Larry Charles: Jake and the Fatman
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Hey everybody, welcome to Literally, the man responsible for one of my favorite moments ever, ever in a movie theater is with us. Responsible for, among some others, for some of my favorite moments watching TV. Larry Charles, who directed Borat.

who is one of the producers on Curb Your Enthusiasm. And Seinfeld works with Larry David for years and years and years. Just one of the funniest visionaries ever on the show. And it's really exciting to have him. Welcome, welcome to the pod. How are you? Oh, it's a pleasure to meet you, man. I'm a big fan and deepest respect and admiration for your career. So it's great to meet you. Thank you for having me.

I feel the same. I have to say that my greatest moment, I really do believe my greatest comedy moment, other than being probably an eight-year-old kid and seeing Blazing Saddles, was seeing Borat. Thank you. Thank you. Blazing Saddles was also a big movie for me as well, by the way. That was a seminal movie to experience. Very groundbreaking. Yeah.

Well, that's that's the thing is just that notion of being in a theater and feeling I can't believe what I'm seeing is so is so impossible to to capture. I mean, it's so rare.

And it's also, it's getting more rare. I mean, the idea of going into a movie theater and having a large mass of people all collectively responding to something without people getting offended, without things breaking down, just getting movies into movie theaters has become a much more rare experience, unfortunately. How much of...

of Borat was, I know you get asked this all the time and I think I know the answer, but how much of it was, was scripted? Was it,

We're going to go into this place and we're going to do this and we're going to do that. But you don't know what's happening until Sasha's interacting with the people in the rodeo or wherever it is. Sasha had questions. I mean, there was a script of sorts, you know, it wasn't a traditional script and it was pretty thick actually, because it was filled. Yes. And it was filled because it was filled with the questions that he would want to be asking of these various targets and

And then of course you couldn't script what that person was going to respond.

And then things would start to unravel and you couldn't script that. So there's like a third of, a third of it would be script and the rest of it would be Sasha having to improvise based on what the target was saying. And yet we knew what we wanted to go because it was also amazingly enough, a story about him wanting to find Pam Anderson in California. So we had, he had to be able to manipulate the conversation to get somebody to help him with a clue that,

to get to the next point in the story also. And if that didn't work, we had to do that scene all over again with a new group of people, sometimes in a different state, depending on how it ended, you know? So it was a very complicated process. And the releases, how did you handle getting the releases of the people on, the regular people on camera who didn't come off so great, potentially? Has America laughing at them? And they still signed the release?

Well, it was always done or as often as possible. It was done prior, prior to the scene under a kind of a ruse. Honestly, you know, we would they didn't realize who Bora was. We would say, you know, he's from Kazakhstan. He doesn't really know English. He doesn't know American mores or customs.

This is for Kazakhstani television. And people, you know, one of the keys to the success of Borat is...

uh, ego and vanity. Everybody has a lot of ego and vanity. And when you say, Hey, you, you know, saying it to you is one thing, but saying it to a average people in the country, uh, they are very flattered very easily and they love talking about themselves. People are just like that. And so when you go, wow, you would be great on TV. Have you ever thought about doing team? Oh no. And then you go, well, we have this Kazakhstani journalist who would love to talk to you.

you know, and Oh yeah, sure. You know, and you have to kind of be patient with him because he doesn't really speak English. He doesn't even know what a chair is. And people would believe all of that. And, uh, and they would sign the releases very, very happily and then be extremely bitter at the end of the scene, you know, the, the,

I love hearing that pitch of introducing Borat to some unsuspecting rube. That's how it works. He doesn't even know what a chair is. I mean, you're just going to have to really just tolerate it if you can. Yes. And with Borat, you know, the thing was that with Borat, it really worked because there was, even though he was a rapist and an anti-Semite,

and a misogynist and you know, all those things, there was a certain innocence to him and people gave him a lot of slack.

And that allowed the scenes to unravel in these very, very funny ways. When we did Bruno, because he was a flamboyantly gay character, people were almost immediately hostile to him. And it was really much harder to get people to that same place because they were immediately ready to reject him or even get violent with him, get physically violent with him. And so the response was very, very different between Borat and Bruno.

And it had nothing to do with that. Sasha is now more famous. They, the, the, the people didn't realize that Bruno was Sasha. We had, it hadn't gotten to that point yet. Nobody ever recognized him. We went out on Melrose and we were going to do Bruno. We took, you know, our phone cameras and just went out on Melrose with him dressed like in a cheap CVS wig or something, you know, a chemo wig and just had him, you know, kind of sashayed down the street and,

uh you know like divine and pink flamingos just to see how people would respond to it no one recognized him even on melrose avenue so we thought wow it's amazing people don't really they don't observe that carefully you know it's you learn a lot about the human psychology when you do movies like this you realize people are not looking that carefully at things

That's why eyewitnesses have to be questioned because what they're seeing is not necessarily what happened. And so they didn't recognize him and we felt like, wow, we could actually get away with this again. The minute the sort of Kazakhstani came up in the theater, I knew this was going to be one of the great film-going experiences. I think it's definitely in my top five

Listen, it's in my top five comedies ever made and might be in my top 20 movies of all time. Easy. I mean, for sure. It's unbelievable. Thank you. Well, you pointed out a very interesting fact about the movie, which is that opening, it's the icebreaker. Like when the stand-up comes out and he wants to get that first lap, having that logo of the Kazakhstani television stand

That broke the audience up right off the bat. And they were like strapped in and ready to take the ride. And that really like loosened the audience up. And it really wound up being like a great opening to the movie. Did the famous horse falling down with the flag.

It was just a happy, in the rodeo. That's just a happy accident. You had one of your camera guys on it, correct? Well, I'll tell you the truth about that. You know, initially Todd Phillips was the, he was the original director of the movie and he and Sasha did not get along. And after like a week or so, he left the project and we couldn't really use most of what they had shot, but

But they did shoot that scene. And so Todd Phillips actually directed that scene. And that was a happenstance moment. And that's the reason why I wanted to keep it when we started over again, because I thought the chances of doing that rodeo scene and having the horse fall down in the background, you know, it's never going to happen again. So we used that one scene from Todd, and I'm very grateful to him for that. Now, that image...

is one of those things where you go, that is the happy accidents in filmmaking or in any time. That's the goal. Do you have a favorite sequence in Borat? Do you have one that's particularly dear to your heart?

Well, there are so many. I mean, the original assembly was like six hours long. Please release it. Please release it. Please. I wish somebody would. I really do. I don't have any control over it, unfortunately. So there were scenes like

a Borat getting healed in a church where he came in and it was one of these evangelistic churches where people are speaking in tongues and rolling on the floor and they heal him. He comes in and he's looking for Jesus.

And they take him in and they were very sweet to him, actually. But it's an amazing, crazy, like beyond comedy kind of scene. And they heal him. And at the end, even he said to me, Sasha said, I don't know, I did feel something, you know. So that was an amazing scene. But I also love like just the kind of slapstick scene.

you know, silliness. Like we went to a antique store in Mississippi and he goes through almost like a Buster Keaton or a Charlie Chaplin kind of destruction of the store where he slips on something and breaks this thing. And that causes this to break. I mean, I love the construction and the choreography of stuff like that also. So I was constantly personally amazed at

As I was watching, as I was directing, and seeing these things kind of unfold, it was kind of miraculous. He's a genius. He just is an absolute genius. People also don't realize how tall he is. He's a giant. Yeah, you would think that's why we thought with Bruno that, oh, now he's done Borat. Now here's this weird looking guy walking down the street. Aren't people going to realize who this is? But they still didn't. Yes, he towers over everybody.

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You started back in, was Fridays, which you wrote on in this, I remember Fridays, by the way.

That was everybody who was trying to be Saturday Night Live after Saturday Night Live. I know. We'll make a show called Friday. No, how about Wednesdays? No, no, Fridays for sure. Right. The writers, as you can imagine, hated. We were brought in and told we were going to do a late night comedy show. We wanted it to be as far from Saturday Night Live as possible. And they asked us to come up with names and...

And we came up with these crazy Monty Python-esque names for the show. Not even words. Some of the suggestions weren't even words. We wanted it to be as distinctive as possible. And then one day we came into work and the binders and the jackets, they were all said Fridays on them. So we never had a chance to really have our input. My favorite story about that is...

The, uh, there was a, there was a great show on, of all places on MTV, these amazing geniuses. And when I tell you the title, you'll, you'll know exactly what it is, but they had a title that they wanted. The network hated it. And so they came up with what they thought was the worst title ever knowing it would be rejected. It wasn't rejected. And so there's a show called wonder shows. And. Uh-huh. Sure. Of course. I love that show. Yeah.

which is one of my all time. By the way, I think wonder shows and in Borat are, uh,

Um, in the same, how would, what genre would you even describe Borat and Wondershows? Because they're not really improv. They're not even scripted improv, although obviously that's a huge part of it. I feel like it, it transcends being called that, but I don't know what I would call it. I think, you know, we do have a tendency to want to label things, but I do think that Borat defies labeling. I mean, it's called mockumentary music.

But like Spinal Tap to me is a mockumentary, you know, Spinal Tap is like set up situations with actors. It's not really dealing with real people. It's not like an X factor like there is in Borat. So it doesn't really fit into any category particularly, in my opinion.

Are we excited about the new Spinal Tap sequel? I'm very excited for this. I am too. I mean, I remember when the first one came out and it took a while for it. Like, the Big Lebowski had the same issue. When it first came out, it did not have the excitement. And slowly people, which is great when this happens because it's rare.

people found the movie, you know, and kind of like own the movie. Finally, the audience finally owned the movie in both those cases. And so, and I'm not a big fan of sequels, generally speaking, but something like Spinal Tap does make me laugh just thinking about the sequel, which is a good sign. I think I saw a, a clip of the sequel. Yeah.

And I was like, oh, how is it going to be? And I knew it was going to be great when it's Michael McKeon. And he's going, one time, okay, one time, we got lost backstage. It's very unfair. It was only once. And I'm like, oh, yeah. The notion that they're bitter about the... I mean, it's funny how the same joke actually...

can work for an entire movie. Like, the bit that they're bitter about being misrepresented

If that's all it is, that's plenty for me. Yeah. Well, it resonates also. I mean, you know, there's so many old rockers now, you know, everybody, all of these guys, how did they live? You know, uh, don't trust anyone over 30, you know, uh, my generation, all these guys, Pete Townsend, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, they're all out there, you know? And so the idea that there is a group that's still out there, but bitter is hilarious. You know? So I, I, yeah, I think it'll be funny.

I've heard, um, I'm, I'm kind of obsessed with bitter musicians, uh, talking about stuff. So the most recent one is, um, I saw Daryl Hall being so angry that Hall and Oates was considered a yacht rock. Right. I saw that too. I saw that too. Well, he, even the fact that he's angry at Oates, uh,

Seems kind of silly to me, you know. I don't know why. I have a question for you, because they're separately touring. If you're a fan, do you go see... Do you go, hey, I'm going to go to a concert. Who are you seeing? I'm going to see Hall tonight. Or like, what are you guys like? Oh, I'm going to Oates. Like, what do you...

Where do you draw the line? What camp do you go to, I wonder? Do they advertise as Hall and nothing? You know, how do they... What does it say on the... Hall with an ampersand, just nothing next to it. Just nothing on the side, a little blank or something. Yeah. I went on a tangent during talking about Fridays. Is it my imagination or was the logo also really bad for Fridays? The whole thing, it was...

I am telling you, Rob, when we came and we were all young guys, you know, and we really wanted to do something radical. And it had this really lame font and it was called Fridays. And it was like, wow, now we have to kind of double our effort to be alienating to the audience. Just to show that we're not trying to copy Saturday Night Live, you know. It could have been worse. It could have been, remember the Howard Cosell show? I do remember it.

I think it might have been called live on Saturday night or something like that. It was really Saturday night live. I'm not sure. It was something like that for sure. And I do remember it very well. Yeah. And I loved Howard Cosell, but thought, wow, that's a bad idea. Now, Cosell being, Cosell's not Lorne Michaels. No, not at all. And not a, not even a good host for that kind of thing.

Until I was doing a little bit of research on you, I didn't for some reason realize that you were early in Arsenio's show. Is it true that for six months you wrote jokes that didn't get on the air? That is true. That's amazing. I was desperate for a job because I had come off Friday, so I thought, oh, the world is just my oyster, and then I couldn't get a job for like seven years.

And no one would hire me. And what I was being offered was terrible. And I was like, wow, this is it. It's over already. And then I got recommended to Arsenio and went to see him. And he was cool. And I got hired. I told him I wanted to write like Richard Pryor type monologues for him. And he was really into that.

And at first he tried my material and it didn't do that well. And he already was getting so much controversy just by being black.

You know, by being a black host on TV, he got so much hate mail, so much abuse from, I mean, because before the internet and I used to read his fan don't call fan mail and it was violent, threatening. It was incredible. The racism was,

And the violence of the racism, you know, wanting to do things to him that were beyond my imagination. And also, like they used to say, written in crayon a lot of time. Things like that, just scary. And we had to have metal screeners up at the audience so that people would come in. They would take weapons off the people when they came in to see the show. So he had a lot of pressure on him. And he could not...

He just could not do controversial material and get away with it. So he started doing much safer material. I could not write it for whatever reason, and I just couldn't do it. And for six months, I continued to write material but could not get a joke on the air, knew my contract was about to end, and when it ended, I got let go, you know. That show was so big for...

That moment where it was so big. It was really... Well, that's Bill Clinton's saxophone. Bill Clinton's saxophone, yeah. That was the... I mean, you could not argue. It's the truth. That was the beginning of...

of politicians who used to be, presidential candidates used to be above even commenting on movies or sporting events. Like, they were above it. They didn't deign to comment, much less participate in the popular culture. That was the first moment of it. Bill Clinton was very savvy that way. And also, you know, it's hard to imagine today, but...

But Arsenio had music on that no one else would touch. He had guests on that no one else would touch. I mean, he would have Public Enemy or NWA. Those kind of bands were on. And there was an audience that was craving that, you know, and he tapped into that because the other talk shows were not touching that kind of talent.

and I were used to hang out a lot together back in the 80s. We did. We had a lot of in my wild days, we had a lot of like forum club, you know, Jerry bus Laker girl. Like I remember he had a great he had if he I remember he had some apartment off of like Fountain Avenue and and

And it was just, it was too good. I haven't seen him in years, but I love that guy. He was the absolute greatest. He's a survivor also. You know, he's around, he's doing stand-up. And, you know, he kind of made it through that period and kind of still standing, which is always, you know, always something that I find admirable and so difficult in show business. Yeah, making a mark and then...

like going to the next chapter that doesn't evolve that mark you've made is it's very, very hard to do. Very few people do it. I'm not even sure how people do it, but they, they do. Um, and then Seinfeld is obviously amazing because of all the amazing things to talk about, about that show. My favorite thing is it was, um,

What was the original order? Six episodes? What was the original, the original, original. And then there was four episodes and then 13. So over the course of like three to four years, there was one pilot that took a year for them to decide to do a few more shows. They did four more shows another year before they finally picked it up for 13. And then after that, they got their first full, the first full pickup of like 22 shows. I remember that.

And I remember driving my car and hearing someone, I don't think it was Jerry, must have been Larry, maybe it was you, on a local, like, KABC radio station promoting the show. I'd never heard of it. It had been on for, like, six episodes. And man, whoever was doing the interview was like, yeah, I don't know. It's, we got six episodes. We'll see.

We'll see how it goes. When you're out flogging to the local affiliate, you know you're out there selling. And then it comes full circle to years later, I'm pitching NBC in Warren Littlefield's office, and he's on the phone with Jerry offering him like,

you know, more than a million dollars an episode to say they don't stay. It's the greatest journey in TV history, that show. Incredible arc. I mean, you have to keep in mind in those early days, it was losing in the ratings to Jake and the Fat Man.

That was the show that was kicking its ass at that time. And we, you know, but what was good about the show under those circumstances, under the circumstances of failure, we're all used to failure, you know, and we thought, well, we'll just do the show that we think is funny.

you know, and it'll get canceled. We'll make a little bit of money. We'll move on with our lives. And in a way, that was liberating. And I think that is the key to the show becoming such an original thing was we did not really kowtow to the sitcom tastes of the time, you know. We just did the show that we thought was funny. And that worked out, you know, strangely. And I don't even understand how you're able to do even that. I get that

it was dead. The show was dead man walking. And so fuck it, let's just go. I, I understand the, the setup of that, but yet isn't there always some phalanx of junior executives at the table read going? I don't know. I don't know if that, that, that, that whole serial bit really works. And I don't know. Uh,

There was a lot of arguing after the table reads. Warren Littlefield often came to the meetings after the table reads. You had all the NBC executives, you had the Castle Rock executives, and there was a fight every week between

about the show, about putting more story in of, you know, the moral at the end, the kind of traditional sitcom things. They wanted it to fit into that mold and the resistance to that. And in a way, because it was doing so poorly, um,

There was a kind of a lack of concern about it ultimately. And so they let it, they sort of let it just be what it was. And Larry eventually wisely felt like, well, if you want us to do stories that are sitcom stories, there have to be funny stories. And we started to then construct stories.

from nothing. You know, again, there was no Seinfeld to speak of. Like we look at it today in retrospect, we started to construct stories that involved all the characters and that were funny and farcical on their own and very different from what was on TV at that time. And then it got moved to

From Wednesday night, where it was being killed by Jake and the Fat Man, to after that must-see Thursday kind of lineup, it got moved to after cheers. And that's when the audience really discovered it. And it kind of exploded at that point. Can you just, because it makes me laugh again, please say Jake and the Fat Man one more time. It's the greatest title ever. Jake and the Fat Man. Jake and the Fat Man. It was just about a fat cop, you know.

That was the hook. That was the hook. He had to run after people, you know, and he couldn't really catch them, you know. And that was a drama, by the way. You can't make it up. ♪

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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash Rob to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash Rob. So you now have the your memoir coming out.

Yes. It's, it's, it's, it's an epic Rob. Um, it's good. I'm glad to hear it. It's, it's, it's telling the story of my career, basically starting, starting just before Fridays and going up to about 2022 or so. And, but it's also talking about comedy and my theories of comedy. And it's also talking about my personal life as well, which has been a very sort of, uh,

rocky, volatile, unpredictable sort of path on its own and how all these things dovetail and intersect. So it covers a lot of ground. It covers the culture. It covers things beyond the things that I've worked on and the connections between those things and my place in the world, trying to figure that out as time goes on and have a kind of some sort of life that makes sense.

with some significance. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I can't wait for it. Oh, shit. Okay. This is what's about this show. The show rambles. It goes in different directions. That's okay. But I need to come back. I'm making a note. Come back to Bob Dylan co-directing. I'm coming back to that. I directed that myself, by the way. I just can't. Oh, okay. Oh,

Okay. You draw, yes. Bob co-wrote it apparently. Yes. We co-wrote it. Yes, that's true. Um, but, but your book, I want to go back to your book first and then we're going to get back to, to, to, uh, the, uh, Bob Dylan pseudonym Renee Fontaine, maybe my favorite pseudonym ever for a celebrity. Um, so you're, do you have any, um, 10 commandments about comedy or three commandments or a commandment that I can take away from this interview?

Well, one thing, and I think you've learned this yourself in your own career, is that almost anything can be comedy. You know, the most horrible subjects...

can be humorous if you find the right angle. I think that there is no subject that is out of bounds. A lot of people think there are things that you just don't touch, but I'm very influenced by people like Lenny Bruce and people like that. And I believe you can take any subject and if you find the right angle, the right hook,

you'll find comedy in that. That's probably my first rule of comedy is don't be afraid. You know, I'm a believer in free speech, absolute free speech, and let the audience decide, let that dynamic between the comedian or the comedy and the audience, let that be the deciding factor. You know, let's not censor that. And let's, let's, I think you need to keep breaking rules.

those boundaries and breaking those barriers in order to find the language that makes people laugh. And you see today, there's a struggle going on about what is funny. And the audience is kind of fragmented as we start to evolve this hopefully new language of comedy that will bring an audience back together again, like Blazing Saddles or Borat, which would both be very difficult movies to get made today. You could...

You could never make the movies. There are sequences you couldn't make in both those movies. There are jokes, jokes that live on today that you can't even quote in public. Um, it's, it's, um, I, I hope and, and, and suspect that there will be a movie hopefully sooner than later that just has an unbelievable case of the fuck it's and it will blow the doors of,

off of everything and will be massive. And then all of a sudden it'll be safe. Yes. To really be funny again, but I don't know where that movie is. You have to tap into that forbidden, that forbidden subject. You have to be able to go and delve into a place that seems that it's not funny. I mean, I think one of the things that characterizes my comedy is I've made comedy about things that really shouldn't be funny and

And I think tapping into that forbidden quality is, uh, and liberates people. They have this need to explode. They're holding all that stuff in and they would never laugh at it normally. But if you give them permission, you show them a way that it's okay. That laughter is the biggest laughter of all. Um, all right, let's talk about Bob Dylan. It's speaking of comedy. Yeah.

Well, he's hilarious. Everybody knows that. Yes, I agree. No one's ever made me laugh more or more consistently than Bob. Tell me what the living fuck... You just got to tell me everything about this because I don't understand anything about it. Tell me what...

Well, I got a phone call from his manager saying that he had been on the road, which he did. That's what he basically does. He's on the road all the time. He's been on the road almost nonstop for decades now. And at that time, he had a VCR in his tour bus.

And, you know, he goes through movies, he loves movies. And at that time, apparently he was watching, he had gotten addicted to these Jerry Lewis movies and he was watching the, you know, the errand boy and cinder fella and just thinking about Dylan watching those movies and

It's kind of funny. Yeah, exactly. It's unbelievable. So, and he got it in his mind and Bob is the kind of guy, and this is something that I learned from him or I knew already, but I kind of, it was solidified by being with him, which is trust your instincts. That's all you have. Just trust your instincts. And he has trusted his instincts and it's worked out, you know?

So he felt very strongly at that time that he wanted to do like a half hour comedy of some sort, uh,

you know, like a series. And at first I thought they were kidding, but he was serious. And they asked me if I'd be interested in talking to him about it. And I thought, oh, well, I'll go have a conversation with him. I mean, I've met with him. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, hang on. I just need to, I just need to marinate, if you'll let me, for just a minute in the notion, the notion of you getting a phone call

from a Hollywood manager saying, my client, Bob Dylan, would like to talk to you about his interest in doing a half an hour comedy. Yes. Please continue. I don't even know. Well, I have had strange people say,

you know, I'm sure, you know, that there are, there are people who like want to delve into it. And sometimes they think, Oh, I'll do a sitcom because that's easy. And, um, and then when they find out what's really involved, they, they wind up dropping out. And I thought for me, I,

I kind of had gotten used to the surreal quality of show business, you know, so this just seemed perfect in a way. And I thought to myself, you know, I'll go, I'll have the meeting and I could tell my friends that I met with Bob Dylan. That's what I was, that's what I was looking for.

A good story to tell my friends. That was it. I knew it wouldn't go on beyond that first meeting. And then I went to meet him at this coffee house that he owns in Santa Monica. And at that time, I was wearing pajamas, by the way. I used to wear pajamas all the time. I had really long hair, long beard, and wore pajamas. You know, that's another subject.

but he came in and he was also dressed like a homeless guy and we sat in this coffee house. I don't think people even knew who he was. He had the hat pulled out over his head and, um,

The first thing that happened was his assistant came over and said, you guys want something to drink? And he said, I want something hot. I want a hot beverage. Like that's what he said. A hot beverage. It's amazing. And I said, I'll have iced coffee or whatever, you know. And they brought the drinks and he put down the hot drink and the cold drink. And he immediately took my drink and

and started drinking it. This was my first encounter with him. And meanwhile, of course, I didn't touch the hot drink. And after a while, he said to me, well, why don't you drink your drink? And I said, because you're drinking it. And he started laughing.

And we started, we loosened up. It was an icebreaker, so to speak, with the iced coffee. And we started having a kind of a loose, fun kind of conversation. And we actually started working on the project from that moment. And I would come in every day. Behind the coffee house, there was a boxing gym. He had a cubicle in the boxing gym.

He would smoke cigarettes all day in this little closed off cubicle. And we would work 12 hours a day. He has the most incredible stamina. And we worked for 12 hours a day for months, putting together this kind of treatment for this half hour comedy show, which was kind of more like a two-reeler, like a Buster Keaton type of two-reeler, surreal, Louis Bunuel kind of comedy, as opposed to like a sitcom.

And so we did work on it. We did get it. I thought it was really good, actually, as it turned out. Whether he could do it or not, that's something we would have to find out. But I was kind of happy with the results. And we took it to HBO. And I said, if you come to the meeting at HBO, they will not have the balls to say no to you. If you come to the meeting, we will sell this project, no matter how weird it is.

And he agreed. So we met in Century City at that time. And I was waiting for him in my pajamas, going to the meeting in my pajamas. And the limo pulled up and he got out. And I was relieved because he looked stranger than I did. He was in like a black sort of villain, a cowboy villain's outfit. You know, black hat, black.

black leather duster, black boots, you know, all in black, like the man in black. And we strolled into that HBO meeting and everybody's just staring at us like, who are these two freaks? What do they want? You know, don't hurt us. And we got to Chris Albrecht's office. And the first thing he said to Bob was he was so excited about meeting Bob, which is exciting. And he said, Oh, Bob, look, look, look on my wall. I have the original tickets for Woodstock. And Bob said, Oh,

I didn't play Woodstock.

And he just walked past Chris Albrecht. And Chris had this gigantic office with these big picture windows looking out over the city. And Bob just walked across the room and stared out the window for the entire meeting. He never sat down. He never acknowledged anybody. He was complete. It was like, and I had to be like senior once's where I was pitching. And occasionally I go, isn't that right, Bob? And he go, yeah. And that was it. And we sold the show anyway.

We sold the show and then we left the meeting, got to the elevator and I could see he had a sour expression on his face. I was like, what's wrong? And because we were all happy, my manager, Gavin Pallone at the time. And, you know, we were all like thrilled. We couldn't believe that we had sold it. And he but Bob looked unhappy. And I said, what's the matter? And he said, I don't want to do it anymore.

And it's like, are you kidding me, man? We just sold the show. He's like, it's too slapsticky. And we went down the elevator, just deflated because we had sold the show and now he didn't want to do it anymore. And by the time we got to the bottom, it was over.

And Gavin said to me, you got to get out of this. Just bail now, man. You better just get out of this. This is too crazy. And I said, I'm on the Bob Dylan train, and I'm going to take it to the last stop. And I went over to Bob, and I said, hey, man,

Do you want to keep talking about this? Do you want to see if it could evolve into something else? I'm willing to keep working on it. And he agreed. And that's how it became Mastin Anonymous. Another year or so of working on it. Holy. Dude, I've heard a lot. Listen, I've been doing this show a long time, this whole podcast. That might be one of the great show business stories ever.

That's up there with Michael Douglas telling me that Deborah Winger bit him in the face when he was trying to cast her in terms of endearment. Holy cow. Yeah. Holy cow. Bob Dylan, I didn't play Woodstock. Do you think that was the beginning of the end? I didn't play Woodstock? Yeah. I think that, you know, again, his emotions, his reasons, his logic is his own.

And he doesn't really worry about what people are thinking. He does his thing. If you like it, good. If you don't like it, it really doesn't matter to him. I've said this before about him and Larry David. They would be doing the same thing if they were sitting on a bus stop like homeless guys. This is what they do.

You know, they can't really make the adjustment. They're not interested in that. And this was Bob and Bob has, it's worked out as it has for Larry. You know, they do what they think is right. They do what they feel. They do what they can really, you know, and they can't really make the adjustment the way a lot of us can. And for them, that integrity has kind of given them a path to follow.

It's so interesting because I never would have drawn that line between those two guys. But the minute you do it, you go, of course, they're cut from the same cloth. The difference for me that I think is Dylan literally showed up on a bus and within six months was one of the biggest stars in the world. Yes. So it's easy to have the courage of your convictions.

When from, from the jump you've been hailed as the, uh, second coming, but Larry, you know, is he, he went through, he had to build his career. So to hold on to your convictions while people are saying no, no, no, no, no. And the door slammed in your face. That's really something. Yeah. Well, the, the diff, that is a big difference. Larry was in failure mode for many, many years, but he never changed his path.

And that's the similarity. Bob and Larry both did their thing and had confidence on some level or they had no choice on some level, but to do what they could do. And eventually people found Larry and realized, oh my God, this guy's a genius. He's got a point of view that's completely distinctive and unique. And with Bob, it almost happened immediately. And then he had the challenge of,

of having to sort of keep it going, you know? So it's, but there's that intersect where they both are like, this is what I do. If you like it, great. If you don't like it, that's okay. Remember, despite Bob's phenomenal beginning, he had many years of failure, many years of public failure and humiliation that he just kept-

Yes. And he just kept moving through it, you know, and never gave up. And he's actually probably more popular today than he's ever been. It's unbelievable. He used to...

show up at my brother's soccer practices because Jacob is my brother's age. I mean, I remember at Point Dune when Bob, when it was revealed that the mysterious person buying up all of the parcels of land was Bob Dylan and he built a house with like a gigantic golden onion on the roof. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like a guitar pool. And it's just, there's no one like him.

It's amazing how sweet and normal his kids are, you know, Jacob and those guys are all really, really nice guys. You know, he, so on some level he was able to show that kind of love and parental sort of guidance to those kids. Um, but, uh, it would seem like that would be a challenge for him also. Amazing. Um, this has been great, man. I, I'm, I'm super excited. Um, also, um,

We didn't even talk about Dix the musical. Right. That's so one of my favorite. Tell me, before we go, just give me a little bit about directing a musical. I need to know what that discipline is like for you. Well, I mean, that was very low budget. When they showed me the script for that, it was kind of like a similar to a borrowed experience. The first couple of pages of the script, I was already laughing. Yeah.

and continued laughing through the entire script. I thought this is, again, as we were talking about a second ago, this was a language of comedy that was kind of new to me. And the songs were great. And they had done this for UCB

like a 20 minute version of it, you know? And I thought, wow, these songs are so catchy and they're hilarious. And the dialogue is great. And these two guys, Josh and Aaron are two, they're like a gay Avenue Costello. And I thought, wow, this is like, this is going to be beautiful. And they gave us very little money, but they did give us some money.

And so I shot it kind of in a proscenium style where they're coming right at the audience. And it was really fun. It was one of the best experiences I've ever had filmmaking. And our live audiences, when they saw the movie also responded, we used to get waves, gales of laughter. It was really a very satisfying experience. And the movie's great. Of course, it's a very weird movie and it didn't find a wide audience, but it's like,

hopefully like Spinal Tap or Big Lebowski that people will discover it over time. If you're listening, Dick's the musical. Okay. And then my last question for you is I can't let it go without going. Why pajamas? Was it a Hugh Hefner homage? Far from it. I mean, I didn't even wear nice pajamas. I wore like, you know, JC Penny type pajamas, like the cheapest, crappiest pajamas. But the reason I did it

I was always looking for like a uniform, something where I could get up in the morning. I had enough anxiety in the morning going to work. And so I wanted to wear something where I didn't have to think about it. Should I put this shirt with these pants? I didn't want to deal with that, you know? And so I tried Dickie's coveralls for a while. Well, I directed the Bob Dylan movie. I wore Dickie's coveralls every day. But they were like heavy in the summer, you know, that kind of thing. So I...

Yeah, right. Stiff, exactly. Stiff.

And so that's how it happened. And then when I was kind of, I reached a certain point where I was going to restaurants in the pajamas and I was realizing, what am I doing? You know, it's like, I look like some kind of nut, you know, maybe I've had a nervous breakdown or something. I didn't know what was going on. And so I abandoned them. But then I wound up wearing like, you know, ripped, you know, I still do really ripped, you know,

sweatpants and t-shirts and things like that and when i was directing curb i would be out of the craft services like on venice we were shooting one day and the security guy comes over goes what do you think you're doing you know and i was like i'm you know i'm the director you know and they go yeah you're the director they thought i was a homeless guy and they threw me off the set you know and they had to come and rescue me so i haven't really gotten the wardrobe thing quite down yet you know

My favorite is that you decided to wear pajamas the whole time, and then it took multiple years, presumably, until you were in the restaurants. And then went, what? What am I doing wearing pajamas every day? Yeah. It's like I woke up suddenly. You know, it's like I realized I'm in pajamas. You woke up. Yeah, that's exactly what it is. Listen, I hope our paths cross one day. I would love to work with you. That would be fun.

Really, really would be fun. I'm a huge fan, as you know, and this is great. You brought such a smile to my face today with these stories. Thank you, man. Really, really great. Pleasure speaking, man. Really happy to meet you, and I'm sure our paths will cross. Awesome. Thanks, brother. Hey, everybody. Thanks for listening. I don't know about you, but I'm really rethinking my wardrobe.

I think it'd be kind of sick. If you see a paparazzi shot of me coming out of a Starbucks or whatever, and I'm in my pajamas, you will now know why I haven't lost my mind. I've just spent some time with Larry child, Charles, and, um, he's a smart, smart dude. He, he's onto something. Maybe if I wear pajamas, I'll be funnier. Um, Bob Dylan, I'll have a hot beverage.

Really, really amazing. I hope you had as much fun on this one as I did. This was next level. Anyway, I'll see you next week right here. More fun to come on literally.

You've been listening to Literally with Rob Lowe, produced by me, Sean Doherty, with help from associate producer Sarah Begar and research by Alyssa Grau. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel. Our executive producers are Rob Lowe for Low Profile, Nick Liao, Adam Sachs, and Jeff Ross for Team Coco, and Colin Anderson for Stitcher. Booking by Deirdre Dodd. Music by Devin Bryant.

Special thanks to Hidden City Studios. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time on Literally. Hi, I'm Ashley Flowers, creator and host of the number one true crime podcast, Crime Junkie. Every Monday, me and my best friend Britt break down a new case, but not in the way you've heard before and not the cases you've heard before. You'll hear stories on Crime Junkie that haven't been told anywhere else. I'll tell you what you can do to help victims and their families get justice.

Join us for new episodes of Crime Junkie every Monday. Already waiting for you by searching for Crime Junkie wherever you listen to podcasts.

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