related in some way. I think there’s a husband and wife for this collection of aristocrats who go on this crazy journey and there’s these constant digressions. Like, I think the one I told you about was when, once again, I hope my memory serves me correctly, ’cause I’m sure now that I’m saying it out loud on a podcast, someone’s gonna go “it’s not even right,” which is actually okay with me too, I guess, ’cause if that’s what I’ve– – It only matters what we think. – Well, what the application was? – Yeah, what the application was. But I think they were at dinner, and some waiter comes up and starts telling them a story, and you know, you cut away to that waiter’s story, and you think okay, this is going to be like a two minute story, and it’s going to have a little beginning, middle, and end, and then he’s gonna, you know, we’re going to cut back to our main characters, but you don’t for like, I think almost, it seemed like a half hour. – Uh huh. – Like, you’re to the point where you’re in another journey entire, on another journey entirely. And then you’re, I was kind of shocked when we returned to the restaurant where the waiter says, “oh, and thank you for listening to my story” and walks off to take their order, and then you’re back with our main characters. – And when you told us that story, we don’t even have to communicate about things like this. Like, we know we love that kind of thing. So when you’re telling that story, we’re both already thinking, okay, that’s happening in an episode. And when you’re dealing with a 22 minute comedy, we’re basically already thinking, okay, so we’re gonna have an episode where someone’s story becomes the episode, and that’s where the whole.. – Right. – The Lucy episode. – Episode six. Episode six. – Episode six cam from, which is, I don’t know, you know, we haven’t seen any posts, we haven’t been in the editing bay yet, so– – Well, actually we saw a little sequence from that– – Yeah, we did see that. – because we didn’t know if we needed to pick up a shot. – That is preemptively my favorite episode, but I don’t, you know, I’m withholding judgment at this point. – [Steve] I know, it’s– – And we didn’t need to pick up the shot. – No, I didn’t think so. – So there we go. We saw that thing. You didn’t see it. You didn’t see the little sequence either. – No, but I– – You didn’t? – No, I didn’t. – That’s kind of rude of me not to show you. – But when I heard that everyone was happy with it, I was like, well, I’m not going to care. (guys laugh) And then the other, ’cause in the other similar idea that we had, which was, can we do an episode where we don’t speak to each other? (guys laugh) And when we tell Michael and Severt that, Michael and Severt who are our head writers on the show and (mumbles) and kind of, along with us, we were in the writer’s room, you could kind of see the fear in their eyes when we said we wanna do an episode where we don’t speak to each other. And of course, it’s not necessarily completely not speaking to each other, but it takes not speaking to each other about as far as you can take it. – Yeah, in both cases. Like, it becomes many things. – [Rhett] Right. – [Link] It does. – It becomes many many things. – It actually became many things that we then had to rewrite, because they were too many things. (Steve laughs) – That’s true. – And then you and Stevie busted in, and you were like, guys, act three, that whole thing was the… – Yeah, that’s not, that can’t be a thing. Of the many things it can be, that is one it can’t be. – And I think we made an improvement. – I do too. – It was a parody of American Ninja Warrior and some other reality competition shows. – Which, incidentally… – But with like a crazy twist and weird constraints. – Well yeah– – And stunt men. – This is one of those things where we throw ideas up on a board, and then when episode ideas get filled in and we see that we’ve got two ideas that we wanted to do left over, and there’s one episode left, we put ’em into the same episode. That’s all that happened. – Yeah. – It was we wanna have a reality show parody of like American Ninja Warrior, and we want to have an episode where we don’t speak to each other, so we originally put ’em together, which, incidentally, then when we were shooting the, you know, our flashback episode, every morning in Santa Clarita, we passed the Ultimate Beastmaster, – Yeah, we did. – And that’s what that huge thing was, which was another on of our references, a Netflix sliced alone produced, you know, American Ninja Warrior rip off. – So what you’re saying is, we could’ve shot on their actual set. – We could’ve just gone into the Ultimate Beastmaster. – We should’ve gone down there. – Yeah, yep. – I think we would’ve been fined, ’cause you almost got fined just wandering around. – Yes I did. I almost got fined, and it was, I almost was fined, and it was not funny either. It wasn’t like I almost fined– – Was it a guy on a horse, ’cause there were horses around? – It was the modern version of a horse, in that, it was a Gator. It was a low-torque, very expensive, I asked him how much, I was like, how much is one of these, you know, ’cause you’re– – You tried to divert him from the fine with– – Let’s talk about your Gator. – Yeah, like, how much does one of those things run you? You know, like, how much does that cost? – You’re backing away slowly. – Yeah, yeah, he’s like “20 grand.” I’m like, wow, that’s an expensive piece of equipment. Yeah, so I was almost fined, because– – My mom has one of those. – Really? – Well, she’s a high roller. – Ah, she is. – Well, it’s pretty low to the ground. It’s her husband’s, actually. – We were at the movie ranch, basically. – Right, you’re not allowed to wander, and wander is the technical term. – [Rhett] Right. – It wasn’t, that’s not just a word I’m using to describe it. It’s wander– – That’s what it says on the sign. – That’s right. You cannot wander. And we, I needed to scout out that location, scout the location of the opening shot of that, you know, of that flashback, and so I wandered. I just didn’t, I had to go and wander. And i didn’t really think about it. It wasn’t like, oh, I’m going to be, you know, I’m going to be contrary and, you know, and wander. You know what I mean? Be rebellious and, you know, flaunt… Flaunt, flaunt, flaunt? – Flaunt it. – Flaunt it. – Flaunt the rules? Is that, I don’t think that’s, flaunt, I think, is the word I’m looking for. – Yeah. – Yeah. – The rules, It wasn’t that, we were working quickly, and I needed to go scout, so I did, and there was a, you know, I come down the mountain, and there’s a guy with that classic “you’re in trouble” smile, you know? The classic, like– – I’m gonna fine you. – Yeah, yeah. Like that, he didn’t even have to say anything, because he’s got the smile on his face that says “you’re in trouble,” and I’m like, what am I, this is, what? – But you got off, right? – Well, there was a 24 hour discussion about it, actually, because he, – Wow. – I was super nice, I was like, you know, I just, you know, I was like, hey, listen, I’m sorry, like, right off the bat. I’m climbing down the mountain, and I’m like, I am sorry. I know. I’m not supposed to be wandering. And you know that I’m not supposed to be wandering, ’cause you’re here to catch me. Like, you caught me. – Right, yeah. – Like, I don’t know how you caught me, but clearly, you know, I mean, I guess I could’ve said, hey, I got permission, but there was no radio from locations to them, you know, so they knew– – I mean this is a big source of revenue. This is like a small town cop catching. This is like a speed trap. – It was a hundred dollars. That’s not small. That’s a hundred dollars cash for walking, you know, on 200 yards off the, you know, the designated area. – And that’s on you, because it was on the call sheet. I’m not paying you a hundred dollars– – Yes, and on the bathroom door, and… (guys laugh) – It’s everywhere. – Yeah, it was everywhere. – I did read it on the call sheet. I don’t usually read the call sheets, but I read that, and I was like, kinda laughed to myself, and I was like, who would, how would, like that would ever happen? – Who’s going to wander? – Right, and you know, you know where you guys did, remember when we were in the river bed, I don’t know how much we can describe, but in that very last shot when we all ran to the river bed, that was almost a company fine. That was like an in-mass wander. – Oh really? – Yeah, because we were losing light, and the location we chose was not going to work, ’cause it was, It was we were losing light, and the place we had chosen for that was under trees. It was all under the canopies. Yeah, couldn’t do it. So, we’re like, oh, and so then we just ran over to the river bed, and there was a massive scramble, and then, I don’t know, you guys were maybe, you guys were changing, ’cause you had to get in to the change, and I went over to the same guy. I hope his name is Pete, because that’s my memory. And I said, we need to wander over there with the creek bed. And he was like, “Looks like you already have.” – Oops. – Ooh Pete, man. – For Pete’s sake. – And I was like, and I apologize for that. I really do. I’m not trying to– – Now tell me again how much that Gator is. (guys laugh) Can we still talk about that? – Yeah, and you know– – You got out of it twice, though? – Well, this time I, yeah, ’cause the first time, yeah, so I got out of it twice. The first time, I could see being like the hey, I’m just going to make this all in good fun, did not work, because I was saying, it was 24 hours that, you know, they came to me later and said you still might be fined. ’cause I was trying to be all jocular. Like, when I came down, I was like, oh, I’m so sorry I… – [Link] Yeah. – I wandered. (Steve giggles) It’s all just a joke isn’t it? I’m going back to our location, so sorry. That did not fly with that guy, ’cause he went on to maybe fine me. And so then the second approach was be very serious about it. Very serious and professional. Listen, I am sorry. – Repentant. – [Steve] I was, no joking around. – One knee, both knees. – The whole thing, like not, hey, I’m gonna make light of this stupid rule, by hey, aren’t we just friends and isn’t this a funny rule? It’s not. It’s not funny. And so then, yes, I worked him in that way, and that worked. I was like, listen– – Both of ’em. I’m sorry, I cut you off. Both of ’em, great shots, right? – Yes. – You got that establishing shot. That was the first wander when you got the establishing, right? – Yep. – Or you were looking for it? – Yeah, yeah, that’s where you guys come down. – That’s one of the biggest shots. – With a zoom lens. – Yeah, with a big big giant lens, yeah. With the classic– – Oh, that’s the biggest shot of the whole thing, maybe. – Probably. – And then you got the night, well I mean, let’s see, the creek bed closer… – The creek bed closer was really good. ‘Cause the– – That was like a act two closer type thing. – Right, yeah. – ‘Cause it was turned out to be a location that looks really crazy and almost like on another planet. – [Link] Yeah. – Like it was very craggy– – Star Trekky – Yeah, it was very Star Trekky. Yeah, and so then when you guys revealed yourselves in that location… – Yeah, we were very down and out. – [Steve] Yeah yeah yeah. – We were up the creek. – Right. – Am I right? – It’s true. – A very dry creek. – And one of the things that we were talking about was, you know, we, Link and I, carpooled together out to our location in Pamona, where we shot most of our stuff out in Pamona, and so, we would talk on the way and talk on the way back, and you know, it kind of hit us a few weeks in that we were like, now, what’s different than season one, because I feel like we’re working harder. We’re like, I just feel a lot more tired. I remember coming home in season one, even though we were working 12 hour days, and telling my wife, I was like, this acting thing is, this is, these guys got it easy. I was like, this acting thing is like, you know, I was really nervous about it, but you know, I’m not saying necessarily good at it, but I’m saying it’s not, it doesn’t really tire you out unless you’re doing like a revenant thing, and you’re like, – Right. – DiCaprio like jumping off cliffs and stuff like that. – Which we did none of. – Right, but we were trying to figure out what is it, what is it about this season? We were like, well maybe it’s, you know, maybe this was pretty ambitious for 33 days. – Yeah. – You know, so, season one, 29 day shoot, 14 minute episodes. We’re going to 22 minute episodes. We’re going up at least 50 percent in content, but we’re also, I think, scenes per minute, you know, scenes per episode or whatever, way up, like, just the pacing. And that was something that came, you know, that was a kind of Michael and Severt pushing us to keep the pacing up more so than we did in season one. – All this was great for the final product, but extremely ambitious for the parameters we had in terms of the time and money. – Right. – [Steve] Yeah. – And you, there’s no way you could’ve fully appreciated what we were throwing you into when we started this thing. – I did not fully appreciate it. – Although you did mention it several times. – I did. (Link laughs) – This is what I would see. This is what I would hear in your voice and see on your face. There was a, you would say things like, now, this is really ambitious. But then I could hear in your voice, you’re like, but of course, I mean, we’re gonna get more days. We’re gonna get more money. You believed that that was going to happen. – I did. – And that didn’t. (guys laugh) – I did. – Sorry, sorry about that. – Well, maybe not necessarily more days, but I didn’t actually realize that not a single minute of overtime would be allowed. And that’s not an exaggeration either, when I say not a single minute, I actually mean– – It’s pretty hard core. – not a single minute, and I actually, as you could tell, rebelled against that greatly for the first week or two, ’cause I actually couldn’t conceive of a world where one single minute of overtime could be the collapse of the season, and so, I was like, oh, I have to adjust, because I have no, there is no fail safe, even an extra 20 minutes, say, would be– – There was no buffering. – enjoyable. No buffer. And so, so I had to adjust to that I think. But I, the thing that I always keep in mind when I’m doing anything, and certainly with this show is, we have to achieve it, I know it’s kind of an obvious thing to say, we have to achieve it, because no one’s going to know, nor care, what we faced, nor tried, you know, what goals we set once it starts getting cut and it turns into episodes. No one cares. – No one cares. – We could say we literally, this entire thing took place on the moon. We actually were the first, you know, movie production or television production to actually fly to the moon, create an atmosphere on the moon, and then shoot a comedy series on the moon, and then we came back. People would be like, oh great, it’s yeah, it’s not so funny. – Right. (Steve laughs) – You know, so it’s like it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. You have to achieve it, and so then, you know, I always keep that in mind, so that we can, you know, we can try and create something great everyday, and I thought that you guys, I don’t know, can we compliment you on your own podcast? Is that a thing without it seeming to obsequious? – No one’s done it before. (Steve laughs) – You guys are super prepared. You know, like, it’s good you drove together (guys laugh) to the set, because there’s no, I mean, you guys were putting away two and three pages in an hour sometimes, you know, and that’s just not a thing I experience in other shoots in other shows, because you know, you either have a little bit more time or whatever, but if you guys didn’t actually know everything you were going to do pretty much all the time, we wouldn’t have made it. And so, that’s really a testament to your hard work. I mean, I was amazed. And that’s what I kept saying, the last couple of days I was like, they’re gonna bail us out of this one. We have 10 seconds. They’re going to bail us. Don’t worry, we got this. As long as I put up the cameras, then we’ll get something, because you guys were ready for it, and that was, I was impressed by that. I was impressed that you were ready for it. – Sometimes it was fun to know that we just had 10 minutes, and we were going to try to get two setups, so we had one take at this thing from each setup. So then it was like, you know, ’cause, I mean it’s, to like to stay so aggressively on point. It’s like, okay, I can’t flub a line, and I wanna hit these marks type thing. That was fun. A few times that was fun. – Right, and I mean, you actually couldn’t flub a line. Like that’s how, we were in situations where you actually couldn’t flub a line. – We talk about that all the time, and I think this is just rooted in being executive producers and creators on the show, and kind of feeling the weight of, like when we say, there’s no overtime, it’s like we’re saying there’s no overtime, right? And so it’s not us against them. We have to kind of put ourselves on both sides of the line, and so we always say, “don’t be the problem, be the solution”, right? – Right. – Where I think a lot of actors, you know, just almost instinctively, it’s like, they’re gonna be the problem, right? Somebody who’s super talented– – ‘Cause they have to do good work, and they have to do their thing really well. – Well, and there’s a natural give and take, right? – And they should, and you know, if you’re really great at that, you’ve earned the right to create a ripple effect of problems that, as producers, you start to appreciate how it ripples through everything. And then it costs X number of dollars. And so we know that intimately. So it’s not that I’m saying I would think normal actors would be annoying. I haven’t worked with that many, but yeah, we never feel like we’re actors. We’re something else that then we have to act to pull it off as part– – We’re acting because we have to do it, right? I feel like that’s, whoa, we gotta make this. Oh, we gotta be in it, which that means we have to act as well. Oh okay, we gotta figure out how to do that. But we definitely can’t be the source of the problem. – Well, it’s not that we don’t wanna act. – No no no. – I mean, we wanna act in it, but we want, but we’re never fully actors. I think with the pressure of time, we were always thinking about three other things at the same time, one of which is, how quickly do I need to get this? Don’t be the problem. – The whole thing, the whole thing is what is in view most of the time. – Yeah. – And acting is a part of it, right? Finishing on time is a part of it. – Sure, but you have to be good sports too, because there were times where, you know, ’cause actors do need space to kind of do it right and do it well, right? There were times where, despite the fact that you had your executive producer hats on, sometimes it’s just like life isn’t fair guys. Life isn’t fair to any of us. – Right, right. – Like, we have to just put it away. So that was good that you guys were good sports about it, ’cause it is still something that’s important and you wanna do it well, and it should be funny or it should be good, and you don’t, and it also can’t be wasted, you know? It can’t not work. – And I, you know, I mean part of the fun of acting is discovery. And sometimes that doesn’t happen until you’re actually doing it. – That’s right. – I mean, we’re so calculating and we work so hard at every step that we were intimately acquainted, and we had certain expectations of ourselves and each other and everybody else and the scene and even you, and so it’s more of we gotta execute what we expect, but there’s a lot of fun in discovering something, like a different angle, or how to tie two shots together, or a nuance to an accent, or just performing in a different way. – Right. – Like, oh, this is a lot funnier than we thought, because I’m crying now. I didn’t think I was gonna be crying. Or i thought crying would be funny, but now it’s not. So I think that, you know, because it was so aggressive, I certainly miss that experience of like, figuring it out. ‘Cause what would happen, like, if I’m to overgeneralize the thing, we would work really hard on a scene, you get it done and you get it done, and then immediately, like immediately be like, alright, next scene. And then we would go, and it would, you know, you’d physically move over just the actors and producers and you, and we would rehearse. And that was a fun moment, but it was very high pressure, because it wasn’t much time allotted for it. But the rehearsal was the time when you block it out. Where are you gonna step? Where you gonna walk? What are you gonna say? How’re we gonna say it? We’re saying the lines, and we’re seeing who laughs at what in the room, but we’re not even giving a full performance yet. ‘Cause you wanna save it. You give like a half performance, but you gotta give enough to, like, have proof of concept, or make sure that something’s not broken and needs to be fixed. And then, but it’s when everybody’s making decisions, like, DP’s making lighting decisions, mood decisions. You’re making all these cut angle camera decisions, directorial decisions. We’re blocking all this stuff. Everybody’s making all these instantaneous decisions, pop pop pop pop pop pop pop all at once, and it’s like okay, and we need to be done with it, so that we can just shoot it. – Right. – But that is a fun moment, because, I’m trying to think of an example, but you don’t really know if this is gonna work. Like, that’s a big moment. Or when you have someone come in, it’s like Garrett Morris, a legend, comes in, from the first season of Saturday Night Live, and like, I knew this, you know, I have images of this guy in my brain from like, the earliest memories of comedy. It’s like, this guy’s a part of it. – Yeah. – And then all of a sudden, he strolls onto the set, and the first time you see him in action is this rehearsal, and it’s like, alright, is he going 50 percent? Is he going 90 percent? And this is true of everybody. And so then we’re kind of, you’re assessing like, alright, what’s he gonna give us? Is he, I mean, is it going to be great? Is it going to be horrible? Is it going to be somewhere in the middle? So you’re like discovering all that, knowing that, you know, 20 minutes later, after you’ve rehearsed, they bring in the cameras, and they set up the lights and everything else, and the props are set and everything, you’re gonna do it no matter what. It’s like you’ve jumped off the cliff and you better hope that squirrel suit unfurls. – But for you, I mean, it was, this was, the whole process is obviously something that you’ve been involved in for a long time, but the limitations– – How much did we mess it up for you? – The limitations that you usually don’t have these limitations. You did us a solid in saying yes, you’ll work on this, based on your level of experience and the size of the projects you’d done before, so talk a little bit about like, recognizing those limitations and like, has that changed the way you think about directing at all? – Oh yeah, I mean to me, the main thing I had to remember was to continue to have fun. I’d be in a situation where I was like, you know, I have to change the way I work in order to make sure that we execute properly, and then I’d get all mad at myself or mad at everyone, and then I’d have to realize that this is deeply crazy what we’re doing, and therefore should only be fun all the time, otherwise why even stand where I’m standing? So I had to, that was first. Like, okay, just remember that this all should be kind of fun. I mean, on a technical level, I started thinking about lenses differently, you know? ‘Cause what is the best frame if you don’t get two of them? You know, if you don’t get two sizes, what’s the best frame in any particular situation? I know that’s probably, what I’m about to say is like the cure for insomnia for most of your listeners, but I would say– – Ah, give it to me. – Well, lenses are a big thing, you know? Like what, you know, how, you know when you get to cover things, and when you know you have, say, you know, three hours to shoot a three page scene versus 45 minutes, say, you know, how best to cover it and, you know, what are the ways in which, you know, when you have that much time, you can shoot it many many ways and you get lots of coverage and you get lots of angles and, you know, so I had to figure out how to kind of efficiently shoot something and still make it good and still make it funny, or at least funny in the lens. You guys were funny and great, and so I had to figure out, you know, how to best capture it, ’cause you can’t be too wide, you can’t be too tight, it has to kind, you have to, you know, tell the story visually. So, I’d say I learned some stuff. I learned some stuff. (Link laughs) You know? I learned some stuff. You know, gags are gags though. To me, that didn’t change. You could probably see my, like, I always got a lot more, you know, I don’t know, whatever, intense when we were doing gags, as opposed to scenes, because scenes, when you guys are, you know, when the floor is yours and you guys are doing character work and being funny and it’s in dialogue, you can cover that a bunch of different ways, it’s gonna be great. – Right. – When you’re doing gags are really specific. They need very specific shots. If you don’t have those specific shots, the gags don’t work, period. So I would always get more, kind of intense, you probably noticed, when we were shooting gags, ’cause they have to be shot properly. – And we had a lot of them. – Yes, 14 thousand I think. 1,470 gags, but it was great, but that was great. So those have to be shot well, you know? Those just have to be shot well, so– – Speaking of which, shall we talk about the Texas switch? – Yes. – Because to me, that’s like– – That’s my favorite. – That’s like the vanity bumper sticker of Buddy System Season Two is Texas Switch. – [Steve] Texas Switch. – Take the vowels out, and you make it into a vanity license plate. – Yeah, but just T-X-S-W-C-H, just S-W-C-H. You could put that T in there. – Yeah you could. I have to go back to what I just said for a second, and say please all out. – Why? – I don’t know. Well, ’cause it seems very boring, doesn’t it? – No – No The Mythical Beasts, man… – Choosing the lens? – Oh, so boring. – They care about that stuff. They care about it. – Really? – Yeah, they’re all creative minded people. – Yeah, well then they’re maybe– – And aspiring directors. – Many of them. – And current diretors. We got it all, baby. – Alright, that’s good. – I had never heard the term “Texas switch,” until you said it four thousand times. (Link laughs) But it’s our fault. ‘Cause it’s, there’s a lot of prop gags. – Right. – So it’s, explain it. – Okay, so the Texas switch– – To me again, because I still don’t understand. (guys laugh) – Well, and then there’s also the Hollywooded in, which is a kind of a variation of the Texas Switch. – Let’s use a specific example as a case study. Do you remember a Texas switch that we can talk about? We can talk about any of them, I don’t care. – Well yeah, so okay, Texas switch– – Pick any scene, we had one. – This is one of those situations where we had a gag we were trying to get with the soup. – Right. – So, we’ve got the box that has the food in it, and I bring it in– – I didn’t think that’s the one we ever wanted to talk about though? – And I do my– – Just because it was so hard to shoot. – Well, but I treat it very– – Right. – you know, roughly. And we set it down, and you open it up, and it’s a perfectly steaming hot bowl of soup. – [Steve] Right. – Liquid in a bowl that can’t sustain being flipped around in a cardboard box. – So I come in with an empty cardboard box, set it down, Texas switch, bring in the one with the soup in it, and open it up. That’s a Texas switch. – That’s right, that’s right. – But it just means that you keep rolling, but then in the edit it could mean anything. It means you cut to another shot. – Yeah, right. You cut to another shot, and then when you cut back, the thing that you wanted switched in was switched with the thing that’s switched out. – I guess, in like a theatrical setting, it’s like hey, look at me over here while some stage hand over here replaces mine with his, and now there’s blood in that. – Don’t do that. – It’s like a visual slight of hand, if you will, yeah. And then we had to Hollywood in the soup, right? Which was also a Texas switch. You know, someone out there will have to kind of clarify, ’cause there is Hollywooding something in, which is also kind of a Texas switch. – Hollywood in is just like a janky way to like, more like a, like the non-technical way to get something in its place. – Right. – Right, like that could be like some sort of lighting shield that someone’s just holding for putting on a stand. – You’re gonna let a grip hold the bounce, or are you gonna put it on a C-stand? – Right. – So if the group is holding the bounce, they’re Hollywooding it in. That’s what I always thought. – ‘Cause I think it means that– – And I learned that from Ben. – In Hollywood, you can afford to just have a person hold that, as opposed to prop it up against something. (Steven laughs) Right? But in Texas, you gotta switch it out. – Right, in Texas. – It’s, so Hollywooding something is a broad term, but Texas switch is a narrower term, which we used many time for prop gags. – And Hollywooded in has too many syllables, and it also is not as fun to say as Texas switch, which has a very clear, like, idea behind it, right, which everyone gets instantly. Like you get what that is. Let’s do that, you know, like right away. – [Rhett] Right, yes. – Yeah. – But now the real fun starts. I mean, we’re gonna have our wrap party here in just a little bit, and then you’re gonna get in there in the editing bay. – Yeah. – Very soon. – I looked at episode two today. – Oh, you did? – No. – It was my notes, almost all my notes, well, my notes are being done in episode two right now. – Oh really? – Alright, well tell us, alright, it’s fine if you say this, because our expectations, I mean, whenever we see first edits, and we try to, like, we try to protect who sees it, so that we both don’t see it at the same time, so someone could have a preserved first look at something that’s further along. – Is that how you do it? Like, you won’t look at it at the same time? – We try not – Ideally, no. – Somebody wants to have a fresh perspective, yeah… – Okay. – To be like, okay I thought this. Let me see if he thinks this. – But we’re used to first cuts of anything, there being that let down. Like, oh I feel disappointed. – We’ve never been encouraged by a first cut of anything, sketch, music video. – So it’s okay if you tell us that right now. – We’re always like, mmm. – How did you actually feel? – Well, I have that problem too. Like, I’ll say like, what? What’s the point of any of this, you know? (guys laugh) You know? But that’s not, but it’s not personal, right? It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Yeah, I’d say, you know, I’d make a sandwich and feel that way, you know? Like, I’ll make a sandwich, I’ll look at my sandwich and I’ll say, well, that’s not in my, you know, like my idea of this whole operation, was that some perfect thing was going to emerge and now it’s just a sandwich, so– – So can somebody Texas switch in a better sandwich? – Yeah, like you have to get past that, and yeah. So that’s all just, yeah, that’s all just stuff like in your head, so you have to– – So, what happened? How much of it, you saw a majority of episode two? – I thoroughly enjoyed episode two. I thought it was really really funny. And first I looked to make sure that I got all of the shots I need to make it. You know, like I live in fear of that. Like, oh, we better have this shot. Because to me, this shot is what’s gonna be crucial to, you know, making it good. So I’m out, with the editor, I’m like, I’m always like go there, go there, go there. I wanna let’s just stream– – Oh, you were over his shoulder? – Yeah, I went over there and I just said I wanna see all these beats and I wanna see which shots I have just to see if these crucial shots– – After scene the cut? Like you sat there and watched? – Yeah, and then I was like, I wanna know that we have all these crucial shots. That, to me, will make it 40 thousand times funnier. And when, most of those shots I got, I felt good about that. And then performance was good, and I was like does this make sense to watch this? – Is this the Michael McDonald episode? – No, this is the Glen episode. – [Steve] Yeah. – Okay. – You know like with that crazy day when we had 14 seconds to shoot that big sad piece at the end, because is that gonna work, you know? – Right. – Like how is that? That’s the whole point of the episode. That’s the whole big deal. Like, if that doesn’t work, the episode, uh oh. But yes, that was great. I was like, let’s go, I was like watch the end scene first. – Oh you did? – Let’s work backwards. – Watch the scene you’re most nervous about first. – Yeah, and then like, there were scenes that really work. I don’t know, I can’t really say things, right? You’re not supposed to say things? – Well, you can indicate so that we know. – The diner, can I say diner? Okay, so that scene is yeah. That whole sequence, from the moment you enter the diner to that end of that phrase– – And then where we go. – and then where you go. That’s all just– – Oh yeah? – Tremendous. – That was a difficult day. – Yes. – Difficult day getting what we needed. – Yes, it was tremendously difficult, and it is tremendous. – The basement stuff? – Amazing. – Oh yeah? – Amazing. Yeah, it’s amazing. It’s yeah, it’s extraordinary. – Whoa, extraordinary? – Yes, it’s extraordinary. And the diner itself is kind of the whole setup to that, is pretty extraordinary too. – What about my pants joke? Is that still in? – Pants joke? – Putting on your pants one? – Yes, yes it is. – You didn’t cut that yet? – No, no no, no. – I’m fond of that. Try not to cut it. – And, are we gonna be short? Are we good on that? – That episode’s good on time, yeah. I mean most of them are long. That’s actually closest, that episode is closest to time. – [Rhett] Okay. – So yeah, if you cut a lot, then you’ll be short. ‘Cause it’s closest to time. – ‘Cause that was a thing, that was the thing I was worried about, because, you know, our AD Jill kept coming back and saying, this is all just too ambitious. We’re not gonna make our days. You guys gotta cut more stuff. And so, you know, Michael and Severt would go and may propose cuts, and pages and pages and pages continued to come out of the script as we moved along, and we just kept thinking, are we gonna be too short? Are we gonna be to short? But okay, we’re not gonna be too short. – No, most of the episodes are probably long, which is great. Yeah, I mean, in that way– – And I’m so excited, by the way, I mean it’s, these are proper episodes, versus season one was just like, webisodes that made up a movie, which was, I’m proud of what it is, but as an experience for the audience, I’m super, I mean we got, what do you predict is your favorite episode? – I mean, certainly the one we talked about, the one that might be your favorite episode is certainly up there. – Episode seven. – So like the big– – Six. – Episode six, yeah. – Six is up there. – People are gonna love it, because it’s such a, such a left turn. It’s such a, I mean, it’s crazy different. I mean it’s a period piece – Yeah. – Yeah but, when you’re not talking to each other, that one has– – [Link] That’s interesting. – That’s pretty, I mean, where it goes is so, it just, it takes these exponential leaps, like these exponential leaps, especially, you know, like the, to me what made me think maybe it was gonna be my favorite episode is when the character Dillon makes that proposal. He comes out of the bathroom– – And it’s like what? Hold on, wait. You’re talking about a left turn. – Right, and he’s like, okay, I see this in a way that, not only no one else in the whole universe could see, but certainly not the audience, and I see it very clearly, and that’s gonna be the next move. And that’s a great move. It’s a pretty great move. So that one I’m interested in– – They don’t know what we’re talking about. – It’s gonna be so frustrating. – Yeah. – I tend to forget about the music, ’cause it was like, but I mean, that reggae thing we shot on the last day looks so great. I mean that’s gonna be… – That’s gonna be cool. – Yeah. My hope is that when you watch an episode, it’s one of those, I think it’s, I want people to feel like when they finish watching an episode, they think back to the beginning of the episode, and it feels like how we felt when we were shooting. Like whenever we were shooting, it was like, I remember what we shot at the beginning of this day, and it doesn’t feel like the same day, ’cause we’re shooting so much and like we’re working so hard. But even from a viewing experience, I think story wise that’ll translate. It’s like at the end of an episode, they’ll think about the first of the episode and be like, that can’t be the same episode. And then they’ll be like, I remember there was a song, like, in like the middle of the episode. But that feels like a different episode too. It’s like… – Right. – I think we take people on a great journey. – A big adventure. And I’m interested to see how the characters that you guys created, how they evolve over the eight episodes. Yeah, in terms of like– – Especially ’cause we block shot the whole thing, and I have no clue… – Yeah, like what your characters believe at the beginning and what your characters believe at the end… – I trust the writing. – Yeah, I trust the writing too. – We tried hard, but like from an acting standpoint, it was difficult to plug back in. Like, we shot all the scenes in the dining room. So it’s like, the call sheet would be like, episode one, episode four, episode eight, episode four, eight, one, and we’d shoot it in that order. – Yep. – But, I mean, as much as we, we do change. – Yeah, I think you guys do change. – We did change. – Physically. – But at least our accents don’t change, ’cause then that would’ve been really bad. – Right, except for that one day. Oh, new character on the fly. – Oh yeah, that was fun. – You heard about that. You weren’t there, but you heard subsequently. – Oh yeah yeah yeah, I was getting changed. – I was like oh gosh. – That was a good move. It was a good work. – It was a good move. I mean it’s good to have, here’s the story. We both, Rhett and I both had characters that we were playing independently that were basically going to be cut together at a certain sequence. And we kind of conceptualized the character that I played and then yours, or I wasn’t in the room for that. I wasn’t in the room when you conceptualized the Cajun guy, but the Southern gentleman, I thought it was supposed to be a Southern gentleman– – Yeah, and we thought that they were different enough, but they weren’t. – But then when we rehearsed it, like the more that you were the Cajun guy, I was like, I feel like this is messing with my mind. I can’t be here, so I left. I couldn’t listen to you doing your character anymore, ’cause it was messing with my character. So then I went off, the whole time you were shooting it, and I was like rehearsing the freakin’ Southern gentleman. Meanwhile, I didn’t look like a Southern gentleman. They made me look amazing and very funny. – That character never left the East coast. – And that was a lesson learned, that I should’ve assessed that the moment I– – The northeast coast. – The northeast coast, that’s right. – Like, once you put on hair and makeup, costume, like that’s the moment, like you gotta reassess everything in the mirror. And that was a mistake I made. I’ll own that. But I think the thing was, so then I was off rehearsing this Southern gentleman, and then I show up after you left, and I knew in my heart of hearts that I didn’t think it was, I thought it was too close. But I wasn’t willing to say anything, because I didn’t wanna be the problem. And then, you weren’t there, so Stevie and Steve were over at the monitor with their backs turned to me. I’m watching them watch me on the monitor out of the corner of my eyes. So I’m performing to the right of lens, and over here I can see their backs, and their like (whispers). – You know something’s coming. – Yeah. – Stevie and Steve are huddling. – Stevie was the one who called it. She clocked that so fast, oh my God. – She’s learned how to, she knows when she can come in and correct the course. – It’s a precarious spot. – It is. – We depend on her for that. – Yes, she had to make a big, that was a bold move. – Right. – It was the last day, but the two of you conferred, and you were like, the characters are too similar. They sound too similar. And I was like, well, they’re from the same place. They knew each other years back. – Please accept that. – Please, yeah. And then, you were like, yeah, he doesn’t look like he talks, and you guys were talking about it, and I was like alright, so. I mean I have no clue, I never looked in a mirror. If we had time, I would’ve been like, alright, give me 30 minutes. Let me go in front of a mirror again. – We don’t have 30 minutes. – Yeah. – So then I just did some different stuff on camera, and I was like, – It was fantastic. – okay? – Yeah, I mean– – And it wasn’t the most pivotal thing in such a crazy episode that I’m not concerned about it, but I think the takeaway, the main takeaway was you got people you put in place to be able to redirect and override and shape something. And you gotta trust those people. And that’s what we hired you for. And you more than earned that trust after, you know, a few days of working together. – Yeah. – So then, by the last day, it was like, I just wanted to be able to pull my weight and take the direction. But I never questioned whether you guys were right. And you know, we got long standing track record with Stevie, and that certainly helped, but I mean, even if it was you saying that just alone, it was like I would’ve totally trusted. But I was like, okay, I can’t blow this. I’ve gotta change this character– – I’ve gotta invent a new character on the fly. – I’ve gotta change this character entirely. – How many characters did you do? Do you know? I lost count after awhile. – I don’t know how many characters, but we discovered that I had 58 costume changes and Link had 60 costume changes, so… – So at least 20 percent of those were different characters. – In eight episodes in television, which is just stupid, is just a… And yeah, so I don’t know how many. I feel like I kinda exhausted my accent ability. The Cajun accent was not really, I mean it was, it was, again, I was going off of what I had seen on Swamp People. It wasn’t really Cajun. There wasn’t any French in there. It was like– – I don’t know, ’cause I wasn’t there. I was like get me out of here, ’cause I don’t want it to mess me up. – Yeah, you were just kind of like I’m off the ledge on this one, you know? Like, it was just like– – Well you looked, the way you looked– – I had a few root words that I kept going back to. – Yeah, you just cracked. And I like that, ’cause it was the end of the shoot, and I’m like okay, you know, ’cause all of them were really cohesive, you know, up until that point, you know? And then I was just like okay, this is good, because it’s completely cracked open. This is all going the way it should go. – And then we immediately ran to hair and makeup and we turned into 80’s hair metal. – Which we know that well. We know that well. – That was comfort zone. – Yeah yeah, for sure. – Well, I’m gonna have to cut this short guys, ’cause I gotta go to the doctor and figure out what’s wrong with me and if I’m dying or not. Not to… – Let’s hope that the verb is not. – You have a sore throat. – Yeah. – Just tell us at the wrap party that everything’s okay. – Well, I might not be able to speak. I might be on vocal rest at the wrap party, and I’ll bring a sign. I’ll bring a sign and put it on my chest. – You could do this, you know, are you doing the mustache? What’s gonna happen? Are you gonna help him out and shave, and then that will, right? – I can just point at him and be like he was gonna shave that, talk about that. – What’s the question? – [Together] Are you gonna shave your mustache? – Yes. – He’s gonna shave it. – Well, there you go. – This is the last thing with the mustache. – This is it. – Yeah, within an hour it’s gonna be gone, and I’ll have my wife back. (Steve laughs) When I say wife, I meant life. – Oh gosh. Well, man, it was a privilege to work with you. – Likewise. – This is, like Link said, we would have enjoyed to be able to kind of stop and reflect and just carry on a friendship throughout, even though we did, but it was very much work work work work work, just like Rihanna. – But it was totally worth it. And it still was a great experience, but it was tough. I mean I’m exhausted. – And now the friendship begins. – Right? Right, we can start. It’s nice that you’re saying that, that we’re friends. Like when you said that to me in the trailer I was shocked, you know? That you were like, we consider you a friend. I’m like, oh man. Some big moment just snuck up on me. (Link laughs) Because I was saying to my wife– – Well, when you go through a near death experience together, I mean that’s the best way to– – That’s the thing. But yeah, I said to my wife in, you know, I was like I don’t know what I’m gonna say on this podcast and all of that, and I was like ’cause I don’t think we’ve had like this long a conversation ever. Like our longest conversation prior to this one was what you mentioned before, was when we met. – [Rhett] Right. – We got to talk for 30 minutes. – Yeah. – And then, that was it. And then yeah, I think we had the desert island thing, and then now this. – We had the car thing. You told me about your car. – Well right, that was nice. I was like wow, the subject matter is not that interesting, but the fact that we’re actually talking about something, yeah, that was nice. – That was pretty interesting. – Yeah yeah, so I’m happy to– – We’ll talk about he car when you come back. – Yes. – ‘Cause our friendship will only be conducted on our podcast. (guys laugh) – Right, that’s good. – No no, this is a form of stopping and celebrating, and you know, I am trying to, like you said, you try to be aware, and I am wrapping this up, ’cause I know you gotta go to the doctor. Just leave, we’ll keep talking. – I can tell that’s what’s in your eyes right now. – But I actually went around the bases again after he said let’s wrap it up, so that’s on me. – Stopping and celebrating, I feel like this is a component of that to reflect on what we made together, and it’s important, and, like the wrap party, it’s important. We’re gonna go with everybody who we made this thing with, and you know, if it’s the last time you see some of those people, well hopefully it won’t be, but it’s like, at least we commemorated it. – That’s right. – Yeah. – That’s what we’re gonna do. – So that’s what you’re saying. We’re never gonna see each other again after the wrap party? – Our friendship will continue. – Thanks for stopping by. – Thanks for having me. It was great fun. Thanks for– – And thanks for listening. We’re not gonna have another wrap up, other than this. We’re just gonna toast. – Here it is. – Come back next week for another Ear Biscuit. (upbeat music) To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety, so you don’t miss a thing, follow the links in the description to Art19, Apple podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere else podcasts are available. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click the video on the left. – [Rhett] To watch more from This Is Mythical, click the video on the right. – [Link] And don’t forget to subscribe by clicking the circular icon. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your mythical best.