 Tom Cruise, Scientologist, John Travolta, Scientologist, turns out one of my favorite science fiction writers, L. Ron Hubbard, also a Scientologist. They even got L. Ron Hubbard. Louis Theroux from the BBC stops by to talk about his new documentary, My Scientology Movie, which Entertainment Weekly calls one of the best documentaries of the year. It's Friday, March 31st, 2017. I'm David Feldman. We have a lot of show, so let's get right to it. Welcome to the broadcast. I'm David Feldman, DavidFeldmanshow.com. On today's program, Louis Theroux from the BBC joins us from London. Louis is one of the world's great documentarians who for the BBC has explored survivalists, black nationalists, white supremacists, and porn stars. His new documentary, My Scientology Movie, is breathtaking. He joins us from London. Kelly Carlin is back. Her new book, A Carlin Home Companion, is now out in paperback. Dan Pasternak writes for Splitsider, McSweeney's, and is one of the world's leading experts on comedy. As program director for IFC, he is responsible for Portlandia, Marin, and Comedy Bang Bang. He talks about a new documentary, Fatherless, which premieres on Fusion Saturday night. Also, law professor Corey Bretschneider stops by for my weekly lesson on the Constitution and yours. Film critic Michael Snyder tells us what movies and TV shows you should be seeing. It's a packed show, as always. We have a YouTube channel. It's just the audio of this program. Not too many views, not too many subscribers. But if you want to listen to this show on YouTube, a lot of people, when they're sitting at their computer, open up another browser and listen to this show on YouTube. Just go to YouTube, type in David Feldman Comedy. My channel will show up and subscribe. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher. Please give us a good review on iTunes. Go to DavidFeldmanshow.com to learn about all the different platforms available for you to listen to this show on. I'm putting out a new stand-up album. Pay what you want. That's how we're doing it. The first 10 minutes are up on my site. Go to DavidFeldmanshow.com. You'll see advertisements, banners for it, and it's pay what you want for the first 10 minutes. And then we're going to be putting out 10 minutes every month. Give me feedback because then we're going to do a final edit and release it as a CD. Probably around, I don't know, Thanksgiving. So pay what you want. You'll see banners for it on my website. Pay a penny or a billion dollars, whatever whatever you want to do. And then go to the contact button and give me feedback. Thank you all for contacting me via my website. I answer all my emails. I want to know what you think of this show. A lot of you have been encouraging me and I appreciate that. I've also gotten a lot of, shall we say, spirited criticism and I appreciate it. We're plugging along here. If you're new to this podcast, I strongly urge you to go to iTunes. Look at the back catalog. Look at who we had. It's pretty amazing what we've been doing. Look at Alex Brazel produces this show. Look at who we've had just in February and March. This is the end of March. In the past two months, these are just some of the people we've had on the show. This doesn't include the professors and the authors and the journalists. These are just people you've probably heard of. Lewis Black, Brian Stack, Bob Saget, Andy Kinler, Rich Voss, Dana Gould, Bobby Slayton, Will Durst, Frank Conniff, Maz Gebrani, Eddie Pepitone, Judy Gold, Jerry Stahl, Jeff Ross, Gilbert Godfried, Sarah Tiana, Merrill Marco, Chuck Closterman, Sam Cedar, Todd Glass, Kathleen Madigan, Micah Fox. It goes on and on. And that's just February and March. Those are the comedians. Well, Chuck Closterman's an author. I haven't even included the comedy writers we had and journalists who we had on the show in February and March. Those are just the comedians. Thank you, Alex Brazel. Good job, man. Good job. Subscribe to the show on iTunes, laugh, listen, learn. That's what this show is all about. Please share this episode with all your friends. That's how you can thank me. Become a monthly subscriber for $5 a month. You can gain access to all our premium content. It's April Fool's Day tomorrow. It's April Fool's Day tomorrow. Coming up from the BBC, Louie Theroux. This is the David Feldman radio network. Yeah, I wanted you on the show just because I wanted you on the show. And then I watched the documentary last night. And I thought, oh, okay, is that how that's how it's going to be entertainment tonight calls my Scientology movie one of the best documentaries of 2015. David Feldman calls my Scientology movie a groundbreaking reinvention of the documentary genre. Feldman goes on to write never before has a documentarian succeeded in transforming sense memory into visual reality. Feldman says my Scientology movie pulls off what no documentary has achieved before by creating a time machine that commits to film events that until now seemingly had gone uncaptured. Feldman continues. Louie Theroux has committed what I consider the ultimate and most egregious stab in the back by growing into an artist and going from Feldman's former comedy writing partner, a former office mate who at one time let Feldman alpha dog him Theroux has now turned Feldman into the supplicant begging Theroux to do his crappy little radio show. Please welcome a churn coat. The younger, more gifted Louie Theroux. Hello, Louie Theroux. Thank you very much. I love that. Is that your new thing to refer to yourself in the third person? It definitely gives you a lot of gravitas. Because David Feldman is not that uncommon a name. So at first I was like, well, there must be another one. But it became clear it was you. I didn't realize you were alpha dogging me. But looking back on it, that all makes sense. It was a pack of two, though. It wasn't. It was just me and you. I don't think you were alpha dogging anyone else. No, I fell in love with you. We were sharing. We were working on not necessarily the news. I don't know. It was like 20 years ago. And you and I shared an office and we began writing together. And I know I drove you crazy. I have manic energy. I know I feed on manic energy. So I loved being your office mate and considered it a great privilege. And I've always thought of you as possibly the most gifted, pure joke writer that I've ever worked alongside. It's a special, I don't know, you know, it's a special talent like they could probably find a part of the brain that does it. Chris Kelly is a very gifted joke writer as well. Yes. Two of you really stand out. When did you meet Chris Kelly? Did you do the radio show with him? Did I introduce you to Chris Kelly? No, no, I worked alongside Chris. I'm glad we can name check him because I don't get to do it often enough. He really did get me my break in TV because he was the one that brokered my interview with Michael Moore. He was the one who went to Michael Moore and said, I know this young British guy. We've been working together at Spy Magazine. And he went to Michael and said, I know a young British guy who'd be great for this. He'd be on air, corresponded material. And then Chris, having got me on board a bit like it's salmon spawning, he promptly died figuratively. Like he got fired within a couple of weeks of getting me on board at TV Nation. Chris Kelly is one of the executive producers of the Bill Mar Show and worked on National Lampoon Spy Magazine is kind of like me. He can't keep his mouth shut. He went after Michael Moore the way I went after John Stewart because everybody at the height of Fahrenheit, whatever that movie was when... 9-11. 9-11. When everybody was saying, thank God for Michael Moore, Chris Kelly gave interviews in the New Yorker, trashing Michael Moore, exposing him for what he is. Not too friendly to unions, Michael Moore. What was your beef with John? Because I didn't know you'd gone after John Stewart. Well, the same criticism that I have of John Stewart, Chris Kelly had of Michael Moore. And Chris Kelly is a bona fide progressive liberal. You cannot... I mean, he's Bill Mar's favorite comedy writer. You do not mess with Chris Kelly politically or comedically. And Michael Moore offended Chris Kelly's sensibilities and Chris Kelly gave an interview in the New Yorker that talked about how Michael Moore filmed Roger and Me with a non-union crew and then violated the core tenets of the Writers Guild on TV Nation by inviting writers in to pitch him ideas because they thought they were getting a job. And then Michael Moore went on to steal those ideas, walk into the writer's room and say, how much longer can I keep bringing potential employees in to give me ideas so I can steal them and keep stealing them before the Writers Guild catches on. Hence Michael Moore's obesity. I love Michael Moore. I love Michael Moore. I do. I do. He's eating the jokes. No, there's something. There's something seriously wrong with the guy. I love him. I get it. And there's something seriously wrong with John Stewart. So I felt obligated because of Chris Kelly to speak the truth about John Stewart because he was willing to speak the truth about Michael Moore and Chris Kelly. And then I'm gonna shut up. Then I'm gonna shut up. But I am interested because I worked with Michael and I can see he's a complicated guy. John Stewart, I only know as a fan of his show. I've never worked with him. I imagine him to be, in my fantasy, he would be a wonderful boss, a wonderful guy to work for. Is that not the case? Well, I love John Stewart the same way I love my ex-wife. He's complicated. I would say, you know, as long as you're going to attack somebody's body, well, let me put it this way. John is quite small. Well, his vision of the world is limited. He thinks that the universe is not expanding. And it is. And so he thinks it's a- We're talking about physics now or is this a metaphor? This is my unified theory of comedy. Now, you just sit down, Louis. And you just let me alpha dog this because I have to punish you for your success. This is- You've got my face in your crotch right now. How dare you go- I was the- I'm older than you and we were comedy writing partners and you have gone off and done all this stuff. Let me just answer your John Stewart thing. I love John Stewart. I do. I think the good far outweighs the bad. He's very involved with autism. And when I was working for him, we were at war with Iraq and he was visiting wounded soldiers. He does far greater things than I could ever do for wounded soldiers, for wounded animals. My experience with him was offensive to the writer's guild. And when we're both before St. Peter, we're both going to be told, uh, you're Jewish. What are you doing here? No, they're going to go over the books and he'll get in a lot quicker than I will. That being said, he broke my heart the same way Michael Moore broke Chris Kelly's heart. And Chris Kelly taught me how to write jokes just by being around him. I learned how to- And this was after we worked together. I learned how to write jokes at a whole new level by, you know, you need to surround yourself with really bright people and listen, which is what I'm not doing right now. I'm not listening to you. I'm talking. I'm so excited to have you. Well, no, but that was a good little, um, I was, you shone a little light into your world and I found that helpful. Thank you for the kind words about my documentary. If I had, um, if I had scripted my own appreciation for what, for the film, it would have been close to what you said. I mean, I think we worked quite hard to use, um, you know, techniques that I hadn't used before, um, a sort of a freestyle improvisatory reenactment technique that would, that was occasionally like therapeutic role play. That when we started doing, you know, and I should probably explain, so we're trying to get inside Scientology, they are repeatedly saying, no, we've no interest in cooperating with you on a film about Scientology. You are a trivial, tabloid, smarty-minded journalist. And besides, we don't really talk to any journalists, so go on your way. So after 10 years of being turned down, I brainstormed ideas for how we could do a sort of documentary about Scientology without their, without their involvement from the outside, but, but in a way that wouldn't feel like, um, just me noodling or phoning and getting rebuffed at the gates and so forth. And, and, and we hit on this idea of using actors and using, uh, ex Scientologists kind of as co-directors on the project to improvise scenes, uh, based on what they'd seen and experienced. And I think it, you know, worked surprisingly well. It worked. It's, it's, it's, you know, I, I don't want to embarrass myself. I think it's a masterpiece. And I was, I went in there with a skeptical eye because I thought, is it Gibney? I don't know how to pronounce his last name. Going clear. Gibney. Gibney. Gibney. He did a great documentary based on the Looming Tower guy's book. I forgot his name. Lawrence Wright. Yeah, that's a great book. And I thought, well, Louis, this is kind of like David Chase making a series for HBO after Analyze This. I mean, we've already done the mobster movie with Billy Crystal and Robert DeNiro. Why would you want to do the Sopranos? That's why I immediately thought of you. I thought with HBO already, they've already done it. Why, why is he doing this? This was phenomenal because you're fearless. And I know that the BBC did a documentary. I don't know the guy's name. He's, again, I hate to bring up. John Sweeney. I'm just doing all the names now. He's bald, right? Have you set bald, sort of booming voice? And he famously, he's a correspondent on a BBC current affairs show called Panorama, or he was. And he did a half hour show called Scientology and Me. And he famously lost the plot when they kept interrupting him during a tour of the Human Rights Museum on Sunset Boulevard. It was terrifying. Right. Over there in Hollywood. And and and Sweeney totally lost his and started shouting. No, listen to me. And and actually lost his voice. He shouted so loudly and and and that's kind of a it's an amazing bit of car crash television. And and actually, Sweeney's a good journalist, but even he would agree that he got unglued in a very entertaining way. Oh, no, I disagree. I disagree with you. I go on because I thought he got spooked. They got him. He got scared. Did. Yeah, they but I mean, in a way, there's nothing that speaks to the credit of Scientology in an odd way than that bit of footage, because it shows that if there is a science to winding someone up and pushing their buttons, well, then they have it because they went into that encounter and specifically Tommy Davis, who is then their PR guy, because he's since got he's since blown as they call it. But but Tommy Davis is on record in text messages that were released after the fact that were leaked as saying, I think I know I know how to get John Sweeney to blow a gasket. I can I know how to push this guy's buttons and I'm going to do it. So he went into the interview and and began saying to Sweeney, you're a bigot, John, you're a bigot, John, you're a bigot. And he kept interrupting interrupting him. And Sweeney, right on cue, just went went nuts. And so it's an amazing and a very revealing of how Scientology has this ability or Scientology sort of drills people in how to, you know, be effectively it be effective in social interactions and winding people up is a big thing, you know, they really it was a very impressive bit of whatever it was. It was it was terrifying. And I was terrified for you watching or going into the documentary because I'm sure you're asked this all the time. Weren't you terrified because the Sweeney guy lost it? No, because I knew that, you know, the thing I was I was terrified of, or at least I was very nervous of was was whether they would not try and do anything like that. You know, I was counting on the fact that they would stalk, harass, surveil and attempt to intimidate us. I was really keen that they should do that because I thought if they can't if they're not turning up to do interviews, if we haven't got access, the only access we're going to get to any the only time I'll get to speak to any Scientologists is if they turn up at the airport or turn up wherever we're shooting and start filming me. And I knew that they'd had a track record of doing that. You know, they did it to Sweeney when he was making his BBC Panorama show. They've done it to other crews over the years. And it's always really entertaining. It's just, you know, you spot someone from over the road and then the camera swivels around and there's this little two person crew filming the journalist and refusing to identify who they are. And each is very, very weird and very revealing about Scientology and their whole ethos and worldview, which is to do with not turning the other cheek. But in fact, you know, attempting to make uncomfortable or destroy the people they perceive as critics. So when we started, I wasn't nervous about them doing that. I thought, Oh, well, I really hope they do do that. I tend to be fearless, fearless. Well, I wouldn't call it that. But I would, what I'd say is that people often say to me, you know, why don't you lose your rag with some of the horrible people you interviewed like Ku Klux Klan's people or the Westboro Baptist Church? The fact is, I don't feel it. It's not in me to do that. I don't really enjoy shouting at people. I don't lose my temper easily. I'm certainly not fearless because I get raffled. But I just don't show my being rattled by sort of shouting back. That said, once it started, it was surprising how when when the encounter happens, like there's several times when they came out to handle me in different different ways. And two or three, no, twice it happened when I was getting shots of their base down in outside Hemet in the desert, which is the headquarters of the Sea Org. And a woman called Catherine Fraser came out and said, you know, I'm calling the police on you. You know, you better move your trespassing. And when someone's shouting at you and accusing you of things that you didn't do, then it's surprising how you do. You do. You can lose your temper. Like I didn't, I didn't think it would happen. But I did actually slight, I did slightly notice I was getting annoyed. But I didn't lose it. I didn't go. My observation of that, because she's high up in Scientology. Yes, you end up interviewing her husband later. But when she lost it, I sensed you knew that you had it, that once you got her on tape, being hysterical, that you had shown the raw nerve of Scientology. And you were salivating and you just went into calm, polite, let's talk. And the more you did that, you were controlling her. And I think you knew at the time that you were in control, that she was scared. She was scared of Miss, Miss, I can't miss carriage. Who's the guy? Miss cabbage. David Miss carriage, the head of Scientology, that you knew that she was going to have to answer to David Miss carriage. At that time, you were, I hate to say alpha dog in her, but you, you knew, right? Is that your new kind of catchphrase alpha dog? With you it is, I'm pissed off at you for all your success. I was the guy who gave you advice. I was older and said, look, this is what you do. And it made it empowered me. You had a story about, I never think, I remember it so well when we, you had a story about how you had kind of alpha dogged David Cross. And you told him off because he felt he didn't wear, he was disrespectful in his stage attire. Do you remember that? Yeah. Yeah. What happened to him? I don't know. Did he ever make it? Did he and Bob do one of our sketches? He came, he changed his wardrobe and then couldn't get another job. I think, We wrote a sketch that they did, right? Bob and Dave, Mr. Show. Did I? No, I didn't. I wish. Did you? Yeah, they, I thought we wrote that together. It was the candidate who, it was when Clinton was triangulating under Dick Morris. So he was becoming a Republican. So we had, we wrote a sketch. I remember it vividly, we wrote a sketch where we did one that we had a whole idea for, it was going to be a, it was either a robot or a computer was going to run for president. Do you remember that? Was there a ton of deep blue in the chest stuff? Yeah. That didn't get any traction. Anyway, let's go back. Memory Lane is a private road owned by Scientology. Memory Lane is a public road. And, and here's the thing. She came up to me, I wouldn't say she was hysterical, but she was aggressive and she wanted me to go away. We'd gone down there to get shots of the base and also to show my actor who was playing David Miscavige in the reenactments. He wanted, he was sort of going a bit method and he just wanted to feel the vibe of a Scientology secret base to have, so it would inform his performance. They came out, it was nighttime. Whenever they would come out and talk to me, she was always flanked by at least one camera person who would be filming the entire encounter, but would not say anything when addressed or at any other time. So then she's saying like, it's a private road. Can you read? Can you even read? Do you know what the word road means? So she like, I'm momentarily lost for words because she's coming on so strong. But then she suddenly realizes that actually, when we're having the conversation, we're not on the so-called private road. We're just on a normal road. So then she goes into her car. But my realization was like, you can't meet fire with fire. You have to actually somehow, in order to short-circuit the exchange, you don't want to match their tone. It's more important that you should be friendly and for as long as I'm talking to her, there's some sort of rapport that's being built. Even if it's sort of infinitesimally small, and even if it's almost unnoticeable to the human eye, and so I'm saying to her, let's just keep the conversation going. What are you angry about? Let's talk. The subtext is we are just two humans on a rock floating through space. Why can't we just get along? And I think that's what a Scientologist finds it more difficult to deal with, because friends are really oddly disarming to them. I'm still here. Can you hear me? Yes, friendliness is oddly disarming. While I'm watching you, I'm trying to figure you out because your documentaries are also about you, which makes them so compelling. And I was empathizing with you, thinking, I couldn't do this. This is scary stuff. And I'm thinking, okay, where is he getting his strength from? And how much strength do you have? How deep into the hull could you go before you became as frightened as the reporter Sweeney, who lost it? And I would have lost it. Let's say you were allowed past the gate at the Gold Studios in Hemet, where they were supposedly miscarriage works out of the Hemet offices. Is that correct? Correct. Yeah, that's where his main residence is. And how many miles is that from LA? Oh, man, I'm going to say it's a two hour drive. Okay. So I couldn't tell you in miles. And that's where the hull is. That's where people escape from Scientology. That's where it's that's the belly of the beast. And this is the question I want to ask you. Okay, where the whole was they I think they I think it's no longer there. But anyway, carry on. Okay, so I'm watching you. Let's say you got past the gate. Yes or no. Before I ask the next question. Yes or no. Did you really want to get past the gate or were you frightened? I wanted to get past the gate. You were okay. Good. So you would have and and with or without the camera crew? Yes or no? Would you be willing to go through the gate by yourself stripped of all your associates? Yes or no? No telephone? No camera? Like in a pair of pajamas? Yes or no? Would you be willing to walk through that gate unarmed basically? What legally or I mean you mean climb over the fence? No no what I'm saying is suppose David Miscarage who runs Science House. He says come in in your pajamas, mano or mano. Have a chat. Don't bring anyone just you and me. I would 100% go. I wouldn't Wow. I wouldn't be worried in the. Really? I wouldn't really be worried about that. No. Okay so you'd be willing to go with no camera crew? I'd be more than willing. I'd be excited. And so all that's left is your word Louis Theroux's word against David Miscarage's word. You would be going up against the head of Scientology by yourself and he and I'm David right? I run Scientology. You're you're at my gate. I know who Louis Theroux is. Come on in I'll talk to you. No camera crew just you and me. You would do that. I would do that but what would I mean I would enjoy doing that. I don't know that I would I'm just thinking this way. I'm not quite sure what's in it for them to do that but I would when we were filming I would go off and spend time in Scientology buildings off camera on my own. I mean it's not like going into Baghdad or or Raqqa you know or Mosul. It's not as though I mean I'm afraid of physical. But you're not afraid of them. Let me go down this line of questioning because this is really important to me at least. If I were you I'd be terrified of what of what happened to the Sweeney feeling claustrophobic feeling trapped meeting the head of Scientology and suddenly fearing for my for my mind that they were going to make me go crazy not let me out of the compound fearing for my family fearing for my life fearing that I would lose my mind. I think Sweeney thought he was losing his mind. So but you're you're utterly convinced that you couldn't be brainwashed. You couldn't be put in that hole. I mean they in your movie you recreate the whole that they write but to in in order to be susceptible to that kind of conditioning it takes months if not years of exposure and I think what you need to what people in general need to understand is that you know this term brainwashing is I think misunderstood and in general you know am I afraid of being brainwashed. I mean I'm a I actually view a degree of conditioning as an important part of my journalistic process that you go in and you start to empathize and see the people that you've heard so much about this as real human beings and you begin to build rapport and understand things in a different way. Now it's not the same as totally going native or losing the plot but I feel as a when you know when I've done my documentaries in the past I've always welcomed the sense that you get after being somewhat you know it happens sort of in the program's time it's sort of for you know 30 or 40 minutes in or in in real life it's sort of you know a few days into filming where you've spent a long long enough in the world that you're in to sort of see the world in a different way for the rules to start to make sense somewhat but I don't you know I I think you can kind of exist on two tracks at the same time I think that just by going there you know to go there for a few days you're not going to totally succumb to some sort of loss of will um that in general and I don't think you would David I think um oh I would I would. Oh I'm terrible. The documentary was produced by Magnolia Films and the BBC? Distributed by Magnolia the BBC uh funded and produced it and it was the actual main producer was um Simon Chin who's who's produced two Oscar winning docs Man on Wire and Searching for Sugarman and it was directed by John Dowell. If you didn't have the BBC the force of the BBC behind you would you have that courage if you were an independent filmmaker who had kick started this documentary if you didn't have lawyers and people knowing that you're in LA doing this documentary keeping track of you if you were just an independent filmmaker wouldn't you have been more frightened that they would could do more to you? I would not be frightened of losing my mind I would be frightened of being financially exposed and of being in in terms of I'd have more nervousness to do with whether we'd be sued as a production or that I would be sued personally and I think even then it's not so much the idea of um me being bankrupted when found I you know say guilty of libel it's more that you have to if they send you a legal letter you're sort of I think I have an obligation to send a legal letter back and that can get very very expensive I'm gonna I'm gonna answer your question one other way as well which is that not only was I not afraid of that I if anything the biggest sense of nervousness I had was that about making the film was that because I didn't have that sense of immersion because I hadn't been invited in I was worried that some important moral or ethical uh strand in what I do or even emotional and dramatic strand that that would be removed that I hadn't been invited in and that everything virtually every other documentary I've done in my life um I've been invited in and that that sort of sense of permission is my feeling was that that was intrinsic to how I work and then I realized that and and that in fact I that I was running the risk of turning the Scientology people into an into an kind of unseen other and and failing to create the necessary uh sense of empathy that allows you to see Scientology in a kind of new or different way so it was a strain and a stress to kind of work through how it was okay for me to make the documentary if Scientologists themselves are saying we don't want you to do this and the way I made myself okay with it I mean it's simply that actually we've got these contributors who are Scientologists who want who have a valid worldview and whose version of events is worth understanding and that to understand who they are and where they've come from you have to understand Scientology but it was a strain it was a strain to try to not that was why in my off time when not filming I would go into Scientology buildings to remind myself that they are people who are trying who who are just like you and me trying to save the world in their own fashion how much time do I have left with you because I have some more questions I don't want to be uh I got I have questions why do we continue this there's a lot of things I remember about you alpha dogging me that I've been talking to a therapist about apparently some of them were illegal and he's told me it's okay to not be okay with some of that this is this is all I'm left with when it comes to you is passive aggressive behavior I can't yes you once called me the most pretentious person you'd ever met no I didn't but I think you were joking no no Marty Rathburn what was his motivation because you didn't pay him I thought you were paying him what was his motivation to do that his motivation was um number one to get the truth out as he saw it number two I think he uh he really liked the approach like if we'd gone to him and said we're doing another documentary about Scientology and we want you to sit down and we'll interview you he would he would have said no thank you but when we explained um we're using actors we're doing reenactments you will be basically kind of running the show and and you'll be in charge of casting the actors and workshopping them in the number of uns sort of semi unscripted improv scenes he really liked that that was what got him on board and in fact early on uh when we started the process and then I began suggesting more a couple of more conventional I said to him one point why don't we since you're here we're doing the reenactments let's wander down to Hollywood Boulevard and have a look at a couple of the Scientology buildings he really didn't like that and he wouldn't he refused to do it and he didn't like the idea anytime it felt like we were doing something more conventional he really resisted it but he went I think what happens in the course of the film you sort of see how he steps into this role that's not a million times dissimilar to his role at Scientology which was also in a sense running a team and having a vision and and when you see the actors around him when he's doing the there's a scene where we take I think 10 or 15 young actors and and he Marty says I'm going to take these guys through some of the drills of Scientology and he really seems to relish doing it and you see him back in that time and place is he OT 8 is he OT 7 what level was he at well okay first of all he no longer I identified himself as a Scientologist and in fact he's gone on a journey now where he also has turned his back on anti Scientology and has denounced that as being sort of you can't unlearn what you've been taught I mean there are tools that you're given in Scientology that are useful so I'm sure that's true I think he got I don't a lot of the people in the sea or do not get that high up the bridge it's sort of one of the many weird contradictions I think because they're too busy kind of manufacturing DVDs right and organizing fundraisers and polishing Tom Cruise's motorbike so that they they don't actually have time to do the steps that will get them up the bridge so I don't think I don't think Marty Rathburn was even OT 3 inside but then they leave and I think he did OT 8 possibly as an independent Scientologist but that doesn't if to a real Scientology or rather to an official Scientologist that the indie stuff doesn't count you went to Cambridge Oxford like that's any better are these guys intellectuals is Marty Rathburn an intellectual or is he a thug is the religion thuggery that none of those labels fit Marty he's he's got a he's a very multifaceted dude he could definitely be intimidating and you know and he admits himself during you know in the film that he had used physical violence while involved in Scientology so he cops to that he's obviously not stupid he knows a lot about he's well read he's intellectually curious I would say if I were to generalize about Scientologists many of the ones I've met appear to have one of the things I think makes them susceptible is the sense of being incomplete educationally and they see like these leather bound kind of guilt embossed volumes of the writings of Elron Hubbard and it's sort of like reader's digest condensed books they see a sort of shortcut to intellectual accomplishment they thought I think the Hubbard was this sort of Cecil Rhodes come Orson Welles figure who can kind of help to make the world more explainable to them and and give them an education that maybe they feel they didn't have here's my last question then you go do that family thing which is fleeting by the way go spend time with your family you won't recognize show business by the time you're done with your family here's the one I'm on my deathbed I'm going to think if only I'd spent more time talking to a podcast how many people do you think listen to it you'll be surprised by how few you'll be you'll be surprised I'm sorry you'll be surprised here's my final question that was me alpha doggy and I and I said I wouldn't do that there's so much self-loathing Louie that actually felt good thank you for that here's my last question here's my theory okay here is my theory about Scientology and then you get the last word and go spend time with your family for all I care waste your time that in the end all religions are about real estate and power and money when david miscavige disappears and he will it'll be a new Scientology that owns real estate and Scientology will be reinvented because nobody has a memory and because of the oppression that Scientology is convinced of the same way early Christians believe that they too were victims of society and had a hide in the catacombs that in 50 years Scientology will emerge kind of like the Mormon church has enough time will have passed that they will be able to reinvent themselves as a legitimate serious religion because all religions are met with Louis Theroux and that 50 years now they will rewrite the religion enough time will have passed is can you pull doctrine from Dianetics 50 years from now can there be a reformation within Scientology and say the problem was David miscarriage not Elron Hubbard and there's going to be purists who will arise out of Scientology and say none of the problem was Tom Cruise and David miscarriage corrupted the teachings of Elron Hubbard and there's going to be a reformation and we're going to go back to the original teachings of Elron Hubbard that's going to happen because there's real estate and money there has to be a reformation of Scientology I think I basically agree with that I mean I think I would qualify what you said about the real estate yes I think I don't think the religious urge is fundamentally an urge toward power and and material goods I think though that real estate money are a sine qua non of all major religions without which they couldn't exist right and and I think there will be a form of Scientology that exists probably for hundreds of years I don't see a reformation taking place outside Scientology I think all those indie Scientologists they tend to just wither away and become marginal I think within Scientology there will be a counter reformation if you like and there will it will soften some of its more aggressive or controversial precepts much as you know the Latter-day Saints dropped polygamy and the more you know they were deeply racist in many of the things they believed I think black people couldn't be priests which was basically just to be a man in Mormonism I think was to be a priest right so I think there will be a softened a kind of gentler Scientology that will that will probably exist in the future and within our lifetime you know more the Mormons allowed African Americans in the 70s in our life in the early 70s that was when they did it and actually with with the thing about Miss Gavage is he was in his 20s when he took over even now he's probably what what would he be probably not even 60 years old I'm gonna say he's 59 or thereabouts so he's got another 20 years in him and even though he does smoke and really people think he does but you know it's another of the weird things in Scientology it's kind of she was smoking that woman who was going after you I know smoking is because Hubbard smoked smoking is not viewed as a bad thing in Scientology that's what I've been told they may deny that so it's one of the many things where because Hubbard did it it's it's kind of it's okay but with with with the persecution or the loot you know you think about the Christians and and and Nietzsche famously said a good a good war will make any cause sacred and and I think it's in the feeling of being persecuted that Scientologists get their deepest sense of affirmation right right and so I don't think you know just as the Christians went willingly to the lions and the Roman Empire fell you know a few hundred years later I think the Scientologists are playing the long game and there's so much money you know yesterday or the day before it was reported that they have now bought an entire channel on Spectrum the cable the cable service which was formerly Time Warner they they are not going anywhere there's too much money and there's too much too many people making huge donations so they will be they will definitely be around I just hope they can they can just what we want is for them to stop breaking up families stop mistreating executives and just um chill out mm-hmm there are only 25 000 that that's the point it's it's a very globally and 15 000 in the US I'm told it's a boutique religion Louis Theroux is the writer and presenter of my Scientology movie I cannot recommend it enough and I forgive you I forgive you for all your success Louis thank you thanks for having me David thank you let's do this again soon take care okay bye bye please share this episode with all your friends copy and paste the link email it to all your friends give us a good review on iTunes share the love share the knowledge share the laughs please share the show and now Kelly Carlin and Dan Pasternak oh we're rolling are we done yes how was it we were amazing oh good that just sounded like a conversation between me and my wife should we plug some gigs so this is I didn't know we were rolling hey tomorrow is April Fool's Day it's April 1st and it's a big day for me because that's for amateurs April it's like you know how like New Year's Eve or or St. Patrick's Day yeah yeah I agree if you're if you're like a like not enough like a professional alcoholic but like an amateur drinker New Year's Eve is like your day yeah yeah or St. Patrick's Day yeah St. Patrick's Day especially yeah and one of my kids always gets me on April Fool's Day because I don't pay attention to April Fool's Day right and he gets me he got me two years ago he told me he was at a big protest and they were breaking windows and setting fire to cars and I kept texting him go home because no no we're really sticking it to the man and I I said I'm gonna if you don't get home you know that the man has to know that we're not gonna put a and I got on the phone he wanted to answer and he says I've got a bullhorn and I'm leading it this is a college that's really funny yeah and I go are you sure he's your kid yeah and I know I said no you've got I'm gonna if I just you're supposed to be studying and this is your you don't care about this issue and it's about finals and you don't want to study for finals and he said no no he says I'm just about to speak I've got the bullhorn we've blocked all of route 80 or 17 or whatever it is yeah and and the cops and and and I'm live on on C-Span here's the link and I hit on it and it is a 90-year-old man sitting on his bed with his actual penis drooped over his legs hitting the floor so it's like a 16-foot anaconda I didn't know burl ever actually had those images taken for posterity and April fooled and I went oh you got me you got me you bastard so your child is as sick as you are no funnier this one sends me it's inappropriate he sends me think I've actually and then then I send him Gilbert the Gilbert episode which have you listened to the Gilbert episode yet no not either have I I'm looking forward to it as it told you the other day I need to listen to it I'm gonna I'm gonna we're gonna play it right now well I'm just gonna tell you for a fact it's one of the funniest things you'll ever hear in your life it's one of the funniest I adore him to bits it is Feldman I'm going to say this without prompting you are one of only maybe nine podcasts in I'm pulling this up on my phone so you can see an actual rotation wow what is actually listened to there you go I am honored right yeah so thank you I'm not just saying it I will listen to it well the gill so let me introduce and then we're going to talk about Gilbert okay joining us is Kelly Carlin yes Kelly Marie Carlin Kelly Ann I am not my middle name is not an everyone out there my middle name is Marie I'm I think we decided you should change your name to Kelly Ann Carlin and that you should host a show called alternative fox right didn't we agree on that we did that'll be the podcast it'll be another podcast in your list of things to listen to you know what I room for one more there you go okay Kelly I'm gonna delete Marin for that Kelly Marie Carlin will be on April Fool's Day at the NIAC library with Elliot Forrest doing a book reading yes reading and conversation you're also the host of the Kelly Carlin show on Sirius XM that can be heard on the comedy greats channel or Carlin's Corner channel and on demand I believe and on demand very exciting your guest speaking of people with large penises hmm your guest on this week's episode of the Kelly Carlin show is Alan's Y bell who saw Milton Burrell's cock we didn't discuss that I didn't well I didn't have the intel on that so damn what oh hang on you saw Milton Burrell's cock I saw it twice it was so big you actually had to see it in installments wow this is true though I do wait wait wait that's a great joke it is a good joke thank you but you did Brad he's blushing from you actually saw Milton Burrell's well let me let me introduce before we just Kelly Marie Carlin okay I don't want to get ahead of ourselves okay no that's a pun shocking Kelly get to know me Kelly Marie Carlin will be teaching online yes and yesterday you had sanctuary time in New York with Kelly how'd that go it sounds like it sounds like romper room or something and now we have sanctuary time yeah you look through the magic mirror and do be a good it went amazing it was a great day what is sanctuary time what is sanctuary time so what I what I so you know good answer now my next guest it's we'll get back we will we will get back yeah it's it's a lot to talk about that's true I should also mention to the listeners that you are a trained Jungian Jungian you you actually have for two years I was a therapist and you yes studied young I did and and and Freud and others but yes basically Mr. Jung and we're going to she's not getting any younger no I'm not Jesus he's yeah it'll keep coming yep it will yeah it'll be a lot of it I think my favorite stand-up comic said that puns are a hostile an act of aggression right didn't he didn't he say that I don't know can I tell you something you know who loved puns who her father this is very true but he also said that they were an act of aggression yeah I think he was kidding but that's his job he was a comedian he did love a good pun was he his comedy didn't come from aggression though didn't he wasn't aggressive we'll table that question for later and we're going to talk to on the show today before I introduce our other guest we're going to talk about Jung and how to cope with the world as it is not how it should be yes very true we are going to talk about how to create some sanctuary in your own life so you don't go insane well that's too late I really did I fell off I did I lost it we'll come in but we'll get you back okay we'll get you back and we're going to talk about Gilbert Godfrey okay we're talking about Gilbert Godfrey never never seen this come never saw him Dan Pasternak yes hello is one of the leading authorities on Dan Pasternak nobody knows more about Dan Pasternak and comedy than Dan Pasternak you are a true besides being funny and besides being a visionary oh dear you're a well he's made a couple of vision boards let's leave it at that you are an expert on comedy a true student you have befriended some of the greatest comics yes I will accept yes he was a dear friend and in fact I introduced Kelly to Jonathan and and we got to do two hours of therapy that we recorded that was kind of marvelous watching the two of them connect was actually beautiful Kelly worked let me do my introduction right Jesus I want to just get into stories no we must Kelly worked on the green room showtimes the green room which was this magical moment in comedy history it started 2010 Paul Provenza created this this perfect confluence of alchemical container it truly was alchemical it was amazing and I worked on it there was in three days I got to see Kelly Conway meet that was real that was real I promise you are so screwed no I know before the show started I said I'm not going to call you Kelly and Carlin or Kelly so and then of course it's got planted a name tag no I know on that show we taped it over a series of nights and I got to meet Kelly for the first time and rain prior and I got to see they met that night they met that night yeah my son and daughter came to the tapings they left left school they I said no no you're you're calling and way better than way and the teacher said of course yes of course they hung out they got coffee for everybody my daughter got to meet Ron Jeremy that's right who fell asleep often in the audience narcolepsy really yes he really did sleep with everybody yes he did well done damn good good and the funny thing is he woke up and every single day was exactly the same as the day before and they are now making a movie of it it's called hedgehog day wow that was good I thought it was grind your hog day all right hedgehog was that his nickname the hedgehog yeah okay I want to stay focused he was focused okay Alex can we rewind the day we're gonna start over and Feldman's gonna focus Kelly's a Jungian so let me what I meant to say but I wouldn't say it right is I want to stay focused unless I have something funny to say so would that be passive aggressive if I if I'm if I'm the alpha dog here I'm really serious here help me out I want to be the alpha dog yes with Pasternak right so good luck and as a form of control uh-huh I say I want to stay focused here but I would violate those rules that I think it's just like narcissistic personality disorder at that point yeah and we're going to diagnose Trump right well I just did but yeah malignant narcissism is Trump yeah it's fun so my compliment to you oh so that day on the green room my children got to hang out one day just this is what one day it was a week of tapings one day they got to hang out with Jonathan Winters and Robert Klein in the same literally in the same green room there was a green room at the green room yep and we have a picture of my kids with you and Jonathan Winters and Robert Klein and I blew it because I was driving them home and people who listen to this show know that I am constantly pitching myself to my children to convince them that I'm worthy of them and just shouting at the top of my lungs I am the coolest father in the world I am that you know you can roll your eyes because you refuse to take your epilepsy medication so roll away roll your eyes and swat but I am the coolest I'm just driving down Sunset Boulevard at home that night literally saying to my kids fuck you fuck you and fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you I'm the coolest father you're ever gonna have and you're gonna have a couple because mommy has had it with me but I am now the coolest fucking father on the planet and tomorrow we're coming back here you're not going to school for another day and you're going to meet Rob Schneider and Janine Garofalo and it's going to continue right and Rob Schneider you know what it's didn't work they still yeah I know it's just it's not your fault my daughter said our meeting those people is an accidental byproduct of you being obsequious to really funny people they're not wrong she literally said that like I'm screaming I am so fucking cool and she's going no you're not Dan Pasternak is cool besides working over at IFC being the head of programming or whatever yeah but you are personally responsible for portlandia okay sure I'll say that all right thank you marin okay I came up with calling him moron I was I noticed on the advertising campaign somebody wrote moron on his coffee cup oh really yeah and when I when he got big I used to call mark moron and he said to me with a straight face he said that's amazing nobody ever said that to me so I must have made it up so it's yours yeah so I should get credit for that because I said to him hey mark moron no what you should get credit for is not understanding sarcasm you really think that is the first time anybody okay he said to me mark marin said to me I said hey mark moron can I have your kids numbers I really feel like this would be a much better podcast if we could all just talk us about how fucking delusional you are let's get them on speaker yeah this was a daughter still working for nadir by the way this was at the height of marin he's still at that but I said hey mark moron and he said to me we're doing a benefit and he sets me wow I never heard that before not even an elementary school or high school with a straight face he said with a straight face right and I said it's amazing that I came up with that shocking I came up with mark moron you should get credit for that I should get credit why you don't think he meant that you know what is this is this giving you some sense of self that you would not otherwise he might need it this week because you might want to give it to him yeah I'll just give it to you know what good on you okay nice work with that bit of humor dan pasturnak mm-hmm writes for McSweeney's I do and splitsider he has an article in splitsider this week about Andy Kaufman another one about stan freeberg freeberg one of my favorite songs makes me cry every time I hear freeberg I will flick flick my lighter Leonard scanner yes yeah yeah freeberg and let me explain that to you folks let me explain that joke to you I just got it he's gonna die so it's okay it's okay if it took a moment because I got it just got it too really it well I just I had to land I had to bounce up and then I got it first bounce though I got it okay so you're cool for the room I'm good I'm good now I'm up I'm up so by the way this the stan freeberg piece I don't believe is up yet but will be coming out in the next week or so on what will be the second anniversary of his passing which I believe was April the 7th okay and you are the producer of a new documentary on fusion it premieres April 1st Saturday at 9 p.m no it's it'll be sunday for you me it's sunday the second yeah but not in the Philippines it'll be we have a lot of listeners on the international date I should have learned a few words of Filipino oh okay yeah I'll make sure I do that for your you know when by the way if we're gonna do the freeberg reference I should say that one of my pre-break my my freeberg is how they would say in the Philippines freeberg one of my favorite bands from that era was the Filipino 70s rock ensemble Manila fudge vanilla pudge is how they pronounce vanilla pudge are we rolling yet you know there are many podcasts you could be listening to but you're listening to this one right now fad and what does that say about them in the Philippines it would be in a strictly Jungian sense what does that say about the listener so this is so no let me let me explain the game I'll be playing now for the rest of the nine hour oh now we get the rules because we're playing to our Filipino listeners all f's must be pronounced with a p okay then okay all right all right all right mr. Peldman go ahead all right my friends because they pronounce f yeah I like we got that okay yeah good all right you know no it's not funny but at least it's racist go ahead it's not racist it's a pack it's a it's a fact it's a pack oh it's a packed story this is a very smart show this is a strange start no it's just no actually it's not it's not a system I have a feeling this entire episode is going to be be me trying to introduce Dan faster now it's Dan faster neck his new series he has a new documentary called fatherless oh my god I'm fusion fusion I think that isn't what we're too much my makeup today Sunday night at 9 fm it's not on the radio it's not it's no it's not funny it's sick you know what it is it's it's OCD it has it's not there's nothing just this f2p thing now it's and I'm good and what's going to happen to my listeners is they are going to start they are going to start doing no you said listeners plural plural it's not it's not funny it's just OCD it's pathetic all right puck this he really left he did where'd he go he really left all right knock it off knock it knock it off knock it off this is all right all right all right I just had to commit to the walk out it was good it was a good 100 percent 100 percent gotta go this Filipino thing let's stop all right doing it we yes because it's no longer punny okay as they say in the Philippines that dog won't hunt that's where that's from the dog won't hunt oh lord okay and it was delicious and we're laughing all right all right then all right where are we going where are we going now Malcolm's gonna say my name again and then start to go yes I'm here I'm here can we no more Kelly and Conway no more references no more no more f2p transition we're good to please the Filipinos I promise you yes because that it because that's just annoying that is just annoying Kelly Karlin yes well done Dan past your neck thank you yes Gilbert Godfrey not present let's talk about Gilbert well he's not here yeah let's talk about him Gilbert did my show and it is 90 minutes of heaven 90 minutes of heaven there was given the last 20 minutes of conversation I'm gonna guess he did most of that I would yes of course by the way and I got the full Gilbert there's a picture I posted God bless Dara we went to the house and he did the interview in a white bathrobe oh and to me that's the greatest gift playboy after dark yeah yeah you just walked in in a white bathrobe and I went uh this is the full Gilbert Gilbert appeared at Caroline's the night of George Carlin way one of my favorite evenings of my life and one of the most sublime inspired performances agreed Feldman just let Kelly tell your listeners what Gilbert did this was an evening dedicated to the memory of Kelly's father George Carlin on the day that the street on which he grew up yes was dedicated in his name yes George Carlin way so a really you know heartfelt I mean the monumental event fans came from out of state to be there to watch the sign be unveiled and we had this big press conference and comics came up the subway to the neighborhood and we my daughter worked on yep for you yep helped helped out for the day rain prior was there uh you know uh it was it was amazing uh and then that night we decided to have a comedy show I couldn't be there I know and we uh just it just I was jealous and we it was yeah and when it was a fun lineup there was some comics that I knew and some I didn't know and Robert Klein came Robert Klein came yeah and uh and I got to go on the stage of Caroline's which is always nerve-wracking for me to be on a comedy stage but it was fun and I think I told a little story or so people as I understand believe a couple people might believe that George Carlin is the greatest stand-up comic in the history of the spoken word and I would assume at Caroline's you had a lineup of comedians who were gave him the respect he deserved yeah yeah and would come up I mean Colin Quinn MC'd the night for us which was awesome and um just a love and everyone came up and was appropriate and was appropriate and and honored him in some way or talked a little bit about his influence on their life that's all you ever and then they would do a little bit of comedy or whatever and then you know it's the typical six or seven uncle pat got up yeah and spoke a little bit rain got up and did some stand-up which was great and and but each of them would say a little something about my dad and um tearfully a little tear because tears are important and laughter is important to honor the memory there was definitely a sense of people's hearts being opened good that's good yeah so Gilbert was on and so Gilbert was on the lineup and Gilbert went up and um so he was the mood was heartfelt yes tribute tribute we laugh because we don't want to cry right good and so Gilbert got up and and the first thing he said was is there anybody else here who's really fucking happy that George Garland is dead and I started laughing so hard because it was the greatest honor to know that Gilbert was about to and Gilbert no he did not stop no no no he did not stop there well first of all I started laughing the minute he said it because there was a hush in the room and believe me every single person tightened checking themselves by pinning Kelly assholes tightened and then they all look over at me and my uncle pat who are bending over crying laughing knowing all right we've got permission and Gilbert goes on to explain not only that he's glad that he's dead but he hope he really suffered painful slow horrific death and he just for 10 minutes I believe he went on to say that if he hadn't died that how he would have killed him and the methodology by which he would have taken your father's life yes yes and it was for me I have to say it's it's one of the most proud things I am is being the daughter of someone who knows how to take fucked up sick comedy like that I mean it's it's a real fucking pride thing for me and and my dad would have fucking loved it totally he would have loved it and I felt like we just won like the presidential medal of honor or something because Gilbert was doing this to him and then and then you meet Gilbert and then he's like this love and he hugs you and he's lovely and I mean it's just it was the one of the greatest that I those 10 minutes of him on stage I would describe what he did as the reverence yeah of irreverence absolutely beautifully said beautifully said and when he came off stage and I I thanked him profusely that's what I did I said thank you for that because it was it was that it was the reverence of irreverence so Gilbert I'm obsessed now with Gilbert you've just started being obsessed with him well well in a way there's a new band you should check out they're called the Beatles they've got some really good stuff you should really I'd look into them is Gilbert you say the Beatles because we always talk about the like Alex Brazil we always talk about the Beatles that it was this magical time when yes George and John and Paul you know they separately they would have been okay right but when Larry David put them together on Seinfeld together oh I'm confusing just a little bit yeah I mean it would have worked with that Kramer that's what I I think the Beatles would have worked with that Kramer I know I think that bit would have worked better if you did the Filipino thing again okay let me bring that back so there's the B but anyway yeah I think that Elaine George and Jerry were the like the three Stooges and that Kramer was a Curly Joe Shemp you could have done Seinfeld without you could have but he still was without him you it there's another context I think that he brought in the wrong element oh really the wrong element but anyway the what I'm saying is Gilbert yeah I love by the way that Feldman we go look at his IMDB page first people while I'm saying this so that Feldman yours I have one yeah I would imagine okay I'm sorry I've not looked at it but you should if in case he does or you know what ask him to send him your credit his credits he'll do it he'll do that and then go ahead I'm sorry tell us again what's wrong with Seinfeld the TV show where you're saying that I'm not worthy to criticize Kramer yes that's what that's what you're saying yes no directly I'm not implying it I'm saying it directly so what you're insinuating no not insinuating I'm saying I mean let me just see if I understand what you're trying to politely say to me so tell us again how what a misfire Seinfeld was just in Landwell so I think what you're saying to me if I hear you right that maybe this is a good start this is a you're listening to him you're trying to take in exactly what he's saying this is like a sanctuary the kind of is actually you're politely recommending to me yeah illuminating possibly yeah that I should rethink my bit yeah my attitude towards I don't think it's rethink just think you are you are giving yourself credit for a level of thoughtfulness that perhaps others would not accord you so if I'm hearing you right I'm gonna read between the lines here because I'm picking up that you're trying to subtly tell me to dial back my criticism of Seinfeld is that what you by George I think she's got it Seinfeld's perfect and obviously I'm yes of course Kramer's yeah I was trying to multi-layer this conversation was Kramer the Ringo star of well I really wanted to get back to Gilbert right and the Beatles okay and I will defend Ringo by the way I would too actually I don't think Ringo I don't think you can have the Beatles with that ring I agree I do agree not to take away anything from Elaine or George or Pete Best or Pete Best who I met as a kid by the way the fact that I was comparing Seinfeld to the Beatles sir was a sign of respect of course Seinfeld is the gold standard of sitcoms Feldo again with the obsequiousness I mean like Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld are never gonna hear this don't worry about it well no but I'll have you know that I was on curb you enthusiasm you were you were you played it an angry Jew as that was my credit angry angry Jew yeah that'll be on your IMDB I believe I believe we've discussed this once before and I said what did you do to prepare for the role of the angry Jew there was a time before we get back to Gilbert Godfrey yes where Jeff Garland maintained that David Feldman was more Larry David than Larry David was that I was Larry David Larry David was an act but in real life you were living it I was lived the same way George Costanz can I tell you something I'm gonna guess I don't know but I'm gonna guess that Jeff Garland did not mean that as a compliment it doesn't matter but what Jeff Garland said was that the guy potatoes please that's not nice what he said was the guy who played George Costanza Jason Alexander correct that's when you get older that's what you do no no it's it's a Kelly what you do is I couldn't I could not think of Jason's name it's fine but what you do is in order to alpha dog another male I see see what I'll do that again let me watch right let me watch let me watch that's a different game okay for example but you're in a conversation right and you're in the twilight of your senility yes and you that's a beautiful way to describe your condition and you cannot remember anything anything you can't like I want to names yeah and I want to go after yeah they tell us again what he means Kelly and Conway yes the the vice president of the United States I can't remember his name right that's fine so I'll do this and watch me alpha dog and this is what you do when you get to be my age now the vice president of the United States Mike Pence correct or or let me that's one way to hide your senility the vice president of the United States Mike Pence I will not say his name I will not say that man's name I cannot say that oh yeah that's I like that one I like bees better by the way and I love that Felden's interpretation of this dynamic my taking pity on his feeble-mindedness he's the alpha right yeah I'm the alpha dog I'm the alpha absolutely totally makes sense yes you just said absolutely so yeah and you're agreeing with me you're agreeing with me so much and I'm so alpha doggy you you raised your voice an octave I'm fine everything's fine here in this room we're good you're afraid of me now we're fine no we're good so Jason Alexander would ask Larry David is that true is because he was playing Larry Jeff Garland maintained that Larry David should turn to me to study Larry David Larry David I swear you know what let's do a Marshall McLuhan moment I may have Jeff Garland's number here Alex can we do a phone tie into this call him call him all right well let's let's hold on he's not gonna answer okay but uh this is by the way you see how he just crumbled like a wet taco shell he's I Jeff isn't gonna pick up that's fine yeah okay you're gonna get his answering machine you're gonna hear Jeff oh Jeff and then sorry this voice message mailbox is full at least the number I have I don't I don't have the damn pasternak Jeff Garland hotline because you're a big shot and I'm not I don't know about you but I'm sensing a little tension in the room no this is I love this there's no tension we've established that Felden is the alpha dog right okay this is how we met I know we we had a meeting I I had a job interview with him about 15 years ago when I was at Carsey Werner wow and it turned into a screaming match it was a really it was a one-sided sky it was me being screamed at oh this is the argument you had yes oh we've gone over that in this pot I did have Larry David moments I'm telling you I know that was absolutely a Larry David and I did that all over town because the funny thing was so the self-sabotage is that David Feldman's agent had to like twist my arm to sit down with Feldman to talk about this job that I could have offered him and file it under no good deed go I take the meeting to be lambasted for what a stupid ill-conceived notion oh my little offering represented to Mr. Feldman so I have I've done that too I my when my dad's show was on Fox the George Carlin show the sitcom Bob and I pitched a show idea you know sitcom episode to my dad and Jerry because we couldn't pitch to Jerry Hamza we couldn't pitch to Sam Simon because Sam Simon didn't believe in nepotism which is fine is that we said yes to my face and he doesn't believe it exists or he doesn't he doesn't believe that he there should be no by the way it should be in the past and Sam Simon is and a very generous man when it came to dogs and things like that and everything I was married to somebody like that so anyway so we pitched to my dad and my dad loved the idea it was my dad if you remember his character was a curmudgeon and the the idea was that he got the power of attorney and had to pull the plug on somebody and this is this was the series this is the series on Fox it was a great episode idea and we pitched it to dad and dad loved it and he pitched to Sam and Sam loved it and so we got we got an episode produced you know it's a big deal we started so we decided to start taking some meetings with agents and things like that and somebody on the lot there said you guys should apply for the Warner Brothers writing programs they had this incredible writing program back then where you go in and for a year they take you in they teach you how to write sitcoms they put you in rooms and writing rooms and everything and it's incredible and I said great so incredibly competitive program as I recall that incredibly competitive to get in was you know to get the first interview was even competitive so we get into the so we submit that script and we had a Seinfeld at the time we had a Matt about you script at the time spec script and so we get we get the first interview which is a huge hurdle and we're in and we're having this interview at you and my husband Bob oh great who's my writing partner great pair of legs yes he does and we get in the room and I begin to explain to the executive at Warner Brothers how this you know I sounds interesting and it's we're interested in it and everything like that but sitcom writing is really beneath I mean it's for the masses and it's dumbed down and it's you know and I just let me write this down in case I get in a similar situation this is so this is how you talk to Bob is sitting next to me who has recently quit his job as a camera operator on Inside Edition to become my writing partner he's he's giving me these looks on the side like shut the fuck up and I'm on my carlin fucking high horse because my dad hates working on the sitcom hates the writer's room hates what how it's the show's being run he said I read an interview with him he said I remember his saying that this is the first time he's ever really collaborated and how much that was the beginning oh that was the first week okay read his memoir he's just very little nice to say oh okay so anyway yes I went in and completely sabotage this thing and that's why I don't have a house in Brentwood or you could have gotten the job and you know what's so funny is I believe and that's why I don't have a house in Brentwood is actually the title of David Feldman's autobiography did you know that I did not I have an agent it makes perfect sense Greg Cavick greatest agent lovely guy I love him and he's loyal and just shakes his head and has stuck with me through Finn and through Finn and there was a there was a time where I couldn't keep my mouth shut I just and so because no well here's what has happened and what what what happened is the phone rings for me just when my head's in the oven the phone rings and something comes up right and they tend to be people who I have tremendous respect for comedically who take my head out of the oven I don't know how they know my heads in the oven Kellyanne Conway says Obama is watching my oven but whenever my heads in the oven maybe it's just because you're Jewish I always sleep well I take off all my okay I'm like I did with Gilbert we went down a whole I'm sure we went down a rabbit hole apparently there's a thing called the Holocaust apparently yes and Gilbert and I did 90 minutes on that so what happens is I'm I end up working for people who get everything they want out of comedy mm-hmm and I don't understand why I can't have that right so when I'm out of work I go into these meetings and throw temper tantrums at people who are unsuspecting and well intention and I tell you your job I actually have done this a lot to Greg Cavick mm-hmm and I I have to stop because it's I mean I've gone into meetings and something sets me off and it really is I mean ask Jeff Garland I'll go I'll call Jeff after it's exactly out of curb your enthusiasm it's exact somebody will bring up you know somebody I hate and the meeting no no you need to know this about him right you need to know that he did what we were just asking if you want to but did I call you immoral that may have been the nicest thing wow that may have been did I say you were immoral did I say you were un-American did I say you have contempt for for for the citizens of this country did I tell you that the airwaves belong to the people and you have no right to poison them as they say in the improv community yes and now here's my favorite aspect of this entire thing because I had called your then agent Bruce Smith oh it was Bruce Smith it was Bruce Smith at the time to arrange for a meeting I had been my manager at the time no he was not yet the manager I was with Greg I'm sure Greg set that meeting up no I'm telling it was Bruce Smith because I had called him to meet with Aukerman and Porter about the same project Aukerman and Porter yes and he said I called him about Aukerman and Porter and he said you should also meet with David Feldman and go look I actually think I kind of know what I want the show to be and I think Scott and BJ did you know who I was I absolutely knew who you were and actually was a real fan noticed I used the past 10th of your stand-up and what was your title can you feel the love what was your title because I remember you had a nice office this was the office in Brentwood so I've had like three different like times right what was their offices in Brentwood on San Vicente right it was hip I remember um young people it wasn't the tall building it was the shorter squat building yes I know which one it was yeah I remember uh-huh and and Carsey Warner at the time gave up you know Cosby oh yeah they were and they were the so we had this little like the early 2000s but we had this like sort of um like pod within Carsey Warner that was doing kind of experimental and alternative and sort of cable stuff and they were really sort of interested in like doing things other than sort of the big network sitcom I had a chip on my shoulder I do remember this that the receptionist validated my parking and that when when I go into a meeting and I get my parking validated for some reason that sets me off I don't know why it makes me feel like weak that you're validating my parking I'm walking in now holding do you understand what I'm saying when you go absolutely not Kelly do you understand I would think it'd be the opposite yeah I would yeah because if they don't validate your parking then then it's costing 18 bucks to get your car back right that would bother me too okay David my whole point was I called Bruce Smith to meet with somebody else other than you why didn't you want to meet with me because I kind of knew what the show wanted to be and I thought that's gotten BJ would be great for it and Bruce said you really need to sit down with Feldman and I acquiesced and I said well we've already got the meeting set with Scott and BJ so sure I will meet with Feldman as well because again I had been an admirer of yours okay and then I opened myself up to this uninvited land-based thing four hours I will tell you that my then assistant came in more than once to see if I was okay wow I remember that that assistant now is the head of Lorne Michaels company Broadway video who was responsible for bringing me Portlandia when I was at IFC and Scott Ackerman and BJ Porter did take the job and my relationship with them continued and I made deal after deal with them comedy bang bang is on IFC I think it just ended after a quite a healthy run on IFC and Scott Ackerman I believe owns mid I mean he's doing very well right so what I'm saying David is had things gone differently can you set up a meeting with me and does does she remember me the woman who now runs Lorne Michaels company can you set up a meeting no it's Andrew Singer is a lovely gentleman and a dear friend can you set up a meeting with Andrew and absolutely not what about Scott Ackerman I understand he's kind of big these days um you know I need a fight come on I'm still good I can go and I can go 13 rounds with these punks come on set up a fight um I'm gonna do a sight gag for the people in the room that will be lost on the listeners but go ahead David ask me to set up a meeting for you can you set up a fight with me I just did the universal gesture for blackjack dealers when they are walking away from the table that was the sight gag for an audience of honesty and I did this I would say I I did it my way well I probably would still do it I can't help myself I can't yes you can but uh I I wasn't reading him properly I thought you were kind of enjoying being told that people like you need to be run out of town honestly you know uh yeah I actually thought for an uninvited case of verbal battery it was one of the more enjoyable and amusing um dressing down I have ever received um but when it was over yeah um yeah no more David film it what yeah that was like that that was that was a one-time only show and you said you would never work with me again no I never worked with you it was not again we didn't work together once but if my name came up in a in a conversation when you're talking to all these Hollywood big wigs and the name David Feldman comes up you would describe me as passionate colorful I would probably do the thing that um I had only ever seen my grandmother do when something that I believe she would uh describe as a Kanahara so like say say his name David Feldman so a little bit like the evil eye thing or something yeah it's the Jewish version I got okay all right okay yeah gotta you know I had no idea this is what was between you guys did not but when we met again at the green room right all of our dear friend Paul Pervenza um I found my I found my affections for David uh which have uh which have continued to this day Kelly yes do you have to have a fight sometimes with somebody in order to love them no is that human nature because I've noticed in courting women and in movies they always the woman hates the guy before she loves him yeah that's men writing that bingo really yeah totally she hates me she hates me she hates me I love you yeah that's men's playing out their mommy issues all right let me process this for a second because I have found that a woman will hate me but you can and I'm not trying to sound you know dangerous here but you sometimes can wear somebody down and they fall in love with you or is that yeah I don't think that's going to be a healthy situation in the end I mean this is there's one thing about having enough fire in a relationship where you there's you're you're able to speak your truth to each other and not be afraid to say what you need to say even if it's going to be uncomfortable and it doesn't always have to be nice between each other but I think people who start a relationship like that are two people who uh need some separate help they probably shouldn't be together because well Kelly why don't you diagram first marriage second marriage and maybe that'll give David some perspective you're talking about me or her no her oh you're being oh so you're this we'll see but I was a mordant my lashing tongue is not only directed at me but you will occasionally lap at Kelly that was not lapping oh I think the two matter that sounded kind of no no no I think that Kelly has herself volunteered that there was a significant difference in the dynamic between her first and her second current marriage to before mentioned Bob McCall yeah and we love Bob yes we do love Bob um but yeah but I was never a woman I never entered relationships with that sense of um need to be aggressive in a relationship as a woman or need to be a game playing is not interesting to me I find all that stuff to be game playing I think it's all bullshit and it's game playing and we're all playing out our mommy and daddy issues with each other and that no one's being grown up if you're doing that kind of you know rejecting of each other and then fighting and then fucking and all that that it just it's it's great for drama it's great for movies but um I don't think it's really healthy uh in relationships basically do you think that couples behave because they see it in movies and think it's normal um I don't know no I mean maybe I think I think we learn how to do relationships in our in our family of origin I mean that's where we learn to do relationships do you think it's possible that somebody in this room might have actually re-enacted a scene from godfather 2 before between Al Pacino and probably I'm guessing since you're bringing it out I gotta do my old man thing between Al Pacino and Diane Keaton correct I'm not I'm not gonna let an alpha dog leave me more I was a woman so I'm gonna be a different dynamic it'll be different dynamic I actually in a fight one said don't you know that that's an impossibility don't you know that I would never let that happen and I'm going I am firing on all pistons here in this fight and I am summoning the voice of Michael Corleone if she finds that out I am totally busted here but do you think that's a true story do you think that sometimes because I've noticed in relationships or watching other people that they are mimicking what they see in movies well I think things are in movies because of what humans do with each other but you just said that but I think men write most of those movies okay and so if you were courting a woman and you walk in with a briefcase yes like a traveling salesman right all right this is our first date I got my foot in the door let me show you my wares and I open up the briefcase what do I have to do to get you inside my penis is that how it works no that's not how it works the woman doesn't go inside the man's penis no that part doesn't work nor does the other part what do I have to do what do I have to do to get you in my penis that question alone is going to keep you away everyone's going to be away from the penis just tell me what I need to do what do I need to do just write it down and I'll do it here write it down down I will give you back rubs I will listen to you for 45 minutes a day yeah the negotiating thing is it's not really working no no that doesn't work no it doesn't work no no it's not a business transaction I know that this car isn't sleek it's used it's a guzzler these new floor mats you're not going to be proud pulling into spago you're going to say to the valet park them way down we'll walk yes but this car can keep going right this it's dependable it'll turn over you know what women love I was going to say that extended metaphor car car metaphor I was going to say extended car metaphor do they really yeah wet yeah they get wet with that work on that work on the car metaphor pitching yourself to a woman yeah yeah it's not a yeah yeah no it doesn't work what works uh hurry up because I'm in a like I'm I know I'm not a relationship expert I would I would say what works is uh being open and vulnerable and funny and loving and truthful okay other than that that stuff's out of the question vulnerable yeah I mean having an orgasm face to face that's vulnerable right sure yeah okay so what else do you need honest honest yeah honest yeah I you make me you can't even say the word at the first five what do you mean they'll chew you in New York City a woman who sees vulnerability no will eat you alive that is that is a horrible stereotype of New York women well I'm Jewish I can make fun of my people why I would say that vulnerability on this island I like to call Manhattan an island as you should and I like to call LA a town it just makes me feel it makes me feel like an asshole when I do that I gave you an opening it makes me feel like an asshole let's not talk about your asshole or your opening please I thought that was good I thought you were going to say you don't need to feel like an asshole you are one but yours was better I think people on this town on this town on this island I think the women here are very difficult I think it's and you wonder why no one will go out with you I'm not saying they won't go out with me I just wish they'd stop calling the cops I say listen why don't you date this cop if you keep calling him it's fair what are you calling the cops for it's fair no but I don't you think there's a in this crazy cuckoo island that we call Manhattan I cannot speak for this island I do not live here I am not a a native of this island I've visited it many times in my life but I could not tell you about the women of this island I'm guessing they're changing a little when you get here uh no actually I find yourself more grateful for Bob when you come here I wish he was with me to see all the fun things that I'm seeing and getting to do but do you do at the end of and I don't mean this metaphorically at the end of the day uh-huh and I don't mean this metaphorically when your head hits the pillow yes I don't mean that metaphorically right okay or in my case when your face bites the pillow by the way that was David being vulnerable yes I was calling myself gay at the end of the day you know when when you're home and your face bites the pillow I love that expression pillow biter when you're the day is over here in New York in the city that never sleeps yes which it does by the way it 11 o'clock this place is dead oh yeah it really is what do you you think of Bob and you think boy I people here are tough they don't know I haven't encountered a single tough person here you don't think everybody here no in everyone has been smiling at me looking giving me eye contact oh fuck off but they're Hungarian they're like they're you know what a Hungarian is you know what the Hungarians are like right they smile but they're looking you up and down yeah no I don't get that here but you know what I actually usually look forward to seeing who is more outraged by the content of this podcast are Filipino listeners or our Hungarian listeners or New York women it's really reminds me of a bit you know I'm gonna pull this back to Stan Freeberg since my Stan Freeberg articles coming out very soon on Split Sider he had a bit about a Swedish acrobat troop were the Swedish or Swiss now I don't remember maybe they were Swiss like that's any better no they were Swiss he says the Zazeloff family the Swiss acrobats and his sidekick or announcer on his radio program since Swiss he said yes that way we won't get any letters I make fun of the Hungarians because they can't write I can make fun of the Hungarians it's okay for because they're horrible people I mean I am Hungarian I have Hungarian I figured yeah and I was trained to hate Hungarians I used to say to my grandparents do you want to go back to Hungary and they would say we're here aren't we we're in America but you think you think I would have gone through Ellis Island steerage for three months on that boat if I wanted to go back to Hungary and be with those people so Manhattan and I'm not saying this about Manhattan women right I'm saying just people generally in Manhattan lovely lovely eye contact smiling but they're making eye contact the way a Hungarian makes no they're making eye contact like like oh hey there's another human there Jonathan Alper back I mean not on the subway but on the street there's a way no one will look at you in this there's a listener if we were live Jonathan Alper I would call him right now and he would back me up on this about Hungarians well I can't tell a Hungarian from the outside so I can't tell a Hungarian anything I don't know what they look like they they look at you I have a look into your soul right that's positively goulash of you and they they they're sizing you up you're being sized up all the time I have not been sized up a single time I've been here the last few days well listen I want to thank you both for coming Kelly Carlin yes so you're going to be in Nyak I will yes really looking forward to that that's it'll be nice day love Nyak darling so all of the Nyakians Nyakians are we going out to dinner yes we are um define we we were just getting started I'm not doing this again we were talking about that we did at one time when I was still in California set I believe the all-time podcast endurance record it was uh Feldman Provenza Paul Dooley and myself um and that clocked in at over three hours wow correct is that online somewhere can you still can you still get those kpfk shows are they still in there yeah on my website yeah you you might have to you know make some space on your hard drive for that fucker but it was a great episode I bet it was well Provenza man you know we I know I feel like we didn't even scratch the surface we got a little sidetracked what did we I don't even know what we talked about we'll talk about self-help okay all right and let's just leave the Hungarians out of it okay yeah please we don't need any more Hungarians okay all right yeah don't be a Budapest wow Buda Fest I go to Buda Fest yeah I would go to Buda Fest too yeah I want you too oh that's Budacan why the Budacan um that was kind of a cheap trick to be honest wow okay now I'm leaving what a second Alex Brazell you just got Alex Brazell to just that was amazing that was that was brilliant thank you that was amazing yeah that was amazing done pastor doc self-help yes sanctuary help being miserable it's being miserable yes how do we deal with what's going on turn off the tv and all of your devices walk away from the electronics like if you can like turn them off all weekend go away from them you'll find yourself again you'll just stop listening to this podcast well start yeah start with that start but just turning this off right now I'll believe believe me no I'm kidding yeah I have found that we have all become slaves to well the information thing we all feel like we have to be informed about everything every second especially with this particular administration but by the way I mean I think we're all old enough to remember like it wasn't that long ago when it was okay to not be reachable yeah right like I mean I still remember getting my first cell phone my first blackberry where I was Edward J almost it's his fault how do I reach these kids from scared straight when he kept saying how do I reach these kids and everybody sorry and we wonder why we go on paths that lead us nowhere he interrupted you no you do I know it no it's it's true bow I didn't I was actually trying to stay on the same path with Kelly he was talking about the technology part right being that we're we're reachable 24 seven now and not only are we reachable but we're like inviting people because we're going on social media and saying reach out to me all day long I mean I think this is what I think my I think that attention our attention what we focus on is our most precious resource as a human and that therefore we need to be really careful about where we place it and our culture right now as it has always done I mean it has always been look at me or buy this or watch this or anything like that but but nowadays it is relentless on every device on every flat screen and then there's the news cycle thing that's going that's a whole another level which we feel like it's life or death some of us so that we have to stay informed and if we don't watch the news every day God forbid what has happened type of a thing and that our attention is is completely being given away 24 seven to all of this stuff right and that we need to start retraining ourselves in a very conscious manner to not put our attention where it's being pulled towards don't volunteer it outward but to bring it back to ourselves right and one of the ways the little micro practices that I teach people is mindfulness and mindfulness is not like this big concept and yes you can get an app for it and all that kind of stuff but mindfulness is like mindfulness like a mindfully taking a sip of this water I pick up the bottle I feel it I use my senses to feel the coolness of the bottle on my in my hand I open the cap I use my senses and feel the weight of the bottom so I'm using my senses to focus my mind and even if you were to do that only five minutes a day in the morning like when you're eating your bowl of cereal or you're washing your dishes or whatever it is but just slowing down and letting your senses take in the moment it's a it really is a form of meditation what you're talking about it's being very as present as possible yes exactly and and the senses is important because the mind wants to go places the mind's job is to freaking go places be distracted have the to-do list the worry list the fear voice talking all that kind of that the mind is going to do that but when you focus on the senses it grounds your mind in some way in your mind goes oh I must I'm thinking about what it feels like and and it forces you to do that and the more you can do that and get in the habit of doing it maybe it's five minutes in the morning or you do it a couple times a day maybe you do it around food because that's a natural place to do it because we're going to eat a couple of times a day anyway you will start to rewire your brain in a different way and you will get out of this endless dopamine loop that we're on which is this agitated addictive thing I mean we've all done drugs in this room we are all grown-ups who've done these things excuse me I've never done drugs in this room okay okay fine so we all know what it feels like to be an addict that's what we're doing 24-7 now I'm good can I say something yes okay Alex I need to relax for a second this is important and I'm going to be mindful here I want to talk about what's transpired and where we're finally at yep in this podcast okay I've decided to I'm trying to do digital detox and I have trouble doing it and we were on the Ralph I do a radio show with Ralph Nader and today we taped Saturday's episode with George Lekoff don't think of an elephant I just wanted to ask him to do the show and a young reporter from the Washington Post who is saying exactly this about AI and phones and how her generation needs to take off you know get off the phone and one of the questions I wanted to ask but we were at a time was you write for the Washington Post you have to turn your phone off you're talking about preaching how many have you asked all these reporters from the Washington Post how many times have you been nervously checking your phone and you actually said to yourself it's a good thing I was reachable 24-7 right and she's you know I didn't have time I have decided to focus on one thing and it's this podcast that I get up every morning now and I focus on the podcast everything else comes second even my stand-up even the writing jobs the podcast the podcast the core as Douglas MacArthur would say the core the core the core it is the podcast for me right because the podcast is mindfulness for me that when I do a radio show it's skipping on the surface you can't really dig down deep right yep but a podcast you can really be in the moment in the studio and then transfer it to the listener you can really create and dig down and what I noticed today was until you started talking about this there was no mindfulness on my part it I was I was narcissistic we talked about me right and there was male energy here there was this hostility Dan and I were doing this faux alpha dog thing and that kind of takes us away it's funny it's clever yeah it's light but it creates anxiety I think it create I think this moment here is more pleasant for the listener than Dan and I trying to top one another which is probably 99% of my show right this moment here that we're experiencing without trying to be funny this is it right right here this is it yeah at all seriousness no no joking wouldn't you agree Dan I'm sorry I was waiting for that but this is the moment right here this is what we were working towards yes and what is this moment right here this is a moment where we're not leading with I I feel an idea of what we think we're supposed to be doing but we're connecting more from a place of like real inquiry real self-inquiry I feel really good I'm not I mean this like I'm not trying to get yeah I feel connected to the listeners right now yeah don't you yeah for sure absolutely yeah and because it's a pod it's to me right now this moment is the medium podcast this is it this is what a podcast is it's for so many years I was looking at podcasts as the means to something else and this is what a podcast is it's the medium well I I was talking today with a few days ago actually with Alan's Y bell this is this is the Friday um and we were not to bring up Milton Burrell's penis I have to I'm fighting I did not you know I'm fighting we were talking about Shanling and this is what Shanling taught me Shanling taught me that this is and whether it's comedy or being in the moment or you know the improv and the Filipinos whatever that whatever it was but there's a moment where if you're willing to let your mask come off you'll discover something for the next moment there with your work and he was working on going on stage and being able to be the witness of it all and to be fully in the moment with it he and I talked a lot about mindfulness tell me I have one question I went Alex I bet you're not hungry right now right he's passed out from low blood sugar okay what is that so to just be so focused in the moment that you can have two not two masks but have two that that you're it's well you know you're performer when you're on stage there's the part of you that's driving the performance driving the car because you're getting energy from the audience you know what's going on you know where you're going next you know if you're doing stand-up you've got your set list in your head but there's also this moment where if you could let the present moment in get out of the car just not doing it by rote but really letting the present moment in like here in this moment and sourcing from here what's happening here and I think that's what you just did when you stopped and said I want to talk about what's happening in this podcast you were like I've landed here I see there's something going on here and and I want to observe it you know what happened what happened was I was getting a sign that we had a wrap up and I suddenly realized how precious this moment with you guys was I went oh I'm good this is I'm losing this we have to leave I don't want it so I got suddenly I got into the moment I suddenly went wait a second we our time is up I waste I wasted the time with you that's what I feel I feel like we wasted time we didn't get to it right we're making jokes right and skipping we were I felt I was skipping on the ocean yeah without I think it was more about Dan and me than you I think that was what happened that there was this thing going it was definitely entertaining but you know it was going it was it was a male I don't know what I think we were showing off for you maybe I don't know was it was male energy right yeah it was definitely yeah so how with so so who's that's my fault I don't think it's a I think it's I think it's what happened today here which is but I think what's going on right now is you're having some sort of insight about something and I am I'm just sitting here just holding the space for you well male there is a male energy which is not a justification yeah I mean I had male energy at the beginning would you agree yeah yeah I mean I think but I think podcasts kind of invite that I mean I think it's kind of a thing where you come on and everyone's trying to be you know clever there's a cleverness which I think and cleverness isn't always which is fine and entertaining and all of that but I don't you know there's this great roomy quote you know sell your cleverness to purchase wonder you know I'm a person who was raised on clever and clever is important to me but when I let go of my clever which to me is feels like my ego something richer I think can come into the room I had a shrink who always talked about his friend roomy his friend roomy and I knew and he would say that's not really her name but I figured they were roommates and now I'm seeing the name roomy was roomy a Muslim yeah Persian poet like 14th century but why has he been embraced by the self-help people because the poetry that's been translated is it's just it's just pure beautiful wisdom it's like wisdom of the ages right you know it's perennial wisdom that rheumatism comes from it it's so you're so paralyzed by I'm making that no that's a different root I know I don't know you're so much smarter than I am so he's going back to that default setting he went back to the default setting okay but but that default setting of trying to be funny what is that well it's we could unpack he will starve to death if we start unpack why people why people we're getting somewhere why people do comedy comedy is a diff I mean comedy humor is a defense mechanism for humans it's about deflecting the pain or deflecting the awkward moment or or or or it's a power struggle too it can be used as a power thing for sure but no matter what it's it's a coping mechanism that we've we've we each use in our own way because of our own personalities how we use it is different how you use comedy is a little different than how I do or how Dan does but it's it's it's a thing that human beings have learned to use and for great good also because it's entertaining and it makes us laugh and it is distracting in a positive way but when it's always used to deflect from the vulnerability of being human then it's not being used for good it's being used but there's so many different forms of comedy and we can get into a you know more philosophical exploration of this but I mean comedy can reveal as much as it can deflect yeah and I'm not saying that's what I'm saying I'm saying no I'm saying it can it's can be used for so many things but there is something about like how you just wrote a joke how you just did it was I just wrote a joke just like in the moment here do you mind I just want to as you were talking I'm thinking I said and then we'll okay I just came up with a joke maybe somebody's come up with this before but as you were saying that I was listening and then I was thinking that when I'm really intimate with a woman I don't want to be funny around her that I don't want to make her laugh I want to annoy her I do I want to be like Monty Python right and just you know do the Filipino p2f thing to right because that to me is an active intimacy so just and anybody can do it so you're not taking her out of the game you're not working at your best because if you work at your best then she can't be funny with you right so you can't if she's as funny as you well but I'm a pro doesn't matter okay and then I thought I don't like this is all going at the speed of right what's it the speed of what's the word my brain is working at the speed of sound speed of light I'm really my all silent I'm listening to you but and then I came up with this joke with that unfolded in about one second where I thought well you can laugh a woman into bed and then I got her into bed and she said you're a prop comic and she opened up a drawer is that funny I came up with that in like in one second while you were talking I just wanted a blinking so what was the jokie route no at all serious I wanted to share that with the audience because as you were talking I like in one second I know this sounds pretentious but you were I was struggling with that and I thought okay so Kelly bad right I'm bad apparently I was being on David's takeaway from being present right being in the moment was writing a joke and being available right was writing a joke yes and falling back on a joke and I feel good and I wanted to share that with the audience the drug I felt good listening to you and within one second I came up and you know what I would completely understand that and validate that if the joke were better I don't think it's that bad a joke I'm worried that somebody else came up with it I laughed a woman into bed and then I took off my pants and she said you're a prop comic and she whipped out a vibrator or something like that that could work in me it needs some work in these but it's there and I see the trail I see the trail that you're going down and I and I and it's resistant in psychology that would be called resistance because you were really talking about something important and I made a joke you did my mind and me and how do you stop doing that it's getting worse for me though I'm getting funnier there's a I'm getting more clever and more funny the lonelier and more miserable I get it's true what is that I don't know it's a defense mechanism like I said earlier for sure right but it's also if you're freer of it's like there's something you're free of right now also because you are more alone right now so you have so one would say he's free of half his money I wish yes wish it was just that but oh right California I forgot so when you when you when you start um uh uh uh disconnecting things that you know take mental space right you have more psychic energy for other things so maybe you have more psychic energy for for your comedy yeah I asked my shrink Dr. Vinnie Boombats it's a Rodney reference I get it Dr. Vinnie he's a great shrink yeah okay go ahead I said he said of course you're funny uh and then I said well what happens if I find someone and I settle down and I'm back to he said no kind of said what you said that you you'll you're more focused he said comedy is focus and that when you're angry and you channel your rage you're focused well I mean there are some that would say the the greatest fighters rose to the height of their capability fighting out of a corner and I think that that's what because that's focus but that's what funny people do I think funny people I'm being completely serious here yeah I think funny people do their best work fighting out of a corner I'm going to just say this from my perspective as one of the greatest admirers of your father's work I wrote a piece about George who I mean remains an absolute touchstone for me where I talked about his work during a place for my stuff which I talked about as being in my mind the low point of his work creatively right which he would admit to but by the way I also qualified that by saying that saying that is also like saying that magical mystery tour is the worst Beatles album I said that's a very high low point right yes of course I get that yes but I think and I'm just talking about creatively now I'm not talking about where you are in your life I do think that as an artist George probably was at that moment of decision of I am either going to push past this and crest this hurdle of potential irrelevance in this art form that I love or I'm going to go to another level and if I lose people in doing that I have to not care yeah for sure and that's what I saw him do as an artist yeah now you could speak to what else might have been happening for him personally in his life but just as someone who knew him a little but who observed him studiously that's what I saw yeah and so David I think what you're talking about is when you say oh you feel like you're being funnier maybe it's the the sort of the line that I always go to is that line from Chris Christopherson me and Bobby McKee freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose do you know what I mean yeah and so I think that that is true in life I think that is true in art I think that when you you clear away all of the obstacles the path is easier to see right Kelly is that kind of what you're yeah yeah yeah absolutely and that's why we and that's why the greatest comics are not telling jokes but they're just clearing the bush and speaking the truth yeah and I also think that the greatest comics are not capable of their best work in their first two three five sometimes 10 years and when I hear because I've been around now long enough when I hear about somebody who I've never heard about and people go oh this is the best comic working today without seeing the person I say no they're not right and that's not coming from a place of ego like if I haven't seen them they're not the best I'm saying because whether it's prior or your dad or CK or Pat Noz was Calvin Klein strange all right did it again I know sorry yeah I know yeah I know I can't you can't help it I wasn't in the moment so the jokes the jokes there is a form of Tourette's that I think is undiagnosed but I think if we can figure it out we can help David today no in all seriousness I mean the this is what I was thinking when I made that joke because I was out of the moment I was thinking this is exactly what I want the podcast to move towards this is this is an art form that great a great podcast can be art and I was when I came when I said Calvin Klein I was hanging on your every word but I was also thinking in the back of my mind did we need a joke there no no no no did we need the energy though you talk about the first five years to get good did we need the first I don't know how long I've long I don't know how this show may be five minutes or and I don't know did we need the first 20 minutes of this show to get here could we have started the show that's what I was thinking and then I made the joke could we have started the show where we're at now or did we have to work towards it well I think because we did work towards it that is how it had to unfold because it's the unfolding of your mind in this moment that this podcast was about right so there you have it and if we added it to just start here it wouldn't it wouldn't be good no because we they wouldn't understand the context of where we are now and the insight you're having about it all right it wouldn't make sense okay so but you might want to cut out the hungry part that would be my favorite joke of this whole podcast because boy did you just blindside fell down that was gorgeous no I know when you said no I'm gonna be totally there's nothing Kelly could say to hurt my feelings other than I never want to see you again I'm hungry I thought Alex is hungry so I'm thinking about his hunger I swear to God I'm gonna use my mind to be you meant the Hungarians oh I'm more worried about Alex being you know what I figured out Kelly I think you were encouraging David to be more in the moment but what was not clear to David or perhaps the concept that he's struggling with is when you said be in the moment you mean this moment can't there be can't you be in several moments you can't well you sort of can but that's another okay David I'm gonna say something completely earnest and honest and straight and there is no joke this is not a ramp up to a joke at all okay and I will not make a joke and I'm holding my breath I have such regard and affection for you and such belief that you are in a great place on your journey right now and I love witnessing it I really do because you are a great guy and you're a really talented guy and I do think that watching you evolve as a human being not just as an artist but as a human being is a great joy for me and I'm really glad I got to come to this so thanks to both you and Kelly for asking me to come today well I I let's go have dinner and yeah I want to plug your gigs and let's go eat and yeah I I think this podcasting thing is interesting and it's one of those things where I've been doing it for eight years now do you mean just this what I wanted to share that with the audience I mean Feldman literally looked at him like are you picking up the baton or not on that one it was awesome because no matter what people this is a room full of comedians or or as Paul prevents you would always say when introducing him a room full of failed comedian yes failed comedian David well that is I mean the great thing about comedy is doing it as a team it's often great so yeah like eight years in I'm going wait a second I'm just figuring out how to do this yeah they had it and it reminds me of stand-up because it's the rule is it takes 10 years to figure out how to do stand-up yeah and I keep saying to Alex you know if I give it another two years we can figure this out so the first 20 minutes of this podcast was wonderful whine-o and I'll sleep the hippie-to-be-weather man and we're now at modern man in the advertising lullaby right we've had an entire evolution in one podcast we have okay yes Kelly Carlin will be by the way if anybody listening didn't get those references like fuck you I was gonna make a joke but I couldn't remember Burns his first name Jack Burns uh-huh sure sure yeah I was gonna call you Jack Burns at the beginning George's first comedy partner who then went on to become comedy partners with Avery Schreiber and again if I need to footnote to this extent like why are you listening on April Fool's Day Kelly Carlin will be in NIAC at the NIAC library with Elliott Forrest and discussing my book and my life and my evolution a Carlin home companion your autobiography yes is out in paperback you can listen to the Kelly Carlin show on Sirius XM there are two channels comedy greats and Carlin's Corner those are two great channels that you should listen to and listen to the Kelly Carlin show there her guest this week will be Alan's Y Bell yes and I think about in the seventh it'll premiere yes and he'll you'll be talking about Milton Burrell's cock yes as every conversation I have these days is about that which is the hang on which is the longest thing in the history of show business hey what do you need me to kill that Lily I think the joke was right there and that was an awkward image at the end nothing is nothing mine when we're nothing was longer than Milton Burrell's cock what are you looking for here except this episode oh yeah oh only we screw that up this was more painful than speaking of pain Dan Pasternak who said you had a look at Milton Burrell's cock in installments that's a great joke it was a great joke thank you that was a great that stays in that stays in okay yeah you write from McSweeney's split cider yep the most recent McSweeney's piece was about uh the great Robert Klein who I'm gonna just plug this since this is Friday right this is the 31st yes so premiering tonight on stars is the documentary Robert Klein still can't stop his leg is he Parkinson's um sorry the comedy nerds will understand this part of the conversation yeah listen you know you know I think he gave that one a good shake um but wait we're going full circle here now yeah anyway um it has all things should yes but anyway I did want to plug that it's a great documentary with like all of your heroes in comedy talking about how Robert Klein you know is one of the all-time greats yep yeah and uh so anyway I wrote my most recent McSweeney's piece was about uh Robert Klein and uh his uh one degree of separation from Donald Trump if that's intriguing to you go to McSweeney's and check out the piece and then my next piece for split cider will be um my piece about Stan Freeberg who uh with whom I had lunch very quickly I had lunch and your dad George Carlin came over to the table to pay homage certainly to Stan yes and your dad went into Carlin's uh went into Freeberg's rather um banana boat record if you remember the uh Freeberg did his version of Harry Belafonte's Deo and Peter Leeds played the bongo player who kept stopping Freeberg and sort of the Belafonte role because he was shouting too much by saying no man it's too loud man it's too piercing and that was your dad's opening gambit when he came over to the table he looked Stan straight in the face with all the affection and admiration that a kid would have for somebody that they admired and said no man it's too loud man it's too piercing and I just thought there is a level of comedy nerddom sitting at a table with Stan Freeberg and George Carlin comes over and does that that that's it is pretty unmatched that is for me in my life that's pretty cool so anyway my piece about Stan Freeberg and split cider coming out next week Lewis Black I answered my own question I was going to ask you final words yes I was going to ask how big a fan of comedy was your was your dad's growing up and I'm going to answer the question Lewis Black was on the show and he said he got a call from George and he says hey it's George Carlin here's my phone number give me a call I can't do anything for your career that's he started with the conversation that's how he started it this is George Carlin I want to start by saying I can't do anything for your career but I wanted to let you know that I think you're funny and you're great yeah yeah and that's everything for your career yeah that is your career yeah didn't Lewis tell that story at the Mark Twain yeah he told it on the show yeah it's beautiful yeah and it's true that the only you can do something for your career yeah yeah yeah well said that's not what George Carlin can do for your career but when one of your one of your heroes or someone who you respect lets you know that they see something in you that gives you the fuel to do what you need to do for your career and after Gilbert yes the Gilbert episode I've been picking up the phone Alex and I are picking up the phone and asking people to do this show good that was like the new fuel to get me to the from the show for studios in downtown Manhattan let's eat coming up on the show law professor Cory Brett Schneider and film critic Michael Schneider if you're enjoying today's episode share the love share the knowledge share the comedy copy and paste the link to this program and send it to all your friends subscribe on itunes share it that's all I ask as you share this episode with all your friends welcome back it's time for talking to one of the most brilliant men in the world doctor professor Cory Brett Schneider he's a professor of political science at Brown University hello professor hi David and thanks for the inflated compliment you also are a public intellectual we don't have too many you write for the new york times time magazine politico I guess teaching helps you talk to people like me idiots and you writing for mass media I would assume is a lot harder than writing for law journals because you have to distill complicated issues down to their essence which is what you guys in academia should be doing all along absolutely I mean I found that I think a lot of people assume oh if you're writing for a popular audience that's somehow easier because the issues are not as complex and I find the opposite part of it is you can't use a shorthand and the other thing that I find difficult but also rewarding is that you have to say things as clearly as possible and that makes them better the ideas I think rather than weaker we were doing a comedy show with Neil deGrasse Tyson from the planetarium and Albert Einstein he says Albert Einstein said if you can't explain your idea to a six-year-old you don't understand it you know you don't know is that's what's going on in my divorce you promised I thought it was going to be some high-minding conversation about institutional law this doesn't know won't be any divorce the fourth I'll send them off it'll be okay we get some information on the first question about the divorce I was impressed by the way you really did tie it to constitutional law last time so I had to leave them now I'm now I'm just craving just going for the cheap advice which I have none none just sounds like most lawyers are gangsters they're racketeers they privatize my right to a trial and then they just cloak it in marble and robes and latin kind of like the italian mafia a lot of marble a lot of latin eight a lot of latin look you know I feel for you and there's a lot going on in the world I'd say of course must be top five up there with the travel ban and the worst confirmation and a few other things but another thing I'll say is you know for the first time maybe in recent years look the reputation of lawyers has got to be at a high point because who's going after Trump on the travel ban who's protecting the rights of non-citizens it's the ACLU it's lawyers I'm pleased to see lawyers taking a kind of starting role and standing up to the potential tyranny of the Trump administration so you're saying I should settle before it goes to court I admire the attempt to get the advice okay I'm sure there is somebody listening who's got something to say about where are we with Gorsuch last time we talked you had written a piece in the New York Times about Gorsuch and euthanasia and abortion and what breadcrumbs he had tossed where are we now in terms of the other hearings over are there going to be more hearings what happens next we've had four days he testified for two we had a day of interviews and a day of formality and I think we're in a different world from the one that we talked in last time last time I was sort of on a fool's errand to to try to say that this is not a moderate nominee that he's extremely conservative more conservative than Scalia especially on issues like privacy abortion rights gay rights in the writings at least and now I think people have picked up on it the Democrats were very aggressive on the Judiciary Committee in questioning and Senator Schumer is indicated that they are likely to fill buster to me I think especially after listening to the non-answers over two days that Judge Gorsuch gave I think that is this isn't just something that I think might happen or maybe would be a good idea I think they should stop this nomination and this confirmation so give me a quick civics course on this it's the Senate that approves a Supreme Court nominee not the House that's correct and technically they only need it's only the Senate and technically they only need 51 votes for confirmation but we have this filbuster rule that still remains for Supreme Court nominees that requires a super majority sure is that a constitutional number or is that Senate rules the 51 is a constitutional number but the Senate rules require 60 under what's known as the under the under these rules for confirmation of Supreme Court justices so right now the Democrats could potentially block with well less than a majority so you need 60 to break a filibuster correct and there is this possibility that if the Democrats do filibuster that the Republicans will as has been widely remark go nuclear meaning that they'll get rid of the filibuster rule and restore the requirement of only 51 votes and could that happen I'm I'm not sure it's possible and then the Democrats would need to pick up a couple of Republican votes as well to block him why are these Senate rules so sacrosanct when you look at somebody like McConnell who's the Senate majority leader he's just in the pocket of the right wing win no matter what why wouldn't he blow up these Senate rules what's he holding on to well I think just from a purely strategic standpoint that they've got to be thinking there's a good chance they're going to lose the Senate sometime in the future maybe in the near future and if there is no filibuster rule anymore and it's just a majority it looks like the Democrats in that world would be able to get through whatever Supreme Court justices they want so senators who want to preserve their individual power I think have an incentive long term to hang on to the filibuster rule and that might be why they they are unable to to go nuclear as we say was the filibuster invented by our founding fathers or did that come after the constitution was written is there is there a provision in the constitution for a filibuster no the Senate can set its own rules and it's just an internal governance rule that they could that's why they could get rid of it or keep it it's up to them and what power would somebody like Schumer have with a filibuster right now how does that work if he just keeps talking or they have to get a what is it called a cloture cloture right exactly that technically to end the debate and to bring this to a vote the Republicans would would need the 60 votes and so by just refusing to allow that to happen to resist basically the going along on that cloture vote they can keep the nomination from being voted upon so they could really kill the nomination through filibuster and there's nothing McConnell could do other than change the rules it could change the rules which you know they've been trying to hint that if the Democrats really want to fight on that that this is what's going to happen but I I think first of all as a matter of principle that Gorsuch is so troubling and that confirmation hearing went so badly that they have an obligation to you know not just think strategically but to vote their conscience and to try to preserve basic tenants of our constitutional law like the right to abortion and the right to gay marriage and the general right of privacy and we haven't seen evidence that he's going to consistently uphold those fundamental rights that's the duty to preserve the Constitution so just on those grounds I think that they should oppose the nomination I'm also just not sure nobody really knows nobody can predict whether or not they'll take the gamble of going nuclear nuclear and and getting rid of the filibuster I think partly those strategic reasons that I'm suggesting indicate that you know some senators would be reluctant to to go along with it you have a PhD in politics and a law degree yeah as does Neil Gorsuch it's part of why he's drawn to this issue yeah in fact I was going to ask you how much of this is I know this guy and I don't like him like it's it's you kind of yeah you see but what I'm saying is you're cut from the same cloth in a way or you went through the same hurdles to get where you are and I can sometimes look at somebody who's like me a degenerate alcoholic gambler who can't keep a marriage together and say you know I know this guy how much of this is just personal animosity I'd say none I mean I have friends who think highly of him his credentials are stellar so when it comes to the brute fact of credentials who he's worked with all these things you know he's got a book with the same press that I published two books with I think you know my inclination would be to say this is terrific and it's terrific for the field of political philosophy to have somebody on the supreme court that has that background so I mean I really wanted to like him now he got his PhD in in judicial philosophy in political philosophy or jurisprudence I'm not sure the formal designation but it's broadly a dissertation in a kind of intersection of thinking about the philosophy of law and political philosophy so I would put it of the eight justices sitting on the court right now how many of them are steeped in this much academia I think he's the most I mean it's one of the reasons why this isn't just any kind of nomination he's got a deep knowledge of both the law but also a wider set of philosophical views that he brings to the court and yeah I would say he probably would be the most skilled in matters of jurisprudence and legal philosophy on the court he's going after Scalia's seat Scalia I don't know how well educated Scalia was but was Scalia the most profound intellectual sitting on the bench or was he just the most colorful he certainly was an intellectual and he certainly did delve and was hugely influential on the fields that I'm talking about his account of originalism I think many ways is a kind of I don't know massive shift and leader and in legal thought he was a professor at University of Chicago Law School he was no certainly no intellectual slouch I think he was a very smart and important thinker I happened to disagree with him a lot and think that some of the opinions towards the end of his life were misguided and some of them even a little ill-tempered but certainly he was a very smart serious intellectual no question about it his book a matter of interpretation and the debate that follows with scholars is one of the classics of legal philosophy and constitutional interpretation he was also a great writer he was and he knew how to write in that way that we started off talking he did not use a sort of obscurantist legalese lots of latin words to hide his views he wrote very plainly and clearly and people could read the opinions both lawyers and people on the court would be engaged with them and also the wider public so I think that that part of that that part of his writings is a great legacy actually so you and Gorsuch are similarly educated but you approach law from different standpoints I view you as a teacher you're engaged with your students you write and you're you write for the masses sometimes and you're a progressive you don't use your knowledge as a cudgel you use it as a way to bring people along I wonder if Judge Neil Gorsuch gets these degrees uses all his knowledge the same way Scalia did to lord it over people to intimidate to bully you into agreeing with them or or or moving his agenda for example originally I think like the originalists and I think anybody who says we have to make laws keeping in mind original intent of our founding fathers that's a way of lording your knowledge over people and getting your way by saying I am so educated I know what John Jay and Alexander Hamilton were thinking so I'm going to get my way because I'm better educated than you somebody like Gorsuch and Scalia kind of use their education to steamroll their agenda senator franken you know accused judge Gorsuch of lacking empathy in that trucker case and there were some exchanges that that raised issues of that kind of temperament but I have to say when it comes to originalism I am a critic of it I'm not a adherent and certainly of the Scalia version of it but I don't think it's just about lording one's knowledge over others because there's a deep philosophy and I'll tell you what it is and I don't agree with it and I can say why but it's a theory of democracy that many people hold and the idea is that the words when they are understood the way the way that they were understood at the time they were written or as they put it they've shifted away from intent they used to talk about intent now most of them including Scalia talk about the meaning of the terms widely shared or widely understood meaning their idea is that it's the democratic process that produced those words and that's why they're sacred and the role of the judge is to just follow the democratic will which is found either through statute and he holds that same kind of originalism or textualism in statutory interpretation or when it comes to the democratically enacted original meaning of the constitution itself or its amendments so I disagree with that and we can talk about why but they they have a well thought out extremely developed theory of why democracy demands doing this and it's not even though it looks like it might lack empathy at times why it's a way of respecting the people's will it's not prejudice in search of a constitutional amendment right and Scalia would say you know do you want me with my personal views to be making judicial decisions or do you want the legislature or the constitutional convention and he said it's the latter now the problem with Gorsuch I'll just say is I don't believe he's an originalist at all I think that he said that he's given a speech but when you look at the reading he's kind of very different judicial philosophy and this hasn't come out as much in the hearings as I would want and it's the theory of natural law which is very much I have access to the truth through a pure account of reason and I can kind of tell you what that is his views even though he claims to be an originalist as much have are influenced by the the account of natural law and there wasn't a lot of discussion of that unfortunately in the hearings it's sort of a new theory I think people already bothered to learn something about originalism now maybe they don't want to learn the new theory of natural law but in a way that that's as or more influential on him I think from the theory of originalism but are there precedents in natural law that you can build a decision on no I think that's part of why what I was trying to express in these pieces that there really is no member of the current Supreme Court that holds this view you know even among the most foremost scholars including his dissertation advisor John Finnis the views that they hold are so at odds with our current jurisprudence that they would make it just completely radical so for instance as I say in the piece John Finnis holds the belief that there should be a national ban on abortion imposed by the Supreme Court because the fetus is a constitutional person entitled to equal protection of the laws that's not something that anybody on the current Supreme Court holds and it's radically different from our current law and that's the kind of thing I think that you would get with with a certain school of natural law or what's more specifically called the new natural law theory are there supreme court decisions handed down where they cite precedent other than the constitution or other than previous supreme court decisions I guess there's a third category I mean that's certainly true it's Blackstone I guess you could go back to the British law at one time but I'm not trying to be funny here to me natural law you might as well be saying it's kind of like in the godfather when Tom says I mean are you allowed to cite something other than point because this is my one of my favorite movies so it's when Tom says hmm wait in the godfather what was that you started your sentence but then didn't finish the reference uh Tom the consigliary yeah when he says we got hit him now why we still have the muscle I mean could a supreme court justice write a decision justifying a violation of the war powers act by saying as Tom says in the godfather we got to hit him now why we still have the muscle I mean or do you have to stick to precedent previous rulings it's why there's so much power in the supreme court and why this is so unbelievably important and I've been spending all my time trying to focus people as much as I can on it is they can really do whatever they want now they have to get a majority in order to make law but there's nothing restricting the kind of jurisprudence that they can invoke and certainly if a natural law thinker found himself onto the supreme court he could cite precedent he could cite the text of the constitution and he could add a whole cloth just cite pure reason and what it is that is laid down and for reason in the natural law in his view so yeah he could you know I think he's a principled person I don't agree with him but he certainly could go beyond those other two sources and in fact I think that he would that he cares so much about these issues of assisted suicide and limits on it in particular his hundreds of pages that amount to an argument against the right to privacy suggests that he doesn't have much respect for that view that that he thinks it's contrary certainly to the constitutional text and also I think he thinks it's contrary to what reason requires of us when you say natural law we kind of touched on this and on the last show I did with you I know what you realize I you're working off the Quran what are you working off with natural law the idea is that natural law has its source in divine command in God's word but that God also had to allow common access through reason to the meaning of the natural law and so the thought is that apart from text of the constitution or apart from precedence when we just reason with one another we can come up with you know what the deep requirements of not just the law but of morality are and so in particular his advisor the tradition that he's in stresses this theory of of fundamental or as they put it basic goods and suggest that it's the role of government to promote them now that doesn't come from some particular text it comes from the idea of reason now some people hold that these two things go together that the natural law and the constitution are really the same thing so that's what we should be doing but what is the the book in other words I can just say to you give me your wallet and I want your house and I made this decision based on natural law what is that it could be anything that simple I mean the godfather references about power right like I let's use the muscle while we can and go out and do what we have the power to do I think the natural law thinkers are are committed to a more subtle view which is that reason has a kind of force and if we just appeal to pure reason then that's what's going to lead us to doing the right thing and that's why we could stray so much I mean but who are they citing were so exciting reason it's unreasonable and they're giving reasons well I don't know I mean you know again I disagree with their conclusions but you and I can have an argument and you know your arguments I'm not saying this would always happen but your arguments in one instance might be bad and mine might be good and you know the the force of the better reason might might prevail and certainly it could go the other way just to get into his view is I think he thinks there are just a series of really bad precedents that run contrary to the requirements of the natural law and one of them is the failure to respect life and that's what his work is about and when it comes to euthanasia certainly the claim that that there's a constitutional right to assisted suicide he dismisses that and even to the right of the states to make laws enabling assisted suicide is very skeptical of that he thinks that it runs contrary to this idea that life can't be violated that's the core idea of his whole work and he's worried about these laws that that do not that's failed to respect life now that language that we're starting to use of course has an abortion resonance to it and he never gives a conclusion but he certainly gives as you put it before breadcrumbs suggesting that he might too think that rovers is weighed I think he does think frankly that rovers is weighed fails to respect life and that and as a matter of natural law it should be overturned and maybe even more specifically the constitution that protects natural law might actually require us to have a supreme court that protects the right of the fetus and that that's you know in reason not just in uh wow in some abstract precedence or in the constitutional tax I just remembered why I couldn't go to law school while you were talking I hung on every word but in the back of my mind I'm thinking was it sunny or Frankie five maybe it was Frankie five angels who said we got to hit them now why we still have the muscle maybe it was from godfather I don't I'm listening and I think that's why I never could get into academia I'm the same way I mean I've got this maybe the same mind and the same movie on the brain what is the line again oh yeah take the gun leave the cannoli that's Clemenza other way no it's leave yeah take the canal can always leave the gun leave the gun take the canal right see I know I'd get it wrong but let's it's not important although I do think you could probably build case law off the godfather Gorsuch the next step what happens in a month two months what what happens here what are we looking at I think the Republicans are hoping for a vote sooner than that and they've indicated that it could come as soon as within the next couple of weeks I don't remember the precise date that McConnell was giving but you know we just don't know because the it's all really up to what the Democrats are going to do and if they fill buster it's going to be a longer process and we have to see what will happen with this ability to get get rid of the the ability to have senators to fill buster Supreme Court nominees so it could be a long process I really I mean I think I've been clear that I think that this nominee failed to disabuse us of the ideas that he might hold very radical views I think given his writings that was his obligation at the confirmation hearing and I was willing to postpone judgment about whether to vote for him until we heard what he said but the way that he answered questions was just to me so evasive that it was almost you know worse that the hearings happen than they that they didn't I mean he was asked for instance about these questions he was asked by Senator Durbin about whether he holds the view that the fetus is a constitutional person and he just responded by citing Roe versus Wade and saying that of course that case holds that the fetus is not a constitutional person now I know what the case says and anybody who's taken a basic course in constitutional law knows what the case says Roe versus Wade what we want to know is what he thinks and whether he respects that precedent whether he would overturn it not respect it in the sense that knows it exists and would think carefully about it but whether or not he's committed to the idea that the case is wrong and the same about gay marriage he just failed to really tell us anything about his judicial philosophy and the underlying issues he even failed to say anything about Griswold why would national ampoules vacation be brought into Griswold I thought it was a great movie that's a case that really establishes the for the first time the fundamental modern right to privacy it's about the right to use contraception by married couples extended out to unmarried couples later on but it's the bedrock really of our privacy law that gay rights are built upon in a case about the right to intimacy among gay couples and striking down laws prohibiting so-called homosexual esotomy and it's also the basis for the right to an abortion in Roe and later in Casey and he didn't tell us even you know I think other justices have said that's not a case that's going to be overturned I believe in the right to privacy he didn't tell us anything the thing I don't understand with these hearings is you cannot have a litmus test for Supreme Court nominee a president isn't allowed just I think through precedent or just what we're accustomed to you can't bring a guy into the Oval Office and say I'm going to nominate you for the Supreme Court but I have to know where you stand on abortion I have to know where you stand on euthanasia that would be considered a violation of checks and balances correct well I mean there's no way to enforce it right the process is there's separation of powers the president picks the person the senate confirms and what president Trump told us ahead of time is that he's going to pick somebody who's devoted to overturning Roe versus Wade now when Gorsuch was asked whether Trump had demanded that of him he he not only said no he said he would walk out of the room if he had been asked that and you know I believe that that there was no explicit conversation but I think that the people who vetted him looked at the same things that I looked at and made a conclusion that you know Trump could fulfill his campaign promise that's not it's not an accident that they chose this person that doesn't mean that there was a conversation I understand that but if the president yeah isn't allowed to say where do you stand on Roe versus Wade I see why is the senate why is the legislative branch allowed to corner a nominee and get him on record yeah without a specific case in front of him I mean he's supposed to rule on a specific case right based on what came before is it fair to ask these questions yeah um there's disagreement about that I think this is not only fair but obligatory it's to try to understand the basics of his judicial philosophy and to understand his writings so this book that he published in the dissertation before it are explicitly about his philosophy anyway of the doctrine of privacy so you don't have to say you know why how would you decide this specific case that came before the court in order to ask about documented statements that he's made and actually published I think actually there's an obligation to do that because the role of the senate is to protect the constitution not just to look at the schools that the nominee went to and part of protecting the constitution is protecting aspects of our bedrock case law and if there's suspicion that this person is going to oppose or overturn bedrock parts of the constitution including not just I should say the right to an abortion but also the right to gay marriage which although it's recent I consider it a rightly decided case a lot of people's contemporary rights rest on the supreme court holding there and it would be a major upheaval of our current law to overturn it so yeah I think we need to know something about the nominees basic views about how to interpret the constitution and fundamental doctrines like privacy just wanted to tie in some issues that we discussed on today's show and on last Friday's episode one of the things I talked about was debtor's prison prisoners earning 50 cents an hour to build furniture and take calls for travel agencies I mean it's pretty amazing how many state prisons now are paying for their prisons by putting prisoners to work there is this cycle of debt that police departments like Ferguson, Missouri perpetuate they will pull an African-American over and just find the guy for a broken tail light and it just doesn't end they end up the Justice Department actually wrote about this when they studied Ferguson and they said the way Ferguson was able to pay for their social services and the city services was through pulling black men over and finding them and then these guys would get into a cycle of debt they couldn't pay the bills so the fines would go up and then they put a lien on their salaries and then a lot of them just ended up going to prison which I understood locking somebody up because they're unable to pay fines is against the constitution is that against the constitution well I mean there is an anemic unfortunately jurisprudence about prisoners rights and so lots of stuff that I think when you read the constitution or you think about its basic principles rights that should obviously extend to prisoners and to those convicted of minor or including major crimes rights that they should have unfortunately our case law is not as developed as it should be compared for instance to Europe I mean in Europe there's a right to vote in prison here it's two states that allow it in Europe there are all sorts of regulations about prisoners working here there's a lot of abuse so yeah what does the constitution say because I know which which amendment outlawed slavery and did they include the right to make prisoners work for free when they freed the slaves the 13th amendment outlawed slavery and it seems like it's relevant here that if there is a forced labor or an abusive labor or conditions that are extreme instances of servitude that you might invoke the anti-slavery requirement of the 13th amendment but the there's a weird quirk in it and that's that there's an exception right in the middle of it separated by two commas making an exception for those convicted of crimes for prisoners and that's put a damper in the attempt to use that amendment that's in the 13th amendment yes correct what happened after we freed the slaves african-americans were immediately arrested correct if they if they didn't have a job if they left they were given they became tenant farmers that's right i mean there were a series of pieces of legislation called the black codes passed not long after the abolition of slavery what i'm saying but in the 13th what my question is yeah enshrined into the 13th amendment yeah is this provision that you can force a prisoner to work did they anticipate jim crow did they anticipate the idea that black men would be wandering around you could arrest them for vagrancy and pretty much put them to work on a plantation that in the form of a prison certainly that's what happened that the provision was taken advantage of and all of these things did happen people were arrested former slaves were arrested for things like vagrancy and then re-emprisoned on the same plantation that in some instances that they had been slaves on now was that the intent of the framers of the 13th amendment i don't think so i don't think there's any evidence for that scholars disagree with it in fact i think and i i'm gonna talk about this in a forthcoming piece that it was really just a failure to reconfigure the amendment that had been used in previous instances of abolition of slavery in the territories and if you look in the 14th amendment i think it corrects that problem courts have not caught up to this point but the 14th amendment talks about persons not with no exception and it talks about equal protection of the laws no exception so the language that should have been used in the 13th amendment with no prisoner exception is finally used in the 14th amendment now that's my argument courts have not unfortunately as much as they should have recognized the the absolute nature of the prohibition on on slavery when was the 14th amendment passed after the civil war there are three amendments that are passed there's the 13th 14th and 15th amendments and they're each intended to try to transform the country from one that had widespread instances of slavery to one of equal citizenship for everyone including performer slaves uh the 13th amendment abolishes slavery and voluntary servitude the 14th amendment guarantees equal protection of the laws due process in the 15th amendment guarantees the equal right to vote right and the 14th amendment is that the most cited amendment don't they use it for everything from abortion to euthanasia to giving the election to george w bush i mean anything can fall under the purview of the 14th amendment it seems it's not any amendment i think actually it's the most important part of the entire constitution i'd make that argument anyway because it transforms the the whole country from one that has lots of instances of subordination to a demand of equal protection of the laws and that's a move really from an undemocratic constitution for the first time to one that at least aspires to an idea of equality and an idea of democracy technically it also applies the bill of rights which if you read them limit what congress can do and the federal government it applies them through a process known as uh incorporation to to apply to the state and local governments as well so it is it is a major thing it's a major so if you are like me and you want to learn about the law yeah giving a number to the 14th amendment it's not giving it credit it should be called something else is it is it the culmination is the 14th amendment the second act yeah of of the united states is it really what lincoln was fighting the civil war for is it the 14th amendment that yeah yeah i love that i mean we should give it a kind of name to express its significance i mean it really is a kind of um a new birth of the of the constitution remember in the 18th century this is a constitution that allows for slavery and postpones even discussion of the slave trade for several years after ratification what comes from that is a a a country that's not fully democratic because of the existence of slavery and subordination and the aspiration of the 14th amendment is to end that and to really create a a ideal of equality throughout the country not just limits on what the federal government can do so i'd be open to a name if you've got one but something big david feldman the david feldman amendment yeah i like that that is a nice that helps david feldman with his divorce case i you know louis through is on the show today he's with the bbc and we're going to talk about his documentary about Scientology Scientology is able to thrive in america because they're a religion so they have tax exempt status then they don't have tax exempt status and we have freedom of religion and after my interview with louis i was in the car listening to am radio and it was the michael medved show he's a right wing conservative which all of am radio is and his sponsors are franklin graham evangelical type and all these commercials for movies about christ and just everything was religion and i thought okay we have freedom of religion but wasn't it really freedom from religion and if the airwaves belong to the government and they're licensing you don't really own a radio station you get a license from the government is it constitutional isn't it a violation of the first amendment for radio to feature religion no i don't think so i mean i see it's certainly the principles that you're expressing our core to we have two religion clauses one about pre-exercise and one about um establishment and one says basically the government can't limit our ability to practice or use our religion the other says government can't act with a religious basis only it needs a secular basis that's the core meaning of the establishment clause and i think that's what you mean by freedom from religion but i you know i think radio if it prohibited religious speech would be way too restrictive and well just as a free speech principle generally we want to hear lots of views i think all views and religious views i think are part of that now if the government starts promoting as the government a religious message that's a very different thing so i think that um you know a crash on the town square the supreme court is right to say that that's unconstitutional because it risks the perception that the town is promoting that idea and certain kinds of prayers certainly that are limiting and exclusive to one religion if they take place in town meetings or in state legislatures i i think the same thing but we have to i think allow for a wide variety of voices on on radio and not just restrict them to so we don't but we don't have a wide variety of voice you know that's the problem yeah i think that so the answer i think is more diversity on the radio and uh you know i the fairness doctrine for instance is something that i've been thinking you know maybe we should bring back that you would require you know multiple perspectives on on radio not just allowing for this segmentation of the audience or at minimum i think there's just not enough you know you're trying to do this and i'm trying to participate in it but not enough progressive voices on the radio and so we need more of that as well i talked about the fairness doctrine last week that was pretty much killed under the reagan administration and you cannot have rush lemba or shon hanity with the fairness doctrine right exactly and you might not have trump unfortunately you know that i think that's the truth that this extreme kind of rhetoric that you get from those figures that you just mentioned has now been not just cordoned off to talk radio but has become echoed in presidential politics or you know the break bar station you and i do serious radio sometimes i mean a lot of trump was was born there from from that kind of conservative talk radio an opinion because of the fairness doctrine getting thrown out opinion has morphed into fact you cannot correct rush lemba there's no federal mandate to correct him when he says tax cuts for the rich juice the economy when there there's no fact based science behind supply side economics so what you have is you have guys like shon hanity and and rush lemba on the radio every day repeating a lie over and over again as opinion they fall under the purview of opinion and the fairness doctrine is gone so there's nobody who can give the opposite opinion which is a fact and it's uh yeah before you go the establishment clause is that part of the first amendment that's like a comma yep no it's right it's uh the first amendment has many rights and entitlements in it and there are two religion clauses one prohibiting the establishment of religion and that most obviously means that you can't have a church of the united states the way there's a church of england but it also means more broadly what you were talking about when you were talking about freedom from religion the idea that government can't endorse or coerce people into believing a religious doctrine right well this has been very edifying and because i had a mixed marriage and believed in the first amendment on christmas all the gifts were given to our children from establishment clause davis he would he and sometimes she depending on the year would come down the chimney and put freedom in everybody's i don't know what i'm talking about okay i love yes virginia there is an establishment clause so well did you learn something today professor yeah well i mean what we're you know your questions are terrific because they are it's just i really appreciated what you said in the beginning because i haven't had a career of doing these public intellectual pieces and writing about contemporary issues like the gorsuch nomination or i have a piece on prisoner voting in politico that touches on some of the subjects we're talking about there it's very recent for me but this radio show i feel like is the equivalent of it it's trying to in as clear as we can be uh you know think about these hard constitutional issues for an audience that's informed and wants to know more and a lot of these issues unfortunately are couched in a kind of secret language with shorthand and using cases rather than explaining what they're about and so i really appreciate what we're what you're trying to do which is to uh to generously give me the time to to try to explain some of these well you're a teacher and i appreciate it and let's do it let's keep doing this because i want to take away the curtain behind law and get people more involved in my in my divorce yes yeah thinking about the travel man and your divorce my divorce we didn't really get to the travel ban i have a feeling maybe next time it's going to be the news yes professor cori brechneider teaches political science at brown university he is a constitutional law scholar he can answer every question except what the hell are you doing on the david feldman show thank you sir thank you it's always a pleasure thanks so much david thank you coming to us today from los angeles is our resident film critic michael snider these are some of the movies he's going to talk about the side my Scientology movie the zookeeper's wife ghost in the shell boss baby and then we're going to talk about the san francisco giants and some binge watching the first thing i asked you was do you want to talk about any documentaries and the first thing you said was my Scientology movie and he happens to be our big guest on the show today louis through yeah literally is a terrific investigative reporter who has no filters it'll do anything to get the story he goes into provocative circumstances and he's really kind of unafraid to take on the big boys including the church of Scientology and we've seen specials and we've seen inside reports and we've seen tell all books about Scientology from the point of view of people that have left the church and some who have just investigated it but thorough decided to just take it on and he came to los angeles from his native britain and he delved into finding out about about the church and found disaffected members who had left and began interviewing him and decided that since he couldn't get anything with the head of honcho the guy who basically was hand-picked by elron hubbard to take over the church which is a massive business slash corporation a money-making venture for sure even though they're obviously dodging certain taxes and such by you know presenting as a church this guy would not talk to thorough and so he decided to take transcripts and old videos and write a script and hire actors to portray various people in significant moments in the church's recent history so that was pretty hilarious including a guy that he hired to play tom cruise who of course is the shiny smiling face of Scientology to much of the mind boggled world and it's tense and it's exciting and and these people are not going to you know be investigated without a pushback and so louis had to deal with a lot of negativity and a lot of shall we say threats i think threats are fair they're all one of video and they're all in my Scientology movie it's a very individual and idiosyncratic look because he's at the center of all the the tumult but he also like i said brings in a couple of former Scientology church members some of which are still very conflicted about having this and so it's it's fascinating and shades of gray but ultimately you do see that this is a kind of a sinister operation and i don't mean louis pretty innovative way of doing a documentary to recreate moments that had not been captured on camera except the nightline interview with ted copple that david miscarriage did but other than that to do improv in front of marty rathburn people who've actually experienced these things it had a time machine quality to it well i loved also the fact that you got the auditions as they look for people as he looked for people to play the various figures he wanted to pick than his scenes and scenarios and pretty hilarious and particularly the competition to play tom cruise i mean it's nothing this town where i live much of the year is a hot bed of out of work actors looking for any kind of gig and hey this was a gig and a paid one yeah i recommend it i think you can download it on amazon i'm not sure i had a screen but i totally recommend it it's very entertaining and again it's a little scary a little creepy uh yeah it's a magnolia picture so you can have access to it that of course is mark cuban's company and he's pretty dedicated to getting stuff out there even if it you know basically uh is controversial maybe even more interested in getting controversial things out there uh so uh in collaboration with john dower and uh and uh producer simon chin uh kudos to louis good stuff great and great score great score i don't know if you remember but the music was hitch cocky and it reminded me of vertigo it was it was and it was an original score yeah nice tension yeah lea remanese a and e series have you seen that about scienceology uh yeah i mean that also pretty great but this is a completely different channel then we see uh i'm losing you there sir are you there we've seen them yeah we've seen memoirs from paul haggis and uh you know there's a lot out there how many bars on your phone um what's doing that's pretty full all right i don't know why you're breaking up there right now maybe uh who knows what it is okay well it's good to have sound on a radio show yeah very funny that's true sound is very important paul prevents it edit paul prevents it edited the aristocrats with his eyes closed did you know that that's oh no actually i didn't it be interesting to see him do stand up with his eyes closed but it's perilous next to the edge of the stage gilbert godfrey that's why gilbert godfrey was so great on the aristocrats because he tells his jokes with his eyes closed and paul prevents uh was editing with his eyes closed okay the zookeeper's wife well you know there's a certain continued relevance to addressing the holocaust the horrific extermination of so many people during world war two uh by the third rike and its axis allies and the zookeeper's wife is a docket drama you know that phrase based on a true story can kind of get to you after a while but this is in fact based on a true story and they tried to stick pretty close to most of the facts i think albeit some things must have been dramatized but it's all about a real couple um antonina and jan zebinski and they basically owned and operated the barsaw zoo in poland in the capital city of poland i believe was the capital city um and in uh 1939 here come the nazis and that means they uh are at risk of losing the zoo for a variety of different reasons and the strafe bombing of war's off killed animals uh the nazi occupiers killed animals and meanwhile antonina and jan decide they're going to do something about their jewish friends were stuck in the barsaw ghetto they had jewish animals in the zoo well i looked at the nose on that elephant oh my god come on that's funny well hey i'm right not serious you should have said right not serious i know hey look you know we don't have time to sit in the writer's room and come up with the quips right now okay all right it's my fault and then he won't they say all these people jessica chastain plays antonina uh beautifully so and uh yohan heldenberg uh who is a pretty cool eastern european actor who's in a very interesting movie about um people in that area of the world who love country music among other things the broken circle breakdown they they are wonderful as antonina and jan and uh daniel bro who is a terrific german actor i mean first rate has been in a lot of great films where he plays the hero and somewhere he plays the villain most particularly in the most uh recent captain america film civil war he plays hitler's chief zoologist uh a guy named what's heck and he has a kind of flirtatious relationship with antonina and uh he is sniffing around the zoo the whole time uh he's trying to do all these kind of genetic experiments with hybrids and stuff animals in this case and so he's involved there and meanwhile the the couple's trying to smuggle the jews out you're always thinking uh this is definitely one for the never forget file you know we just have to keep reminding people particularly when anti-semitism does not go away it's a perennial it's a perennial it's like a seersucker suit you should always have one in your closet you can't get rid of it but anyway uh it's funny they called it the zoo the zookeeper's wife always thinking maybe yudin in the zoo then might have been a good name for it um and i have a feeling if matt daemon had an option to be called we bomb the zoo instead of we bought a zoo game it anyway i just thought solid stuff nicky caro directed it and it was written by angelo workman and um yeah it's not a great film but it's certainly one worth your time and it's a story worth telling and it's a true story yes from beginning to end uh you know they have to have their kids there that had to keep the kids safe it was brutal man brutal great the boss baby well um the boss baby is another animated entry in the uh attempt to bomb as many millions and millions of dollars as the studios can from family audiences and in this case you've got terrific voice actors i mean alex baldwin steve you semi lisa kudrow plus uh jimmy kimmel and toby maguire and essentially it's a an animated comedy about a suit wearing a briefcase carrying baby who just shows up at the suburban home of a husband and wife who work at puppyco.com or whatever and torment the older brother and you need suspension of disbelief here and it's a funny thing it requires a cohesion in whatever fictional world you're building and the boss baby which is basically a string of gags including uh from alex baldwin as the voice of this you know kind of mutant baby a glen getery glen lost jokes uh and many less sophisticated it lacks cohesion there are plot holes and incongrues and i see what they wanted to do but any chance the filmmaker said i did a smart sharp look at how the first born kid in a family feels put upon by a new brother or sister you know the tyranny of the infant all that's lost amid the flat jokes and knee jerk sentiment and i guess it's all supposed to give everyone an aww shucks feeling at the end but even the whole idea of a factory a heavenly factory that manufactures or spits out babies that was done and done equally clumsily in storks from a year or so ago um alex baldwin is always entertaining he's got a way with the line and it's interesting to see his voice come out of this this kid but you never really what did letterman say buy the premise and you buy the bit i didn't buy the premise i sure as hell didn't buy the bit and it's funny i saw an animated film that was a true work of art and it was nominated for a best animated feature in last year's oscars and um it kind of hasn't really had much traction here in the states it didn't win but it was wonderful it's called my life as a zucchini that's the american title or the english language title and it's a swiss french stop motion animated feature and uh it just uh is uh heading into its us uh theatrical engagement uh right around now and i i loved it and for the record the actual title in french is ma vie de courgette because courgette is the boy's nickname which translates into english as zucchini and essentially it's the tale of a boy who is orphaned in very tragic fashion this is an animated feature and he's brought to a foster home run by a very decent sort of caring bunch of adults and he's well treated but this movie is about his struggles with the lost city space the need to fit in with the other kids at the home all of whom want to get adopted and you know just general real world problems and it's all done with honesty and wit it's lovely and it's also kind of sad and and still it's hopeful and david i'm not joking i wept a little bit at the end of the film uh you know uh despite looking like it was designed to be primarily viewed by children it is so much more and it shows you what you can do with animation as opposed to the cheap um laugh product of boss baby it could have been had a little bit of depth like i said uh in regards to you know what happens when a new uh new born infant shows up at a home where there's already an older kid i think the last time michael snider wept at a movie was when he act had a pay for one right uh that must have been i can't even remember how far back that might have been so we've covered uh the science my scientology movie the zoo keeper's wife ghost in the shell oh ghost in the shell you know oh look um as a fan of animation and comic books and japanese manga and uh i guess what the word for their cartoons is anime i'm very familiar with ghost in the shell uh a dystopian futurist uh saga about uh essentially um a um what would you call it an android or a cybernetically enhanced human uh it's the future when human beings are cybernetically enhanced and one woman or girl her brain is salvaged after an accident one assumes and put into this life the body that being the body of scarlet show hanson you know she's playing a different character of course and it appears to be japan and it has it it's essentially you know this creature is going to be the perfect soldier they decided to build a weapon this is another familiar theme in uh sci-fi of this nature and she's supposed to stop criminals and terrorists and i don't know we've seen so many similar settings and issues and speculative fiction about uh artificial intelligence and androids as cybernauts and tech enhancement and this thing cribs its look from blade runner although it does so it's like blade runner on steroids because you know uh cgi animation has become so fantastic in the special effects realm but there's also elements of the matrix and yet it gets some of its tone from akira which like ghost is a manga turned anime uh but west world and humans are much deeper and more complex and emotionally satisfying things about artificial intelligence and and the question of sentience in robotics and and this sort of thing uh and even though there are um actual robots who are main characters in things like humans in west world here the human brain in the cybernetic body displays little of the humanity and emotion that it should and scarlet jumanston played an alien in human skin in the appropriately named under the skin which was a sci-fi film from a few years ago but she was much more layered in that than in this performance uh you know maybe it was the script but man it looks good ghost in the shell looks pretty terrific there's also by the way before we bail on this there's been questions of cultural appropriation the idea that this japanese um property features scarlet shohanston uh you know a white woman in the central role which is ostensibly a japanese person and in fact the brain that's within this body is a japanese woman's brain and admittedly uh takeshi katano the great japanese character is in this thing and by the way the only one in the whole movie who basically speaks all of his lines in japanese with subtitles and that's a little kind of boggling but with that in mind you know if you take it as a b movie you know bargain matinee another sci-fi romp and i guess it's okay it's got you know she's pretty wonderful i just feel like we've been here already you know are movies taking second place to television these days i was having now hmm um i i got to say that uh the long-form narratives that we are seeing in prestige television and also in networks like fx and amc um are in many cases outstripping a lot of the film output tell me about the expanse tell me about the expanse the expanse is it's nothing short of exquisite the expanse is a sci-fi saga um and the two guys who created it uh wrote these books about this kind of futuristic circumstance where humans have left the earth and have colonized um the moon fully colonized mars and have colonized the asteroid belt in some places where they've created artificial uh atmosphere and have built basic waystations and living units and and marketplaces and what have you and this show set in this milieu is not only you know a sort of a spaceships lying around um the political intrigue with the potential for war but it also has romantic subplots it has extraterrestrial uh biology uh threats it's got so many different storylines that are interwoven that if you just watch it you know half-heartedly or in a casual way you you'll either get lost or you won't follow it or you won't care but if you give it the time it is beautiful and complex and the effects are marvelous and it's the first thing i think on um sci-fi channel since maybe Battlestar Galactica that had any kind of weight in genuine drama and sort of an adult perspective and the only familiar faces i think in the first two seasons as far as i can see uh thomas jane plays a detective uh on the belt a belter uh on the asteroids uh shura dosh blue plays a un poncho on earth and in the first series the uh the son of richard harris one of his two great actor sons uh Jared Harris plays a kind of belter wheeler dealer and sort of uh gang boss and the sporting players a lot of them have never seen four are are right on and this channel sci-fi has done some kind of purile typical action uh the you know kind of shallow science fiction stuff before like kill joys and they've also done things like uh dark matter that sound a little more heavyweight than they are this is the real deal the expanse is absolutely worth the time it is hard science fiction in a lot of places and it's entertaining dramatic and deep legion what is legion a legion is actually part of the whole marvel universe but it's part of the marvel universe that comes from x-man land thus it's um part of the properties that marvel basically leased to fox so not disney don't interact not disney i'm sorry not disney no this is not you know the marvel um basically um contracted out properties to 20th century fox and sony when they were just getting rolling when they finally built their own studio situation and connected with disney they were able to build their entire interrelated cinematic universe that features all these top tour actors playing classic marvel characters and also with a television component that is ostensibly part of that same world but spider man and all spider man related characters and uh that went to sony and the x-men and the fantastic four and all of those interrelated characters were picked up by 20th century fox most recently because it made economic sense after sony kind of fumbled their second version of spider man they made a deal with marvel to co-produce spider man incorporate the character and his various supporting cast into the big marvel cinematic universe which is why you now see spider man running around with four and these you know and captain america and iron man and these big deal blockbusters about the avengers and that's allowing sony to have uh robert downey jr as sony stark appear in the spider man film that's coming up in a month or two homecoming and you know it's obviously economic sense for sony to have done it but there's nothing like that with 20th century fox what fox does have is such a massive x-men universe with all these characters that they took one of the characters not a major character but the bastard child of professor x the character played in the movies by patrick stewart and they have spun off a series by the guy who basically uh created and show ran uh and continues to do so fargo the fargo tv series based on the cone brothers film the same guy is in charge of legion and legion is about david howler the bastard son of charles Xavier and an israeli scientist and this guy has some serious problems he's perhaps schizophrenic and he's an incredibly powerful telepath and telekinetic and the guy is played in the series on fx by none other than matthew crawley of downton abbey uh dan stevens and he unrecognizable and the comedian aubrey plaza has a significant role in this as well and she's doing work like she's never done before and she's fantastic and legion uh the book it it deserves people's attention that's all that's all i'll say on it and just really you know maybe only genre lovers are gonna dig it but i don't think so if you like a puzzle if you like complex drama if you like really outrageous performances you know both of these shows are you know for you and you speak very highly of archer archer is coming back and i have to tell you it's the funniest animated show on television i don't know whether you paid any attention to it yeah it started out basically as you know what let's make a cartoon about the the biggest jerk who ever tried to emulate james bond a secret agent who's sort of inept on some levels but somehow indestructible and gets the job done and he works as a mother yeah he and it just so happens that this black ops unit that he works for is run by his mother and it's it is hilariously great and it could be uh it's the funniest animated thing i think on television right now and they've gone through a bunch of different iterations uh when the cia strips all of their um legitimacy away one season they they become basically um a drug ring you know they try to acquire and sell coke and that's one season another season they move from uh their new york base to los angeles and get uh their own private detective agency up and running it's all about the mother and her minions including her son sterling archer and his on again off again girlfriend lana who um is voiced by uh the woman from um the the talk uh and you should pilot it's the best work she's ever done she's a pretty good stand up and she's done some great you know kind of hosting tv shows and such but as lana cayne that's the name of the character she's this kind of leggy sort of bond girl but who's actually a totally competent secretion and she's uh archers paramour and they've actually had a kid since the show ran what three or four seasons they introduced a pregnancy but this season it's kind of a film noir and it's maybe archers fantasy uh at who knows but um it's plays archers age john benjamin yeah john benjamin is also the uh the father on the um bob's burgers bob's burgers yeah bob burgers on fox speaking of animated shows but he's in his glory as sterling archer and uh everybody in the voice cast is right on judy greer plays this kind of off the wall rich girl turned secretary for the agency i mean i mean it's great um christian slater shows up as himself ostensibly the actor christian slater in this cartoon series secretly works for the cia shades of chuck barris and i mean there's some funny stuff going on on the show and i i i find it wildly entertaining and very quickly your beloved giants how are they doing so far well uh since you pay little or no attention to baseball i'll just remind you that season hasn't started yet but as soon as it does i'll have a report in the meantime it's preseason anything goes uh these are the times when even the lowest teams find their fans dreaming of a championship whether rightly so or not when does one is opening day it's only a couple days from now um let me see here i'm i'm really not maybe it's this coming weekend maybe when this runs um we're going to be on the verge of it but the no uh official games as yet um i always believe in the orange and black attack as i like to call the giants i may live much of the year in los angeles and i do love it here but um you know i stopped my place in s f and damn it i hate the la sports teams and i'm a giants lifer giants 49ers and warriors you know for life and how's alex spennett i'm getting a lot of emails from his fans telling me that really yeah to have alex on the show alex is alex alex is always uh you know a handful alex is opinionated alex is a legend in broadcasting alex is my friend you know you can catch us every week on uh rocu but you know all i can tell you is invite him on if you like and and let the sparks fly what's the name of the show the alex spennett show it's called the alex spennett show it's on gab net dot net and my segment's mobile ciders culture blast the separate thing that that pops up on a weekly basis and if you have a rocu you can you can watch it well you can listen to it or watch it however you can watch him on the video my segment is audio but it's uh you know new movies and things that you and i don't get to and is he doing a daily show or a weekly show it's pretty frequent he does a nightly thing called the ramble it's uh citizen panels it's him you know going off on stuff there's plenty to go off on in this day and age yeah i should call him well now that we've worked that out all i can tell you is it's ever a pleasure uh... mr felden and sorry for any kind of i invited him slayton was in town and i said well why don't we ask alex to do the show and alex wouldn't do the show with bobby and me because now it's like a standoff who's going to call whom first whoa what's the problem i was this kind of has arrived well holy not he didn't do anything you know what i you know what i've been so busy and i've been having personal problems the thought and the thought of having dinner with alex and then it's gonna turn to the personal problems and then it's just gonna open up and i just don't want to talk about my personal life you know i mean you're talking about you're talking about your strange relationship to alex right here and right now i'm just gonna get the inquisition about how i ended up this way from him and i just don't feel like answering those questions you know what i mean you're you're an enigma wrapped in a riddle david you're like a stinks michael snider is our resident film critic how do people reach you sir you can follow me on twitter at culture blaster and you can certainly check in on facebook at michael sniders culture blast page uh like it listen to the stuff that i do with david and maybe the stuff i do with alex read articles whatever it's all there it's all good and it's always fun to chat with you mr feldman mr snider thank you thanks for listening i want to thank louis through his documentary my scientology movie is playing in theaters near you and i think you can watch it on all the streaming platforms amazon netflix itunes kelly carlins book a carlin home companion is now out in paperback dan pastor next to documentary fatherless will be on fusion tomorrow night i think it's at nine thirty also check them out on split cider and xweeney's law professor cori brett schneider will be teaching at brown university you can read them in time politico and of course the new york times and film critic michael sniders over culture blast we have a youtube channel it's just audio of this show go to youtube type in david feldman comedy subscribe to the channel you get all these shows for free on youtube or itunes or stitcher help me out give us a good review on itunes that helps share the love share the knowledge share the laughs copy and paste the link to this show and send it to your friends please i have a new stand up album that i'm working on pay what you want that's we have 10 minutes up on my website pay what you want a penny or a billion dollars and you can download the first 10 minutes we'll be posting about 10 minutes every month and building out this album tell me what jokes you like which ones you don't like hit the contact button stay in touch i answer all my emails have a great april fools day tomorrow from the show brisk studios in downtown manhattan that'll do it for us medicare for all this is the david feldman radio network