Mike Judge Interview

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we're around the same age so there's a bit of that in this conversation connecting about albuquerque i've been i've been very nostalgic lately i don't know if it's i don't like to call it nostalgia but i'm sort of trying to sort things out I kind of go on these missions into my memories to try to you know kind of target where it went wrong I'm on these stealth missions into my memories and I just stand there Mike look at what's going on here this might be something why you in that hotel room that I think that's a problem and I pull out then I kind of regroup and I'm like we're going back in let's go back in let's go back to that hotel room alright so this looks like sophomore your high school you're in a hotel room that's your buddy Dave that's Chris Chris that's Chris oh you got I remember this you guys are just taking a handful of yellow jackets and those two guys yep they're both making out with girls onto both beds and you're just standing there like an asshole because your girls split now yet there yep that's yep you're going to break those two giant bottles those glass sprite bottles that were using a mix with and make a scene and ruin the party alright let's pull out I'm out I'm out yeah those are the memories Albuquerque New Mexico Datsun b210 first car got it as a gift from my parents right after i took a finished my classes at McGinnis driver school McGinnis drivers ed drove around that car wrecked it the first month combing my hair in the rearview car put that car through a lot a lot of driving a lot of drinking and driving at age 15 hanging out in front of liquor stores dudes get us a pint of southern the six high knees this pint of southern six of Miller's dude you give me a half pint of Jack six of Miller's dude you get us a find in Southern who are the people that got us that stuff I think we were kids I was 15 driving around there was gunplay Albuquerque was exciting driving out with my buddy Dave he's dead now me and Dave the 73 Firebird with the holley double pumper bored out cylinder heads whatever that means fast fucking car his dad owned a stereo stores always had a good stereo me dave bob bryan Chris Damon some combination of that running around drinking booze driving around the car then date he's always having problems with the Firebirds who got a Scirocco volkswagen scirocco then someone we just cruise around cruise around the McDonald's let's go to Highland High McDonald's I go to Island I we all got our own McDonald's let's go by the mcdonalds hanging out cruising the mcdonalds Dave and Andy were out cruising some other McDonald's up by eastdale some guy shot a bullet right into his car right in today's card shot a bullet never got along with Andy don't know what happened to that guy dave is dead mention that right alright let's go let's go down the memory hole here we go right I'm driving I'm driving my car I got pine to Jack cuz that's what I drink I drink pint of Jack and I drink it fast don't like beer it's too filling Damon's with me I think Pete's in the back Pete came a wasn't really eating hang out with us too much but we went by his house that's right it was me and Damon we went by pete's house because we're gonna drive up to Santa Fe there was a game it's a game between santa fe and Highland I didn't care about football but I wanted to hang out that's what I was about let's hang out what's everyone doing yeah I'll Drive I'll Drive and we'll go to the football game so I'm driving and go by pete's house and I remember we got like a fifth of passport scotch we stole a like a fifth of passport scotch from Pete's dad's liquor cabinet and that's what I was drinking guy didn't want to drink beer some important passport scotch and soda coca-cola we drive that out of Santa Fe right we drive to Santa Fe to the football game I kind of remember that it's an hour away kinda remember that I remember walking into the game I remember looking up at the stands and a lot of my high school is in the stands was cold out and I was shit-faced and I remember dropping to my knees in front of everybody in my high school and laughing hysterically and then I was walked up the bleachers by a couple of friends probably pee maybe Damon and they SAT me in the bleachers and now I don't know what happened all i know is that i was laying in the bleachers and then and then the next thing i know uh there was some like I remember being cold and then I remember waking up and for a quick moment and Damons holding his hand up and it's all bloody his fist is all bloody and we're driving and then the next thing I know I wake up in albuquerque at the mcdonalds and I'm alone and I'm in a booth I got my head in my hands and I wake up and I don't know where my car is I don't know where Damon is I don't know nothing and all of a sudden people start coming in from the game all the cheerleaders and the jocks and all the people all the people I didn't like but we're around because I wanted to hang around with people no idea what happened then some kid comes up to me and he goes dude you were you were on your back and the bleachers throwing up on like a fountain like a fountain you were just throwing up look like a fountain like what and then some girl had a crush on hex he went to go get a milkshake or something she walked up to me and I was like hey how's it going trying to be cool not knowing the history of my evening because of a blackout she goes why do you have rice in your hair yeah that's how that night ended then Damon came on my car he gotten into a fight that's what happened drove somebody home thank God my car went home high school Albuquerque New Mexico before I committed my life to the art department those are the trying days of trying to be accepted by the cool kids and then I went to the art department and became a high school artist anyways Mike judges here we went to high school in the same city in different high schools life is hectic folks and when it gets like that sometimes it's hard to make the best snacking choices believe me I know I've been in a writers room for the last several weeks TV writers eat garbage thankfully there's naturebox calm they've got more than 100 nutritionist approved snacks naturebox is something for everyone all with zero artificial flavors colors or sweetness no trans fats no high fructose corn syrup great snacks bold flavors and none of that nonsense I'm looking on naturebox calm right now why bother with greasy chips and vending machine chocolate when you could get santa fe corn sticks or dark cocoa almonds why and right now you can try naturebox for free with a trial box featuring five of their most popular snacks go start it now at naturebox calm WTF you know you're going to snack you know you know you are so get smart about it with nature box go to naturebox calm / WTF now for a free trial box of great snacks I just remember something a senior prom I'd like can I just maybe with junior problem I just like to put I just want to apologize to cam cam McCullough that was a bad night and I was rude I apologize that just I just remembered that yea high school man there's so many stories so many stories that revolve around vomit around coming in my pants around Brown bad grades around long car rides that don't end well I do remember one time me and dead Dave drove to Santa Fe and I know we did up there but we were driving back it was night it was late at night and we were driving back on Old Highway 14 that runs behind the mountains behind the sandias through Madrid the ghost town but it was night and the moon was big and it was bright and we were stoned and we listen to pink floyd animals in its entirety driving on a dead highway just me and dave moving through the night following the moon listening to Pink Floyd animals when pigs on a wing came on what song is that with the guitar solo meant by you know doudoune it didn't do you were you oh I just got chills I just got chills folks have you listen to this show 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decide to sign up for Squarespace make sure to use the offer code WTF to get ten percent off your first purchase and to show your support for our podcast that squarespace.com promo code WTF we're going to talk to albuquerque zone mike judge here in a minute that's how i see him the guy from albuquerque let's talk to him now mike judge st. Pius high schools your year ahead of me yeah I was graduated on 17 know so my brother went to pious really yeah yeah he's old but he's two and a half years younger than me so I don't know that you would have known him my sister would have known him probably what's his name Craig Marin he was a tennis guy I don't remember i can t I need some people that when you went no we must know a ton of the same people we must have common friends I always wondered that yeah if I'm trying to think I went to Albuquerque high one semester and I know a lot of those people but um I had a couple friends who went to Albuquerque I Devon Jackson was about on him either i didn't junior high I knew him really yeah Devon Jackson time Montague tide Montague dude he ended up going to what are we on yeah cool okay yeah time Montague ended up big advertising guy dude yeah in New York ya when it was fun when beavis and butt-head was happening I was when it was first getting going i was in disguise office at mtv a beater cuillean and he said i telled time Montague I'll call him back and I thought yeah i'm in manhattan and I'm like how many time on that user and again at it see from Albuquerque said oh I don't know he's if he works at shiet day or whatever yeah and I said ask him if he's from Albuquerque and he's like alright and turned out he was the time on two key that I do when I was in like seventh grade yeah but him and Kevin Jackson were friends yeah they're havin got into writing didn't he yeah Devon you know he's a ballplayer probably when you knew him basketball here basketball right yeah he's he did he wrote a book and you know he's still a writer he was out in Santa Fe and he's got a kid and an ex-wife and you know the regular stuff like all of us yeah I don't have the kid but I got a couple ex-wives uh yeah and his dad was friends with my dad his dad used to be the the physician over at the university health clinic all right I remembered and Jackson I've been talking about do you remember captain Billy oh hell yeah like you know he got shot yeah I'm did you go on the captain Billy shoot all the light I went out like on your birthday you would go on and sit in the bleachers yeah yeah my uncle worked at that station and knew him well where was he on kob he was on KOAT t wouldn't he okk oh it was an 07 that's beating there was uncle Roy and captain Billy with a competing a children's show guys and I don't know how it came down for you but I remember my mom felt like I'd heard that he'd been shot right and that he was with some guy's wife right that's what my dad saying my dad's a doctor and he was at the hospital when they brought him in oh he was right and that's the information I got then I recently went back and did some research on it because I've been talking about it on stage about childhood memories in the angle of the bit was that you know my father came home you know and I was like 7 or however old we were yeah that's about right and he said you know someone shot captain billion in my brain of my couch you know what yeah we watch captain Billy though happen cartoons for the exam I'm was really yeah and in like I couldn't but my dad being as inappropriate as he was yeah I said why would anyone shoot captain Billy's I can lead some guy come screwing his wife and in the joke is in retrospect that's really the most important thing I learned from Captain Bill yeah it's so weird like that's that was my I mean I watched captain Billy every morning and yeah I remember first hearing may be from one of the neighborhood kids that captain Billy well I'd heard he'd been murdered and that he that he was screwing somebody's wife and then I remember asking my mom about her this is kind of she was trying to soft-pedal it to me I guess and she goes she said well it could be that he was just sort of giving her a friendly pat on the back and it was misinterpreted like not tarnish captain Billy for me but um or or make you understand what it could possibly have to be fucking some guy's wife there's a lot of it is such a dark like typical of Albuquerque like you know you're just a local childhood guy but then I remember years later my uncle worked at that station he was saying that he thought captain Billy was gay but well here's what I heard was that well what I went did some research on and somebody had set out to clear captain Billy's name and said that it was a lunatic a lunatic like he was doing a pledge drive or something on TV and this guy's greif was on the show on the you know one of the phone bank people and captain Billy came and like put his arm around then what my mom said may have been partially try it wasn't the guy was paranoid delusion right right and he had had you know he'd been on the inside in the mental hospital before and it was there was more to the story it would not help my joke so like yeah like the information I got was the information I got not only did I I need to interactively what your chocolate well just so like if there's any people that are related to captain Billy or need to know the story and do like a sort of an addendum to my act yeah but a boy I think I first saw like heckle and Jeckle and he's to run some of those old cartoons yeah all the texts savory stuff and you know Roadrunners they play all the old Warner Brothers stuff right it was something that's where I first saw that stuff and you remember that it oh yeah you're obsessed with cartoons at that point yeah yeah I would have in fact I had um it's another Albuquerque thing I had one of the first weird cartoon dreams I had remember this ed black Chevrolet and yet crow yeah it was it was really weird drawing of a crow crisis facing camera you usually draw a crow from the side because I mean seems like he's a crow yeah the beak part it was just a circle face weird or oval for EM you had a dream that that crow was like 200 feet tall and was like going through the streets with a pitchfork stabbing people but it was animated it was like kind of a cartoon a drag Chevrolet and flex generally there was there was n blacks there was gallus it's so funny that it's such a specific landscape it's weird because I'm making up for something here I had Bryan Cranston in here you know and you know they shoot all that in our hometown and our guess it's that shows one of the first to really because I shoot so much stuff there i watch breaking bad as that really that's algorithm like a hooker break they use that octopus car wash or whatever the hell it wasn't yeah that's like a land mass media and in the in the Albuquerque bank building they even dead no country for old men too they say that shot in Texas but in that shootout scene at the end of no country for old man you see the First National Bank building right there and anyone who's de lived in Albuquerque yeah yeah they shot it right there like central and what is that sama Tay in one of those hotels right there was that and then there was yeah kistler collister these were close to right there with the department store over on that was on on seminal moment but that hasn't been key for coaster forever yeah yeah I don't know what the hell that is now there's so many weird memories that happen when you when you grow up a place like I remembered walk into that food way I remember the first time I got dragged home by some guy not in a bad way but like I remember one time me and my but my kid brother were going down to I think was called food way you know I code we remember yeah I don't think they exist anymore but we decided for some fucked up reason we're gonna crawl across San Pedro too and some guy decided he would you know walk us home and tell my parents about that I don't know what's wrong with your kids but they decide they're gonna crawl on the street but I remember like well Cranston was in here and I was so nervous about the interview I completely forgot to even make Albuquerque a point of reference and I new places he was eating like there's one scene where they aided at a place called taco Sal's which is like way up on like you banker juan tabo owe me and it's in a strip mall it's a great Mexican placing only reason I knew about us cuz my buddy Dave's dad owned a store up there they we worked at me 18 there I met Vince Gilligan yeah we talked Albuquerque for a while you know yeah it's just a lot of the same well frontier restaurant that's it that was so important to me meant yeah I mean I spent so much time might I spent a lot of high school in frontier yea high school yeah that was and one of my best friends worked there it was just uh to do it that's still there it's still good really good yeah well my one of my mentors early on was Gus blaisdell and he's down the living batch bookstore which is right next door to here for a while bearded dude was a real smart guy worked at the posh bagel across from Yale park when I was in high school like yet when I was going to Highland right there there was a bagel place didn't last one was next to the guitar shop and there was budget records right on by highland high school no right across from university right on set all right around the corner from the general store and natural sound was on Harvard Oh totally and then the guitar shop had that wooden front to it like right there yeah well in uh yeah I used to go to those because my dad was a professor for long times archaeology professor at UNM really huh yanan an archaeologist like he'd but but yeah I used to us to go over there but um I was also in the Albuquerque Youth Symphony and we would so Popejoy Hall was a rewrite this and then yeah Saturday's we've wandered around yeah those places where after rehearsal would you play I played trombone back then I play upright bass also with it but when I in the youth symphony was playing trombone you so you start playing music really young yeah like fifth grade trombone so you can read music and you can do all that yeah trombone but late anyway the hell of an instrument I said I got a base when I was in high school and started doing that and then upright bass but yeah trombone you got it's one of those things like violin you gotta you have to stay on it and you know yeah your lip is you know like for me to play now I would have to yeah kind of it take a long time to get back to work out with it with that every college mouthpiece yeah the well trombones one those ones where you can't sort of like I'm just gonna hang out at home and jam yeah that's the other problem i'll pry basis like that too it's not being a little boy yeah you can just an still but yeah trombone you kind of want to play with people or in a horn section was that the original idea musician yeah thought about him and I I guess I took to it pretty natural and I did you knows yeah i was gonna I just didn't but maybe when I was really young but now I mean by the time I was in high school it was just uh you know you had to go into science was the idea that was that the idea that you grew up with I mean I didn't even look like an archaeologist what kind of digs did your dad do what was his he was a focus the the Anasazi was his thing he was at Chaco Canyon oh yeah well he started when I was really little he was basically the Anasazi in the you know pre-columbian before Columbus so your dad did was on digs and he was like a preeminent Anasazi guy yeah he's pretty I mean in that world yeah he um this this author Jared Diamond do rope Guns Germs and sneha don't like Pulitzer Prize got heat I was meeting with him when I was doing the movie idiocracy and at some point hehe why were you mean with him for that movie that Fox had said okay you know let's hire a futurist and I was just you know I dread guns turned the ceiling collapse and I was like a future and you hooked me up with Jared Diamond I just kind of was a big fan of yeah I think and I just thought I'll use this to try to meet him and his kids were huge beavis and butt-head fancy has these twin sons who are super genius but the time they were like 13 yeah and so anyway he at some point like during the interview I said my dad was an archaeologist and then I got an email from him the next day and he said is your dad the gym judge may be the only person who would ever say this like the guy who did and there's something in his book I think collapse about just pack rat shit that preserves itself and like my dad had something to do it and he's cited in in a Jared Diamond book like it is further reading about the Anasazi well really one of my dad's books yeah so that was my keys now it's really cool actually I mean he's in he's been in documentaries and National Geographic articles and things like that and he's still around huh my he's retired but with your mom do she was actually she was a teacher at Highland for a while come on yeah Spanish taught Spanish and French and then she became a elementary school librarian she got tired of the high school teaching I don't know how the hell high school teachers do oh it was no feeling idea especially in Albuquerque it was roughly yeah and at the time we grew up it was rougher it seemed like it was pretty like I remember it was rougher it seems like it yeah no definitely I mean there was a time where it was like one of the second most violent cities in Albuquerque yeah untry there was a I think in the 70s it was there was a couple years in a row it was the highest per capita violent crime right cities in the country I don't remember really seeing that but I do remember you like the the great thing about growing up in New Mexico's you could get your driver's license when you're like 15 it was a while 14 and nine months where do you get your learner's permit I remember a friend in my high school hadn't gone through puberty yet and had his driver's license he like little eight-year-old driving around he gets pulled over all did you get your permit a 14-9 month 15 where'd you go from from Albuquerque UC San Diego oh really which was kind of a um wasn't my first choice I'd actually I wanted to go to UT Austin and something got I ended up getting accepted but something got screwed up with one of my application or the acceptance letter I didn't get it or I found out too late as I recall and in it I don't know I really don't know why I went to UCSD of just kind of I told my guidance counselor I wanted to just go somewhere in the southwest and she just put that on the list and I applied and I was saying engineering and music stuff and that just came up in which would you end up studying physics got a physics degree a big did you do well I did I was a I did well considering I hardly went to class I did was kind of known for just like i would start going to class and then i would just realize i'm not paying attention i'm just learning everything from the book anyway yeah and then i discovered you know now with the internet i think he can educate yourself back then I discovered I could just go to the engineering library and just get better books on the same topic than it seemed like I always picked the worst books for some of these like some of these classes and so I ended up I did I got straight B's yeah and what they're trying to get a lot into those textbooks I guess they might not explain it as fully as they could yeah and some some physics textbooks they almost pride themselves engineer types and physics almost pride themselves and not explaining it very well sir no you don't get it yeah you know and and you can find these other books that would have better explanations and tons of practice problems they break the code yeah it's like philosophy to it so you got to speak the language but it's English yeah okay why is everything I've to have a different definition than what it really is yeah there's a lot of that in the academic world and yeah well tell that's how it sustains itself yeah that you need us to Dakota job security yeah well what were you thinking with with physics I mean what was it what was started out in engineering and I was just gonna was going to get an engineering job that's house you know a lot of people talk about what a big nerd they are when I was in high school I had a ham radio license when I was 12 so it's kind of an electronics guy and I thought okay I'll just be an engineer and get a job and then you know back then they tell you if you get a science degree you get a they'll just people be handing your jobs like it's in here's some money yeah it is just not true but but I I was in engineering and then just realized physics fewer class requirements no there was a practical thing believe it or not it was a little easier for me to get a physics degree I'm I think I'm better at the conceptual stuff than the I mean it's at maybe I'm not explaining that right but just stuff that's more pure math and physics rather than just here's 20 engineering problems right 40 engineering and we have to be able to wrap your brain around the abstract to get physics correct yeah i think so and and i was i could i I was I guess better at that but and also I you know you can I realize you could still supposedly get engineering jobs with a physics degree and what is angel I never I've never clear what that means what's an engineering job can be be a lot of different stuff so right my first job was actually the f-18 fighter jet all the electronics that test itself in the software they asked itself now now it's very common in cars everything you know you gotta gives you you got the your rear flashers off your is broken or whatever right it was def 18 it was just all its self test stuff yeah and I was working for a company that did that really that made the plane or just that panel no they just they just did the test software for the so you were you're already proficient at computers that something else he learned I did I done yeah I done some programming but this was actually this job that I was on we were going through all their software and trying to find and the schematics and trying to find failures that the software wouldn't catch and so we were evaluating but this was like 85 and the f-18 was all over the news because of Top Gun i guess and but it was really not working very well I'm anyway like they would fly it like when they bombed Qaddafi yeah I remember like India at the office because we were on Coronado Island yeah and they're like saying hey you know the f-18s just flew on it on that mission for publicity and for for for using their radar I guess alright so the bombs were dropped by whatever those are they controllable they can't trust the f-18 to do the bombing but yeah but now that i look like cf-18 no I mean the but no f18 I mean they they had worked out the kinks so that you were just working for a military contractor yeah and that you just got that job at a college yeah I got just sending resumes around and you were just in a room full of guy so I got picture like the right stuff no listen it was literally cubicles I kind of modeled a lot of office space after my first two jobs and this was it was just gray cubicles with schematics on them and piles of software and a computer and it wasn't glamorous at all no guys were sitting around with models of things know that I mean occasionally I would have to go on base and you'd get to go look at an f-18 and in the distance seriously oh there's an aircraft carrier but I was going I was going to look up like if a part was obsolete started sneha just going to a counter with a guy do you know if this part still exists but occasionally like if i don't know if i look at my Wikipedia page or something and then it's true is it like technically I worked on the f-18 but I wasn't out and half eight writing on a carrier giving a thumbs up to somebody you know yeah a few way a few removed yeah yeah so what was so you worked there for a while and then and then what happened um I lasted about a year there and then I moved up to well i was actually playing music the whole time i was playing like three nights a week with this kind of george thorogood type guy this sort of drunken slide Blues player and I was actually paying pretty good and then I moved up to the boy said what guy was that his name was blond Bruce yeah see your blues guy yeah he's a long time ago are you a blues guy um I mean that's that's just what I ya got I started playing that and got more blues gigs and I played upright bass too so it's sort of like could you slap bass diesel yeah I did like the slap rockabilly thing I always wanted to play more rockabilly country but all the gigs I got would be blues I said the music you liked in high school I went through a phase whereas really yeah I was really into like Elmore James and all right me too man really like yeah brownie mcghee Sonny Terry all these like old blues guys yeah so you got the blues brain I do too man yeah I saw a lot he's guys too I saw I saw brownie McGhee and really yeah where one of us i'm in san diego at the belly up Oh real when you're in college yeah weird cuz a fake ID we were how'd you get your fake ID um the first one actually I don't know if you ever did this in Albuquerque friend of mine I hope to get you make a giant poster right yes it look I got the same ID to cut out yeah kick your head you do a color card you put your head and then you'd cut it right you cut it out I doubt you'd sign the name with there's big sharpie so it looked like a when it was reduced down to side right yeah but the weird thing about the board I got is that the guy couldn't change the information on the port so me and my buddies all got fake IDs they all had the same here yeah my friend I won't say his name but he he got a his brother worked at the airport and had the binder with so so he took a picture of a Wyoming driver's license right blew it up with an overhead projector traced it all out so whatever the guy whatever the fake name was in fact he even put his three-year-old nephew up there and a fake ID at age 21 just for fun I remember my name my name is Tom Bynes be so hilarious if it was your buddy who was making those because we did at a party or something so does everybody stepped up we wanted to buy it could buy it yeah but that was the amazing thing and also we'll get back to where you went but the the thing about beers and butthead and the thing that like obviously the entire world responded to it but it felt very familiar to me because there was a certain whether i don't know maybe it was because it was you were from Albuquerque and I knew that but there's a weird thing that happens when you can drive at 15 but you can't drink to your 21 because it's sort of weird and dangerous but like everyone's going to get booze and most of us when we grew up like that we were driving around six packs and going up to the rocks and you know hanging out on the mountain but all you did in Albuquerque just drink and drive around right there's nowhere to go and yeah yeah you would get like I mean we it's it's a it's crazy like how lawless it seemed like I remember getting in coming out of movie and my friend like a bunch of us get in the back of his pickup truck and he just it was over kind of x where st. Pius was that theater and there's a big vacant lot the one rock he just like yeah musi Anna coronado or winner yeah and he's like yes same area just like jumps a divider jumps a curve and just starts doing donuts in this vacant lot it's right out there you could see it from Lomas from I just no one ever seem to get a hold over by the cops yeah it was funny because like that I doubt I've been in that car but yeah fucking go do doughnuts let's go we used to get chopping carts in the mall parking lot at winrock like acted like we drink all night driving around then we get shopping carts and put them in front of my buddies Firebird and just get them going about 40 or 50 miles an hour just to destroy themselves on the curbs and that was like a big night but there's something about that weird frustration to having access to a car and access to liquor and nowhere to go no girls and you couldn't go to like no one owned a house so you know yeah you had to drink outside somewhere yeah maybe someone's parents would be out of town but you're just destroy that place destroyed the place with no parents yeah it was it's really yeah you could have a license I we had a pickup truck that a guy had left for my dad it was a it was a Datsun before anyone knew about Datsun it was like a 59 dots and you could actually crank start it if it if the starter motor de be around that long time yeah well these were you hardly ever see these because they weren't they did somehow this guy had one right and he to avoid the draft went to Canada yeah and then I guess he ended up he couldn't come back and then I think he ended up dying or some but we just inherited this truck that was and I was learning to fix yeah engines on it but we could like if there were three of us we could each pitch in a dollar and have enough gas to drive you know you are networking my wrong and yeah on that car mostly India my dad and my brother did but that was your first car kinda yeah we sort of nobody really owned it how many brothers you got just one and then one sister yeah well I and also if there was a lot of guns around yeah that's like I saw several guns in high school some guy pulling aside gonna check this out like holy shit oh yeah we got shot at once outside out one night you know I mean I so I worked at jack in the box and whataburger which whataburger the one I don't know if it's there anymore it was on it was kind of down in Martinez town yeah on lomas but downtown below 30 grand yeah I remember there was a Navajo Indian guy Jonathan and this other guy Larry who sort you know like Native Americans and rednecks kind of hung out yeah there's a flat country yeah they and and but he used to say he'd go like oh yeah yeah you know me and Larry you know sometimes you know we just go out on the west mesa you know just shoot at cars it's like fuck are you kidding me i was this is my first job i think i was 16 and now my first job worked other jobs yeah like it up and then he what one day goes uh I guess hey man you want to go out after work with me and Larry what are you gonna do is over just gonna go roll queers and as I didn't know what that man said what do you know kick their ass take their money I I can't tonight I'm I was such a gringo looks like i'll get you yeah no I don't think I OBX with you guys doesn't sound fun yeah but uh oh god it well that's a weird thing is that like when we grew up it was like it had to be sixty or seventy percent Latino easily yet always fun like yeah I mean we were the ones that were you know yeah at Jefferson junior high I felt like I was the minority you know oh yeah even at st. Pius it was it was more mellow I suppose enough I didn't feel but I never got a sense of tension until I cholo started happening like there was always always more sort of disco oriented and yeah platform shoes and then all of a sudden something happen yes I'm Viva La Raza yeah the nakano Power movement yeah it was kind of like yeah I distinctly remember a guy used to ride the bus with Richard Quinton and he was we were really good friends and all sudden just at some point like a certain age yeah he couldn't be seen with me right and then the gang started happening a bit yeah and then they're like that the flannel shirts right only button at the top with the white shirt and that in the bandanas it just all changed suddenly got ya so after a san diego you where'd you get that were you this is when you got the job in Silicon Valley yeah I went up there my my ex-wife we were my girlfriend at the time it was from Palo Alto and she'd gone back and I thought I'd give it a go up there and uh yeah then I had engineering job and they started playing music again and l3 he played bass huh yeah and I and then after that I played bass for a living for like five years almost four until Beavis and Butthead really yeah the engineering jobs that there had one that lasted like three or four months and another 12 months but but did he give you a sense of like was it really the kernels of your understanding of Silicon Valley or was it just another job well that it was it was kind of the kernels of my understanding of it because I just I mean that was the job in San Diego military contract or whatever it was that was sort of like cubicle dreary whatever but yeah this was a whole different they were like cults or something it was very weird I feel like it's still like that up there and I just just didn't fit in but I'm not call that I've product occulta was kind of believing in what we're doing and we are the leaders of the world and Silicon Valley and where you know and this is sort of dream right a little bit there was a boom back then but this definitely pre the boom now and it was a it's another level now but it was um there was a bit of a boom going on was it a personal computer boomer and some other yeah personal computer I think and just kind of computer in general right boom was still going on the second job I had there was actually for gallien-krueger that makes bass amps and guitar amps so when did you so what happened so you play bass for five years before because in my head where were you living then um then I moved to Dallas Dallas yeah you know what the fucking anything we are you on any words uh yeah I'm on Doyle Bramhall seniors a couple of his albums and anson the sky anson funderburg and Sam Myers they were like a duo yeah they were a label called black top it was in New Orleans that was in the 80s so I'm on playing bass on those and then other stuff here and there there's a ray Benson the asleep at the wheel guy among yeah one of his I just got a bunch of big package from them they wanted him they pitched him as a guest and I didn't really follow up on it but he's still at it he's got amazing stories he's a yeah he's still at it and then I'm yes I'm but I didn't have any great me I mean I was always just doing it cuz I didn't way to not work in a cubicle and I was really trying to go into writing or comedy film making not stand up ever but just I knew I couldn't pull that off but I but I'm I wanted to I started making animated films like mmm i finished the first one in 90 but i bought a camera and started messing with it like an 89 what what how did you learn how to do that i actually just got books at the library and for animating for ya and I kind of knew I just always was interested in it so I just kind of knew what was the moment where you like again well it's doable Damone was in Dallas at the inwood theater they used to have a thing the animation celebration which was just every year they take the best animated shorts from all over the world and put them together like his nature and it would just play it into movie theaters and I would always go just start really cool stuff they'd have in there and in the lobby they had cells on display of this guy Paul Claire out who lived in dallas who had made a film and had gotten it in there and i was looking at these drawings and go on shit there's a guy that lives in my town and he's doing this and because i always thought you had to have a ton of money or you had to buy all the question machine yeah and I thought wait I bet you can just rent the equipment what why don't I and then I got books on and then I just got this like animation fever I just decided I'm going to do this I'm gonna and it's you know just wrote down every idea I was I'd never drawn yeah it always drawn a little bit but I never took a lot of pride in it I brought it to just do something I could sort of draw someone would get under my skin like a professor or someone like when I was a musician like this guy that I was touring with and I would draw them just it would just I get this urge to draw them and I but I wasn't great like I can't draw landscapes and blouses and trees but I would just draw faces in a way that could make people laugh and like so I just in Butthead yeah you know that was that sort of thing and I would draw notebooks and stuff but I never took pride in like oh look I tried to do some panel cartoons a little bit but i don't think there were over that great was a print yeah but but i was that kind of wasn't my thing either I just but I had a hunch that that I could make something funny if I could figure out how to put it together but you you always gravitated towards animation it resonated with you there was some yeah what about it exactly I know what it is like will stop motion was a another thing i really wanted you I'm actually better at sculpting than I am drawing haha maybe not like so I always want to do like Gumby stop moving down F just a little bit when i first got around the same time and then I realized that involves just a lot of hardware and building sets and all that stuff and to make work as shitty as my drawings are I was like that does a quicker path to getting something done that could be funny and right so it wasn't the original stuff so when did you make the first cartoon the first I had a about a Bolex movie camera it's a 16-millimeter little single frame i did i did like a test i tested some animation with it and that was 89 single frame kind of yeah just like shit you get a peg bar and the papers punched and you register it so it doesn't move and right I finished a test and I got the film back and I was like oh my god this actually looks like a cartoon I can really do this it was like one of the most exciting it said and I wasn't telling anybody I told my wife I showed her and like look look at this I can I could make a cartoon and then the Ford she say she thought it was really cool okay she as she was working in engineering job she had been physics too so she was she was in tech and Dallas and anyway so I though I ended up there sort of well it was it was actually started because the anson funderburg guy offered me a gig and then she was saying I look at my company has a branch there you know I'm do it you can play bass and it was just so expensive to live in the Bay Area I just couldn't basically I lived there for a couple years but I am so you do this thing you do it their first thing I finished with sound and everything like a time's the track out with a stopwatch I didn't know if that was going to work either and that was the first was called office space and it was the character Milton and the boss coming and taking a stapler right and that's how that started yeah so that was the first the first animated thing I ever finished was called office space was uh it was pre Dilbert and it was just you know the guy with his you know it kind of short sleeve guy coke bottle glasses at his desk and so real basic yeah but that one got ended up you know i just had VHS copies i couldn't like ahead i'd won those tascam for tracks with a cassette tape yeah back then that so I did the soundtrack I did all the music and all the voices and the sound effects all is kind of a radio play and then I animated to that that's how you do it noisy yeah time out everywhere every syllable is going to happen and you shoot it and I remember getting it back and put it in the projector and I just hit play gun fuck this is never gonna work and just it's sunk up perfectly that's like holy shit this is really a cartoon I just made and then I and the atom was split yeah yeah I split the atom of yeah yeah and then I sent out I called 411 literally like into it I felt so stupid as MTV like I just got names of anybody I could Comedy Central all these people and how many when you made those calls how many did you have in the can to I to op i had base i had one office space another one that was just a this kind of fat dumpy guy watching a health food commercial it wasn't great yeah but I put them both on this tape yeah and mailed out like 14 copies or something like that and just and then I started getting calls was it like really at this point I think I was 27 or season to get who are you getting calls from I got a call from the kids in the hall bloon or not I got a call from a show called night after night with Allen Havey that ended up running remember that yeah the theater you know I'm 100 audience of one yeah I've interviewed him yeah I ran into him recently in a in a bar in santa monica and I was like and thanks for you say them you were the first guy to ever put me on TV and amazing yeah and oh so he ran it as a piece on night after night on comedy central yeah and they actually flew me to New York which was amazing and and but they you know they said how many of these can you do how fast and you know I let him have that one for like I think they paid me like 15 hundred dollars or something that and that covered my cost and a little bit more but for me to keep doing more of them at that price would have been I was like I'm just going to animate other stuff and so I ended up you know and I was getting stuff in festivals at that but at that but it's pretty work intensive the way you were doing it oh yeah take me about six to eight weeks to do two minutes so that was crazy you know if it's $1,500 and I clear two hundred dollars and I'm making them you know I already got one on their show so it's like that's my you know all right does just a cool thing to and then we have what what happened so you do you get a little attention kids in the hall that but MTV didn't with the daya no not right away with it but then I just kept making them so i made one called is this character inbred Jed that wasn't very good and then let's see and then the fourth one I did was beavis and butt-head it was a short called frog baseball yeah at this point my stuff was playing in this in this thing called sick and twisted animation festival he has in the animation celebration where I'd first seen it right less that one ended up I got to go see that play in the same theater in Austin and that's cool yeah so then it was much in Denver was a show on MTV called liquid television diamonds shorts yes yes they licensed for of my shorts and put them on there so which ones well I've done at that point I'd done to beavis and butt heads so they put both of those on they put office space and they put the inbred Jed one and that in that these were how long usually around two minutes most of them what the second beavis and butthead short was like four minutes I think of 34 and then and then what happened when well so then they did you do it were they on Sarah now alive too yeah the first thing I ever animated office space after night after night with Allen Havey then it got on SNL actually just and they just have they set it up they ran it it was on the night that last time Nirvana was on there was 93 so beavis and butt-head had already started going by then but but uh and I did three more for SNL and they weren't very good the fourth one was pretty good I was just kind of it was it was sort of a weird I was hiring a couple people myself to help and just like just the timing of him wasn't great but that you know it led to the movie but he were still doing them at home at that point beavis and butt-head was going and I was in New York but I was so I was beavis and butt-head was in full production I wasn't really doing him at home but I sort of was those ones it was me and two other guys in our spare time they worked on Beavis and Butthead and we were just animating like crazy to get these things for SNL and like Lauren would call on a on a Friday and say asked me if I could have one for tomorrow say he'd call you directly yeah you'd call me directly and say you know we're a little short on material could you have one tomorrow and just say no they take with three of us it would take like two or three weeks you know and so so all this sort of kind of happened in a perfect storm within a year or so you know the the momentum of this thing yeah one for like 90 was when i finished the office space 191 it was on Comedy Central and 92 beavis and butt had happened and and you did a deal with MTV for a series yeah and and that gave you a production schedule yeah and it seems to me that if i'm not mistaken these sort of single-handedly saved mtv the network because they were terrific in their relevance and there was no one gave a shit anymore yeah they they were and it's funny like i didn't i didn't know what ratings meant what an i mean i knew that what ratings were but where I know what the numbers I wasn't even thinking about it going into this and then after the first episode aired the next day Abby turku lela kind of the exec on it comes in says we gotta one and I said what's a one doesn't sound like a very high number to me baby stare at miley he said normally that time slot is 0 point six mm-hmm you know some and then the next day it was point is on every day which was just crazy next day is like 1.2 by the end of the week it was one point eight and then but this was this is the first way to train wreck they they had they were supposed to have something like 15 episodes by march eight when it I remember this guy they hired who didn't have an animation studio he was just I was just a train wreck and we had we ended up having just two episodes ready so what we did is took my two shorts and put videos in between them and cobbled together another one and they just were re running by the end of the week there was another one coming in so third so just three episodes airing over and over again but the ratings kept going up and then they finally did a smart thing and just took it off the air and waited until we had more well that's that's interesting because that would have been you know the the the equivalent of viral now that like by word of mouth it actually probably helped you in the log right I think it did because it everyone was like what what happened that show where to go and then three months later or something like that it yeah you got another 12 in band and the episodes were better and they started to get better and yeah so it was uh it in yeah in a weird way it ended up helping and the shorts have been on liquid television and we're getting a lot of buzz so so it's just like he changed it you changed everything not just for you I think for America I I made America stupid I was I was uh ya know it was it was a crazy time I didn't really appreciate it at the timing and I was married we had a my daughter was year and a half old and I was just working 16-hour days and we lived in a lousy condo way up in Port Chester and I was taking the train in and just kind of portchester yeah the order that his way up north yeah it's up between greenwich and rye but it would he was in it was an amazing time because I mean beavis and butt-head literally there was something so it resonated with so many people so quickly and that you know it was just a matter of weeks it seemed before people were imitating them and you know showing their friends and it was so specifically i think what registered to me and i guess to everybody else is that it's a very specific American County experience any like that that I grew up with and that we grew up with you know I don't know if that it but I think just about anywhere I mean they everybody to know that guy or know those guys or have gone to high school with those guys yeah definitely um I mean yeah and that's what I heard from the get-go is oh I grew up with guys like this and to me it feels very Albuquerque yeah but it turns out to you know just dumb asses are universal but cross language barriers maybe but I don't know looking back on it at the time it in a weird way on one hand I was I wasn't I wasn't surprised that people would connect with it once I got it I felt like the first two that aired were horrible and a lot of the early ones weren't good but once I knew once I got the good ones on that it would at least I felt like it would connect with some people I didn't I didn't really know it would be as you know get as big as it was or or piss as many people off so right because she uh oh all kinds of reasons I mean it was it it landed right in this pocket when I guess the I don't know the wall had gone down and you're you know like his end of the Cold War and not a lot of news and suddenly just right at this time right before it came out there was all that all of sudden it was like violence on television and television corrupting the minds and then you know here's a show called beavis and butt-head that's a cartoon and everyone thought of cartoons is for kids yeah this was just you know our kids are watching this ya know and just and it was such a I wish I mean at the time it was there was such a just assault from the news media of just you know this horrible show what are what what's this world come to and and I wish I pointed out more it took me a while to get this is cable TV you have to call up and order it you have to pay your bill you have to be there when the guy installs it you have to take all these steps and for these mothers to parents just like my kids are look what my kids are watching you need to change like just you went and it's like going and buying hustler magazine and leaving it on your eye off the table and say look what my children are look hat you know like but but also he's like you can lock it out it's so easy to do and it weird thing is is that where was the arguments like well the three stooges were pretty violent oh yeah yeah the behind of you know it's not like how it went in specifically animation it's like we're it's not real yes no real and it's not I mean also just you know a typical roadrunner Warner Brothers car to you know tex avery stuff randy said Caillou liked through such shit banging people in the head yeah pans and coyote yeah yeah so it's uh I don't know now it's kind of I wish I john/chris falou see there was this thing that like MTV's publicity Department was always just breathing down my neck okay when they asked me that they were just running afraid running scared from every attack but meanwhile the greatest publicity the show could have it was it was good publicity but I just remember it was some I don't know Access Hollywood her somebody doing a thing about and they had me and John Kriss for Lucy not together but interviewed separately and you know Here I am just being like like defending the show and being all serious and then it cuts to John Kriss for Lucy saying every cartoon needs a good beating because I and he's he's just being funny and it's gonna end it cuts to him like in front of this computer screen where this one cartoon character bent over another one's just punching him in the butt any animation cycle and I'm just thinking why didn't I just embrace it and be funny like that I feel like I was always taking these questions too seriously you're out instead of just going hey this is a comedy fuck you yeah which more serious guy we're is it weighing on your conscience at all well there was I mean actually took yea though I mean what happened was there was a couple controversies like there was a there was a thing where somebody had this kid in a trailer park had set the trailer and he was five years old I think of our five yeah his mom left him alone with and there was a one year old in a crib who ended up dying in the fire and when they were about to arrest did this didn't come out in the news they're about to arrest him for I mean her for you know negligence negligence and she said well he was watching beavis and butt-head that why said it all right fire not that he was five and then it blew up like it was it was the first story of every major Network News that night and it was like Dan Rather I remember he he said you know in Ohio a child died after that you know skid was watching beavis and butt-head any and he his opening statement of the news ended with him saying leading us to ask ourselves how did we ever get from Leave It to Beaver to Beavis and Butthead and and and it was it was a little scary because it was like everyone is blaming the show for the death of a kid well it came out that they didn't even get cable at that trailer park she was just there have been another story in the news about beavis and butt-head and somebody doing like a some kid like with a lighter or so I don't know but but so so she just kind of was about to get arrested and blamed beavis and butt-head and the cops bought it and home whatever like she went out on a date and left five year old in one year and then it turned out the kid had started another fire the year before before beavis and butt-head had ever gone on the air yesterday it's a weird day like that left matches lighters whatever you know left the kid you left the kid yeah that was yeah the opening story was like how friendly to be review this button now like where the fuck was this mother know with the five-year-old in a trailer that's what was I look back on it and just say like why didn't MTV come out why don't we just like there is oh don't don't do any interviews don't get you know why I just wish I would I wish that I had stood up for it more and not been so like oh shit a child died and you did feel bad right all these but yeah you felt bet you don't want to be the guy who's going out and saying when a child just died you don't want to be the one who's going out and saying hey man must show you know where's the mother was you know yeah this yeah well how come the mother blame the mother like that's the it was a very odd time you want to get you to want to enter the dialogue because that would have put you in dialogue with right yeah with yeah exactly i didn't it so but you know looking back on it I don't know I wish I had I wish that they had maybe stood up for a little more but I mean I kind of our own it seemed to have done all right it all worked out ffs but our with at that time so this is a huge success didn't any how to get management and everything else right yeah and was I think we had the same we were three arts you rodenberg but yeah I met you like in 95 yeah i was with day Becky yeah and I don't know uh you know I yeah we did me and I you know I remembered I was sort of like II were from Albuquerque yeah yeah yeah hardly ever meet showbiz people from Albuquerque no it's rare i think david Hyde Pierce's from Albuquerque yeah yeah that's right I didn't know him I think he's younger than we are so months so once you get management once this thing takes off like it does i mean you know what was the plan i mean because he did get I mean didn't seem to me that you were calculating about having a career in show business necessarily knowing it yeah I I mean I always wanted I was always into filmmaking and yes that's what I wanted to do sketch comedy or something and um yeah Michael Wroten Berg they signed me from the beginning I didn't have a lawyer at all I couldn't get lawyers to call me back I throw a cartoonist that I met can't remember who knew through the gist newspaper cartoon you know world knew Matt graining lawyer mm-hmm and I couldn't get her to call me back just I just probably sounded like some guy bullshitting I've got a mtv wants to make the shit you know and so before I even started they were trying to get them yeah and so I ended up doing I got a music lawyer and Texas that kind of just said oh don't sign it and I ended up really negotiating a deal with them myself that wasn't a good deal but it was you know it's kind of like the I knew you know I read I could you can you can read a contract and kinda yeah you know he's one of those things like physics so there's a word in there that yeah good everything could hinge on a word I mean I knew basically I mean I was but I was making two minutes short films in my house I couldn't to take it to another level i would have to do a deal with a network and they're gonna have to own it that's just the way it especially when you're nobody and I didn't know it was going to be a hit i thought they're gonna make some of those little mtv ids and i would get right twenty thousand dollars and be happy and did you end up getting screwed well I sorted yeah the original deal was about as screwed as you would think but but and in a way I didn't they their lawyer had all the bad intentions of a good lawyer but wasn't a really good lawyer so the contract I think she didn't really understand that I think she thought I was going to be doing all the animation myself mm-hmm and so there was a fee that was a per-minute fee and then later years later when I was renegotiating it well also they needed me to make the show they realized they they didn't know what they were doing and just too I did the voices and yeah I just kind of had the whole vision and everything and I was you know I mean I was doing all the video i mean is all i was doing it also they realized they needed me and then you know i was able to renegotiate based on all these kind of they realized if I if you went by the letter of the contract they would owed me a lot even more money so i ended up getting i remember what every year that was finding out that i was getting paid more than Tabitha Soren felt pretty good yeah so the second season would write older really yeah well I mean I get season came right away I mean was the season was 30 to 35 episodes and Nate we just there was never a break would just do as many as you can because they were putting it on every day right which is just ridiculous for an animated show so we did probably 80 in one year but these are 15 minute and bright how many tell adults like total right around 200 Wow think what it was all in and how much ownership did you end up with ultimately now supposedly I've got a 50-50 deal almost with him but at the time I had almost no ownership I mean I sold them the characters just kind of after months of negotiating and just going and having the deal done and then just sitting there in Dallas going well shit I mean might as well it's not like I'm gonna sit here and keep making these by myself and putting them festivals I'll just find something else to do and so I just you know sold it to him thinking just take some money for this and move on if they do something with it they do and not knowing it was going to go full-on series and yeah that they withheld that information from me until so you sold it to him and were you working on computer or still doing selves all cells I didn't even own a computer then I did it all on film and even when the the first season was done in a really horrible digital ink and paint except for the shorts that I had done and then that from then on it was all film oh so not in it ourselves yeah never never computer other than the those few episodes in the first season Wow and so now you're like sort of a you like I it seems to me that without you you get no you don't really get south park you don't like their you broke open something I might have yeah yeah i mean the simpsons was running but that was a good thing yeah this was the simpsons definitely opened the door for i think for everybody just about because but yeah and then yeah i mean beavis and butt-head i distinctly remember when they were talking about doing a series with it you know of course they would say well they'd look at you know when the simpsons did this and but there was also this weird sir almost DIY quality to it yeah there was a roughness 22 yeah the animation into yeah that i think i think i opened the doors for shitty drawings yeah i mean on TV I i said i did not frame it that way no but but I I mean yeah I mean I what I was trying to do I was a big fan of national lampoon magazine and allow yeah cartoonists that had really kind of cool like notebook style drawings that I and I always imagined how cool it I wanted to see this stuff animated and in fact one of at the same time that the simpsons shorts were in the Tracey Ullman Show there was mary kay brown MK brown plus a big fan of great great animator yeah really really great stuff in a shampoo yeah they animated some of her stuff for that same show it's called dr. Nagato it's about impossible to Google because she spelled it with an exclamation point in the last name but it was a really cool just love the way it looked and and that and also the the pacing of it and so when I was doing the first office space Milton thing I was kind of thinking of the way that stuff looked and she also did weird kind of almost dark domestic very yeah varied it like this weird woman who is teaching cooking yeah right yeah those are tricky man I really trippy really funny stuff like and the other who else else was in the back of those the Lampoon's when they had the color comics at the back they had some escalade wilson stuff in there since I Wilson there's a bunch of Mimi pond BK Taylor all these really great stuff yeah and then Andrew Friedman and right Harvey Pekar sometimes I think and bill Griffith I mean I doubt that stuff to me that actually this guy named Mark Merrick and I mean I could just buddy hickerson all these great people that had different lynda Barry like just really cool ways of drawing and none I'd never seen any of that animated so that was kind of I was trying to do that just animate something that didn't look so slick and yeah yeah and partly because I just can't draw that slick way and then how long before like what when you chose to like I imagined that doing you know king of the hill and conceiving of king of the hill and having these you know characters with emotional depth was sort of the next evolution of you as a as a guy who moving moving towards film and yet moving towards you know sort of exploring you know like responsible adult themes and that kind of stuff yeah it was uh yeah I'd want it you know I was a big fan of just classic television like Leave It to Beaver if the show Bob Newhart hey Ashley I want to do something different than beavis and butt-head and and also they wanted to show specifically to follow the Simpson so I didn't want it to be too much like the Simpsons so that's a huge break for you I mean when you know we have must have been offered to you would he must have been like holy shit yeah it was very it was a little daunting I tried not to think about that too much but I I actually didn't think honestly that I i did this overall deal with Fox and I've always like I always just kept thinking i'm just going to retire and do weird little stuff for fun but but this I remember thinking well it was very daunting but then I thought you know what I'm just gonna pitch a show that I want to do I'm not going to and if if it's not what they want to do they'll say no and that's that and right and I I sort of kept thinking they were going to say no looks like just he's like the first drawing was for guys with their beers and then the family and kind of based on the neighborhood i lived in outside of Dallas and but I just kept and actually in Albuquerque to I lived in a I had four different Fort Worth people from fort worth living in my neighbor and that hyper out for that was Texans are their own thing yeah they seemed to find each other in Albuquerque to yeah my neighborhood was they were all all around round that mean the last neighborhood we lived all over the place there but the last neighborhood I was in when I was in high school so that way it so it was uniquely tax in that way it was really based on ya Texan kind of an i think it's sort of the way you know you'll hear Canadian comedy people a lot of them will say you know you're right next to the United States you can kind of observe it as an outsider right I kind of feel that way being New Mexico growing up there and Texans you know they flood our campgrounds every three day weekend and half men folks my dad would just he you know he grew up in Montana and Wyoming this wide-open spaces and he he just hated crowds and and when there was these you know big three day weekends and just Texas license plates you just like be muttering just god damn Texan everywhere and so I gotta grew up with this you textin to see they think they're in their own country there is definitely this I was just there and there there's definitely this feeling that like you know Texas as taxes yeah and whatever else is going on out there it's uh yeah that's someone else's business it's kind of like I mean and once I move there I just loved it but but it's it is that winning it's the winning team that you like to hate unless you're on the team right okay what you know um but did you notice growing up in Albuquerque it seemed like any time there was a middle-aged male authority figure telling you to do something it would head out of Texas accent okay excuse me boys hey what are you boys doing move it along like yeah but everyone else talked like a troll oh yeah yeah exactly in there Panther sure we're always tucked into to like western-style slacks yeah yeah I mad I usually yeah I mean as you know like in the 70s they still had their 50s hairdos and yeah switchback yeah maybe longer sideburns so thou so king of the hill ram for a long time did you like I know that like the guys who were riding with me on my show did some Hills older I forgot you Michael Janice attitude yeah they're they're working with me they've been with me on the last two seasons in my show but they told me that you know it got when you were in Texas that you were actually doing the voices and sending them in yeah by that point yeah we were just about everybody was doing the voices remotely up towards the end there yeah and but you feel you stand behind it all the way through yeah yeah was uh I was uh I mean you know there's there are some some years some seasons better than others but um I was I started to back off being involved when John also learned dave krinsky took over because they were i just found that they were always kind of making whatever decisions i would have made and just the episodes got started to get really good and who was run the show Greg Daniels this is when John ultra and dave krinsky are they were on your shoes he was running it at the beginning I mean I was I was there a lot the first who was greg greg was yeah and he left to do the office the American office sometime I don't know what years those were happening but um yeah and then a couple different people ran it and then John and Dave took over probably I don't know the last like six seasons or something and how does that work so you you know you you're the creator and then it just sort of has its own life you know when I was first season most of the episodes were either treatments that Gregor I had written danos yeah and then how did you get to know how did you how did you get I kept within three arts but I actually met him at the same comedy festival i met you at i think 95 aspen comment huh um and he he had been on The Simpsons he was conan o'brien's writing partner right and then he I'd written the pilot and done the drawings and he I was going to work on the beavis and butt-head movie and you know they said you need a showrunner and greg did a rewrite of the pile it and he did a I had the Laotian neighbors moving in and thus the social worker coming all in the pilot and he he took the Laotian neighbors moving in and had that it'd be like second or third episode and then added the character LuAnn I think he came up with I did the drawing but he and he rewrote it and then just you know it was kind of a good fit because he had done he'd been working on The Simpsons right you knew how to oversee a lot of the you know animation stuff that's really going to be foreign to somebody who's only done live action but it's interesting too that like give him the simpsons the license they take to do just about fucking anything yeah I at the drop of a dime in even you know family guy to a certain extent that that king of ago still still stays true to to almost the sitcom format we headed out without like you with animation you can go to the moon in a frame if you want right and in the Simpsons did going down her space and and and i love that stuff but I I don't know for whatever reason from I guess cuz I was basing it sort of on neighbors that had and yeah i got i just kind of I just wanted to make it realistic and then also I think that's the way maybe I tend to write although Beavis um but but it gets a little crazy sometimes but I was also just wanted it to be I remember saying to the one of the executives on it you know I'm said well you know I think we want to have it be different from the simpsons and not just because like this simpsons and he kind of looked at me like hmm that's an interesting thought like I think executive you never I don't think anyone's ever gotten faulted for being exactly like something that was really hugely successful no horses in their mind they're yeah what he's really think is but the simpsons makes a lot of male breast why do you not want to be yes it should be exactly and so I realized that wasn't a good thing to say but I just because it's an interesting thought I'm not sure if it's a good idea but I mean then it you know just made the and greg was on board for making it have you no realistic and having the pace that I wanted and and yeah so yeah anyway I think you were I was very involved earlier on and then a certain point I what I would do is just I'd be back in austin i would take the storyboards you'd moved austin by that point yeah and do notes on the storyboards they have thing called an atom animatic and in some ways you know we were in Century City and film Roman did the animation they were way out in the valley and most of the time you were on video conference or the phone away so my will be in austin you aight Dawson yeah any word there for how many years I still have my house there I geez from 94 till you know a couple years ago so what was it when how did office base happen well that same deal I done with Fox Peter Chernin who ran the whole thing at the time had also at that same comedy festival as a good thing I went that year that was a he saw in a theater we just ran a bunch of my stuff including the for Milton office space shorts that had been done the original ones at Aspen 95 same same year he had seen that and just he actually won't he wanted a he said that there should be a movie this could be a movie the Milton character and I didn't see a whole movie in it well I'd wanted to go into live action actually for I just was always you know i mean when i first was doing the shorts one of the things i was thinking of is trying to pitch myself as a terry gilliam animator to a sketch show yeah you know like Rocky was Tamara Python and that was your big plan that was my plan yeah and in fact I actually there was a show called the edge with julie brown as a sketch show almost all female on fox and bill plympton had been doing Brian mated segues and he had quit and they asked me to it was right around the time beavis and butt-head was getting going and I did a couple form and then they cancelled the show but Jennifer Aniston was on that show actually that's where I first saw her budget anyway so yeah that I've been you know just kind of kicking around live-action stuff and yeah this did they said I said I don't really see a whole movie in the Milton character and they got some riders to try to pitch and nothing land and they said well what if it was I'd had another idea just kind of based on my time as an engineer about something like that and I said well what if you just do a movie they pitch to me a movie like car wash but the workplace is your office and right you've got there and I said yeah I could I could try to do that and car wash was a 70 I know gorci already it's interesting I would never have thought that was the precedent I know there I did that would be that the good day I about car wash I mean there was a there was a 50-50 chance he'd be like what movie car wash meets nothing that you've ever seen other than maybe nine to five wasn't you know yeah car wash amazing was Franklin Ajay professor Irwin Corey was any Richard Pryor was in a number that song I think just has one person after another coming through and it wasn't so that's it like when you know later with I mean one of the criticisms office space was maybe it wasn't strong and story but i would say well they told me to do something I car wash I don't but see I think that's a misconception about story in general that if you have a journey you know what the fuck do you need a story for okay you know what I mean if I yet yeah it is a little I mean what did I think it's also very easy thing for critics to pick apart going oh well it doesn't have the three-act structure or the way you know yeah I mean we even more in the small experience I've had in writing television I mean you know there's you got to make choices like that but I've had there's been some success and you know if the if the sort of movement through the the scenes is strong enough no one's going to be like that it does it didn't make sense to me I mean whatever carries you through to write whatever carries I mean you know JJ Abrams said an interesting thing when I think I forget what script he used to I just have him read stuff and we have used to know him back then but he he said you know you want to write it what the way he said it like whether it's a screenplay or a cut of the movie you want it to be like if you give it to someone to read and there are two pages in or 30 pages in 50 if you take it away from you want them to say wait wait don't give me back I want to see what right and you can accomplish out a lot of ways it can be like right by wanting to find out what's going to happen to the kidnapped kid or or it can just be you know that guy ever get a stapler back yeah yeah it's like this is reminding me of people I know I want to see what's going to happen to him you know there's a lot of ways to to get that it's not necessarily always going to be the right kind of you know simple so how did this grips and isn't public how did it end up did you write the whole script yeah I wrote it wrote it turned it in and then to my surprise they just kept tied it's another thing where I just kept waiting for it to not happen I started to get cold feet at one point I was just my producer I you know I said well if we're gonna do it we got to shoot it in Austin my kids in school I don't want to go live in LA for whatever and I remember going like okay just tell me when it's getting close to too late to back out because I may want to not do this I was just like I don't know if want to put this pressure on myself because you're gonna direct it yeah i was gonna direct it and is like also just thinking you know what if this I couldn't tell like you know what if I can't find the right cast what if it sucks without it just going through all that and Mia I remember pulling up they had opened a production office and pulling up and seeing like an 18-wheeler and people constructing sets and going oh shit it's happening this is really like those people are building those sets so I can have my little play pretend with these high road and just and just getting sick to my stomach and then Oh Jennifer Aniston's flying in and and you know there's gonna be paparazzi Jessa oh my god what have I done here yeah and but one of the things that really tipped the scale there was a few moments but when Gary Cole came in to read for the part of lombourg and I was just going oh my god if nothing else if i can get this guy and he was kind of basing it on what I'd done in the cartoon but he was taking it to this other level that I was just I'd only seen him in a made-for-tv movie where he played a serial killer and I just thought you know if if I get nothing else but this guy in a movie doing that then I at least I got that and said and stephen root doing milton and then it started to come around and I thought okay at least i got i know i have some scenes that me and my brother and my old roommates and musician friends of mine a laugh at right and then you know but it was that was that was a lot of stress it wasn't used to but the characters were so defined in the performances were fucking amazing yeah I felt like I remember rehearsing with Ron and Gary Cole a scene where he he's uh you know asking him to come in on Sunday and I'm it just it's just the three of us in these cubicles of sets had been built and and I'm just laughing and thinking this is great neither of them are laughing right they're playing it was great am I just making something that and Gary Cole actually hardly ever laughed through the whole thing except and when I realized I was thinking does this guy know that this is funny or maybe it's not funny and why tell I'm either way I know I tell he's what he's doing it was just seemed like magic to me and when there's a dream sequence where he's having sex yeah what's supposed to be Jennifer Aniston and so he has a shirt off and and we're about to shoot and I come up and I gotten the idea at the last minute to have him have the coffee cup and we're seeing two in it I come up with a coffee cup him out to hand it to him I'm so used to him not laughing he just starts busting out laughing and I was like okay here he gets the joke he's just so focused he's just such a focused doctor and that's a hilarious beat that was just him in the moment yeah yeah I thought you know he said the coffee cup in every single scene way and did now so did you make exactly the movie you wanted to make yeah I mean I i'd say i'd say just about everything in it there was some may be said like there's one thing i can think of there's one the studio is sew up my ass about everything they do I mean they didn't like the music I put in there I fought them on that I thought they didn't like the cast they fought me on almost every detail of it so it was and I won all of them one thing I can think of there's one this is like petty but there's one shot of Ron Livingston the main guy at the very end when the buildings burning there's one shot of him smiling that I don't like and it was this is how much they were meddling it was there was down to the last final edit and relaxing and there's a shot where his smile looks more natural right and not as big as that one and that one didn't and and they just fought me and I was like you know it it's like a two or three second shot let him have it and right now I look at him I half fuck I should I want every other battle was why did I put that out that was the one bone he threw them was in and it's one of the last shots of him in the movie and I'm just like shit it still sticks with you yeah well what I mean if I I can't believe I got all those Geto Boys songs and all those great I mean I you know that when they're smashing the printer that song I had to fight tooth and nail to get that song in there and and damn it feels good to be a gangster they didn't want that they didn't so it's I feel lucky that I got the movie well the interesting thing about again is that that movie at just over time and even now still kind of builds this cult following and it's a it's a it's a reference that almost everybody knows about and and people can watch it multiple times you know it's really nice to spend really sweet for me to have people still like it you know because on the release how did it do on the release didn't do that well I mean it wasn't a huge disaster because it only cost 10 million but but over time over 20 it's been a huge profit for him I mean they've made they still make money off and I'm sure it still airs on cable they stood there it took him forever there's this the red stapler yeah swingline didn't make red staplers and I painted it had him painted that color so it would stand out in the radical and so over the years when it started to catch on people would call swingline to try to get a red stapler they didn't know what they were talking about there's a wall street journal article about this and then someone was selling red staplers on ebay illegally and making a bunch of money and so swing line to start making red staplers and it became their biggest selling stapler and it was I actually originally i think it was Boston how'd apel staplers was in the script and Boston said no you can't even user and we don't want her yeah and swingline didn't give us any money but they said yes right so so top for that Boston staplers yeah or whatever you're called and they still selling red staplers yeah they said that they sell a lot of them it's theirs I think last time I checked it was there there big fat so how many years between that and a theocracy so that was 99 office space came out idiocracy came out in 2006 so yeah after office space i was just said I'm not doing this anymore i'm just gonna why what was here it was it's too taxing the experience of directing you didn't like the rationing and also just I wanted to just be there for you know every one of my kids games and recitals and just be around I just didn't when I was tired of always getting on a plane and flying to El he made Bank you could relax yeah yeah I'm king of the hill I could do from Austin and so proud yeah I took it took it easy for a while and ed ah cracy like it because like in a distant like and also at this time I mean now South perks out and you know and and you are sort of this respected senior in a way digi elder statesman another statesman but also liked and what I started to realize about these animations about in about south parking about beavis and about what the simpsons to a degree is that you know the there's an amazing freedom to animation you know you can fucking you know say and do almost anything and imply almost anything and take on sacred cows or or really turn things inside out you know with it when it's couched in animation it just seems like the freedom of it is amazing and like I don't know what your relationship is with those South Park guys but I mean once that started happening you know I had to be impressive oh yeah no I love south park I know those guys have gotten to know him really well over the years actually and in fact I met them I met them before South Park came out when they had done that short to Brian boy yeah he had a dime for tunnel thing and in fact they came to the were they three arts too did you I don't think they ever were three arts went after him I'm sure but they they came to the beavis and butthead movie premiere and that's where they met Isaac Hayes for the first time he was playing because he did the theme he did the opening song for the movie oh really I don't know if that if that's how they ended up choosing him but they did that's where they met her the respect that Thea beavis and butthead premier i remember those guys being there yeah they've man i mean that so talented that stuff is just smart and blowing lee good stays relevant those characters again like to like I think that nothing you created a playbook but to use sort of like you know kids with with demented points of view yeah you know the traction you can get from that is amazing yeah there's also something that's that's funny about animation it didn't occur to me till I was well into doing it but that it's hard to explain there's something kind of cowardly in a funny way about you know you're you're doing these you know you're you're doing these little drawings yeah making fun of people and right here you can do it I ting behind this you know you're not putting your face on the camera here yeah but it also is a you're a makes it funny to me that that your did it's cowardly for some reason but it's not it's not it's not cowardly it's actually the most reasonable and and and and also the most accessible way to explore the things that people think or feel but they aren't allowed to express yeah that's true you can you know you know the scene in kill bill that Quentin you know he went into animation for this awful thing where this the girl's mother is like killed on the right and and I remember him saying he was you know I thought it was great I was genius movie but that him saying that you know I didn't want to actually drip blood on a little kid and stephanie went into this Jesse anime yeah yeah anime style stuff and yeah yeah you can you can do a lot of stuff that you would take license yeah yeah so alright so you find what what was you know kind of boiling up in you that that that created the next movie that you know I had that I'd gotten the idea I guess I was just thinking about evolution or something and I got any idea when I was writing to be with some buttered movie that now that we don't have predators yeah what happened you know nobody's it just favors whoever has the most kids and just thinking about that and I started thinking there could be funny something funny I'd seen well the year two thousand one was coming up and I'd watched 2001 again and just thought wouldn't it have been funny if that movie was just you know giant Walmart's and the Jerry Springer Show instead of this clean bright future that every high-tech future that everybody in frightened everything's pristine and nice and rice doesn't seem to be going that way and so I just thought what if he just charted from the 60s to now just kept going out in that direction for another 500 years and it just I was also i was at Disneyland with my daughters and in line at the teacup rides and this dislike this kind of redneck mama behind me with her two little kids like you know three and five years old like mine where I guess I run mine were a little older but and then a Mexican woman comes up and they did I guess they had had an argument before and they just just this woman behind me starts going yeah say that to my face bitch I'll kick your fuckin ass bitch come over here and there and she's yelling back and like I'm just thinking Disneyland and the teacup ride this wasn't how is any Walt Disney imagine this being you know and I'm just my daughters are with me and I want to just turn around and you know say something to her but it was kind of scary like a thought of fight was gonna freak out yeah anyway I just thought that was actually the instigator itten the treatment for it awhile before that but I thought that while I should really I should really do something with this and that that was the moment yeah those a moment there will come a time or everyone will talk like this yeah yeah and I just broken my ankle surfing it's those on crutches and I had a lot of time sitting down so I just started writing it then and then I put it on a shelf for a while then a Tom Cohen who worked on king of the hill yeah add Fox hire him and then we we went and actually wrote it over a period of I don't know two or three months just we'd get together first time I'd written like this where we actually wrote it in the room together the first draft and I went and did a rewrite later it was something my put on the shelf we were looking at making it in 2002 and couldn't get anybody to be the lead in it nobody wanted to do it then I went and did a full rewrite I didn't want their widen they want to do it I think the script wasn't it was good it was a good idea but it wasn't that great and then when it came back I rewrote it and maybe was a little better but I was I I still I mean one of the things about that movie was sort of a bigger concept than it was a movie to really such a felt that big concept and it didn't I mean I could have it wasn't that's the the weakness of it i think it's it's a better idea than it was well no I think you're just so just this you need a big budget that's right so that that's what i read about because they're like it's it's pretty it's like a dystopian satire you know you know I think office spaces you know is a workplace at tire but they but you were you know the the things you were tackling logically were huge and and they were global literal yeah and so like you know you could feel that you add budgetary restraints but that made you you know lean into the actual jokes that you had I mean the other thing we were well I was I was a little afraid to make it just because it was very daunting I at some point when we tallied it up I realized we had something like 65 speaking parts which is not a good idea right to find that many people who can play convincing dumbasses and ended up getting a lot of my friends actually in it but um but when Luke Wilson wanted to make it then that's when I thought okay this could be I'd sort of I remember thinking of him when we rewrote it and when it actually that's kind of who the rewrite I did was imagining him doing it just sort of as sometimes it helps you write when you're thinking of a particular writer and then he responded really well to it and so so yeah then it we started we shot it in 2004 and then it was didn't come out till 2006 I thought I'd never seen Dax before and I thought he was genius in it I mean I couldn't believe it as a comedic performance with with this weird heart I mean yeah right like you like there was a part of him that just just couldn't wrap his brain around the fact that he might have been human or human Morgan I loved what he it wasn't how I imagined that character and he had known him he had done king of the hill and I'd met him he came in and read for that and it just I just loved it it kept its stuck with me and well another one though that there was one guy who was ahead of think marketing who got it in his head the problem with the movie was Dax's voice and he wanted Dax to completely loop the entire movie in a different voice and I had him do a couple scenes just to say I tried and and it just it's always nice to hear that people like Jackson that movie because I loved it and I hear that a lot actually but you know it's weird how one person in the studio are you getting your head and go like shit maybe he's right I don't know but I'd after a certain point though it's like you gotta go like who the fuck is that guy yeah you like you know they're like it's it's weird that you know someone can say something with authority and make he made everybody else there believe it to its you right it's really it's interesting because you can assign blame to an entity but then when you realize it's like might just be one asshole yeah yeah I mean I just had this realization recently like everyone who assigns blame to corporations ready I mean obviously there's blame there but usually it comes down to write this in one douchebag yeah who's gonna you know but and that douchebag keeps getting promoted usually of course yeah yeah so what happened with that movie ultimately you feel like you made the movie you could make or you wanted to make I mean that one I could I could go well I wish this scene looked better there were scenes I felt like it was cursed from the beginning it was it was uh you know was supposed to take place during a drought we shot it in Austin during one of the wettest summers ever so we're constantly having to kill grass dirt down yes I mean it was a big undertaking yeah and it was I mean I felt happy with what what we had to work with how fast it had to be done and everything that it I felt like I did as good as I could have done with I mean like I say I do feel like it was maybe a bigger concept and it was a movie and that was tricky but I think I mean we we got it in on budget there wasn't you know we had to cut a lot of you know I wish I could have spent a little more on special effects I mean there was I was getting so tired of you know they we came in on budget and they said you know you're going to be overrun special effects but don't worry about it every movies like that and then we did it screening where there was literally just drawings of stuff like the Washington Monument when you can't no matter how much you prep an audience didn't go well and so then they just started saying and they had promised me you know oh we won't use this test screening against you this is just to see out plays and then they immediately said this didn't score well we need to cut the effects budget and weight so I ended up having to they were nickel and dime nickel and diming man's effects so badly there was a point where I just said look I'll I'll pay for this myself I'll pay thirty thousand dollars to not have another one of these meetings and I actually ended up without even telling them I robert rodriguez has in austin he you know he has his own special effects people and he said so look I'm in between movies I he finally got frustrated with effects companies and just said him and hire my own Scotty so operation down yeah and and so they actually did a couple effects shots it's like just help out free yeah justjust and ever they're as good as any we had gotten and we just put him in the movie I think we gave him a special thanks i hope we did you guys are friends yeah yeah cuz like you do voices in his in the spy kids movies right yeah yeah i'm in the i'm in a couple of those i'm in all three of the first what's the calgary Donegan uh-huh yeah i don't know i think he I'm the missing agent in the first one so a lot of its my picture and then he painted himself into a corner with that and had to had to have me and the other two but it was it was really fun to I'm supposed to learn the line being on those aren't animating they're not yet they might be making an animated version or maybe they have so you actually weird the guy you i'm actually i'm actually in those things yeah I minion I'm in office space also i'm i'm the manager talking about the pieces of flair yeah did I was wearing a mustache I when it's the right when it's the right thing I mean I I think I'm happy with what I did in office space yeah but usually like like in the spy kids movies and basically sort of a I'm the asshole cop with a mustache tie and I think you could get better people than me to do that like I I was doing a lot of just kind of expose mission and stuff it was really fun to do though just because you know Mike my kids were in that age group where they were watching those my dad yeah and also just watching Robert like I learned a lot watching the way he works which is different than a lot of directors and then you're friends with the Jackass guys apparently oh yeah yeah they're good guys knock smells great guy oh yeah I love that guy yeah he's great good spirit there's a good there's a good American spirit to those movies yes like I really love those but there's very few movies I've seen twice in the theater and I saw the first one twice in the theater and it still worked yeah guys it did the first time you see the first jackass that's like a big day yeah as you can I like right out of the game you're you're like what the fuck is happening and it should right pure funny the spirit of it is just yeah yeah it's like and it's all its life it's there you know there's people risking their lives yeah for your entertainment you know literally in there in the Ross way possible now I'll be honest with you I did not see extract that's fine onion no I'm gonna watch it was a him what happened oh that was just a house a little movie I made in a sort of it not great time in my life and it did it was very low budget and there's some good stuff in it I think Ben Affleck's amazing in it a lot of good performances and what was the seed of the idea um that started with just a friend of mine talking about being married and just and we're just hypothetically talking about a guy who wanted to get divorced and hires a gigolo to see if his wife will cheat on him and right and then but then also I had an idea about a guy Adams extract was a you'd see as you're driving south of Austin they make extract and I had a separate idea about just kind of a crazy kind of criminal girl who was really hot coming into the mix kind of based on something that had happened someone I'd known and and I writing these scenes actually a while ago and just kind of combined him and I don't know I just had it lying around for a while and just put it together and jason bateman wanted to do it and I don't know I thought it was I like it it's not it uh it didn't do super well but also hardly cost anything so right i mean i think everyone it was mostly private investors page Morton and miramax came in at the end and everyone got their money back yeah I think everyone did all right on it it still it was last a year ago it was in the top 10 itunes oh yeah download yeah so it's I mean it gets it gets some subtraction here and they say it's picking up a little cult following yeah yeah it seems to be okay I gotta watch it I apologize for no no well you know I've done no I can yeah i mean i enjoy silicon valley a lot and i'm not easy and in some of the and some of those guys like i have personal problems with 0 as a community right you uh but a lot of them are well yeah you got we what you've worked with Kumail right never become a I've worked with TJ and Josh Brener is actually my assistant on my show that's right hey man you got ya yes so he you know him and I actually have an on-screen relationship but like Camille and I know I respect these guys and they're funny guys but liking I'm a cantankerous fuck yes and TJ Miller like sort of as a person has always sort of annoyed me but he's fucking and he's great and I know him and you know and I'm you know I'm an only annoying I'm a known cranky bastard but he's great in that in kumail's great and everybody's great and I just had uh white Martin Starr in here recently said he ya did it but it shows really funny I mean it's just purely funny and it's like the the the world you created with those comic actors and the idea behind it it just it all equals great comedy to me and I think people are responding to it that way what was the evolution of that idea to to screen that started with a couple of John ultra and dave krinsky who are on king of the hill had John had talked about an idea with engineers and that you know I obviously I'd like I had known that world he was talking about doing something sort of like Falcon Crest or Dallas but about the about tech money instead of right oil or wine scott rudin had pitched me an idea about gamers they bought the rights to some story I think and I just no video games I don't know enough about that and right that's something if you get it wrong they're just gonna yeah you just get ya hated on the unread it yeah you'll be washed up on ready exactly yeah yeah so I so I said well what if you know would you want to do something like this about startups in that world and shot the pilot and then when it became serious elk Berg came on to co-run it with me I think that the casting is pretty amazing that you know that you know Middleditch is great tj's great I think there I think I'll it's a great in the way they already would that I mean everything hinges on you know that that dynamic you know and they all seem to settle into their characters so beautifully and they're so you know the comedy doesn't seem like you've created a world where you can go a bit over the top because they all want to go over the top they owe the nature you have of their ostentatious pneus yeah is is is over the top and these are people that don't really know how to do that so that's what's interesting about the world is these people have so much just absurd amounts of money going into into this world and they're people who don't quite know how to enjoy themselves right they they don't they wouldn't know how to flaunt it if they tried really and they don't really want to and I mean it's just it's yeah it's pretty crazy and gather cast i think i love the cast and they actually geez i think all of them except all the main people you see on the poster and then josh who wasn't on the poster was you know main character in the show plays big head all of them read for tjs part from her lick mm-hm and then I went back and sort of I mean we had some other characters in there but we had a satanist and whatever but then like seeing each of them had certain qualities that I recognized in the world of engineer nerd types and so I went back and kind of tailored just kind of wrote to the way they played it right and it's just the way they all gelled I could tell right away shooting the pilot just when they all sat down they all sat down in that main room in the places basically that they are in the show like Martin sat in the corner right and I just like yeah ok this works ok over there and TJ kind of wandering around and and I didn't realize they all had this imp I didn't know I knew Thomas and I'd worked with TJ but I didn't know that they all had these I didn't know Kumail was a stand-up I didn't know right that they all knew each other from improv and all the Chicago yeah she J can mail anyways and Thomas yeah they go way back and then Martin and then actually Josh was in a when he was around twelve was cast in a movie that I was producing that didn't ended up having the plug pulled on it but really and because he's from Houston and it was a local a real iron and he came up to while her shooting he goes hey do you remember this movie i think was called El Camino love story and oh yeah what yeah i was at can't remember the characters names it was just like oh my god i'm totally remember you it but he was a kid then but um what's interesting about these characters is that the way their their their innate vulnerabilities as sort of overly intelligent nerdy guys plays against their ego it like there's always going to be this weird there they're never going to be able to get rid of this this inherent vulnerability that runs from their intelligence and their their their nerdiness yeah you see it I mean you see it all the time I've I've met a lot of big tech billionaires and they're still socially awkward and some of them are even a little as burglary you know yeah and this totally reminds me of what you know like the guys I knew it in physics and and in Silicon Valley who are just super smart to create a world where that can really work and and to have it be as and to have that type of character and not make fun of that type of character in that like you know Martin Starr you know did to have him be a Satanist and just sort of be matter-of-fact about it is is it's just beautiful like they usually these you know that cast of characters are punch lines and here you know they're driving the narrative and they all have a fully rounded human component to them that they're sympathetic they're not they're not they're not punch lines and then I haven't in her life and and and if there's a vulnerability to all of them that's just great yeah that was that yeah that's a that's what the goal was you know to make it yeah and like this Satanist thing was you know every time I've met or heard of one they're not there like science fiction club or something yeah it's like in even the head of this agent search Anton LaVey was like this this huckster he was a guy named usually ahead you know it was a it was a goof but it's really just about like sort of like do whatever the fuck you want yeah and it's you know some odd people joining a club well it's but it's funny because it's sort of like that it's like what swingers really look like like you know you ever see like pictures of swinger parties they're white kid to make a trailer park well we had this we had this book and there was a there's a picture of a satanic baptism in just like fat weird unattractive people naked and just standing there with these sheep almost paper mache looking goat head right it's the human component like when you'd hear about Satanism in the 80s it was always pat robertson or somebody to pricerite dark evil force out there that we need to combat and you really look at it's just a ragtag group of weirdos right what a fuck when you know in places in right well great job man was great talking to I appreciate you coming down yeah thanks this is fun that's it that's the show how cool is that talking to my judge Albuquerque man you know I felt it I felt the connection I felt the connection in the Albuquerque connection to the animation I just want to say our theme music is by John Montaigne other music on today's episode was by DJ Coakley right now we'll do some of my music go to WTF podcast you