Kelsey Grammer talks Politics/Fatherhood + Peter Berg Reveals Secrets Behind Super Bowl Commercials

Summary

Podcast Summary: Adam Carolla Show – "Kelsey Grammer talks Politics/Fatherhood + Peter Berg Reveals Secrets Behind Super Bowl Commercials"

Release Date: February 27, 2025

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1. Introduction to the Episode

In this engaging episode of The Adam Carolla Show, host Adam Carolla welcomes the esteemed actor Kelsey Grammer and director Peter Berg. The conversation delves into personal experiences, politics, work ethics, and the intricacies of creating impactful Super Bowl commercials.

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2. Kelsey Grammer on His Movie "Wish You Were Here"

Adam begins by discussing Grammer's latest film, "Wish You Were Here," highlighting its intimate and heartfelt nature.

• Adam Carolla [01:58]: "Julia Stiles makes her directorial debut and it's a very sweet, moving, touching and oftentimes funny, poignant film... Kelsey plays the dad."

Kelsey shares his experience working on the film, emphasizing the trust he placed in Julia Stiles as a director.

• Kelsey Grammer [02:31]: "I said, sure, sure, I'll do it... it's nice."

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3. Fatherhood and Personal Relationships

The conversation shifts to fatherhood and the impact of their relationships with their own fathers on their current lives.

• Adam Carolla [06:55]: "I wonder why my dad didn't feel that way... What was your dad like?"

Kelsey opens up about his limited relationship with his biological father, reflecting on how it has shaped his role as a parent.

• Kelsey Grammer [08:20]: "I never really said the word dad out loud until I became a dad... I did meet him once when I was 14, and then he died a few months later."

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4. Shifting Political Landscapes Post-Trump

Adam and Kelsey discuss the evolving political climate since Trump's presidency, observing that people are becoming more vocal and openly expressing their political beliefs.

• Adam Carolla [04:12]: "People are sort of coming out from out of their shells... Do you?"

• Kelsey Grammer [05:16]: "There's an ease about it... maybe a few conservative principles might help in our life here."

They explore the idea that traditional community values, such as protecting the community, are gaining renewed importance.

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5. Work Ethic and Generational Differences

A significant portion of the discussion centers on work ethic, purpose, and how younger generations perceive their careers compared to previous ones.

• Adam Carolla [07:24]: "But you grew up in a kind of broken environment, right?"

• Kelsey Grammer [06:23]: "I just wanna keep working. It's my life, it's my job... I have to make a living."

Both reflect on the importance of having a clear purpose and the challenges they face seeing younger individuals struggle with career direction.

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6. Early Jobs and Life Lessons

Kelsey recounts his early jobs, including working at Denny's and as a ditch digger, emphasizing the discipline and work ethic he developed.

• Kelsey Grammer [22:16]: "I worked as a ditch digger the summer before that... It was fantastic."

Adam relates by sharing his own experiences working at construction sites and Denny's, highlighting the transferable skills gained from these roles.

• Adam Carolla [27:06]: "So that. It's good. It's a good base, right?"

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7. Handling Fear and Personal Growth

The duo explores the concept of fear, its impact on behavior, and how overcoming it is crucial for personal and professional growth.

• Adam Carolla [35:32]: "I had to decide whether it's a good concept that you just screwed up or it's a bad concept that you thought was a good concept."

• Pete Berg [109:36]: "Greed is fear really."

They discuss how fear often drives individuals to act against their better judgment and the importance of cultivating courage.

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8. Peter Berg on Directing Super Bowl Commercials

Peter Berg shares his insights into the world of directing high-stakes Super Bowl commercials, detailing the creative and logistical challenges involved.

• Peter Berg [72:26]: "That old, like when the modem was signing in and that, that audio companion to the logo... it's really hard to do that."

He emphasizes the importance of deep research and understanding the client's vision to create memorable and effective advertisements.

• Pete Berg [73:51]: "For me, commercials are a real challenge... and it's a great way to kind of, I don't know, network and meet people that you might not normally get to work with."

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9. Crafting Compelling Commercials Under Pressure

Adam and Peter delve into the dynamics of creating Super Bowl commercials, comparing them to a high-pressure creative competition where every second counts.

• Adam Carolla [74:48]: "It's like a very American art form. This one minute long creative endeavor that needs to satisfy a bunch of different masters."

• Pete Berg [75:14]: "They realize that this is kind of like their big moment to show."

They discuss the strategic inclusion of clients in the creative process to mitigate micromanagement and enhance collaboration.

• Pete Berg [81:54]: "The way you get away around that nitpicking and, and, and micromanagement is to try and include them."

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10. Innovative Movie Ideas and Collaborations

The episode concludes with Adam pitching a movie idea focused on a long snapper, sparking a creative brainstorming session with Peter Berg.

• Adam Carolla [89:32]: "Cause you love sports... the long snapper's making the league minimum."

• Peter Berg [94:14]: "I like it... it's an under the radar valuable position."

They explore narrative possibilities, including themes of redemption, integrity, and the impact of one individual's actions on the larger game.

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11. Closing Remarks

Adam wraps up the episode by highlighting upcoming projects, including Kelsey's new movie and Pete's Super Bowl commercials, while also promoting various sponsors like O'Reilly Auto Parts and Shopify.

• Adam Carolla [60:19]: "Kelsey, I hope you come back anytime you like."

• Pete Berg [63:50]: "You're one of the good guys, man. You always have been."

The conversation leaves listeners with a blend of personal anecdotes, professional insights, and lighthearted banter, embodying Adam Carolla's signature style.

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Notable Quotes

• Kelsey Grammer [08:04]: "I just wish maybe he'd had a gun too. Potentially protect himself."

• Adam Carolla [13:38]: "I believe there's a correlation and a connection."

• Peter Berg [72:26]: "There's a brilliance in the simplicity."

• Kelsey Grammer [48:16]: "We already know that it happened, and evidently it is acceptable because it just happened."

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This episode offers a deep dive into the lives and minds of Kelsey Grammer and Peter Berg, intertwining personal narratives with professional expertise. From navigating political discourse to the meticulous craft of directing commercials, listeners gain a multifaceted perspective on resilience, creativity, and the enduring value of hard work.

Transcript

[Adam Carolla]

A wireless network is like a car. You want to test drive it first. Well, US Cellular is letting you test drive their nationwide 5G coverage free for 30 days. Just download the TRI US app from any network and you can head over to US Cellular to enjoy full access to the nationwide network and get a feel for it, see how it works and see how it fits. So kick the tires and test the speeds because it's a real test drive. Try US Cellular. Free for 30 days. Download the US Cellular Try US app today. US Cellular built for us. Try uscellular.com Try US. The Adam Carolla show presents Kelsey Kramer's birthday cocktail party for February 21st.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Let's see who's invited.

[Adam Carolla]

The German born Russian tsar and husband of Catherine the Great, Peter iii.

[Pete Berg]

Here's the president of Mexico who dominated.

[Adam Carolla]

Mexican history in the first half of.

[Pete Berg]

The 19th century and also the namesake.

[Adam Carolla]

Of all that wind, Santa Ana. Here's the zimbabw revolutionary Robert Mugabe.

[Pete Berg]

Let's welcome singer, songwriter and civil rights activist Nina Simone. Legendary record producer David Geffen is here.

[Adam Carolla]

Alan Rickman just joined the party.

[Pete Berg]

Actress Christine Ebersole is here.

[Adam Carolla]

Astronaut and senator Scott Kelly just walked in. Jordan Peele is here. And now it's a party because Jennifer Love Hewitt just walked in.

[Pete Berg]

Kelsey Grammer is on the Adam Carolla show.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow. Pretty interesting birthday cocktail party for Kelsey Grammer. The movie wish you were here, which I watched, is out as we speak. Julia Stiles makes her directorial debut and it's a very sweet, moving, touching and oftentimes funny, poignant. Nice film, by the way. When I say little film, I don't mean that in a condescending way. It's not a big film, but it's a very intimate film and it's nice. And Kelsey plays the dad.

[Kelsey Grammer]

There you go. I'm the dad.

[Adam Carolla]

It's crazy, right?

[Pete Berg]

When you're dad.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I mean, she called, Julia called me and we had done a movie together about five years ago called the God Committee, which was not a, not a very easy film to watch actually, because it was kind of sad. But she was lovely in it and she said I'm going to do this movie and will you, will you appear as the dad? And then I said, sure, sure, I'll do a sight unseen. I mean, just because of, you know, her own credential and she's a great gal. So I said, yeah, why not? And it's nice.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, it's nice. It's nice. When you work with people, people you like, at a certain point you get Old enough where someone goes, oh, that's a. This is a good job. And you go, I know, but I can't stand that person. And life's too short. I just don't want to deal with it.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I would never do that.

[Adam Carolla]

You would think that. Yeah. You're from la. You've been out here for a million years. I'm still displaced. I've not been able to return to Malibu.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Sorry to hear that, man.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. But my place miraculously made it when almost nothing around it did. How about you? How did you fare during these fires?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm sitting in my home right now. We live in Holmby Hills, which was never really quite threatened. And it's really in the heart of kind of the semi concrete jungle. So there's some trees around, but it doesn't have the same kind of access to, as Gavin Newsom would say, the urban wildlife interface.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Do you find it interesting that things, pardon the pun, but the wind seems to blow a different direction now that Trump got in, and people are sort of coming out from out of their shells a little and kind of going, you know what? I don't think whatever we were doing before was effective. And also in Hollywood, it was very taboo. I was talking to someone yesterday and I said, when someone is very progressive, they walk onto the set or into work and announce it from the mountaintops and start shouting it at everyone. I said, when I onto a set, I have the camera guys quietly walk up to me and go, I saw you on Gutfeld and I agree with what you're saying, but don't say, you know, it's. It's a very morano quiet. Don't let anyone know. I feel like people are kind of coming out of the closet now. Do you?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, I think so. I think there's a. There's an ease about it. There's an understanding that, you know, well, maybe. Maybe a few conservative principles might help in our life here. And certainly paying attention to the idea that you're supposed to protect the. The community, things like that are really important, rather than the other community, the one that isn't necessarily from here.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes, I know.

[Kelsey Grammer]

As I wanted to say to Bruce a while back was, well, some of us, we were also born in the usa.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, the boss. So, I mean, Kelsey, you haven't really had a period where you didn't work in your adult career, which you're gonna maybe dismiss as luck, but I don't think it has anything to do with luck. And you don't think it has anything to do with luck either. You're just being modest. But I just mean a feeling of. I have it in my career too. It's like a feeling of having to throw track out in front of you constantly just because you're just powering down, the train is moving ahead and you gotta keep throwing track out there. Right?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, I just wanna keep working. I mean, it's my life, it's my job. I also family and, you know, I'm dad, I need to make a living.

[Adam Carolla]

I agree with you. But I wonder why my dad didn't feel that way. Like. And I don't know how your dad thought, but I do have that same thing where, like, look, people depend on me and I can't hang out. I got to show up, I got to earn. There's people that depend on me. My dad didn't have an ounce of that. I don't know why didn't. It didn't bother him. But what was your dad like?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Well, I didn't know my dad very well.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, that's right.

[Kelsey Grammer]

So some of those things.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, what was my dad like?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Surely he was probably one of the driving forces in your life because, you know, you ended up being a very funny guy who is always working and maybe that had something to do with it. I don't know.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't. I think. I think it was a lot of nature and not a lot of nurture.

[Kelsey Grammer]

But.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, you're dad, I'm sorry for not remembering all the nuts.

[Pete Berg]

Oh, it's okay.

[Kelsey Grammer]

It's all right.

[Adam Carolla]

But. But you grew up in a kind of broken environment, right?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yes, I certainly did. Yeah. And my dad. It's interesting, you know, it's like. I don't mean to steer us back to politics, but certain stances like Second amendment rights and stuff like that. Somebody came up to me once after some shooting, and I thought to myself, you know, yes, I. I get this. And a reporter and. And he said, so, you know, clearly we just gotta outlaw them all the time. And I said, well, you know, it's funny. My dad was gunned down and I wish. Not that I would advocate that he would be a good shot or anything, but I just wish maybe he'd had a gun too.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. And potentially protect himself.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Potentially have not died that day. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

So that was in The Virgin Islands. Yeah.

[Kelsey Grammer]

68.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Is that something that's just with you somewhere? Always.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah.

[Kelsey Grammer]

In there. Yes. I mean, I. I think about it sometimes, and the fact that I didn't know him really is. Is it's it's not a blessing or a curse. It's just sort of, you know, there it is. There's. That's my dad, and I never really said the word dad out loud until I became a dad, which is kind of an interesting thing. But I did meet him once when I was 14, and, and then he died about a couple months later, so.

[Adam Carolla]

Man.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Oh, no, I was, Yeah, I was 12, actually, when I met him. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Every. It's so crazy that everyone has a story and there's oftentimes a lot of tragedy woven in. But it is funny when others are very dismissive about everyone else's story and they drill down in great detail on their own. And then also, I think you and I are of the same head, which is. I had a successful, very attractive blond who went to UCLA try to lecture me on my white privilege, my white male privilege at a party not that long ago, and I was just like, you have no idea. You have no idea. And by the way, you have a D cup, blond hair. That's a lot of privilege in this town.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Something's working for you.

[Adam Carolla]

You went to ucla, so you're way ahead of me in my privilege. But it's always assumed, and I think in a weird way, your characters have sort of embodied sort of white privilege.

[Pete Berg]

You know what I mean?

[Adam Carolla]

The erudite, the speech, the look. I mean, it's mannerisms. I know you've leaned into it, much like Jim Backus or something invented it. You know what I mean?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Thurston Howell.

[Adam Carolla]

Thurston Howell. Not since if there was a lineage of sort of white guy, rich white guys, it would be Jim Backus up until, you know, 1974. And then Kelsey Grammer would take over as the rich white guy.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah. So, yeah, you know, the career sort of doesn't jive exactly with the history, but, you know, that's okay. Well, you know, it's, I, I, I prefer to play any number of different things if I can, and, but yeah, I believe in erudition. I mean, I, I think that speaking well is something that's necessary for a human being to communicate well with other human beings. And I, I value language. I mean, that's my life. It's, it's important to me. It's what makes us laugh. Good language makes us, you know, kicks us. It's just fantastic. So that's where I live. Yeah. That's all my privilege. Rolling right up into a ball of erudition and eloquence.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, grammar, obviously.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm stuck with that the pressure's on. But, yeah, I sort of. I agree with you. As I hear more and more politicians sounding like athletes, you know, from the 70s and the 80s, I think, what happened to this? And then I realized, oh, they're doing a folksy kind of connect with the people. And I'm like, I get what they're doing, but it's like, I like Fetterman, but put on a suit, you know, you're showing up to the Capitol.

[Kelsey Grammer]

You know what I mean? I've grown to appreciate him a lot more because he seems to be the only honest Democrat in the office right now.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Kelsey Grammer]

But I am really impressed with him. Except. Yeah, I mean, I was put on a tie. Not that I'm the jerk about it, but I remember years ago, there was a fellow that used to be the. The news guy on the Today show, and somebody said, you always wear, you know, a very, very conservative outfit, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he said, yes, well, because if I wear a loud tie, for instance, on the air today, somebody might have died. And they might. That might hurt their feelings. I thought, you know, that's very just. He was very respectful of his audience. He always thought, I'm going to always present an image of a person who takes himself seriously and takes the audience seriously because he was reading the news, you know, things that happened that day that might be actually crushing for someone. And that I thought was very responsible.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, I agree. And I'm also into the kind of broken windows approach to society, not just crime, which is, you know, schools where they have a dress code and a uniform have 40% less fights. You know what I mean? And when you play classical music, you have less altercations than when you play rock music and so on and so forth. And people, I think, well, maybe that makes you some uptight person that says video games make people violent. And I'm like, no. But the fact that people are flying commercially in slippers and sweatpants and a wife beater and the instances of unruly passengers is up 172% versus guys wearing monogram smoking jackets at Ascots. Yes, I do believe there's a correlation and a connection.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I do, too. It just seems pretty obvious on the face of it. Yeah. I used to like it when people dressed up for flying. I thought that was pretty cool. Like it was a place to go. And, you know, take yourself like this. This trip has value to us as people. You know, it means something rather than just sort of. I don't know, that sort of honors the occasion. I like that.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I guess the question is, do you think there'll be some sort of circling back to what is old is new again? For instance, we have a way with fashion and with society and sometimes with architecture and even automotive design and stuff like that, of looking back and going, well, look, gin was the most popular spirit in the 1930s and the 1920s, and then it all but left. I didn't know any gin drinkers when I was in high school.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I'm the only one, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. Nobody bought gin. When I was a kid. We bought our. But now I like a gin martini.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, me too.

[Adam Carolla]

And so does the other guy. And now it's up, you know, and. Or rye whiskey. I didn't know. I knew it was in American Pie, the song, you know, I did not know. Right. But did not, you know, now rye is back. So, you know, do you think we might circle back to a time that was different?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, I think. I think there's a lot of people who are, if they're not, you know, personally acquainted with it, are aware that a sense of tradition might actually preserve a better way of life, might actually point to a better way of living with each other and within ourselves. I think. I think there's a lot of that resonating with people now. And I think. I think this movement of saying, you know, let's get back to work, let's. Let's stop working from home, stuff like that is. Is going to be helpful. I think people showing up for one another is helpful. I think them being locked in their prisons, basically, or within a prism, if you will, of sort of information age and the handheld devices, I think people are maybe stepping away. I think my kids might actually throw them away one day. They love them, but they're not. They understand that it's a device that's meant to actually better your life rather than make your life. And that's been a very interesting thing. I think we may have. Now I'm going to go off the rails here a little bit. I think we may have abandoned one segment of our generation to the idea that they don't have to work to be anything. And unfortunately, they're going to be stuck in that. And we have. Well, but the one that's coming up after this, my kids now, my 12 to 7, I think they get. They're supposed to work hard and work out their own destiny and create it for themselves. And there's a group of people ahead of them who I think might be stuck. And we did. And we did that to him. And I feel kind of bad about that.

[Adam Carolla]

No, first off, I agree. The saddest thing to me is when I talk to a male because I'm old fashioned career wise and the guy's 30. And I go, what's the plan? And they go, I don't know. You go, but what's.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I got the same issue.

[Adam Carolla]

What's your career? What do you want to do? And they go, I don't know. I like movies. No, I know, but me too, but yeah, what are you doing with them? And they go, well, you know, Taste of Encino is coming up this weekend and they have sushi there. And I go, I know. I'm not talking about what sounds like fun. I'm talking about what's your purpose, what's the plan? And they kind of go, I like Netflix. And it's like I go, wow. I feel sorry for them because I think the worst thing you can feel is rudderless. Like without purpose, you'd be better off trapped on an island trying to collect wood for a fire that night than just sort of hanging out with a. I have no idea why I'm here feeling.

[Kelsey Grammer]

That's exactly right. Thanks. Yep, that's it. And I think, I think a few people may be left in that lost there. I don't know for sure, but it seems like that the more people I meet in at least our sort of immediate circles are okay with rudderless. And I think that's a shame.

[Adam Carolla]

No, I agree. And I think part of it is blurring the line between male and female. I think females can find purpose in a family and children to bear and as well as career and other things as well. But there's things they can do minus a career and minus a livelihood that give them a lot of purpose. When guys don't have that livelihood or that career, they become video games or porn or whatever it is. They lose it pretty fast. They're wired to need that even if they don't want to do the hard work of obtaining it.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, I mean, I concur. Yeah, you see that. And it's purposeless. It's not a good road to be on.

[Adam Carolla]

I wonder. It kind of makes me want to bring back like job corps and stuff like that where it's like you take 18 year olds who have no idea where they're going in life and you just gather them up. I mean, I remember if you ever go to Red Rocks and you go to the big amphitheater that's been carved out of the. And you see the old Pictures of the guys who built Red Rocks, the bunch of 15 year olds with pickaxes. They're like, these were juvenile delinquents. They were on the road to nowhere but prison or death. And we gathered them all up and we made a camp and they went to work all day and they made this amphitheater. And now blues travelers can play there and everyone's happy. And I'm like, yeah, now modern civilization would think you can't force a 16 year old boy to work with a pick. You don't understand. You're helping that kid.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah. When you're 14, you need a job. Yes, I'm sorry, I think that's exactly it. And my kids, I want my kids to be doing things. Of course. I don't want to get in trouble with labor laws, but I mean, my kids got to have some chores and get them done and, and be focused on getting them done. It's, it's, it's an important factor in your life, especially as a young man. You, you got to have something to do. And I think this is, I think they made a huge mistake with this, the minimum wage thing being so high. I mean, when I was 14, I got a job washing dishes at Denny's. Now I lied about my age. I was supposed to be 15, but at least there was a path for a young man to understand what it was to earn a living. Not, not a great living, certainly, but I, I went to work and I worked eight hour shifts from 11:00 to 6 in the morning and, well, 7 in the morning. And that was fantastic for me. And we've now blocked that for our kids. They're not allowed to work for anything less than 20 bucks an hour. And who the hell is going to pay a kid who doesn't know what he's doing 20 bucks an hour?

[Adam Carolla]

I've argued, I have this argument a lot, mostly with women or my son. I said, let him work at the McDonald's up the street. First off, it's in lock and yacht. It's a nice McDonald's, but let him work at the McDonald's. And they went, you don't want your son working? And I said, yes, I do want my son working at McDonald's. And they go, why should he? So a lot of people going, he doesn't have to work at McDonald's. And I go, I know he doesn't have to. He couldn't. What does he need to work? I go, he could learn to work. How about that? Learn to work.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Showing up, showing up. Taking orders, putting on a pair of.

[Adam Carolla]

Pants, punching the clock. I worked at McDonald's. It worked out for me. And they go, well, you had to work. Yeah, I did have to work at McDonald's, but I still got. I learned a lot while I worked there. And you worked at Denny's and you worked graveyard at Denny's.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah. Oh, it was great, though. I was in Florida.

[Adam Carolla]

Huh.

[Kelsey Grammer]

You know, so I'm in Fort Lauderdale, Oakland Park Boulevard. That Denny's is still there. I would take my little boat down there and tie it up at a boatyard and walk over to the, to the Denny's and around 4am why would.

[Adam Carolla]

You take a boat there?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Well, because I had a little boat when I was a kid. That's how I got around. That's. That's how I got, you know, that's how I got from place to place because, you know, I needed independence. I need to be able to move around.

[Adam Carolla]

But you didn't have a driver's license because you're 14.

[Kelsey Grammer]

No, but I got my, you know, I got my power squadron certificate that said I'd passed the safety test.

[Adam Carolla]

So you had a little motorboat.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And you could use that motorboat just offshore to sort of get around like someone to use a moped.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Exactly. That's. But some. So 4am when the bars close in the county of Broward county, the most beautiful young women in the world would come in, and they were. It was like a heady paradise that had walked into my room, basically, and I was there at the dishwasher kid. But it was. It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen in my life. And I just. I just dreamed of the days that I might actually get to talk to one of them or maybe even kiss one one day. So this was a, you know, this was. It was perfect for me. It was a perfect element for me. And I did work really hard, and so I was pleased with that. And I could eat all the hot fudge sundaes I could eat.

[Adam Carolla]

So the bars would close at 4am versus 2am over here. And then, of course, everyone who was inebriated would always want to go out and get some comfort food, hash browns and all that stuff, Right?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Exactly.

[Adam Carolla]

So they would spill into Denny's, which was open 24 hours, and you'd be in the back at the station busing and cleaning dishes, and you would take your little motorboat there. You would leave your house at what time?

[Kelsey Grammer]

I would leave the house around 10 o'clock. It was about a Half an hour drive down the Intercoastal canal.

[Adam Carolla]

So about 10pm at 14, and lash the boat to the dock and then go into Denny's. Put your uniform on, do your things, and then you would leave. It would be light outside when you left.

[Kelsey Grammer]

7:00Am get home, go to sleep for a while. Yep, that's. That's how it was.

[Adam Carolla]

And was that a summer thing?

[Kelsey Grammer]

That was a summer job. Yeah, summer job.

[Adam Carolla]

And your parents, not your biological dad, but the powers.

[Kelsey Grammer]

My mom, your mom and my grandmother. That's where I was being raised, was my grandmother and my mom and my sister was in the house at that time. We all lived that way. And I was. I was basically the man of the house. I had to go out and do something I was supposed to.

[Adam Carolla]

And they supported it.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Absolutely. Oh, yeah, they were absolutely behind it.

[Adam Carolla]

Because most wouldn't let their 14 year old head out at 10pm only to come home at 8am Well, I had a job. You had a job. I know, I know. These are the craziest things. I could remember my son wanting to go get frozen yogurt on a Saturday in La Canada, one of the safest neighborhoods in the United States. And I said, yeah, go ahead. He was nine, I don't know. And my wife at the time started yelling at me, why'd you let him go? You know, I said, it's three blocks, Let him go. It's like he could be abducted. I was like, okay. And you could have had pirates take over your vessel when you were 14 and a half. Henry Denny's. Yes, a lot could happen, but I would like my son to have experiences and independence, by the way. I mean, you must have gotten a lot from that. Getting the idea of just getting a paycheck at the end of every two weeks meant something, right?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Absolutely amazing. Yeah, it was absolutely incredible. That was. That was fantastic. And before that, I worked other job worked. I worked labor jobs before that, I worked as a ditch digger the summer before that. I was 13 then. And that guy just paid in cash. So I'd make, you know, like 40 bucks a day. And it was fantastic. He'd just hand you the money and you'd bet? Yeah, I worked all day and I sweated and Doug came up dirty and it was okay.

[Adam Carolla]

Do you. I too worked as a ditch digger. And not the metaphorical you're gonna end up digging ditches, but the literal, I dug ditch. Yeah, well, I dug footings on a construction site.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Oh, that's all right.

[Adam Carolla]

Same as a ditch. Do you remember what you Got as an hourly wage at Denny's. Cause they would have paid whatever the minimum would have been at the time.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, it was a buck 35.

[Adam Carolla]

Buck 35. And then they would take taxes out, right?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yes, they would just, you know, about half.

[Adam Carolla]

And so you would end up 10 bucks an hour. I mean, you would end up making like $41 a week or something about that.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, 3750. I think something like that was what I'd walk home with, but yeah, it was okay.

[Adam Carolla]

And did you present it to your mom?

[Kelsey Grammer]

No, no, that was for me. I put that in my bank account.

[Adam Carolla]

And you saved that?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And so learning how to work. You learned how to work. You don't really learn how to dig ditches or learn how to wash dishes, although there's a part where you learn, but you get it pretty quick.

[Kelsey Grammer]

You catch on fast.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, it's more about learning how to work. Right.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Being there. Yeah. A little bit of pacing. I think that's a good lesson to learn. I learned that more on. I did construction the following year. Construction was good for, for learning about pacing because if you're, if you're a laborer, you're cleaning out units, stuff like that, they expect you to do a certain number in a day and you had to pace yourself so that you weren't, you know, exhausted in the, in the morning. Right. You know, there's a. There was a steady thing that would happen, and that was, that was a, that was a good learning curve thing too. That was, that was good for understanding. Well, you know, the goal is it's the marathon thing instead of the sprint. But that was a good lesson too.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Pete Berg]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

I always remember, and I'm sure you remember little snapshots of those kinds of tasks from back in those days. Like little specific tasks.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Absolutely.

[Adam Carolla]

I remember one time getting dropped off at. What is it, is the export place. God, I'll think Pier 1. Pier 1 in Santa Monica on Wilshire. And the company I worked for basically built that place. But at some point I got dropped off and they just dropped me off and they said, you're gonna work here for a day. And I said, what's going on? And there was a huge pile of dirt, maybe the size of a minivan or two minivans. And then there was a shovel and a wheelbarrow. And about 80ft away there was a dumpster.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Take it there to there.

[Adam Carolla]

And they go, you take that from there and you put it in there and you push it up with the ramp and then you dump it and you go back and you do it again. And then they said, you will leave when you're done, not at 3:30. You'll just do it when you're done. And I remember starting to do things like count the number of scoops that I put into the wheelbarrow to see if it was too much. It was a little unwieldy. I couldn't get it up the ramp, you know, but there was a certain number that was a sweet spot of a number of scoops of dirt. And then I would hit the ramp into the dumpster in a certain speed and counting the number of steps. It was sort of like, I think, what people do in solitary confinement, you know?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

And I would just count everything and start working and humming sort of things in myself and trying to make some distraction logic out of this so as not to go stir crazy for $7 an hour. Sounds a time.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Sounds like a meditation.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. But kind of learning what that was. And then also when you're going to do a show and they go, well, the first two shows sold out. You want to add a third show? I go, yeah. And they go, but really, that's three shows in one. And I go, yeah, that's okay. Yeah, that's nothing.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I like work. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And by the way, this barely constitutes is work, considering what you did, what.

[Kelsey Grammer]

We used to do.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. Yeah.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Right.

[Adam Carolla]

So that. It's good. It's a good base, right?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yep. Absolutely. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And so you go from, like, work to what. When does. When do you get to get off the construction site?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Well, I would do. I would go the construction site. That was basically a summer job as well. And then when school would start back up, I'd get back into my surfer schedule because I was a surfer as well.

[Adam Carolla]

And I'd.

[Kelsey Grammer]

So I'd get up at 4am, go up coast, we caught. And then we'd surf for about an hour and a half and then we'd jump. Jump back in the car and go down to school.

[Adam Carolla]

Wow.

[Kelsey Grammer]

That was. That was how we went about things. And then I met, you know, then some. My junior year, somebody said, well, I should try doing a play. And I said, sure, okay. And I decided I was gonna be an actor.

[Adam Carolla]

Was it. Did it come. I don't wanna, you know, make you sound immodest, but did it come kind of easily to you?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Did you take to it? But you know what it was. It was. I loved people. I love people. And the exposure I got to different kinds of people when I was doing those were talking about, opened my mind to a lot of different things. And so I had life experience that probably was a bit more saturated than a kid of my age would have normally had. And it. It ended up being sort of the fuel for what I was able to do because I. I'd seen things, I. I understood people. I was always fascinated by them. I watched the way a guy would walk when I was a little kid and think, I wonder why it does that, you know, and that's. That's the work an actor does. That's what happens. That's the work a comic does. You know, it figures out, you know, what's the. What's going on in there? What's the reason for it? What's funny about it? What. What's that guy's motivation? And when you start to have. When you got a quirky mind like I think you have, and Like I know I have, you start to come up with wonderful inventions about how that you got from one place to the next and how to connect the dots. And this is human behavior. Human behavior is our bible. That's what we study. That's what we live by. And if you don't do that, you're not going to have enough stuff to be interesting. When you're on camera, do you find.

[Adam Carolla]

That you may possess this affliction, which is not really bad, but Dr. Drew once diagnosed me with hypervigilance, which is happen to notice everything. And it usually bothers me, as it would if you noticed everything, absolutely everything. So you find yourself noticing everything, and at the beginning, you don't know what to do with it. You want to talk about it. And people don't understand why you care so much about things that you don't really care about. You just notice a lot of things. Now, that's a road to comedy, but that's a road to performance. But it's probably a road to being a good detective as well.

[Kelsey Grammer]

For anything. Yeah. I mean, human. Human behavior is.

[Pete Berg]

Ben.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Those kinds of things. You got to solve a human problem. Why did they do that? What's the reason for that? I think that's what that comes down to. Yeah. You find whatever your angle is going to be. Maybe you are a detective, maybe you're a comedian, maybe you're an actor, you're whatever. But, yeah. My son Gabriel is afflicted with this. I know he is. He's 10 years old. He asks me questions constantly about what he thinks, what I think being 6 foot 9 is like instead of being 6 foot 7.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

You know what? Well, you know what you'll. I think you'll find with Gabriel, I think he will end up doing what I ended up doing. And now my son sort of has it as well, which is studying patterns.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And also there's a sidebar, which I'll just give you as one dad to the next. What goes along with hypervigilance is an inability to sleep really well because you hear everything and you feel everything, and you're constantly woken up and you notice too much. I'm telling you, an eye mask, a shade, and a white noise machine will help Gabriel if he has the vigilance.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, No, I think he has got it.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Kelsey Grammer]

That's actually really good. Yeah. He needs me to sort of. He always says, you know, dad, will you wrap your arm around me so I can kind of get to sleep?

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, that's sweet.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Sure, man. But you're off.

[Adam Carolla]

He goes, dad's in Canada shooting a feature. So I know.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Then it's kind of. Then we're screwed up.

[Adam Carolla]

That's where the eye mask comes in.

[Kelsey Grammer]

His mom, she says to his mom, mom, will you come down? She says, no.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, go to sleep. And so, you know, there's a thing. And maybe you tell me if Gabriel has this. But I realized my son, I think, has a little of that. The hypervigilance. I had it. Cause he's a pattern studier. And when you study patterns, you start to sort of see things in advance, you know, and it's pretty simple. You know, there are people, there are guests on this show and some comedian or actor, whatever, been on the show multiple times. And I'll say, be prepared to start early because this guy tends to show up early. So we may want to be in place early, because that's the pattern I've studied from this person who I don't really know very well, but they've been on a couple of times. And I noticed they showed up early the two times they came out. But the thing that was funny with my son is I got myself into a predicament, which is my mother passed. She was old, and we had a fair to middling kind of relationship, but never really a great relationship. And my mom had not a great relationship with me and barely a relationship with my kids. So that when she passed, I never told my son or my daughter. She passed. And because of my untraditional family, I knew there wouldn't be a wake or funeral or anything we'd have to attend. And I was being lazy and being. I was procrastinating. I was like, I know I should tell my kids, but I just don't. It doesn't seem like there's a good time, and I just don't want to say anything. And they don't talk to her anyway, so they're never going to know. And they're in height school and they don't care about that, and so on and so forth. So at some point, Christmas about three years ago came about, and I spoke to my stepdad and he said, I'm coming for Christmas and would you mind if I brought my new girlfriend? And I thought, no, that's fine. I'm glad you have a new girlfriend. And then I realized I haven't told my kids who will be there.

[Kelsey Grammer]

It's gonna be at Christmas that.

[Adam Carolla]

My stepdad, your grandpa, he's gonna show up with his new girlfriend and not mom, and she's gone.

[Kelsey Grammer]

So what happened?

[Adam Carolla]

Well, what happened was, is it got down to the night before. And the night before, I was with Anthony Anderson at Jimmy Kimmel's house, and he was laughing hysterically that I was in this predicament that I had to tell my kids. And so it was the day of before Christmas or whatever, and I was driving with my son, and I was taking him to get his license at the dmv, or at least try to get his license. And I just was driving the car, kind of thinking about it the whole time, but not waiting for some sort of opening to say something. And I just looked at him and I go, hey. By the by, I don't know if I remembered to tell you, but my mom, your grandma, she passed not too long ago, you know, it'd been like nine months, you know. I go, I can't remember, but it's been a minute. But anyway, she's gone. And so your stepdad John's probably maybe bringing somebody other than mom, you know, of the house. And he just sort of nodded, and he didn't say anything. And he looked at me and he goes, oh, I didn't tell him about my stepdad. I didn't tell him. I just said, your mom's passed. And I just thought, my mom's passed. I thought you should know. And he goes, why are you telling me now? And I go, just thought you should know. And he goes, yeah, Based on what? And I go, that's nothing. Just thought you should know. Why are you telling me now? Because I was like, oh, the jig's up. My stepdad showing up with a new squeeze. But he knew the rhythm, he knew the pattern, and he was suspicious that I just volunteered this on this ride to the dmv, not attached to something else that he knew that was motivated. So he. He got the rhythm of it. You know what I mean?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Not a smart kid.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I think. I think Gabriel's your son's name. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think you're gonna get a lot past him.

[Kelsey Grammer]

No, he's not. No. There's no point. No point. No point even trying. He's just a very, very astute, observant young man who wants to know about things. And he's. He's. He's great. I mean, he inspires me.

[Adam Carolla]

And were you that when you were a young.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I think so, yeah. I think I was kind of like that, yeah. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And you were just sort of studied behavior, human behavior, life.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I love watching people. Yeah. That's been my thing for my Whole life, it's. That's still there. I still love it. That's why it's endlessly fascinating to me. I mean, yeah, there's some stories, you know, going in. You go say, well, I know this story already. I don't need to live it again. I once wrote myself a note. I was going out with somebody who was still in their 20s, and I thought, well, I'm not in my 20s anymore. Why should I be in anybody else's? And that was a clear, positive observation for me to have made at the time. So I moved comfortably into my 40s at that point.

[Adam Carolla]

And so began the career. And pretty much never had another job, correct?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, once. Well, I was a waiter. I was a waiter. I wanted to be an actor. I went to San Diego for a while, and I worked at the Shakespeare Festival for three seasons. And then I. I moved to New York. Moved back to New York, where I've gone to school. And it was there that I was a waiter for a while, and a busboy and a waiter. And I was pretty good waiter. And I. But one day I said to myself, you. You can't wait tables anymore. You have to stop now because you want to be an actor. And so I said to the manager, his name was Michael. I said, michael, I know this comes at a bad time, but I gotta go. He says, we're just starting a lunch shift. I said, I know, and I'll. I'll work the lunch shift, but I. I gotta go. I'm. I'm quitting today. And he said, you know what? I got this. You go ahead and go. And it was cool. That afternoon I auditioned for a show I got, and I've been an actor ever since.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. So let's talk about the sort of trusting that internal voice, that instinct, being sort of in tune and knowing sort of when to leave and when to stay. And I've definitely. Can I understand that. And had a few of those moments where I just said, no, I'm not going to do this anymore. I'm going to do that. And someone went, what are you doing? What kind of sense does this make? It doesn't make any practical sense. It only makes sense if you're in tune with yourself enough to kind of understand what you're doing, even if you don't intellectually understand it. It's more of a vibration, right?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, I think that's definitely what it is. I mean, it's just. There's just a thing that happens, and you get there and it's a realization. Whatever you know, God hits you on the head, whatever you want to call it. You've clearly had moments like that. I mean, you ended up where you are. This is. I remember watching you for, you know, 30 years ago, thinking, that guy's pretty funny. I like him. And then. Then there were a couple things you said, and I went like, oh, wait a minute. I think he might even be on my team. I wasn't sure still, because, you know.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, Hollywood types, but still, he's making.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Some sense to me. And I've always really admired your work.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, well, I feel the same about you. And I also feel there's a certain pragmatism that you get off the construction site or McDonald's or Denny's. There's a instilled pragmatism. The construction site is one big sort of pragmatic experiment, and there's a hierarchy, and there's an entire thing to negotiate there. And it's the kind of thing that if you lose track of things, you definitely will lose a finger.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

You're out along the way as well, so there's a real kind of gravity to it, and it almost forces you to be that person, that sort of. And you don't get to say, you know, when. And de Blasio is over there in New York City, and he goes, well, if one person dies of COVID that's one too many. You don't get to say that because you're like, many people will die of COVID Now, what we'd like is the least amount of people to die of COVID But the proclamation that one is one too many, that's in the rearview mirror. That's already happened.

[Kelsey Grammer]

It doesn't do me any good.

[Adam Carolla]

Right?

[Kelsey Grammer]

But Cuomo stood up and said, I'm undocumented, right? What are you talking about?

[Adam Carolla]

Right. It's a proclamation that does nothing for anybody. And I'm the same way, too. It's like when on the construction site, when the scaffolding gives way and falls down and three people get injured. No one goes, this is unacceptable. They just go, how do we fix the scaffold?

[Kelsey Grammer]

How are we gonna fix this?

[Adam Carolla]

And how do we fix these guys? But you can announce it's unacceptable except for it already happened.

[Kelsey Grammer]

We already know that.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, right.

[Adam Carolla]

We already know that, and it happened, and evidently it is acceptable because it just happened.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Or you could say, I can't wait till we get to scaffolding 2.0.

[Adam Carolla]

That's right. That's right. So maybe there is a new pragmatism. That is kind of sweeping in. And only because of the vacuum that we've been living in for a while.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I would agree with that. Yeah, I think that's what's happening. I think people are finally waking up and saying, you know what? This bunch is hollow. And they're not actually looking out for anybody. They're looking out for themselves. And that's not the job.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And the job is not to shovel out platitudes. It's to have reservoirs that are filled and fire hydrants that work. And then all the platitudes after that, that. That's just so much window dressing. It's really sort of neither. Look, if you are compassionate, warm and friendly once all this is done, then that's fine. That's icing on the cake. As a Patriots fan, you want Bill Belichick to be a steely eyed winning coach. That's all. It turns out his team and his family like him as well. That's great, but that's kind of gravy. You want the super bowl rings?

[Pete Berg]

Yeah.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And we. Yeah, I. I'm trying to think about what happens. I mean, I. I'm still sort of stuck in this. In this haze of trying to figure out what drives people to want to represent people, but not represent them, not actually do the job. To view all, all these assignments or these victories that you're elected to do as. As stepping stones to some other place where you do just as little. I don't. I don't quite understand it. My granddad fought forest fires when he was 16 years old. He belonged to some sort of, like, volunteer, like National Guard for youth group in 1907, whatever it was. And he told me the scariest thing he ever did was fight a forest fire. This from the guy that, you know, fought in Guadalcanal. It was fascinating me. And I thought, well, everybody who lives in California knows that we live in a high fire possibility state. A place where at any time, if you're not vigilant about fighting a fire, you're going to get burned. And you, you of course, are a sitting example right now, although you came out reasonably unscathed on this last venture. But, you know, it's happened for years around us all the time. And it seems to me that this is a masterpiece of ill planning and lack of readiness in a place where readiness is the only job you have.

[Adam Carolla]

Yes.

[Kelsey Grammer]

For this particular thing.

[Adam Carolla]

So I have this thought, and you can feel free to agree or disagree, but every job has a fun and glamorous and walk down the red carpet part and be the toast of Sundance part. And then there's a very nuts and bolts, long hours, early mornings part of the business. And this is every business. And show business is no different. It has a very early morning, long hour, tedious kind of part. And then there's get dressed up and be the toast of the town. And I think politics has a kind of fun part where you're celebrated and you're getting the key to the city and the local, whatever group has made you this, that, and the other. And then there's just a very mundane nuts and bolts. Boring. Doesn't sound exciting when you hear Gavin Newsom speak. He says, come to California where you're free to love, and I'll protect you, and I'll protect your rights to love who you want to love. But no one ever really talks to him about workman's comp issues and issues with the union. And the guys who work the sewage facility at the union are gonna go on. Strikes or sewage facility may go off are very. Oh, who wants to deal with that? I want to walk the red carpet.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I want to be important.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, right. And so the aqueducts and things of that nature and the fire hydrants, that feels unsexy to these people. And these people are here more as mascots than actual public servants. They like the idea of the red carpet. And by the way, Hollywood toasts that. You know what I mean? They love it.

[Kelsey Grammer]

And they keep putting them in there.

[Adam Carolla]

You can get Bradley Cooper on the phone in 10 minutes if you need to, and he'll come down and do your benefit or whatever that is. And I think they fall in love with that part of it. But they're not in love with the off season where they're in the weight room at 7am throwing around iron, trying to get better for when the season starts. They like game time, but they're not prepared for the lights. And I think that's what we're dealing with.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, I think you're right about that.

[Adam Carolla]

And the more we elect them based on a look, a vibe, sometimes a DEI score, the more they do it based on that, the worse they're gonna be at those jobs. I'll tell you a quick story. Yeah. You want your accountant to be a boring guy, Guy with a receding hairline.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Tom Menino used to be the mayor of Boston, and we were great friends. He was. I met him one of the cheers trips years ago, and we stayed in touch. And Tom Menino would go over a. A bump in the road or like a. A hole or a pothole, a little pothole that he bumped into. And he'd get out of his car and take his instamatic camera and. Or polaroid camera and take a picture of it and write down the location and give it to the highway supervisor when he got to his office. And he'd say, you gotta go take care of this puddle. That's the kind of guy I want to be, right? Or the town or the. Or the state. The guy that says, wait a minute. You know, I saw a tree line out there the other day that's pretty hazardous. Maybe we should start talking about clearing brush near there. And maybe. Maybe we should go ahead and reinstate the idea that we need to harvest some of our lumber, our potential, our forest, so that we can actually control it and be responsible keepers of the state. But this is. That's way too much to do. I mean, it's not so.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, they don't get patted on the back for that. There's no accolades for that. That is just the nuts and the bolts stuff. And the more we move from those old school guys that you just spoke of into a sort of a celebrity, then we're gonna attract less of those people and sort of more AOCs where there's no nuts and bolts. There's more of a look and a vibe and an attitude and also, look. We asked for it and we got it. We decided that this is what we want. We decided, wouldn't it be great if a woman, or better yet, a woman of color ran? And it's like, no, It'd be best if we just had the most qualified person who worked weekends and holidays and took polaroids of potholes and sent them. Now, that person could very well be a woman of color. I'm fine with that. Absolutely. But just make sure that doesn't supersede the part where they take pictures of the potholes. And when we get back to that, then I think that's where the pragmatism comes in. But I do not know if that is attractive. Those types. We had a choice between Karen Bass, our current mayor, and Rick Caruso. Yeah, Caruso. And I can tell you, my mom, as a very, well, progressive, hippie, dippy kind of woman, would have found Rick Caruso boring. You know what I mean? Like, come on. Just some old white dude. Oh, I get it. He's a rich white dude. We don't need any of that. This is more dynamic and more interesting. And also, you could say you were involved with having the first female of color elected to this position. And meanwhile, now everything's on fire. And so you need look, whether it's your babysitter or your mayor, you better get back to boring.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That's interesting. There are times I'm driving down the road and I hear that someone else has come up with a statement that says, you know, we're going to make this a sanctuary for, for sexual reassignment surgery for children. I'm thinking, are you telling me you're.

[Pete Berg]

Going to do a perform of forced.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Sterilization on an underage person and that you're going to call that a sanctuary? And this, this stuff sounds sexy to people, I think, yes. It sounds like you're committing a crime.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I agree. But it's all stuff they get kudos for at a cocktail party, especially in Hollywood, which my last question for you is, you know, I've talked to the Jon Voights of the world and many of those who have managed.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I was here at the house a couple of weeks ago.

[Adam Carolla]

We were, oh, he's a great guy. Great guy. But you managed to navigate Hollywood even when you went against popular opinion in a game where you can be blackballed. But I feel like void in you at a certain level with the ability and the talent can sort of transcend the politics of Hollywood.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, they, I think what happens is that the industry called the quiet side of the industry, knows that, oh, no, I want to give that guy a job because he's reliable. He's going to show up to his job and we can believe him in the role. It's great. That's what John is for sure. And I've had the same kind of thing. I've got a good track record with comedy and sort of in know, serious comedy or accommodating a certain role. But I went to a Golden Globe party once, years, years ago, a luncheon that they held for people who'd won one once and whatever. And I was talking to my publicist at the time, Stan Rosenfield, and I said, you know, it's interesting. I mean, I don't really have a film career. And he said, well, that's because, you know, everybody's, you know, your, your politics are wrong. And I said, well, but, you know, what does that really have to do with anything? He said, I don't know. But see that guy over there? He was pointing at Steven Spielberg. He said, you'll never work for him.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Kelsey Grammer]

A couple of other people said, you'll never work with that guy either. That's just the way it is.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Kelsey Grammer]

It turned out to be true. You know, it's like that's just the way it is. Okay, so I got to work. I didn't get to do that work. It's okay. I tried to get into the film academy, right. The Academy of Film Mart or whatever they call it now, Oscars, and I, I was denied. Now I don't really know why. I mean, I had, I had a letter of recommendation from Helen Mirren and from Sylvester Stallone. I've done about somewhere between 50 and 70 movies in my. In my lifetime. And they did. They just didn't say I was. I was member material. So, you know, the. That's life. I mean, Robert Redford started Sundance right now. Sundance, the people who run it, they wouldn't want a guy that looks like Robert Redford to be there.

[Adam Carolla]

It's so funny because the second you talked about the Academy, I just thought Sundance. I've made plenty of award winning documentaries. Very high on the Rotten Tomatoes meter. Been rejected by Sundance every single time.

[Kelsey Grammer]

I think that may have something to do with it.

[Adam Carolla]

Knowing Kelsey Grammer may have something to do with me being rejected from Sundance. Kelsey, always great to catch up with you. Wish you were here is the name of the movie. It's touching, it's endearing, it's a little bit of a tear jerker and it's good. And it's available as we speak. Kelsey, I hope you come back anytime you like. Anytime there's a project you want to plug, we'll do it. Or maybe me, you and John will just get one of those gin martinis.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Yeah, exactly. That sounds even better.

[Adam Carolla]

Thanks, buddy. Take care, Kelsey.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Bye, man. Bye. Bye.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, oh, oh. O'Reilly Auto Parts. Bam. You know the song, right? Mm. They're in the business of keeping your car on the road. O'Reilly Auto Parts offers friendly, helpful service and all the parts and knowledge you need to maintain and repair your automobile. Always been an O'Reilly guy. Used to go the one out in North Hollywood when I was over there. Then I moved to La Crescenta and went to the one up on Foothill. Still swing by there every once in a while because I'm a hands on guy. So whether you're a car aficionado or an auto novice, you'll find the employees at O'Reilly Auto Parts are knowledgeable, helpful, and best off, they're friendly. Because some of those auto parts guys can be a little tough around the edges. Stop by O'Reilly Auto Parts today or you can visit us at O'ReillyAuto.com add that's O'ReillyAuto.com Adam well, you want to start a business, your own business, a small business, and grow it this year? Let's do this. And now's the best time to start. Shopify is going to help you. I started a business and I use Shopify and I'm glad I did. Shopify makes it simple to create your brand, open for business and get your first sale, get your store up and running. It's easy and they've got thousands of customizable templates that can help you with all the details like shipping taxes, payments from one single dashboard, allowing you to focus on the important stuff like growing your business because you want to be freed up to grow your business, not burdened with the nickel and dime stuff. Let Shopify help you with that. With Shopify, your first sale is closer than you think. It's Shopify, right? Dawson Established in 2025. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Sign up for your $1 per month.

[Pete Berg]

Trial period at shopify.com corolla all lowercase go to shopify.com Corolla to start selling with Shopify today.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Kelsey Grammer]

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[Pete Berg]

A little crime before bedtime with NCIS.

[Adam Carolla]

Or Tracker or curl up with a surefire hit like Forrest Gump Run Forest.

[Pete Berg]

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[Adam Carolla]

Shows, all for free. Pluto TV stream now. Well, it's good to catch up with my old friend Pete Berg. The series is something we can get into. It's a limited series. America Primeval. Sorry, American Primeval, available on Netflix as we speak. And we'll get into that. Also some commercials for the NFL to get into as well as many other things. Pete Berg's actor, director, mainly turned director, writer, old school Hollywood type, I would say throwback. Good to see you, Pete.

[Pete Berg]

I appreciate that. You're an old school Hollywood type. You're a classic, you're an icon and you're one of the good guys, man. You always have been. Always have been.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, God bless you, Pete. Ran into Pete at the UFC fight because Pete loves the sweet science and I think most of us that enjoyed boxing early on just sort of transitioned into UFC because it's really just Boxing plus sort of thing, I would imagine. But our hearts are still into the sweet science of pugilism.

[Pete Berg]

Dana White has made it impossible to not love ufc. And, you know, I think for me, what. And I. I get going on this, man. But like, boxing is. Is so broken, is such a deeply broken sport. There's no leadership. You know, you've got all this chaos and disorganization with the different promoters and the different governing bodies and the belts and the weight classes. And Dana just came in and said, this is going to be like the NFL, the mlb, the NBA. There's going to be one league, there's going to be one commissioner. I'm going to run it. There's leadership, and the whole sport falls in line. So it's hard not to love the UFC and what Dana's done.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, ultimately, as a fan, and I'll spread this out from sports into politics, you just want to know that the two best fighters or the two best teams or the two best 185 pounders are there, are showing up. And the reason the NFL is so satisfying is it's the two best teams that are going to play in the Super Bowl. And that's just how it works every single year. You can quibble about a couple of bad calls here and there, but you can't really question that those are the two best teams that represent. You want that in the ring, you want that in the octagon, you want that in Congress as well. And when we start questioning that, that's when you lose faith in the sport.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, man. And like in tennis, generally, the two best players end up in Wimbledon, in the finals, or in golf, the best guy usually wins, and it's a show. In boxing, it's just. It's. People are trying to preserve their W's, and they can't. They don't have access to the other good fighters. You can't make the fights. And it sucks. It's. It's a bummer. And I'm really hoping that Dana and TKO come in and take over boxing just the way they did with the ufc. So I scream that all the time.

[Adam Carolla]

You start off where in this country, before you come to California, I was.

[Pete Berg]

In my mother's stomach at Yankee Stadium, cheering for the Giants back in the early 1960s. I came out of her stomach in New York City, so I'm a New Yorker.

[Adam Carolla]

And when did you come out to Los Angeles? And was it always eventually to write and direct? Because it was all about acting at the beginning. Right, Right.

[Pete Berg]

So I went to College in St. Paul, Minnesota. And long, bizarre series of events lined up. And I ended up getting involved in theater and little filmmaking in Minnesota, mainly because my college had a horrible theater department. They were. They didn't have any bodies. They were about to shut it down. And my faculty advisor, Dan Kaiser, said, please take acting one. Like, it's a. You have to take an arts course. It's an automatic A. And you need just. We need the bodies. And I'm like, okay, I'll do it. And I started taking these acting classes, loved them, Got A's started that turned into playwriting and play directing and then a little bit of film naked. And my dad, who was in advertising in New York, started getting progressively more agitated and stressed that I seemed to be moving in this direction. And when it was time to graduate, he came to me and told me that he had helped secure me a job at Lehman Brothers Others, the investment company. And I said, well, thanks, dad, but I'm gonna go to California and Hollywood. I think I'm gonna learn about, you know, film and all that. And he said, don't do it. You're making a big mistake. I said, dad, I really want to try it. He said, don't. I said, I'm going to. He said, well, okay. I'll tell you one thing. You're going to end up making those gay pornos. That's what you're going to end up doing. And he stared at me, and I stared at him. And I'm like, well, thanks, dad, for the encouragement. And I went. Despite his warning. And to this day, those words are in the back of my head. And I think a part of what motivate me to work hard so that I don't have to pursue that line of work. And so far, so good.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, Well, I don't think there are any more rules. There used to be rules about you either did TV or you did theatrical stuff, or you did commercials. You. You turn on the tv, you see a listers all over, commercials for big popular brands. John Cena's doing a McDonald's commercial. There used to be a whole lot of rules about what you could do and what lane you couldn't veer into as a director, as a writer, as an actor. It's kind of no rules now, right? You can direct a commercial, you can direct a theatrical, you can pop up in a series. You can direct a series. Like, it's kind of nice, right?

[Pete Berg]

Yeah. Oh, it's fantastic. I mean, I've always felt that way kind of in. In. In that especially with directing. I direct a lot of commercials, I direct a lot of documentaries, I direct doc series, TV shows, scripted and, and movies. And people ask me, you know, do I like one more than the other. And for me, the truth is it's, it's all one big kind of creative journey for me. And if I'm directing a commercial, like last week I directed a Super bowl commercial. And I had every bit as much creative stimulation as doing that as I did doing American Primeval or any movie I've ever done. I found that I've been able to kind of flow through different mediums. And I think definitely, as far as acting goes, you know, Robert De Niro's got a limited series coming out next week on Netflix that I think is, is going to be really good. My friend Eric Newman produced it. And it's very fluid now. You know, it's like the kids talk about, everything's fluid today. People are sexually fluid, they're emotionally fluid, people are politically fluid. And I think I have no problem with that. And I think our business is definitely fluid like that. You can do anything. And if the work's good, the work's good.

[Adam Carolla]

No, I agree. And I do some docs and some books and some stuff that's different too. And I think there's something challenging, like when I used to work for the man show, or when I used to do the man show, we do one minute commercial parodies and you gotta get it all in in one minute, you know, challenging. And people think, well, that's a lot easier than a 90 minute doc. And it's like, no, it's harder. It's sort of the difference between a logo and a saying or verbiage, meaning the most brilliant thing you can have is a brilliant logo where someone is going 70 miles an hour down the highway and they look up and they see the billboard and they recognize exactly what that company is. You know, it's Apple, it's Coca Cola. You know what I mean? And you go, there's a simplicity to it, but there's a brilliance in the simplicity. It can be read at 70 miles an hour at night.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, it's very challenging. And not only can it be read and identified, but it has emotional resonance. You actually feel something, whether it's, you know, comfort or, or it could be disdain if you don't like the product, but hopefully it's not, you know, it when. And, and now what they're really into, and I can't remember the term, but the, the audio component of a logo, like when you, when Netflix comes on and you hear that, Bob.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, right, right.

[Pete Berg]

That you get the visual with the audio. And there's, there's companies that specialize in making the audio companion to the logo. They. It had the ability in two notes to lock you in and, and hold you. And. And that's cool. That goes back to like, remember the old, the AOL that.

[Adam Carolla]

Right.

[Pete Berg]

That old, like when the modem was signing in and that, that was one of the first ones. I remember you heard that, that audio companion to the logo and you get locked in. It's really hard to do that. So commercials for me are a real challenge. And one of the cool things about as a director doing commercials, a lot of big department heads, like cinematographers, costume designers, production designers, Academy Award winners, when they're in between movies, they like to do commercials. A. Because it's generally pretty good money, but it's also just a way to keep busy. So for me, when I'm directing a commercial, I can reach out and find new people to work with that I normally. And you get to sort of trial run with each other for, you know, three days. And it's a great way to kind of, I don't know, network and meet people that you might not normally get to work with. And these are some of the best people in the business. So that's always fun.

[Adam Carolla]

The super bowl commercials are a great little science fair of life. Like, here's everyone's offering and you get to walk past all the tables and see the kid's volcano and his celestial star system and like whatever's going on in that kid's head. And you take one minute in front of every table and then you declare winner. Yeah, it's competitive, but it's really interesting because it's. I feel like it's kind of maybe not uniquely American, but it is like a very American art form. This one minute long creative endeavor that needs to satisfy a bunch of different masters. It's gotta be funny or it's gotta be heartfelt, or it's gotta be interesting or smart. And we gotta get the product in there. And, you know, sometimes there's a call to action, you know?

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, yeah. It's. Super bowl commercials, I think, are fascinating too, because for everything you just said, they are. They're like kind of like a bake sale, like when you go to school back in the day and it would be bake sale day and everyone would bring in their best secret recipe, right? So like grandma's chocolate butterscotch chip cupcake and caramel peanut butter, whatevers. And everyone would sort of be like, this is my special thing. And it was interesting because it was people reaching in to create the very best caramel brownie they could possibly create. Right. And with commercial super bowl, you have all these agencies which most people don't know about or care about, and I don't know why they would. But if, you know, the business companies like 72 Sunny and Chia Day and Droga and, you know, tons of them, these are pretty talented people who work, you know, year round servicing clients. But then if they get a Super bowl spot, they lock in and like the butterscotch brownies, everyone tries to bring their absolute very best and you know, does. They don't always work, but they really hope that they will work. So you're getting to see people who are having, you know, from my end as a director, you meet you these agency folks and the creatives and everyone is going all in. So you get the feeling that you're working with people who are. They realize that this is kind of like their big moment to show.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, it's their Super Bowl.

[Pete Berg]

It's theirs. Exactly. It's their super bowl. And they're. And I kind of like that, you know, and I feel the pressure and I want to try and deliver for them. And it's fun, it's competitive and it is. It, you know, it is judged and there is a winner and everyone knows that there's going to be a winner. It's the USA Today's ad meter, which no one knows. Like, I guess back in the day when the USA Today was really, you know, a big important paper. Not to disrespect them today, but. Right. No paper is. But the USA Today somehow positioned themselves as the authority yet the judge for the super bowl commercial. So if you win the AD meter, the usa, which I've won twice. Thank you. I'm very proud to say I've won it twice.

[Adam Carolla]

Wait, which two commercials?

[Pete Berg]

Sorry, I won it with a Kevin Hart Hyundai commercial where Kevin Hart played a dad who was trying to follow his daughter on a date to make sure that the boy behaved himself.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. Remember that?

[Pete Berg]

That was one won and then I won it. I think the next year for that NFL 100 Super bowl spot, which was like a big banquet.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. Where they ran and the ball got loose and everyone dove and. Oh my God, that must have been crazy to film.

[Pete Berg]

It was fun. It was really fun because we had every great football player from Jim Brown to, I think Saquon was a rookie that year. We had, like, you know, 60 hall of Famers in this banquet just attacking each other viciously. And it was. It was actually. It was fun, and it. It was actually quite emotional because you got to sort of see the timeline of NFL greats all in one room, and they were just, you know, very casual with each other. So it worked on a couple of levels, but it, like, you know, they called me like, we won the Super Bowl. And I'm like, we did. I didn't even know that was a thing. But then I found out it was a thing, and I was very excited and proud of all of us for working hard and winning something. It's always good to win something, Adam. Always good to win something.

[Adam Carolla]

I agree. So, full disclosure, we're recording this before the super bowl, so that's why I'm not referring to the specific commercial that Pete Berg directed. But the thing about. I've dealt with a lot of corporate stuff, and they say they want it to be funny and they want your flavor. And the reason they hired you is because of your unique talents and the way you see life. And then at some point, they start getting nitpicky about verbiage and about things they will do and won't do. And sometimes the creative process is damaged in that process. And if you get enough juice, like Pete's got enough juice, he can probably override a lot of that. But it's still. At the end of the day, those people are cutting the checks. So how do you deal with that? Do you. If we had the epic battles.

[Pete Berg]

So. So the way I deal with it, like, particularly for the big spots, like, okay, I just did a Super bowl spot for the NFL. I think we can say that. And, you know, this is their big commercial. They. It's a two minute, sometimes longer commercial. It's the, you know, big. It'll be the longest commercial on the Super Bowl. So there's a lot of pressure. And you've got an ad agency, and in the case of the NFL, it's an agency called 72 and Sunny, which is a really great ad agency, very successful agency based in la, but they've got offices all over. And then you. So that's the agency, and then you've got the client, which is the NFL. Right. And that's pretty powerful client. And. And that sounds intimidating on. On the surface, you know, this big agency and of this big brand, the NFL, but I've done it long enough to know that, well, the big agency are just a bunch of human beings, and their president is a Guy named Glenn, who I know and is a good guy and he wants to win. And the CMO chief marketing officer of the NFL is a guy named Tim. And he's a good guy, too. And so I know them and what I like to do. See, normally when you do a commercial, the director is on the set and everyone else has to be in these tents away from the director. They're not allowed to talk to the director. So if anything wants to get relayed, there has to be an intermediary. It's like negotiating a hostage release in the Middle east, right? You got to go on. And so then it gets very stressful. And, you know, the message comes back that they want, oh, Marshawn lynch to hold the football two inches lower. And that's a two hour extending. It goes on forever. And so what I learned to do is I take the two main guys, Glenn and Tim, who I like, and I let them stand right with me on the set. And while we're, while we're going and I'm direct, I'm like, what do you think? And they'll have an idea and we can actually. You can make you. I make peace with them and I try and bring them into the creative process rather than trying to resist it. Because you'll never win if you try and resist. Resist it. It's like trying to swim against a raging river. You're gonna lose. So I, I've learned over the years, the way you get away around that nitpicking and, and, and micromanagement is to try and include them. And I think that, you know, they have enough faith in me because I've done this long enough that they do trust me. So the whole process is, is relatively peaceful and, and doesn't. It doesn't go the way you earlier described. However, a young director that hasn't experienced it, I could see just getting like Derek Henry plowing over them. You gotta kind of know how to handle the situation, you know, I don't.

[Adam Carolla]

Know why it popped in my head. We're talking about advertising. I hate it when you have a killer idea. And this must have happened. It's happened to everyone who's engaged in this process. But you come up with an idea and you love this idea and you think you're gonna do it. And it never happens, which is. I met with the guys from Ford and Ford was like, we have the 50th anniversary of the Mustang coming up. This is a couple of years ago, and they wanted to do a commercial. And I said, you know, I Got an idea. What if we did the movie Bullet, the iconic Steve McQueen movie Bullet, and they show all him through San Francisco and jumping the car down the streets and getting sideways everywhere. But we told you the story of the little known item that nobody knows, which is Bullitt had a partner in that movie. And it was my dad in 1971, and he was riding shotgun gun in that car. And it would be me with a big 70s fro and a 70s turtleneck and leather jacket, just screaming and hanging on to the dash, yelling, slow down. And then we'd cut to the exterior of the car getting sideways, and we'd cut back to me spilling coffee all over myself, yelling, slow down again. And then we'd go back again, and I'd be doing something insane each time. We got back to the interior of the car, and we'd use the actual footage from Bullitt, you know, the exterior stuff, and tight on Steve McQueen. And then they'd cut to me in the passenger seat with the giant fro wig on, screaming, slow down. And they were like, oh, that'll be so funny. And I'm like, it would be so funny. Like, I can see it in my head. I'm cutting it together in my head, you know? Never happened.

[Pete Berg]

Wow. Yeah. And so did you pitch that to Ford or to Ford's agency?

[Adam Carolla]

I pitched. Pitched it to Ford, I think, when I was in Dearborn, and I should have. I think it's before. You know the guy who runs Ford is Chris Farley's cousin.

[Pete Berg]

Yes, that's right. Jim.

[Adam Carolla]

Jim Farley. Nicest dude. Nicest dude you've ever met. Or maybe you have met him.

[Pete Berg]

I met him.

[Adam Carolla]

Loves to do the vintage racing. I do the vintage races. So I see him at the track all the time. The most gracious guy in the world. And maybe if I could have got and looks like Chris Farley, which is funny.

[Pete Berg]

I actually met him. A really good guy. There's the problem, right? You never had a chance, Adam. Because I know what happens is if you go to a brand like Ford with a great idea, and your idea is great, and I didn't know that was your dad. And I'm fascinated to hear that. I'd love to hear more, but.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, that's all a goof. That he didn't exist. I just made. Yeah, the whole goof is that I play my dad in the recreation.

[Pete Berg]

But was your dad really in the movie?

[Adam Carolla]

No, my dad's never left this house.

[Pete Berg]

Okay, sorry. Great. Well, I'd love to meet your dad at some point. But you pitch an idea to Ford, or you pitch an idea to the agency that represents Ford, and you don't have a chance. Because if, say, you have a great idea and you pitch it to the Ford and then you leave, then Farley is going to call the agency. I don't know who Ford's ad agency is, and say, carly just came in here and give us this great idea. And what they will do is they'll say, oh, yeah, that's a great idea. And they'll probably think it is. And then slowly they'll kill it, because if they take your idea, they have no job. That just means that they failed. And, you know, because all their job is to come up with ideas like that 24 7. Suddenly you come in out of nowhere with a better idea. They're never going to take it. Because it would just be a huge acknowledgment that you're a football fan, Right?

[Kelsey Grammer]

Sure.

[Pete Berg]

You saw this tight end on the Ravens drop the ball last week.

[Adam Carolla]

I did.

[Pete Berg]

Right. So I was pitching the NFL and the agency. Yes. Two days ago. I said, God, you guys. Because it was so amazing how Lamar Jackson came up to him, you know, and said, hey, man, come on, this. You were a team. We don't. We don't win or lose as one person. Susan, on you. And I guess the Buffalo fans made a huge donation to his charity. And I thought it was very interesting the way people rallied around him. And I said, you guys could do a whole spot on what happens when a player makes a horrific mistake and he's failed and he's humiliated and, you know, and devastated and how the league holds that player and says, look, get up, man. You're going to get up. We're going to survive. It's not. And. And I thought. I thought that was an interesting moment to seize upon. Underrepresented when something horrific happens and, you know, interception or a fumble or a drop or a really bad injury. The way that. And I'm so. I'm pitching this and I'm getting all excited, and I can see this really emotional spot, and they're nodding, and it was the NFL and the agency, and there's so. And I'm like in the back of my mind, mind going, they'll never do it, because their minds are going, yeah, that's a good idea, but we can't let Pete have that idea because we don't have an idea. And I walked away, and it won't happen, but it would be a really good idea.

[Adam Carolla]

I agree. I mean, we've come a long way since Bill Buckner. You know, I mean, that was a life sentence for him, essentially. And we've evolved quite a bit. I think it's a good sign as a society that we pick these people up. We wouldn't have done to Bill Buckner today what we did to Bill Buckner all those years ago.

[Pete Berg]

There was a soccer player in South America, a goalie, right. Who let in a goal and the cartels killed him.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't think. Well, I'm sure that has happened. It wasn't that he let in a goal. I think he killed. Kicked a goal against his own team.

[Pete Berg]

He did.

[Adam Carolla]

He did by mistake. And I don't know if it was a goalie or not, but somebody screwed up and kicked a goal against their own team and had him killed. So that's how they do it in Medellin.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, I mean, I'm not. I'm not. I can't remember exactly what it was, but somebody led up a goal or was responsible for a goal against their own team and they were killed. So.

[Adam Carolla]

I don't know, Pete.

[Pete Berg]

There's something there.

[Adam Carolla]

You. Oh, man, I gotta pitch you. I'm gonna pitch you my football movie idea.

[Pete Berg]

What do you got?

[Adam Carolla]

Cause you love sports.

[Pete Berg]

This is just between you and me, though, right?

[Adam Carolla]

Friday Night Lights. I know, but I'm serious about this one. They do that thing in sports every once in a while where the mob gets hold of the quarterback and pays him off to have a bad, bad day at the Super Bowl. But there's eyes on the quarterback, and there's eyes on the kicker, and there are eyes on the stars of the game. But nobody watches the long snapper. The long snapper is making the league, minimum. First off, you can't bribe Patrick Mahomes. He's got too much money and too many endorsements. But the long snapper's making the league, minimum.

[Pete Berg]

You mean for the punt or for the extra point field goal?

[Adam Carolla]

It's usually the same guy.

[Pete Berg]

Okay, okay, you're right. Then that's a valuable guy. That's under the radar. I like it.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. We don't know his name and he's making the leap, minimum. Now, in our story, Pete, they could kidnap his daughter and. Hold it, hold it. Now, this guy, all he has to do is snap one over the punter's head and snap one bad field goal. And we just shaved about 10 points here. Just fire one over the punter's head, the ball carry him all the way back to the other end zone. The Other team will fall on it and. Or one bad field goal snap, no one will know it. Not provable. No one says a word. And they won't. They wouldn't pull him after the bad punt snap. They don't have another snapper. He just have a bad game.

[Pete Berg]

Would you go. Would you go? Happy ending, though. Like the long snapper at the end finds his integrity and realizes that it's about more than him. And, and, and he's going to figure out a way to live a free his daughter and make the good snap so they can win the game. Or would you go darker and like he throws the game and they don't ever give him his daughter back and you just go really dark. Well, how you going?

[Adam Carolla]

I don't know. I think you'd end up making it feel goody and redemption and that kind of stuff. I just became intrigued with the notion that this guy, while everyone else is making 30 million bucks a year, this guy makes. Makes 375 a year. And a million bucks is a big deal to that dude. And he can control the outcome of this game more so than almost anybody, I mean, other than the quarterback. But the quarterback's making 30 million a year, so you can't really buy him.

[Pete Berg]

That's a great idea.

[Adam Carolla]

He's an old guy who's been a journeyman who's bounced around from team to team. There's some precedent, I think. The Rams, when they went to the super bowl in like 79 or 80, their long snapper went down and they got the coach's long snapper from college and brought him onto the team. Like, next thing, you know, like one day the guy's working at a Home Depot and the next work, next day he's snapping in the Super Bowl. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's kind of long snappers, one of those jobs where you could do it when you're 40 and it's not really like it wouldn't work. If you said this guy is a wide receiver or cornerback, you'd go, well, he's 40. He's not. It's not going to work. He doesn't have his legs under him anymore. But this, you could be pulled out of retirement. Maybe he gets pulled. I think he gets pulled out of retirement to play and then the mob shows up.

[Kelsey Grammer]

Up.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, I like that a lot. I'm remembering there was a story either last year or the year before where there's, I guess, hockey teams and I never knew this. There's always a backup, backup goalie in the Stadium who doesn't dress. And two years ago, two goalies got hurt and they had to bring this guy out of the stands and he ended up winning the game. Do you remember that story?

[Adam Carolla]

Yes, I remember that story.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, I'm getting a little bit of those vibes lives from.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Pete Berg]

What you're saying. But maybe not kidnapping. Kidnapping the daughter brings an element of, I don't know, that takes it in a direction. I like the idea that maybe they're just going to say, we're going to pay you a lot of money and you're underappreciated and here's a chance for you. And he thinks he's going to go down that road and maybe a little bit of threat. But kidnapping a kid, that's pretty like.

[Adam Carolla]

All right, we'll do money. Will do. All right, how about this? He's a journeyman guy. He's living in, you know, not great shakes because he's always just kind of been a league minimum guy, you know, like backup, outside linebacker, but long snapper kind of league minimum. Maybe scene one, act one. He's being screwed over by the league. They've declined his medical benefits. He's out of pocket. You know, the league has screwed him.

[Pete Berg]

You know, maybe his daughter's medical benefits. Right. So his daughter can't fix her.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. The system has not taken care of him. He's been out of the league for two years. He walks with a little bit of a limp. And the system in the league has not helped him with his daughter who has medical difis. Daughters, medical veterans, very expensive. Then gets called because we do that thing the Rams did. His coach from college ends up being the coach of the team that goes to the Super Bowl. The long snapper goes down and this guy trusts this guy and pulls him out of retirement to show up. Then the mob sees this as an opportunity.

[Pete Berg]

They get him during a playoff run or they bring him in early in the season.

[Adam Carolla]

I, I think playoff run. I think they play, I think they pull them off in the playoff run. It's a great feel good story. But the mob gets the newspaper too.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

They realize the guys made the league minimum. He's living in a crappy house in New Jersey and his daughter has medical issues and expenses that the league isn't going to pay for. Then they, they come in and that's where the story really begins. And by the time we get to the super bowl, we don't know know whether he's going to make that bad snap or not.

[Pete Berg]

I like it. And I think the mob, in this case, because mob. It's harder to kind of. The modern mob isn't quite what, you know, it used to be because it really. They're not reading newspapers, literally, because. Right. There are no newspapers anymore. But you know who I think would be a good villain or one of these big online gambling sites. I'm not going. I don't want to call them out. But there's one that starts with the words bet and three letters, Right. Like, if those guys. Because these guys are all about analytics and computers and if they realize they can make a bulk of a lot of money. Yeah, if I like, that would be a good villain.

[Adam Carolla]

Offshore, Filthy Richmond. It's the offshore on the. Whatever island chain where they're set up to launder money. This guy's the big bet online or bet. Whatever. Whatever that company is. Right. So we get rid of the sort of Italian mobster, the Russian mobster, and we give it. We give it the. This is why we gotta beat this out. Pete Bird.

[Pete Berg]

All right, all right.

[Adam Carolla]

Well, that guy's the. They're the heavy and they're the ones that are coming with the cash because again, a bad punt snap and a bad field goal snap. That is good for points.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah. Like, and then at the end, he's got to just say fuck it and just deliver the greatest. Like they got to kick a 58 yard field goal in the weather, in a hostile environment, and he's got to just nail that snap. Just perfect.

[Adam Carolla]

I think we. No, no, no, that's perfect. That's perfect. But I say. I say we take it a step step further.

[Pete Berg]

Okay. Where you want to go?

[Adam Carolla]

I say it is raining and this guy. And we don't know as the audience, is he going to muff this snapper or not. With a minute and a half left and these guys are punting in the rain, like. And we show his hands tight on the ball, in the rain, on the ball, you know, and we see his POV with the sweat and the rain.

[Pete Berg]

Arthritis.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, He's a little, little bit. A little bit older.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

And we do that whole thing and he skips the ball back to the punter. He goes short, the punter pulls it off the ground, skips it right off his feet, pulls it off, throws the punt. We're ambiguous. Like, we don't know did he muff that or was that just a wet ball in the late game and everything? He hustles down the field, makes the tackle, drills the guy. The ball comes loose.

[Pete Berg]

Oh, I like it.

[Adam Carolla]

That and we he. Because he's on the defense, right?

[Pete Berg]

Yeah. You don't see the long snapper. Cause a fumble inducing smash hit that leads to a recovery for a touchdown. That would be good.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, or maybe one of the gunners puts the hit on the guy and you see the ball squirt out and now it's slow motion. He's picking it up off the field and taking it in for the touchdown.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, okay. There's a lot, there's a lot there. There's a lot there. Are you going to play the guy? Do you want to play?

[Adam Carolla]

I can long snap beat. No, that's what I did. That's all I'm good at is long.

[Pete Berg]

We were just on a high school football field all weekend doing that commercial and we, we were all trying to kick field goals. When's the last time you tried to kick a field goal?

[Adam Carolla]

Oh man. I did a man show bit where I tried out for the Raiders. For The Raiders like 25 years ago where I tried, I could never kick.

[Pete Berg]

I kicked a 25 yarder, really felt pretty good. And then I tried to go back to 30 and I kicking, you know, I mean everybody knows kickers. I mean that's a crazy way to make a living. To kick a 55 yard field goal in an NFL game. And in a way, stadium, I mean those guys, that is hard. Just straight up hard.

[Adam Carolla]

I'm with you. And you know what's interesting about those guys, the nerves part of it never really seems to factor in. They make most, they miss some. But even super bowl, millions of people timeout, all eyes and it doesn't seem to affect them.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that that kind of mindset, you, you train yourself to only think about eight things. Whatever it is. Your, your, your two practice kicks, your three step drop, you're two steps to the side, you're going to take four breaths, you're going to swing your arms. Free throw shooters, you're going to swing your arms three times and then you're going to think mom or you know your dog's name or any you've got. And you hold that routine no matter what, whether it's an extra point, whether it's a field goal attempt when you're up 30 points or it's a, you know, game winner. I think that's the key to being able to survive that kind of pressure. You just gotta lock into a routine and no matter what you just, that's what you do.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah, it's muscle memory and, and mind memory.

[Pete Berg]

Though too. I think, I think you've gotta. Because if you start listening to all the other things and the timeouts and the people talking and whatever, whatever the defensive line is saying to you and yelling at you and unimaginably horrific insults and weird about your, you know, pet family, you got to just lock in. I think it's the. What I love. I think we all love. It's just such a lock in moment.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah.

[Pete Berg]

And you know, and if you miss it, man, you're alone.

[Adam Carolla]

I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the beautiful and talented Erica Rhodes, who very frequent guest of the show. Beautiful comedian and I think a Broadway her up to you at the ufc.

[Pete Berg]

I know I need to meet her. Erica, when are we meeting? I hear we need to meet and that you're an amazing person.

[Adam Carolla]

She is beautiful and she's very funny, which is, you know, not something you.

[Pete Berg]

Always see the best combo in the world.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. And a really funny standup and a really great comedian and a great cello player, which is very sexy. I don't know why. So sexy.

[Pete Berg]

Interesting person.

[Adam Carolla]

I completely agree.

[Pete Berg]

Let's go watch some stand up.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. I'll find out when Erica's next gig is in town and we'll go watch her do some standup. She's a really funny stand up and it would be really fun to do. You know, it was funny you brought up earlier you don't know who has the Ford account. And it made me remember that it may be Daly and Associates. And the reason I bring that up is because in Albert Brooks movies, he's always an executive for advertisers.

[Pete Berg]

Lost in America.

[Adam Carolla]

Lost in America he was. And yeah, Lawson America and two movies I think he worked. But yeah, Lawson America, for sure. That was where he worked. Now his actual brother Cliff ran Dale and Associates and they had the Ford account in the movie. And if you recall, there were the guy who's gonna do the Ford account came in from New York, whatever it is. But I think Albert, he was pragmatic. And you can tell me as a filmmaker, he's like, I know this business. My brother Cliff runs this business. We can go shoot at his business. And I'll sound like I know what I'm talking about because that's what my brother does and I know the business. And so he would give himself the job as account manager for Ford or ad sales, you know, advertising sales guy. Just because says go for what you know, it's there.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah, sure. Write what you know, you know, make, make, tell Stories about what you know. And if you don't know it, learn it and then tell it. You know, I've. I've always been a big, huge, huge proponent of deep research. When I did Lone Survivor, I went to Iraq and lived for a month embedded with the Navy SEAL platoon. Really? I went on and lived on an oil rig for deep water. I went back to high school for Friday Night Lights in Texas, Austin, Westlake High School for an entire season. I think the more you. If you want to have success, I believe in, in our business, you've got to either do what you know or learn what you don't know. So you know it. And in the case of Albert Brooks, you know, for anyone that doesn't know Albert Brooks and hasn't seen Lost in America, he plays an advertising exec. And you can tell he understands the nuance. It's in his blood. And one of the greatest scenes, I believe, in film history is Albert Brooks trying to talk Gary Marshall, the casino owner, and giving him his money back. Right? Because his wife got woke up in the middle of the night and took their nest egg, all their money, and went crazy on the roulette wheel. And Albert Brooks wakes up and they're broke, and she's like, on a binge. And he then has to try and talk to. And he's trying to use his advertising speak. The desert in has heart. He's pushing him.

[Adam Carolla]

There's a great. There's a great line when he's pitching Garry Marshall.

[Pete Berg]

Wayne Newton.

[Adam Carolla]

Yeah. He goes, I'm not one of these schmucks who rolls into town to watch Wayne Newton. I know what I'm doing.

[Pete Berg]

I like. Wait a minute. Did you say Wayne?

[Adam Carolla]

I didn't want to use.

[Pete Berg]

I'm a schmuck. I didn't. He goes, I was foolish to use an entertainer as a dividing point.

[Adam Carolla]

I know. It's such. It was foolish to use an entertainer as a dividing point. I know everyone who writes comedy and. Or just writes just had to sit and watch that and go, oh, that's the way you word it.

[Pete Berg]

That's how you do it. But, but to your point, had he not understood advertising Albert Brooks, in such a nuanced and deep way, it would have been funny. But it's the pauses and it's like, like, okay, I've. I've spoke. I speak well of some of the advertising folks I work with. But there's another side to these guys, because they're desperate salesmen. They're hucksters. They're. They're Trying to figure out what you want to hear. And as they're saying it, they're trying to read your reaction. So in mid pitch, they can adjust. Sometimes in mid word, they. No, no, no, no, no. They can adjust. And it's a very, you know, sales oriented behavior. And Albert Brooks had it, man.

[Adam Carolla]

Oh yeah. Now that movie. And then of course, defending your life is. Those are two amazing pieces.

[Pete Berg]

He's never, never not great.

[Adam Carolla]

No, he's never not great. But defending, defending your life was an important movie. It wasn't just like a comedy. It was, it was important. Like it had a great, great message to it.

[Pete Berg]

I still think about it. Like, do you have a list secretly of like, if you were going to be judged upon death and you had never going to play back, like three of your worst moments ever and three of your best moments ever? Do you, do you think about what those are? Do you want to share those with us? Adam?

[Adam Carolla]

I will say in the movie and I'll think about that in the movie he really touched on something that it was fear that was crippling, sort of fear that made you act at your, you were at your worst with fear. And something I've thought about a lot, like I would say that, I always say most people aren't bad, they're just weak. And you tell them, look, do this or you're gonna lose your job. And they go, okay, I'll do whatever you want me to do. I'll say whatever you want me to say. I'll act however you want me to act because I fear losing my job. And so it's like most people aren't bad people. They're weak people who like kind of sadly will do whatever for money or whatever, anything not to be shunned. You know, we all sort of saw it during COVID Like these people weren't all in on masks and vaccines and six foot distancing. They just didn't. They were fearful, terrible, and rightfully so. And they didn't want to be shunned and they certainly didn't want to be removed from their livelihood, so they just did it. So in the movie he really focuses on fear being the biggest problem. Now we think about evil or mean or bad or angry, but it's really fear that makes you.

[Pete Berg]

Greed is fear really.

[Adam Carolla]

Right. It makes you do horrible things out of fear. So I think in this experiment that you've put forth, we should really think of things we've done out of fear. In terms of worst moments. I haven't done bad things. I remember Just being bad when I was 13 and that kind of stuff, like, stuff kid kind of regret making fun of some. There was a girl in my sixth grade and she was a fat, pasty white girl named Ella. And I would say, ella, you smella and you got a Bella, like a bowl full of jella. I was 12 and I feel stupid that I.

[Pete Berg]

Why don't you take this moment and apologize, Ella, right now?

[Adam Carolla]

Well, I'm sure Ella took her own life 27 years ago now. I don't know. I don't know. Ella, if you're out there, I apologize. I shouldn't have done that. I did a fair amount of that kind of young boy stuff. Made fun of my sister, just that stuff. But in general, as an adult, I don't feel like I've done much of that. I've pretty much stood my ground and sort of made decisions that I thought were righteous and didn't really care about the outcome.

[Pete Berg]

You've learned how to control your fear also and identify it and have discipline to not allow fear to put you into a bad spot. Because I'm thinking you're right. I totally agree with you. It's fear and people behave badly because they're scared. However, there's another component which I think is just stupidity, right. And I think about some of the things I did, and there's a lot of them when I was younger that were just so stupid and so embarrassing. When I was in high school, we had payphones, right? And I went to a boarding school where I lived at the school. And I came up with this genius idea that I was going to rip the payphone off the wall and throw it out the window of the five story tower at my school. And then when the payphone broke, I'd run down and get all the money. So I was going to get rich, right? But this whole idea. So me and my friend Carlos Salgado. Carlos. Yep. You did this. We ripped the payphone off the wall, we dragged it up to the top of the tower, and we were about to throw it out the window, but then we realized the coins would, you know, just dissipate and go everywhere. So I ran into my room and I got my laundry bag and I put the phone in the laundry bag because that way we'd catch the coin.

[Adam Carolla]

Sure.

[Pete Berg]

We threw it out the window and five stories down and it hit the concrete and it literally sounded like a bomb went off. Just the mo. Just this deafening sound. The phone bounced 8ft in the air, landed again loud, didn't break. Just Everybody put their heads out, and we ran away. Right. An hour later, I get a call to go see the principal. I go into his office. There's the phone all banged up on his floor. My laundry bag and my name tag from the laundry bag that he cut out. I'm like. And he's like, you're so stupid. Because that wasn't fear. That was just right. So I do think, like, there's the idiotic moments that are fear based, and then there's, like, which. And defending your life. Some of Albert Brooks's stuff was just stupid. Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

No, I agree. There's the montage of stupidity, and that's done for comic effect, comedic effect, but underneath it.

[Pete Berg]

Yeah.

[Adam Carolla]

The message of fear is kind of what is behind so much of your inability to make clear decisions and to act in a way. I mean, if you look back on it historically, when you look at Joan of Arc or whomever, Martin Luther King or something like that, it's always the stories you tell aren't people who are cowardly and got no fetal position. It's like, we admire this thing, yet we don't do a good job of cultivating it in the present time. Right.

[Pete Berg]

I always felt like, you know, when I look at the success of the UFC and boxing, when it works, but particularly the ufc, everybody in that. Everybody in that arena is watching the two gentlemen in that octagon who have the ability to manage fear or act in defiance of that fear here, and that's the secret sauce is, you know, for anyone that's ever boxed, and you and I both boxed a bit, no matter what, if you and I are going to spar, just fun, and, you know, we, hey, let's take it easy and just go three rounds of sparring, there's a moment that would. That activates in anyone who's going to get into a ring. That's just fear. Right, Right. And. And so these fighters engaging in, you know, absolute. The closest thing to murderous behavior outside of war that you can get into. And in some ways, I think it's. It's more confrontational than war because you can't do it from 100 yards away with a sniper rifle. You've got to touch and breathe and smell and bleed on each other and. And function in the presence of such incredible fear. That's why it's such a wildly popular sport.

[Adam Carolla]

No, we have a visceral attraction to things that scare us. And you always can't help but put yourself into that position. And they say, oh, one of the hardest things to do is stand up. You're up there alone with no supporting cast and no teleprompter or whatever. But I do a lot of standup. So when I see people do stand up, I go, yeah, yeah, who cares? It's not a big deal. You know what I mean? Cuz I could do doesn't scare me. So when I see someone else do it, I don't have the utmost respect and go, I could never do that. But when I see somebody do something that I wouldn't do, or couldn't do, or be very fearful of doing, then all of a sudden I go, oh, man. And the thing about UFC is that is universal. You know, you have someone who might go, I'd be way too scared if I was tapped to direct a Super bowl commercial that I would screw it up. I couldn't take that kind of pressure. But not Pete Berg. Pete Berg's fine with that. And then you got Mel Gibson sitting to the left and this guy Kevin Costner to the right, and you go, well, these guys, you might be scared to do stuff they do, but they're not scared to do it. But we're all scared to get into the octagon of this. Of this. You know, I wouldn't be scared, quite honestly, to do a long snap in the Super Bowl. I would not be scared to do it, but I would be very. Cuz I can. Long snap. But I would not get into that octagon. I would be scared of that. And so that's where the respect comes in.

[Pete Berg]

Do you. Do you not, like, if you were gonna go try out some new material at the Comedy Store or wherever or whatever comedy house you go to, and you're literally in the green room and it's. You're up next and they tell you you're on your. And you're walking on. Do you not feel any fear at all anymore at this point in your life? Is there any trace of it?

[Adam Carolla]

I don't have any of that. But no, there is no trace. But there are business decisions to be made, which is to say maybe the person in front of you is about to shoot their special for Netflix and maybe they've been touring, working on this 20 minutes or whatever the time is for the last year and a half, and they got it down to a razor sharp edge, right? And they just went out there and just crushed it for 20 minutes with this polished, incredible act that's ready to be filmed the next week. You know, now I have a hodgepodge of notions and ideas and stuff. I Wrote down on a buck slip, but not really fully realized. So now I'm backstage, I know this person's wrapping it up. Cause I can hear their act coming up to a crescendo. You can kind of hear when they're wrapping up, like, okay, here comes. Comes to big stuff now. And they're getting applause breaks and people are reacting and going nuts. And then all of a sudden I start making business decisions. I'm like, you know what? Instead of I'm going to go with.

[Pete Berg]

Old Faithful, you're going to pull up.

[Adam Carolla]

Some old tricks, I'm going to weave on the drive to the club. I said for the first 10 minutes I was going to go with some new stuff that I was trying to work out.

[Pete Berg]

Fuck that.

[Adam Carolla]

Fuck that. This guy just got done crushing that audience is going nuts. And I don't want to look like an ass experimenting up here. So that is kind of a business decision that'll be made on the fly, but it won't come with the nerves.

[Pete Berg]

And if you're trying new material. I used to date a comedian whose name I won't mention, who I adore, and I used to watch her go up and I had so much respect for her and, and how brave she was. And every once in a while I would watch her just, you know, something would just not work. And it was just death, right?

[Adam Carolla]

Yes.

[Pete Berg]

Dead silence.

[Adam Carolla]

I love Elaine Boosler as well. Continue.

[Pete Berg]

I'm just. Well, how does that. Does that bother you? Does that hurt? Are you such a pro that you can just be like, all right, moving on? Like, what does that. Because that would scare the hell out of me.

[Adam Carolla]

You have to decide whether it's a good concept that you just screwed up or it's a bad concept that you thought was a good concept. You know what I mean?

[Pete Berg]

Or could it just be a dumb ass audience?

[Adam Carolla]

Oh, yeah, sorry, I should have brought that up. There's three possibilities. It's like these guys are tired and they don't get it, or it's a good idea and you screwed it up. Or maybe it wasn't as good as you thought it was. And you have to be kind of honest with that assessment of whether you're gonna do it or not. Pete, I think you and I'll just. We'll figure out where Erica Rhodes is playing and we'll go have a. We'll have a drink and we'll go to a comedy club.

[Pete Berg]

I'd love it.

[Adam Carolla]

Would you love it?

[Pete Berg]

I would love it.

[Adam Carolla]

American Primeval is the name of the series on Netflix as we speak. Also. Well, we got the super bowl or we have the NFL spots as well. Instagram. Should we go to eetberg44?

[Pete Berg]

Peteberg44? Wow. I've never done an Instagram plug. Sure.

[Adam Carolla]

And Pete, I'll hit you off the air and we'll figure it out.

[Pete Berg]

Dude, I'm so happy to reconnect with you. I've known you a long time, since girls jumping on trampolines and dating Kelly said, man. And you're just a great dude.

[Adam Carolla]

It's always great to talk to you, buddy. I'm so glad I ran into you as well. And let's hook it up while the iron's hot.

[Pete Berg]

All right, brother.

[Adam Carolla]

Great. See you, Pete.

[Pete Berg]

Bye.

[Adam Carolla]

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[Pete Berg]

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