Presenting “NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING”

Summary

Podcast Summary: Don't Ask Tig - Episode: “NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING”

Release Date: March 12, 2025
Host: Dana Fox
Guests: Franklin Leonard, Abdullah Saeed, Fortune Feimster
Production: American Public Media in partnership with LA Studios and the Ankler

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Introduction

In this lively episode of Don't Ask Tig, host Dana Fox welcomes a trio of creative minds—Franklin Leonard, founder and CEO of the Blacklist; Abdullah Saeed, writer known for his work on Bong Appetit and High Life; and Fortune Feimster, actor, comedian, and writer. The episode, titled “NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING,” delves into the complexities of time travel in Hollywood through a series of engaging games and collaborative pitching.

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Segment 1: Exploring Time Travel in Hollywood

Dana Fox opens the episode by setting the stage for a deep dive into the trope of time travel in cinema. She muses on the allure of altering the past to create a brighter future, highlighting the persistent fascination with time travel despite its inherent logical paradoxes.

Notable Quote:

"Time opens up the impossible. We fantasize about how a rewritten past could bring us into a bright new future." — Dana Fox [04:06]

Segment 2: Let’s Kill Hitler Game

The first game, “Let’s Kill Hitler,” challenges guests to recall how various time travel-themed narratives depict attempts to assassinate historical figures, particularly Adolf Hitler. The participants navigate through movie scenarios, identifying where characters falter in their missions.

Notable Quotes:

"Characters in movies and television shows try to go back in time and kill Hitler. And time and time again they fail." — Dana Fox [05:37]
"A housekeeper rats him out." — Abdullah Saeed [06:46]

The game not only serves as a fun trivia exercise but also sparks discussions on the ethical and logical dilemmas of altering pivotal historical events.

Segment 3: Lean Mean Time Travel Machine Lightning Round

Next up is the “Lean Mean Time Travel Machine” lightning round, where Dana describes iconic time travel devices from film and television. Guests buzz in to name the device and its origin.

Notable Quotes:

"It's the TARDIS." — Abdullah Saeed [41:21]
"It's a Time Turner." — Fortune Feimster [44:56]

The fast-paced segment highlights the diverse representations of time travel technology, from the DeLorean's flux capacitor in Back to the Future to the TARDIS in Doctor Who.

Segment 4: Collaborative Pitching and Time Travel Movie Ideas

The core of the episode revolves around collaborative pitching games where guests create and pitch their own time travel movie concepts based on random elements drawn from “popcorn buckets” containing actors, settings, and tropes.

Notable Quotes:

"I kinda went meta on it, guys. I also think it could be that's how I got here." — Dana Fox [19:05]
"Sweetie Man" — Abdullah Saeed [23:19]

Example Pitches:

1. "Can You Smell What's Cooking?"
   Franklin Leonard pitches a comedic time loop scenario featuring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson battling the Great Molasses Flood of 1919 Boston, emphasizing physical comedy and historical satire.

2. "Sweetie Man"
   Abdullah Saeed introduces a fantastical narrative where The Rock plays a Willy Wonka-like character orchestrating a molasses flood, only to relive his actions repeatedly, ultimately striving to prevent disaster.

3. "Unwritten"
   Fortune Feimster envisions a romantic time-travel tale set in the Library of Alexandria, exploring themes of love across epochs and the challenges of altering one's personal history.

Dana Fox commends the creativity and humor each pitch brings, highlighting the blend of historical events with imaginative storytelling.

Notable Quote:

"Would you rather risk dying in the explosion than be stuck in time without her?" — Dana Fox [73:05]

Segment 5: If I Could Turn Back Time - Real or Fake Movie Game

Dana Fox introduces a game where she pitches movie plots, and guests must discern whether they are real films or fabricated stories. This segment tests the guests' knowledge of time travel-themed cinema while providing humorous and inventive scenarios.

Notable Quotes:

"If I could turn back time, I'd have to decide if it's real or is it fake?" — Dana Fox [47:35]
"It's called 'Run.' It is." — Fortune Feimster [52:56]

Example Pitches:

• An MIT reject uses a Time Traveling TI89 calculator for revenge, which is revealed as a fabricated story by Dana.
• A romantic tale where a duke from the 19th century falls for a modern career woman, hinting at the real film Kate & Leopold.

The game not only entertains but also educates listeners on lesser-known and iconic time travel narratives.

Segment 6: Final Collaborative Writing Challenge

In the episode’s climax, Dana Fox assigns a collaborative writing task where guests revise a scene to modernize a time-travel narrative. They work together to infuse contemporary elements and emotional depth into a scripted scenario, showcasing their creative synergy and adaptability.

Notable Quotes:

"You have to punctuate the dialogue with an Irish flavor." — Dana Fox [67:05]
"Welcome to Ireland, where we make cool sweaters." — Fortune Feimster [67:41]

The exercise culminates in a humorous and heartfelt scene, demonstrating the guests' ability to blend humor with storytelling effectively.

Conclusion

Dana Fox wraps up the episode by acknowledging the collaborative efforts and creative contributions of her guests. She teases upcoming projects, including Deli Boys on Hulu, and reflects on the unpredictable nature of time travel narratives—echoing the episode's central theme that “nobody knows anything.”

Notable Quote:

"Nobody knows anything. Not even us. Actually, that's not true. I know one thing. If you have the chance to go back in time, please go back and kill both Hitler and Cortez." — Dana Fox [73:19]

Final Thoughts: This episode of Don't Ask Tig masterfully combines humor, creativity, and insightful discussions on time travel in media. Through interactive games and collaborative writing, Dana Fox and her guests engage listeners in an entertaining exploration of one of cinema’s most fascinating tropes, all while reinforcing the show's central humor: “Don't Ask Tig.”

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Key Takeaways:

• Time travel remains a compelling and complex theme in Hollywood, often grappling with ethical and logical paradoxes.
• Collaborative creative exercises can yield both humorous and thought-provoking narratives.
• Interactive games on podcasts enhance listener engagement and provide dynamic content delivery.

Notable Quotes for Reference:

• "I've never had a child that couldn't read." — Franklin Leonard [00:17]
• "Time opens up the impossible." — Dana Fox [04:06]
• "If you have the chance to go back in time, please go back and kill both Hitler and Cortez." — Dana Fox [73:19]

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Credits: Produced by Monica Bushman
Written by Megan Halpern
Head Writer: Claire Austin Culotte
Mixing: Hasmik Pahosian
Original Composition: E. Scott Kelly
Additional Music: Track Club
Support by Gordon and Donna Crawford

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Disclaimer: LA Studios acknowledges the Gabrielino Tongva people and recognizes the painful history of displacement, colonization, and erasure of their language and sovereignty. Visit las.comland for more information.

Transcript

[Franklin Leonard]

The Sold a Story podcast is about how teaching kids to read went wrong. But now we have a story about.

[Fortune Feimster]

A school district where things are going very right. Let me make sure my friends are sitting crisscross applesauce hands in their lap. I've never had a child that couldn't read.

[Franklin Leonard]

How did they do it?

[Abdullah Saeed]

When I tell some of my other colleagues that may be at other schools that this is what I do, and.

[Fortune Feimster]

They would say, you kidding me?

[Franklin Leonard]

New episodes of Soul to Story are.

[Fortune Feimster]

Available now in your podcast app.

[Dana Fox]

Hello, don't ask Tig listeners. My name is Franklin Leonard, the founder and CEO of the Blacklist, a platform that helps Hollywood discover great scripts. I am also the host of a new podcast from LA Studios that I'm excited to introduce you to, and it's called Nobody Knows Anything. Nobody Knows Anything is a new show about how difficult it is to make something actually good in Hollywood. In each episode, we put your favorite actors, directors and writers through the ringer to see if they've got what it takes to make a successful movie or TV show. With, of course, an escalating series of helpful studio executive notes from me. Spoiler alert. They're not always helpful. In the process, we'll poke fun at the industry we know and love and see if famed screenwriter William Goldman was right when he said nobody knows anything. And we're excited to share with you today our episode about the final frontier. Not space, but time travel. Actor and comedian Fortune Feimster, writers Dana Fox and Abdullah Saeed zip through and go head to head for points. Some people think space is the final frontier, and those people are wrong. It's actually time travel. Space, we've been there. But time travel? Who's done that? That we know of? I don't even think I've thought about outer space at all this year. I mean, aside from wanting to sh myself into the sun every time I turn on the news. But if I had a nickel for how many times this week I've said, if I had a time machine, I'd have like six bucks. Which, okay, is absolutely fucking useless. I can't even buy a dozen eggs with that. But the point is, time opens up the impossible. We fantasize about how a rewritten past could bring us into a bright new future. We tie ourselves into knots trying to force logic into the science of it. And we make movies about it over and over and over and over and over again. Sorry, I got stuck in a loop there.

[Franklin Leonard]

I'm from the future.

[Dana Fox]

I came here in a time machine.

[Abdullah Saeed]

That you invented it.

[Dana Fox]

Must be some kind of hot tub time machine. Bill, what strange things are afoot at the Circle K? Do you ever have deja vu, Mrs. Lancaster?

[Fortune Feimster]

I don't think so, but I could check with the kitchen.

[Dana Fox]

Welcome to Nobody Knows Anything. Which is also my response to anyone who tries to argue the Navikov self consistency conjecture with me. This show comes to you from the Blacklist in LA Studios in partnership with the Ankler. I'm your host, Franklin Leonard and we are very excited to be joined in the studio by three guests who have absolutely no idea what they're in for. Our first guest is an actor, comedian, writer and a 1998 Gastonia debutante. Welcome, Fortune Feenster.

[Franklin Leonard]

What an intro. Thanks.

[Dana Fox]

We are also joined by writer Abdullah Saeed. You know him from his weed work on his James Beard award winning show Bong Appetit and the High Life. But look out for his new show Deli Boys on Hulu. Thank you for joining us. And finally we have screenwriter and rom com queen Dana Fox. There's not a person in America who didn't bawl their eyes out at the end of Dana's latest movie. Wicked is up for 10. Yes. 10 Academy Awards in just a couple of weeks.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Welcome, Insane.

[Dana Fox]

Bravo.

[Fortune Feimster]

I'm gonna ball my eyes out at the end of that intro.

[Dana Fox]

All right, let's get right to it. What would you guys do with the power of time travel?

[Abdullah Saeed]

I'd kill Cortez. Because a lot of people says is interesting, right?

[Dana Fox]

Tell me more.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Okay. So I've always felt like if the Americas were allowed to just develop on their own, right. That it would have become this like amazing, like, you know, Native futurists, you know, it would be kind of like a Wakanda, but more, you know, Native American, North American and South American groups. Right. And I think that would be a much cooler world probably than the post colonial, you know, Western hemisphere.

[Dana Fox]

Yeah.

[Abdullah Saeed]

So, you know, a lot of people say, you know, you'll go back and stop the JFK assassination. You go back and kill Hitler. I would say just keep going, keep going back and back and back. Kill Cortez.

[Fortune Feimster]

Back, smart back, smart back it all the way back. I was going to say that I would go back and kill Hitler, but now I can't because of the Cortez thing. So because we have to go past my actual day, going back is. I've often thought I want to go back to the day in my own childhood. That was a day before I realized the world was not fully a safe place. I Wanna go back to the day before anxiety, the day before fear. And I wanna be in that body just so I can try to figure out how to feel that way again. But really on a more positive, less depressing note, I asked my child what he would do with time travel and he actually said he would go to the future. And it made tears shoot out of my eyes because I thought, I can't believe he thinks the future's gonna be good. Cause it didn't even occur to me that the future was gonn.

[Dana Fox]

I know this sounded like a question with no wrong answers, but yes, obviously the right answer is that you would go back in time and kill Hitler. Oh, I have to say, Abdullah, killing Cortez may be a better answer, but our next game is called let's Kill Hitler. So too bad. Time and again, characters in movies and television shows try to go back in time and kill Hitler. And time and time again they fail. For this game, I'm gonna name a title and give you some options on how characters messed up the most important thing they could have ever done in their lives. And you tell me which one is correct. The person that buzzes in first gets a point. Now you have to let me.

[Fortune Feimster]

What if I 100% don't understand the rules? Can I still play?

[Dana Fox]

It's very straightforward. It's a multiple choice. It's a multiple choice test. Preach it forward. In a 1963 episode of the Twilight Zone, scientist Paul Dristel travels to a Berlin hotel room to assassinate Hitler the summer before he invades Poland. How did he beef it? A He books the wrong hotel room. B A housekeeper rats him out. C He kills a random guy named Joey Hitler instead. Is it A, B or C Abdullah.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I'm going to go. B. I'm going to go. He gets ratted out by the cleaning.

[Dana Fox]

That is correct. A housekeeper.

[Fortune Feimster]

That was going to be my Too scared to hit the thing.

[Dana Fox]

In a 2002 episode of the reboot of the show, Special Agent Collins, played by Katherine Heigl, is assigned to go back in time and kill baby Adolf by impersonating the new nanny in the Hitler household. How did she fuck it up? A she doesn't speak German and so can't figure anything out. B she accidentally has an affair with Hitler's dad. C she actually does kill baby Hitler, only for the real nanny to buy a baby to replace dead baby Hitler so she can save her job. Fortune.

[Franklin Leonard]

She doesn't speak German.

[Fortune Feimster]

That is incorrect because her name is Katherine Heigl. I think she actually has to right.

[Abdullah Saeed]

They were just selling babies in Germany back then.

[Dana Fox]

I don't know. We haven't gotten to the right answer yet.

[Fortune Feimster]

I think Imposter Baby Hitler is interesting.

[Dana Fox]

That is Imposter Baby Hitler is the answer.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yes.

[Dana Fox]

This is.

[Fortune Feimster]

I do love this game.

[Dana Fox]

Excellent screenwriter.

[Franklin Leonard]

There's no way that could be.

[Dana Fox]

This is amazing. So she does kill baby Hitler only for the real nanny to buy a baby. Replacing dead baby Hitler, saving her job. And then of course, the Hitler we know is not the actual Hitler.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Of course, the original one would have been like a good guy.

[Fortune Feimster]

He would have just been a painter, like, was proud of himself and didn't have a hole in.

[Abdullah Saeed]

How did they play Katherine Heigl killing a baby on network tv?

[Franklin Leonard]

I know, I thought that couldn't possibly be the case.

[Dana Fox]

I know the answer, but that's an excellent question. All right, our next question. In the extended super duper cut of Deadpool 2, Ryan Reynolds makes a pit stop in 1889 Germany where he finds baby Hitler in the hospital nursery. How does Deadpool blow this? A, he thinks baby Hitler is just too cute to kill. B, he gets too messed up on unregulated 19th century morphine, or C, he gets distracted by a sexy fraulein nurse.

[Fortune Feimster]

The morphine one.

[Dana Fox]

It is not the morphine one.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Fortune felt very Deadpool.

[Dana Fox]

It is A, he thinks baby Hitler is just too darn cute to kill.

[Fortune Feimster]

It seemed too wrong. I couldn't choose it. It was so wrong.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I think it's an interesting question, though. Like killing a baby before it turns into the evil person. Right? It really begs this nature versus nurture thing. Like, if you. You know what I mean? Like the baby is technically an innocent at this point. Right? Even if it's baby Hitler has all the bad shit happen that turns him into a fucking monster.

[Franklin Leonard]

What if his baby. Cortez.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah.

[Fortune Feimster]

Do you think it's a bigger.

[Dana Fox]

Hypocrisy called? All right, next one in time COP2, the Berlin decision, which of course is the direct to video sequel to the Jean Claude Van Damme film, which I know we've all seen. Obviously, the head of the Society for Historical Authenticity believes he has a moral responsibility to change history. So he Travels back to 1940 Berlin to kill Hitler. This guy is an expert. What went wrong? A, he gets arrested by another time cop. B, he accidentally travels to 1940 Berlin, N.H. or C, his older self travels back in time to convince him not to do it.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Abdullah, I'm going to say it's A.

[Fortune Feimster]

I think it's wrong. Because I think C. That's what I was gonna say.

[Dana Fox]

Here's what's amazing. You're both right. It is. A and C. It was a trick question. You both get a point.

[Fortune Feimster]

I was gonna say pulling you in for that.

[Dana Fox]

The movie tries and fails to kill Hitler so many times, I lost count. It's amazing. The old school, like,'80s Jean Claude Van Damme direct to video stuff is. People should go back and watch it. It's surprisingly.

[Fortune Feimster]

Hell, yeah, don't sleep on it, is what you're saying.

[Dana Fox]

That's exactly what I'm saying.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I grew up in Southeast Asia, where a lot of failed American movies, like, really in life. Yeah. And I mean, stuff like Time Cop was. Was huge.

[Fortune Feimster]

Amazing.

[Dana Fox]

All right, our next question in 2023 is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Indy's Nazi nemesis, Jurgen Voller reveals that he plans to use the stolen dial to travel through time and kill Hitler. Why does Indiana Jones stop him? A, Indy realizes the dial is set to actually go back in time and kill Short Round. B, Voller doesn't think Hitler was hardcore enough and wants to replace him. C, Indiana Jones is a secret Nazi.

[Fortune Feimster]

I got so thrown by C that I can't even remember what name you were.

[Abdullah Saeed]

And Dana just met Harrison Bourne.

[Fortune Feimster]

Literally. How dare you speak of my friend Harrison. Born in those terms. Wait, no, I saw. I saw this movie, and I was a little offended by how much people hated this movie because I was like, look, bros, like, all of you, bros. Like, it's still a good movie. Like, let's just. We're lucky to have him. You know what I'm saying? I'm lucky to have a Harrison. Completely agree.

[Dana Fox]

I think he was actually interviewed recently and said, yeah, I'm glad we made it.

[Franklin Leonard]

Yeah, I didn't see it.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I didn't see it either. I did see the open hand where he was like, mistakes were made or something. It was something very, like, dismissive and casual, which I appreciate it. I'm like, he's fucking Indiana Jones. Don't ask him this type of shit.

[Dana Fox]

Well, so here's the thing. And this was actually. I did not remember this until it was pointed out to me. The reason he doesn't kill Hitler is that Wohler doesn't think Hitler was hardcore enough and wants to replace him. So Hitler was the lesser of two evils.

[Fortune Feimster]

Right, That's. She took it B. It was B.

[Dana Fox]

She gets up for an extra point. Can anybody here explain to me why killing Hitler is actually a logical fallacy?

[Fortune Feimster]

Is it Schrodinger's cat. Is he. Is he not dead until he's dead?

[Dana Fox]

What are the term you're looking for is the grandfather paradox.

[Fortune Feimster]

Okay, thank you.

[Dana Fox]

And I'm not talking about Al Pacino having a kid at 83. I'm talking about how if you go back in time to kill your grandfather before he has children, you wouldn't have been born and couldn't have killed your grandfather.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, but that's your own. But then with Hitler, it's only if you're related to Hitler, which means that.

[Dana Fox]

If you kill Hitler and successfully Prevent World War II, there's no reason to travel back in time to kill Hitler, which means that.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, but then wouldn't you wake up?

[Fortune Feimster]

That's good.

[Abdullah Saeed]

But wouldn't you then, okay, so say.

[Fortune Feimster]

Let's think about that.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah. Okay, so say you get in the machine, you go back, bang, Hitler's dead, you come back, now you're still you. And I'm assuming that meaning, okay, like all that migration from Europe doesn't happen, right? Like all these things sort of change, right? So wouldn't you just come back and be like, ah, I live in a perfect world. Like, let's have an Arnold Palmer. Or is it that you come back and you're like, oh, I don't exist?

[Dana Fox]

Because I think you don't exist. And therefore you couldn't go back in time to.

[Fortune Feimster]

Well, and also theoretically, killing him would have changed so many things that you just weren't born in that way in.

[Abdullah Saeed]

That time when that Arnold Palmers don't exist.

[Dana Fox]

It's.

[Fortune Feimster]

The real.

[Dana Fox]

In other words, think about it in, in Back to the Future terms why Marty McFly starts to disappear in Back to the Future. Interestingly, there actually is a physicist at Vanderbilt University that claims to have resolved the grandfather paradox. I don't understand physics enough to, to. To understand it or explain it, but it's a thing.

[Fortune Feimster]

This is the third thing I have to look up today after this to learn how to understand this. I love it. No, I like sad byproduct of hanging out with me for Marty.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Sorry. Not to harp on this too much, but with Marty it was also like specifically it was because his mom would marry Biff, right?

[Dana Fox]

I think you're getting too into the. You know what?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Sorry.

[Dana Fox]

And as Joe tells his younger self and Looper, I don't want to talk about time travel shit, because if we start talking about it, then we're going to be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws. Yeah, yeah. Bruce Willis and Looper. Excellent movie. I don't think the time travel actually holds up. Like, logically. I've been. I've been in too many development meetings in my life about time travel. It's hell. It's hell. You have to just get the mechanics out of the way and then just do it.

[Abdullah Saeed]

But then why do people keep tackling it, right? Like, well, here's the question.

[Dana Fox]

What are your favorite time travel movies?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Looper is definitely up there. 12 monkeys, I think, would be my favorite.

[Franklin Leonard]

Bill and Ted's excellent adventure, obviously.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah. My favorite time travel thing is not actually a movie. It's a podcast about a kid whose father dies, has a heart attack. This is a true story. And he loved his dad so much. His dad was an engineer, and he used to fix televisions. And he became so obsessed with the idea that maybe he could bring his dad back. He became the first black physics professor at Harvard. But his secret was that he was actually building a time machine in his basement to try to go back and save his dad. And he, like, lost his whole family. And it's the saddest thing I've ever heard. I cried all the way through an airplane. I tried to get the rights, but Spike Lee had them. And I was like, of course Spike Lee should have them. And so I demurred. But, oh, my God, what a story. This.

[Dana Fox]

Seriously.

[Fortune Feimster]

That's another thing. Look it up after the thing. Somebody make this movie for me so I can sob my face off.

[Dana Fox]

Coming up after the break, the games continue. Stick with us. Welcome back to Nobody Knows Anything. I'm your host, Franklin Leonard. Let's get back to the games with writer Abdullah Saeed, creator of the upcoming Hulu Show Deli Boys, writer Dana Fox, co writer of Wicked, and comedian, actor and writer Fortune Feimster. Back to the firing squad of our games. Rhetorical question. You're all writers here. Have you ever thought about writing a time travel movie? Well, we're gonna make you sort of.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I actually wrote a script about people who go kill Cortez.

[Franklin Leonard]

I knew it.

[Fortune Feimster]

I knew it. Did you really?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah, it's not great. And it's from a while ago. It was called the New World Strikes.

[Franklin Leonard]

I did do a lot of information.

[Fortune Feimster]

Really well thought out idea. Now I feel better.

[Dana Fox]

That's very spec if you're a studio looking for a movie about killing Cortez.

[Abdullah Saeed]

That's right, the New World Strikes Back. And it's actually a half hour animated comedy, which is maybe why it didn't.

[Dana Fox]

Well, you may have a bit of a leg up in this game. Because I'm going to have you pitch me some time travel movies. Every studio has mandates. I'm a studio executive, and my mandate is I want time travel. In each of these popcorn buckets, I have actors, settings, and classic time travel tropes. You're going to have one minute to come up with a pitch that gets me to greenlight your movie instead of your competitors. There are three rounds. So, Fortune, I'm gonna hand you these buckets. You're gonna draw one slip from each bucket. You're gonna have a minute to write a time travel movie.

[Franklin Leonard]

The setting is the Great molasses flood, Boston, 1919. The actor is Dwayne the Rock Johnson.

[Dana Fox]

Here we go.

[Franklin Leonard]

And you're stuck in a time loop.

[Dana Fox]

All right, so we've got the Great Molasses flood in Boston in 1918 or 1919.

[Franklin Leonard]

19.

[Dana Fox]

1919. Great molasses flood of Boston. Dwayne the Rock Johnson and a time loop. You've got one minute. I know I sound like a PBS host right now, but let's be honest. We all know that's the real goal of this show. Count your days, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. I'm coming for that job. Back to time travel, though. When do we get so obsessed with it? There are a number of ancient myths, obviously, about dumping forward in time, but it seems like the idea of traveling increases tenfold in modernity. And I can understand that during antiquity, it would be pretty cool to imagine a future where, you know, you could get convenient access to salt or not have to worry about the plague. But I can also understand how, in the modern age, it's tempting to imagine a world where we don't have microplastics in our brains. Or a world where I don't have to know who RFK Jr is and why he owns a blender. There's probably an English lit PhD thesis out there about how the industrial age fueled nostalgic depictions of agrarian societies, leading everyone to believe that there was this period of time just beyond their reach when everything was better. Which is to say, it's all bad. Kids don't time travel. And that is exactly one minute. Let's hear those pitches. Fortune.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, man, I didn't get to start with you.

[Dana Fox]

Here's an important thing. You got to give it a title, and I may have questions about what you pitch me.

[Franklin Leonard]

Okay. It's called, can you smell what's cooking?

[Dana Fox]

Good start.

[Franklin Leonard]

The Rock enters a wrestling ring. When he walks into a bright light that sucks him back to 1919, he can see that Boston is about to be flooded by molasses. Great molasses. Not just regular molasses. And he is about to warn the good people of Boston when he's sucked back into a time loop. And he's flailing about and he's all oiled up and muscly and in his Speedo and he goes back to the ring and then gets sucked back again. And time has progressed and now everyone's covered in molasses. And he's about to help start saving people when he's sucked back into it. And it just continues.

[Dana Fox]

It just continues. The idea of the rock trudging through molasses is weirdly compelling.

[Franklin Leonard]

Yeah, I mean, that's why we hired him. All those muscles. Who else can pull people from great molasses than him? And at some point we get to the point where. Where he is saving people, but he just keeps getting pulled back in and out. And it just turns out that some kid's fucking with the, you know, the time loop.

[Dana Fox]

Someone's just got a remote basically sitting back and forth. I can see that.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I love it. Yeah, I love it.

[Fortune Feimster]

It's great.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I'm looking for writers.

[Franklin Leonard]

You know what I would love? I would love someone else to write this. I'm busy right now, so as long as you hire me to be in it, I can help.

[Abdullah Saeed]

He'll play the rock.

[Dana Fox]

Dana, what do you got?

[Fortune Feimster]

I couldn't get my brain to actually move past the part where I had Dwayne the Rock Johnson. And I felt like I didn't actually need a story or a movie because I had him. And if I actually had him, I would just get the thing greenlit and we would figure the story out later. So I kind of went. I kind of went meta on it, guys. I also think it could be that's how I got here, guys. Is that kind of thinking? I think it's an R rated comedy. It's called Get Stucked. And I like the idea that I'm obsessed with disaster movies. So I like the idea that it's all the disaster movie tropes that get played one after another. And he goes through a relationship cycle with one of the people in the group. So we focus on the one person in his relationship. So there's always like a kid who's like, they're going through a divorce and he has a kid that's like mad at him and now they're going to get through their thing. And right when he gets to the end of that and he's about to hit the climax where he Actually, like, gets together with him. Boom, he's back at the start, and now he's going through it, but he's trying to get through the molasses. And now he's dealing with, like, the scientist who doesn't believe him. And it's this, like, sexy woman, and they're falling in love, and they're, like, about to kiss. And then, like, boom, we're back at the beginning. And so we kind of keep going and we do all the tropes through the different thing until we get to the very end. I don't have an ending yet, but I feel like I have the Rock, so I'm gonna figure that out.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I have a few endings. Are you.

[Dana Fox]

That's how it's done, folks. God forbid the Rock actually listens to this show. And we might.

[Fortune Feimster]

I love the Rock. I'm, like, sort of obsessed. I hope he is.

[Franklin Leonard]

As long as he can have his tequila in there at some point, it's true.

[Dana Fox]

There needs to be a tequila placement. And then, like, is there no problem? A workout clothing line or something?

[Fortune Feimster]

I'll work it in. Yes. And no problem. It'll be in the next rewrite. Don't worry about it.

[Dana Fox]

Abdullah, can you. Can you top it?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, man. Hard to follow, but, you know, what.

[Dana Fox]

Are you thinking about? All right, let's. Let's.

[Fortune Feimster]

Let's hear it.

[Abdullah Saeed]

All right, so my movie is called Sweetie Man. All right? And so in this, the Rock plays like, a Willy Wonka type character who's, like, the Candyman of Boston, right? And this is before the Roaring Twenties. Like, before things were really roaring, right? He was like, things are kind of boring in Boston, so I'm going to manufacture a molasses flood. As the person who brings sweets right to the world, he wants to have this huge marketing stunt where he floods the street of Boston with molasses. Right? So then what basically happens? All right, and this is sort of where I was still hashing out some of the time travel stuff. Right, right. Is that he gets to the end of it, and then he dies in the molasses. But live, die, repeat style, Edge of Tomorrow style, he gets the molasses, like, the glucose restructures a thousand percent.

[Fortune Feimster]

Right.

[Abdullah Saeed]

And sends him back to the beginning of that phenomenon. And now he knows that, like, despite being the person who's driving this, you know, effort to flood the streets with molasses, he also, like, everything's been set in motion, and suddenly he comes back there and he realizes that it's actually going to be a disaster. So he becomes the opposite of the Sweetie man. He's trying to, like, ruin the sweetie party.

[Fortune Feimster]

Crazy pitch. Start at a slightly different moment in the movie. Cuz, like, this is what I feel like they did in Palm Springs, and it kind of turned the genre on its head. Start in a slightly later moment in the movie, and then have him discover over the course of the movie that he's the guy that started the first flood. He doesn't know that at the beginning of the movie, he doesn't know that he's going after whoever he thinks that is. And then he's like, oh, it's me.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I love it.

[Franklin Leonard]

He looks in a mirror.

[Fortune Feimster]

Let's do this.

[Dana Fox]

I'm. I. I'm gonna give Dana two points. One for her pitch, one, and one for elevating Abdul's pitches. That's the first time that's happened, but I think. I think I gotta do it. All right, all right. Dana, can you take one slip from each of the popcorn buckets?

[Fortune Feimster]

I'm really into this game now. I was very, very scared of it at first. I'm gonna be honest with you. It's giving me a lot of anxiety. I don't do well under, like, time pressure.

[Franklin Leonard]

So you can tell who in here writes sketches and who in here writes significant movies.

[Fortune Feimster]

That's not true. You're amazing. Okay.

[Dana Fox]

All right, what do we got?

[Fortune Feimster]

So the time period is opening day at the Library of Alexandria, 200 BC. And I think we all know the Library of Alexandria from the very, very important moment in National Treasure when it is revealed that the scrolls are in fact there from the Library of Alexandria. We thought they were ruined, but no, they're in National Treasure. Married in the future or past. In an alternative timeline, our protagonist finds out they're married to someone unexpected. I mean, obviously, I'm loving this one. And the star is Sydney Sweeney. Also loving that for us.

[Dana Fox]

All right, Sydney Sweeney, married in the future or the past is the trope at the Library of Alexandria, 200 BC. You've got one minute. As I was saying, time travel, not exactly a novel concept. Obviously, Charles Dickens had the idea of traveling both back and forward in time with A Christmas Carol. And of course, H.G. wells popularized the idea of a machine that can change time in the aptly named the time machine in 1895. But what about time travel in cinema? When do you think the first movie about time travel came out? The 30s? The 40s? It was actually way earlier than that. Try 1918. According to my very professional sources, Wikipedia, the first time Travel movie was a silent film called the Ghost of Slumber Mountain. Only a part of the movie has survived, but what remains is about a man who comes across a magic telescope that lets him see into the past. And with that telescope, he even sees a dinosaur fight. So it's the first movie to feature time travel. But here's the coolest part. It is also the first movie to combine live actors and stop motion creatures on screen. And this is why I get so mad when people only watch movies from the past 20 years. There's just so much stuff out there in the 100 odd years of film history. Why limit yourself to just one fifth of it? Anyway, that's time. Time. Let's hear those pitches this time. Dana, you're going first.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, man. No, that's where I, I, it was the extra time that I gained on listening to hers that I was able to actually.

[Dana Fox]

And that's why I started with you. This is Bake off rules. Put that shit on the glass.

[Fortune Feimster]

Okay. This is harder. Okay, so Sydney Sweeney plays a sexy librarian who is working at the Library of Alexandria in 200 BC. There's some time travel where she goes forward and has like a totally normal life in what is present day. Right? So she's like, married to a guy. It's the, it's 2025, and they start to experience marital problems. And she starts fantasizing about what if she wasn't married to him? What if she had done something different? She's sort of having a sliding doors moment in her brain. She wakes up the next day and she's actually in 20 BC and she realizes she can't actually be the sexy librarian because she's not allowed to have a job because she's a woman. And she's probably not allowed to have a job for another 2,000 years after that. And she finds her husband in a different guy. Like, he's the same guy, he's played by the same actor, but he's a different person. And he works at the Library of Alexandria. They fall back in love in the past. She wakes up back in 2025 and is in love with her husband again. But it's because of the experience she had in the past.

[Franklin Leonard]

Wow. I mean, it was not a rekindling.

[Fortune Feimster]

It was a, it was more of an emotional journey than a time travel journey.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Just the idea of a librarian in the Library of Alexandria to me is so great. Right?

[Franklin Leonard]

Because it's like.

[Fortune Feimster]

What is like, did they have that?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah, I mean, they had to have otherwise room full of books you know.

[Fortune Feimster]

Like, wasn't it, like, scrolls and stuff? Were they books already?

[Abdullah Saeed]

I think there was some actually Egyptian.

[Franklin Leonard]

Book of the Dead.

[Fortune Feimster]

Were we binding things or were we, like. Was there. Was it like.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I actually. So I think they must have had papyrus by that time. Time, right?

[Dana Fox]

Yeah.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah, you're probably right.

[Dana Fox]

But scrolls are also papyrus, are they not?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Right.

[Dana Fox]

All right, stop stalling, Adila, you're up. What do you got?

[Abdullah Saeed]

This is how I do bake offs, where I'm like, hey, pay attention to the jokes I'm making on the fly. Not my terrible pitch. All right, here it is. So I don't have a title for this. It's going to be called Untitled Sydney Sweeney Project.

[Franklin Leonard]

Love it.

[Abdullah Saeed]

All right, so it's 200 BC, right? A Celtic author from, like, what is today Ireland, right? Played by Sydney Sweeney is on book tour for a new scroll or book that she's written, right? And so she's going all over, you know, the known world, and she ends up at, you know, the end of the thing. It's the biggest place, the Library of Alexandria. And she sees this handsome guy there, you know, in the audience, and she befriends this guy and they go out and have a drink, they have a wild night, only to discover that he is the one and only King Toutant Haman, right? This guy is King Tut, all right? And so essentially, they have, like, a wonderful romance, right? And then she accidentally slips into a time travel portal and she ends up in the 1960s, right? And now King Tut's tomb, her lover's tomb, is being exhumed, and everyone's painting this picture of him as this, like, horrible tyrant, right? And as a bad guy. And she's like, nobody really knows this guy the way that I know him, right? So she spends her life trying to fix up his image, right? And being like, no, King Tut was really a good guy. And people are asking questions. Finally, right? We get to 2,000 something or other, and there's a technology you can use to take DNA from a mummy and actually recreate the person, right?

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah.

[Abdullah Saeed]

So she's like, now the world, it's.

[Fortune Feimster]

Like Barbra Streisand's dog.

[Franklin Leonard]

That's right, right?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yes, exactly right. And she's like, now the world will finally know that King Tut is actually, like, a really good guy. But then, of course, the new King Tut that's born, everyone, the world, projects their negative sort of image onto him, and he actually becomes the monster that everyone posited. He was and her heart is broken. It's a tragic ending.

[Fortune Feimster]

This is beautiful.

[Franklin Leonard]

Thank you.

[Fortune Feimster]

This is beautiful. I love this pitch.

[Dana Fox]

Fortune, what do you got?

[Franklin Leonard]

It's called Unwritten.

[Dana Fox]

Okay.

[Franklin Leonard]

Sydney Sweeney is in a library in Alexandria, Times D.C. she's a sexy librarian. Looks like Cleopatra, boobs are out, you know, and she. She meets a man played by Glenn Powell.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Sold.

[Franklin Leonard]

Yeah. It turns out this is an arranged. The person that her family wanted her to have an arranged marriage with. And they meet in the library, and they're like, oh, my gosh, you're the. The guy I'm so Mary. And. But they. They don't feel like strangers. It feels very like I've always known you kind of thing. And she's holding a book, and. And he. And it's open, and it's blank pages. And he's like, what's gonna. You know, what is in your book? And she's like, well, you know, the rest is still unwritten. Just like the movie that they. The rom com that they were just in. This is like the. The prequel to it. It's gonna be a love story. The studio loves it.

[Dana Fox]

We're buying it.

[Franklin Leonard]

And. And then it, you know, turns out that they will have been married to each other at different iterations of life. Life through the.

[Dana Fox]

It's a franchise.

[Franklin Leonard]

Yeah.

[Dana Fox]

It's basically Glenn Powell and Sydney Sweeney through history. As lovers.

[Franklin Leonard]

As lovers.

[Dana Fox]

And we can just do whenever period we want.

[Franklin Leonard]

Exactly. And this Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield will play in every movie. Yes.

[Dana Fox]

Stop talking.

[Franklin Leonard]

Yeah.

[Dana Fox]

I'll have business affairs immediately. We're done.

[Fortune Feimster]

Are you guys looking for writers?

[Franklin Leonard]

Exactly.

[Dana Fox]

Exactly. We'll get one of those out in theaters every year for the next 70 years.

[Fortune Feimster]

A lot of plaid. I love it.

[Dana Fox]

Does it, though? I. I'm not sure it does.

[Abdullah Saeed]

We got Sweeney. We got Powell.

[Dana Fox]

We got love. We're good. We've got Naja Bedding filled. The problems are solved. After the break, the fun and the battle for points continue with our guests Abdullah Saeed, Dana Fox, and Fortune Fe. Welcome back to Nobody knows Anything. Let's get back to our game. Let's pitch a movie with our guests choosing a random actor, setting, and classic time travel trope.

[Fortune Feimster]

Okay. And also, I can't go first next time. You saw what happened.

[Abdullah Saeed]

It was a disaster.

[Dana Fox]

I'm going to complicate things because you're only going to gonna get 15 seconds to write your pictures. This is basically a freestyle. So what do we got?

[Fortune Feimster]

Okay, maybe repick. If it's up, can I rebuild?

[Dana Fox]

Just tell us what we got, we're on tight. We're on a tight schedule.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Okay? The actor is Kieran Culkin.

[Franklin Leonard]

Okay.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I also, I just watched the Real Pain and I'm like, so on board with this guy. So excited about that Road trip on the Silk Road. 650 cell. So this is the seventh century, right?

[Dana Fox]

Jim's on a road trip in the Silk Road.

[Abdullah Saeed]

And then the plot point is, oh no, I made out with my mom. Enough said. Okay, okay, 15 seconds.

[Dana Fox]

You got 15 seconds to solve this one. Kieran Culkin on the Silk Road in the seventh century. And oh no, I made out with my mom. I can opine some more about time travel and movies, but I think we can all agree that it really took off in the 1980s when filmmakers stopped worrying so much about the rules, started making it fun. How else can you get a movie about an 11 year old kid accidentally discovering their bedroom as a time portal when six dwarves show up with a stolen time map and he tags along to plunder treasure throughout the ages. And that's time. And that movie is Time Bandits. All right, Abdullah, kick it off. All right, what do you got?

[Abdullah Saeed]

All right, let's do this.

[Dana Fox]

And you two both stop writing.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh no, Abdullah, start talking.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Okay, so Kieran Culkin plays a very, very early stand up comic, right? And he's on tour. The mov movie is called Road Alone. All right, so he's on tour, he's on the road, right? He's on the Silk Road. He's going. And you know, here we really get a sense of like what the Silk Road was and the things that are moving back and forth. Gemstones and spices and. And whatever, right? And this guy is like, in a world filled with material things, I have this very intangible talent. I make people laugh, right? And so he basically then finds himself in At Elusis, right? He's now in ancient Greece. Trees. And you know, there's a. I don't know if my timeline is right here necessarily, but he goes in there, he takes the ergot laced beer, right? And he has a hallucination. You know exactly what I'm talking about. Franklin, we listen to the same podcast. And so he takes that stuff and he has a hallucination and he travels back in time. This is where we tie it into the franchise. He is in Home Alone, all right? He's playing the younger brother, which he played of Macaulay color, and Catherine O'Hara is there. And now we, as the audience know. Don't kiss that lady. That's your mom. He falls in love with her, right.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, my God.

[Abdullah Saeed]

And then he ends up kissing his mother. And that's the joke is on him right at the end of the day, the way that he brings this immaterial joy to the world is that people laugh at him forever for being the boy who kissed his mom.

[Fortune Feimster]

Wow. I mean, honestly, that was incredible.

[Dana Fox]

Catherine O'Hara. I mean, who wouldn't fall in love with Catherine O'Hare?

[Fortune Feimster]

I'm so in love with her. I want to be her. I'm obsessed with her. I love her. Yeah.

[Dana Fox]

Fortune, what do you got?

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, God. I didn't really get very far. You only had 15 seconds spitballing here. Kieran's on a road trip. I don't know. What is it? Camels. What are. What's the transportation at that point?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Camels down.

[Franklin Leonard]

It's a. He's with a buddy, you know, and he's passing by a woman selling spices. And he. They get into the. Somehow an accident, and he's losing blood. And. And the. The. The woman selling spices, like, I've got to do something to help save him. And they perform some kind of, like, old school, like, blood transfusion situation. And she's like, what kind of blood are you? And. And. And she's like, oh, my God. That's also my. My blood type is also red.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah.

[Franklin Leonard]

And so she's like, sa. He's so grateful. They kiss. And then they realize at some point in the movie she had the same blood type because that is his mother. And so she fell in love. She saved his life and fell in love with him. They set up really well at the same time.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah, it was great. It was set up beautifully because I didn't fucking see the thing coming in my life at all.

[Franklin Leonard]

Yeah, right. Yeah, it's my. It's a take on old school medicine. And there's a lot that can be explored here.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I love it.

[Fortune Feimster]

I mean, honestly, I love it.

[Franklin Leonard]

At some point, Natasha Bedingfield sings Unreal.

[Dana Fox]

Dana, what do you got?

[Fortune Feimster]

Okay, I'm going to need you guys to get in here because I clearly do not know as much about history as you do.

[Franklin Leonard]

I really.

[Fortune Feimster]

And I need you. I need you guys.

[Franklin Leonard]

I really don't either. I'm like, camel.

[Fortune Feimster]

I'm thinking it's called Silk Roadie, and it's back in the day. The Silk road is happening. We're on the. We're on this. Like, is it a road?

[Abdullah Saeed]

It's a. Yeah, I think it's like a path. Path. You know? Long path. Trading.

[Fortune Feimster]

Right? We're talking about trading. Okay, great. So everybody's trading. Everybody's trading. But there's one woman there, and she's different. You know, she's like, not like everybody else. She, like, doesn't want to trade. She wants to do something sort of different. And she's a musician, so she starts a band and she works at a place where people stop along the way. And she's this incredibly hot woman. And Kieran Culkin is there, and he's working as a roadie on the Silk Roadie. And he falls in love with this woman because of her incredible voice. And he feels like he's heard it somewhere before. He loves his voice. His voice is, like, inside him. And they fall in love. He. They kiss. And he realizes that he had heard her voice because she sang to him as a baby before he was left as an orphan when she wanted to start her band.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Great moment.

[Fortune Feimster]

I love that. And so then. Well, also back then, girls had babies at, like, 13 and a half, so the age difference wasn't actually that big of a deal. So that. That's also part of the pitch is that, like, it's not even a. Like, oh, my God, I kissed my mom. It's like, oh, this lady who's pretty great, who's like, maybe 13 years older than me.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I feel like we all could have gone, like, really dark, like, old boy level shit here. And we actually kept it pretty cg.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah, we kept it clean.

[Dana Fox]

It's very true. I would also add that all of you have been very supportive of each other.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, yeah.

[Fortune Feimster]

I like other writers. I think you guys are.

[Dana Fox]

That's not what this show is. That's not what this show is about. This is about a war for dominance and a war for points. So I'm going to have to ask.

[Franklin Leonard]

That you stop being so nice to be cutthroat. Anyway, I like their ideas way better than mine.

[Fortune Feimster]

I just like you guys. You guys seem great. We should all work together.

[Dana Fox]

This one's going to Abdullah, if only because of the invocation of Catherine O'Hara and Home Alone and on to the next game. This next game is a lightning.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, I won. You won that point.

[Dana Fox]

You won that point.

[Franklin Leonard]

Good job.

[Dana Fox]

All right, so we're gonna move on to the next game. It's a lightning round. It's called Lean Mean Time Travel Machine. Machine. It's not magic time travel. It's science, obviously. And you aren't going anywhere, probably, if you don't have a machine in this next game. I'll describe a device from film or television history and whoever buzzes in and has the opportunity to earn two points. One for the name of the object, the other for the film or television show it was featured in.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, boy, here we go again. No clue what we're doing, but love you guys so much.

[Dana Fox]

This box with three small flashing lights arranged in a Y shape was secured in a stain steel car.

[Fortune Feimster]

Back to the future DeLorean. What is the question?

[Franklin Leonard]

I love the confidence. I love the no confidence and the complete confidence.

[Fortune Feimster]

That's how you believe me.

[Franklin Leonard]

That's how you do it.

[Dana Fox]

Okay. It is back to the future. We were looking for flux capacitor in the DeLorean. But I'm going to give you both points.

[Fortune Feimster]

Thank you.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah, that should count.

[Fortune Feimster]

That's kind of you.

[Dana Fox]

But now. Now you all understand what we're doing here. I'm going to describe a thing from the film or television show. You're going to tell me what the thing is and what movie or television show it comes from. As everyone that steps inside this 1960s bright blue police box exclaims, it's bigger on the inside.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Okay, I'm just going to guess. I don't think this. Right. It's not the phone booth from Bill. And that's.

[Fortune Feimster]

I was going to say, not the phone booth. That was my guess. I don't have it.

[Dana Fox]

Blue police bubble box. I'll give you a hint. It's not from this country.

[Fortune Feimster]

It's British. Right?

[Dana Fox]

It is British.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, Doctor who.

[Fortune Feimster]

Doctor. Doctor who is the thought.

[Dana Fox]

But it is. It is Doctor. It's from Doctor who. What is it that. That they step.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, yeah.

[Fortune Feimster]

What's that thing called? I've never seen time, but I thought it was. It's not a red phone boothing.

[Dana Fox]

Apparently it's blue. It's called. It's the tardis.

[Fortune Feimster]

The tardis. I do know that.

[Dana Fox]

But it is Doctor who. That's a point for Abdullah here. Okay.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Having never seen it.

[Franklin Leonard]

I don't know. That is good.

[Dana Fox]

The culture. All right. This backyard Jacuzzi was an excellent place to relax after hitting. I think it was fortune.

[Franklin Leonard]

I didn't hit it.

[Dana Fox]

You didn't hit it.

[Abdullah Saeed]

And I think we're all on the same page here also because I feel like there's a reboot of this going around. Yeah. And maybe you guys have been asked for your take on it. It's not tough time.

[Fortune Feimster]

I wish somebody asked me for my take on that. I love you might have graduated from that level.

[Dana Fox]

Wait, are they rebooting hot to the time machine, or are they doing a sequel to Hot Tub Time Machine? I love that we're breaking news here on the show.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Is there really a difference these days, man?

[Fortune Feimster]

I went to the Playboy Mansion with the cast of Hot Tub Time Machine. Let me tell you, that was a hot tub time machine.

[Franklin Leonard]

Wow.

[Fortune Feimster]

I was in the. I was, like, in the grotto. I was in the hot tub time machine at the ultimate hot tub time machine, which is the Playboy Mansion.

[Abdullah Saeed]

And it's where Hugh Hefner is like, I'm 35 years old. I'm 20.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah, it's.

[Abdullah Saeed]

He's dead, probably.

[Fortune Feimster]

Sorry, Rip. But maybe not so much. Maybe. Maybe it's fine.

[Dana Fox]

All right, next question. That's two points for Abdullah, though. This 1980s kiosk with an antenna on top and a book of numbers inside Fortune.

[Franklin Leonard]

Is that the Bill and Ted's phone book? Phone booth.

[Dana Fox]

This is the Bill and Ted's phone booth. I was gonna say it's in San Dimas, California.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I got a question for you guys. What was the name of the George Carlin character? Do you remember?

[Fortune Feimster]

There's no chance.

[Franklin Leonard]

Cortez.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Franklin.

[Fortune Feimster]

You should do Stand Up Dead Baby Cortez. Is that it?

[Dana Fox]

Wait, I. I actually don't. I know I don't.

[Abdullah Saeed]

It's Rufus. Oh, yeah.

[Fortune Feimster]

That's cute.

[Dana Fox]

That's true. All right. This circle of ancient massive stones is hidden in a copse of trees on a hill outside of Inverness.

[Fortune Feimster]

Stonehenge. And it's from Outlander.

[Dana Fox]

It is from Outlander. It is not Stonehenge.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, gobegly. Tepe.

[Dana Fox]

I don't know.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Same podcast. Franklin, is that.

[Dana Fox]

It's not that, though. That's not correct. Are you an Outland.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Outlander person?

[Franklin Leonard]

I know of it, but it's like a very sexy.

[Dana Fox]

A very sexy show.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah, My mom very sexy.

[Franklin Leonard]

This show makes my mom very horny.

[Dana Fox]

It's a horn Makes everybody horny.

[Fortune Feimster]

Horny show.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Just knowing what makes your mom horny makes you a great kid.

[Franklin Leonard]

We're close, you know, I want her to. I want her to feel good. Feel things.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah. Beautiful kiss.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Kieran Culkin in the seventh century.

[Dana Fox]

So the Stones. It's Craig in the doon is apparently the pronunciation. I had to Google the pronunciation. And there's a video of Sam Heughan, who stars an Outlander, smoldering, explaining the.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Pronunciation of the thing.

[Dana Fox]

This show is just selling sex, is my point.

[Fortune Feimster]

I love this show. I watch it over and over again.

[Dana Fox]

Many, many, many views, half of which apparently are Danish.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah. They're all me.

[Dana Fox]

All right. These are highly regulated miniature Hourgl that are suspended between two rings on a gold chain. When rotated, they send the wearer back in time for just one hour. Abdullah.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Is it Dr.

[Dana Fox]

Strange?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Is this from Dr.

[Fortune Feimster]

Strange? I have a different idea, but I might be wrong. Is it like a Horcrux from Harry Potter?

[Dana Fox]

It is from Harry Potter.

[Fortune Feimster]

It's that. It's that time thing that. It was that one that was weird where they could go back in time and. Oh, you know why I remember it? It's because Hermione did exactly what I would do with it, which is take more classes.

[Dana Fox]

That is correct. You get a point for that. It literally written on my script here is. It is a. It's called a Time Turner and most famously is used by Hermione to go back and take more classes.

[Fortune Feimster]

Hilarious. I've never felt more seen.

[Dana Fox]

I see it. Okay, so. So who thinks they're winning at this point?

[Franklin Leonard]

I know. I think you're winning.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I don't know. I feel like Dana's winning.

[Fortune Feimster]

But also I do want all of us to win, which my husband would hate because that would infuriate him. But I. I kind of like, want us all to be, like, winners.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Me too.

[Dana Fox]

Can't.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Holly.

[Fortune Feimster]

Is there a participation?

[Dana Fox]

Exactly.

[Franklin Leonard]

There's enough room for all of us.

[Dana Fox]

It's true. Fortune, you are right. You are in. You are lagging with two points. Abdullah has six and Dana is in the lead with 10.

[Fortune Feimster]

No way.

[Franklin Leonard]

I feel like we're kind of happy to be here.

[Fortune Feimster]

Do you want some of my points?

[Franklin Leonard]

Please.

[Abdullah Saeed]

This is all going terribly wrong.

[Dana Fox]

Terribly, terribly wrong. You're supposed to be fighting. Everybody's so n and likes each other. God damn it.

[Abdullah Saeed]

So as a group, we have 18 points.

[Fortune Feimster]

Thank you. As a group, we have 18 points, which is so great for all of us.

[Dana Fox]

I gotta have a conversation with our casting director. Okay. Some of us would use time travel for the greater good. But how many of us would really waste our one shot to change the future on the rest of humanity? If Hollywood canon teaches us anything, it's that anyone with the ability to rewind the clock actually uses it for love.

[Franklin Leonard]

Aww.

[Dana Fox]

In this next game, I'm gonna be the one pitching you a movie. You see, I love the idea of time travel romances, but I've never actually seen one. You know how it is, you sit down to watch something and you get a push alert about the news and it's the end of democracy. You don't come back to the movie. This game is for any writer that's ever been in a pitch meeting.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Something going on in the news that I don't know.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah. Continue. Stay where you are, my love. Stay right where you are.

[Dana Fox]

This game is for any writer who's ever been in a pitch meeting with an exec who clearly isn't listening and only to have their own idea pitched back to them. I'm sure you've never had that experience. I'm pitch you a movie that may or may not exist already. Since I'm a high up executive who holds power over your future, you have to politely listen to my pitch and then chime in if you think I've accidentally plagiarized a pre existing film.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, smart.

[Dana Fox]

So basically I'm going to pitch you a movie. You tell me whether it's a real movie or if it's a fake movie. This game is called if I could Turn Back Time.

[Fortune Feimster]

You got it. It's the song that you wanted in the other songs.

[Franklin Leonard]

That's a real song.

[Dana Fox]

Correct.

[Fortune Feimster]

That is a point for Fortune.

[Dana Fox]

Yeah, there it is. Here's the thing. If the movie does exist, you get one point for for guessing correctly, whether that it's real. Another point for telling me the title of the film or TV show. If the movie does not exist, you get one point for guessing correctly. And I will offer you another point for making up a title that I like.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, I like this game.

[Dana Fox]

So here's our first first pitch. After an awkward one night stand, two singles find themselves falling in and out of love in an endless wedding time loop. But when one of them wants out, she'll risk it all to blow up the time vortex and maybe herself. Will the other make it to her in time to tell her he'd rather risk dying in the explosion than be stuck in time without her?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Is it.

[Dana Fox]

Is that Fortune?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Sorry, that was me.

[Dana Fox]

All right.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I think that's Palm Springs, right?

[Fortune Feimster]

I think that's right.

[Dana Fox]

That is correct. It's Palm Springs 2020. Andy Samberg, Cristian Milioti.

[Fortune Feimster]

Great movie.

[Dana Fox]

Excellent. Excellent.

[Fortune Feimster]

Great movie.

[Dana Fox]

All right. After getting rejected from MIT, a math nerd with perfect SAT scores uses her Time Traveling TI89 calculator to restart her senior year and exact the ultimate revenge against the jock she thinks took her place. She prepared for every possible outcome except for falling in love.

[Franklin Leonard]

Fortune has made up.

[Dana Fox]

That is made up. Do you have a title for it?

[Franklin Leonard]

Calculated.

[Dana Fox]

Oh, Lightning fast.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yowza.

[Abdullah Saeed]

We just found a That's like Tracy flick. It feels like another in the universe of Election.

[Dana Fox]

Exactly.

[Fortune Feimster]

I actually that I like would write that. Like, if anyone want, we are now accepted offers.

[Dana Fox]

Anybody who wants to pay Dana money to write that.

[Fortune Feimster]

But only with my two friends. I'm not.

[Dana Fox]

Here we go.

[Fortune Feimster]

This is Ampersand. I just want. I want to be in an Ampersand sandwich. I want to be the middle in the Ampersand.

[Abdullah Saeed]

True.

[Dana Fox]

And I hope this movie happens. All right, here's the next one. After discovering that her high school sweetheart husband has cheated on her, a former prom queen goes solo to her 25th reunion and faints on stage, only to wake up back in high school for real. With a new perspective on the man she loved. She has to figure out whether saying yes to his proposal will doom her forever or get her back home. Also, her grandma is a psychic. Just accept it.

[Fortune Feimster]

This is weird because this is real.

[Dana Fox]

That's literally the game we're playing. Is it real or is it real?

[Fortune Feimster]

It is real, but I can't remember what it's.

[Dana Fox]

You can buzz in and say one way or the other, it's. It is. It is real. Does anybody want to say what the movie is?

[Fortune Feimster]

I pictured the girl. It's not a halfway. It's a younger girl. She's not a Hathaway. She's a Hathaway. I know what you're talking. I know this movie, but I can't.

[Franklin Leonard]

I don't know if I know this movie. Is it Drew Barrymore?

[Dana Fox]

It is not Drew Barrymore. It does feel like a Drew Barrymore movie.

[Fortune Feimster]

Is it the Amelia lady who was in Game of Thrones? Amelia Clarke?

[Dana Fox]

It is. You guys are way. I don't think she was even born when this movie came out.

[Fortune Feimster]

Really?

[Dana Fox]

This movie was.

[Fortune Feimster]

This is.

[Dana Fox]

This is. Peggy sue got married, 1986. Kathleen Turner and Nicholas Cage nominated for three Oscars, including one for Kathleen Turner.

[Fortune Feimster]

I was in a very different place. I really thought this was totally.

[Dana Fox]

Peggy's who Got Married is a classic. Highly recommend.

[Fortune Feimster]

I don't know how this happened.

[Dana Fox]

All right, here's our next one. After leaving her emotionally distant husband, an overworked academic embarks on a solo robot road trip. But when she stops to take in the natural beauty of Utah and steps through delicate art, she finds herself in 1993, being seduced by the warm and welcoming leader of a cult. Turns out to be a young version of her ex. Is it real or fake?

[Fortune Feimster]

Well, I want it to be fake, and I want you to make up a title for it, but I don't know if that's true.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I don't I think it's fake.

[Dana Fox]

Fortune. What's the title?

[Fortune Feimster]

I think you get points if you say that.

[Abdullah Saeed]

All right, guys. One, two, Three. Three. It's fake.

[Dana Fox]

It is fake. You all get points. I hate you all. Fortune. I'll give you the opportunity to come up with a title for an extra.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah, I really want you to.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, man.

[Fortune Feimster]

I feel like you.

[Franklin Leonard]

Cultivated.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, wait, that sounds suspiciously calculated.

[Fortune Feimster]

Cultivated, I thought.

[Dana Fox]

It's good, but Cultivated. It works.

[Franklin Leonard]

I mean, yeah, you get the points. Calculated, cultivated.

[Abdullah Saeed]

They're just all.

[Dana Fox]

It's the sequel to calculus. 20 years later.

[Fortune Feimster]

She's the.

[Dana Fox]

She's. She's an academic. And this is what happens. Someone please.

[Abdullah Saeed]

And then constipate it. This.

[Fortune Feimster]

I do love how Franklin needs everything to be a franchise because he knows there's no way we're going to sell the first one if it can't be too.

[Dana Fox]

I said at the beginning of this that I'm a studio executive. Real or fake movie? An irresponsible grunt has fucked up big time, leaving a bag full of cash on the subway, and his boss is going to kill him for it unless his girlfriend can put together $50,000 in 20 minutes. But every time she puts the money together, tragedy strikes. Is there a timeline when she can save her boyfriend? Is this a movie or is. Did I make it up so close.

[Fortune Feimster]

To that other movie?

[Franklin Leonard]

I don't know.

[Fortune Feimster]

I need to watch the. Eisenberg is in where he has to rob a bank because he's got a thing on him. Is that. Is that a movie?

[Abdullah Saeed]

I don't remember.

[Fortune Feimster]

It's not this movie.

[Franklin Leonard]

Is Morgan Freeman in this?

[Dana Fox]

Morgan Freeman is not in this movie. I will also say that it's not in this movie. English language. Oh, but it made a lot of money in the US and was nominated.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Is it Korean?

[Dana Fox]

No, it feels like it would be, but it's not. It's actually German.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, I don't know.

[Fortune Feimster]

Run.

[Dana Fox]

That is correct. It is Run. Well done.

[Fortune Feimster]

In German. It's. Wow. I'm. I'm the one who should go back and kill Hitler, because I do speak a little bit.

[Dana Fox]

Me go.

[Fortune Feimster]

And I really want to do it.

[Dana Fox]

All right. When a 19th century duke falls through a time portal to New York City, he strikes up an unlikely romance with a modern career woman. But after he is sent back to the past, she realizes the only way to reunite with him and stop his marriage of convenience to an heiress is to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge. Will she make the jump? Is it real or is it fake?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah. This is Real.

[Dana Fox]

Can you tell me what the movie is?

[Abdullah Saeed]

James Marsden plays the.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yes. And Emily or Amy Adams, I think is Prince Charm. Enchanted.

[Franklin Leonard]

Enchanted.

[Dana Fox]

It's not Enchanted, which is amazing that you all came to the same conclusion.

[Fortune Feimster]

What is it?

[Dana Fox]

It is Kate and Leopold starring Meg Ryan.

[Fortune Feimster]

And that was the title of that movie. I thought that was.

[Franklin Leonard]

And that was about time travel.

[Fortune Feimster]

It's more like there's a conceit and then it happens and you're sort of in the movie at that point.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, it's just really not like you're.

[Fortune Feimster]

Like discussing time travel. It just gets you. I think it's a setup.

[Franklin Leonard]

Okay.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Not for me.

[Fortune Feimster]

Franklin's not going to help me with this.

[Dana Fox]

When a retired world renowned physicist accidentally discovers time travel, he decides to go back and live the out and proud life he always wanted back when he was a shy closeted student at Cambridge. When he falls for a boy from the wrong side of the tracks, he has to decide whether to pursue a love he's never experienced or continue on a path to academic greatness.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I love it. Whatever it is.

[Fortune Feimster]

I mean, it's gorgeous.

[Franklin Leonard]

I know.

[Fortune Feimster]

I want to. The pun of the time, I think it's fake because nobody would let anybody make it.

[Dana Fox]

Sadly, that was pretty to do well make it.

[Franklin Leonard]

But for us it is fake.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah. I wanted to have like a Alan Turing vibe because he was famously gay. Yes. And he was kind of persecuted, so I feel like it could, I don't know, turn. Alan Turing. Yeah. We. We'll work on the title later.

[Dana Fox]

We're going to title later.

[Fortune Feimster]

Sadly.

[Dana Fox]

I feel I've already cast Ian McKellen in my mind.

[Fortune Feimster]

I love it. It's amazing. Oh, Ian McKellen would be amazing.

[Dana Fox]

I mean anything.

[Abdullah Saeed]

You know what I like for a title? This is something like this is me or something. You know what I mean? Like sort of a simple thing where it's like that his thesis for the revised person that he is when he is young again, where he's just like. Or it should just be called like, yeah, I'm gay or something. You know what I mean? Something that's like very like. Oh, there's, there's. I don't have to deal with the consequences. I can just be myself. Which I think is a lot of people can lock into.

[Fortune Feimster]

Love it.

[Dana Fox]

Fortune, your latest special dropped in December on Netflix. Netflix, Correct. It's crushing it. Which I assume you crushed.

[Franklin Leonard]

I think so.

[Dana Fox]

The people were saying you did. What else you got on the horizon?

[Franklin Leonard]

I have the season two of fubar that I filmed this with Arnold Schwarzenegger coming out sometime, I don't know, April, May, June, who knows? That'll be on Netflix. My new tour is starting. I. Once you put out a special, you have to write a whole new hour.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, boy, the thanks you get.

[Franklin Leonard]

I know this is my third hour in five years, so a lot of content has been put out there already. So I'm working on. On what's next. And. And that tour will start in April.

[Dana Fox]

So do you have to put together the hour, you have to basically put together an hour before the tour starts, or are you working out the hour while you're on tour? How does that work?

[Franklin Leonard]

Both. You, you know, you need to have a show that, that they see and can enjoy. So I'll have like a show for them, but it will be the material as I go. I'll add punch lines, I'll restructure. I mean, you do that up until you film the special. I mean, I was writing transitions day of the special because it's just always, you discover things as you go. I'll discover things after I watch it. And I go, ah.

[Fortune Feimster]

That's why I don't watch anything I ever do, because it's like, well, can't fix it.

[Franklin Leonard]

But yeah, just, you know, doing the acting and standup thing. I'm doing a lot of developing again. I was going through a phase where I did a lot and then just kind of left it by the wayside. And now I'm starting to write a lot more, trying to do some. Writing some movies and writing some scripted and unscripted shows and going into that whole crazy world again.

[Dana Fox]

All right. Deli Boys March 6th on Hulu.

[Fortune Feimster]

I did a whole thing.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, really?

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah, it looks great. I love the poster.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, that's so nice.

[Dana Fox]

I don't want to butcher the explanation, so I want you to explain to the world what it is. Okay, so I'm fucking pumped for this.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Thank you so much. So Deli Boys is a half hour comedy show that's going to be on Hulu, and it is about two Pakistani American brothers who live in Philadelphia. They're very rich and pampered because their dad has a chain of very successful convenience stores. But in the pilot, they lose their father and inherit his business empire, only to realize that it's a front for an international cocaine smuggling.

[Fortune Feimster]

Wait, that's incredible.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Thank you.

[Dana Fox]

I'm so excited for this.

[Fortune Feimster]

If it weren't already bought, I would want to buy it.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Thank you so much. And you wrote Wicked, so please co.

[Fortune Feimster]

Wrote with Winnie Holtzman the greatest of all time still.

[Abdullah Saeed]

But thank you so much. But, yeah, that's the show. And, you know, it's a lot of hard jokes and a lot of hard turns, which is kind of my thing. And I feel like South Asians, Muslims, haven't gotten the opportunity to just have fun. You know, there's a lot of. There's a lot of pressure to represent and to, you know, meet all these different sort of sensitivities. Right. But I also know that we're funny people and we like to laugh. And, you know, I just want to indulge that.

[Fortune Feimster]

Do you also go deep into the emotional thing of they lost their dad or how do we go into that emotionally? Because I love the juxtaposition of, like, hard comedy and sadness because they live right next to each other in my brain.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Absolutely, they do, Right? And I think really, you know, we definitely explore the death of the father, but we're also making so much fun of these guys and beating them up so much that it just becomes part of this barrage of difficulty that they're sort of dealing with, in a sense, you know. But, yeah, we try to hit the emotional beats, but to me, I'm like, well, I just want to make sure we have enough time and space for the jokes, you know?

[Fortune Feimster]

That's amazing.

[Dana Fox]

March 6th on Hulu.

[Abdullah Saeed]

March 6th on Hulu.

[Fortune Feimster]

I'm gonna watch the shit.

[Dana Fox]

Dana, what are you. What are you up? I mean, you're done with Wicked at this point?

[Fortune Feimster]

Yes, we shot them at the same time, so we shot them, you know, back to back. And we actually worked on both movies at the same time. So we spent about two plus years writing both movies. And it was an extraordinary experience. I co wrote with Winnie Holtzman, who's the greatest of all time. Stephen Schwartz was there all the time, and it was like a masterclass being close to him and listening to the way he thinks about ideas. John Chu was there for a ton of the development, and that was the luckiest thing in the entire world because he's a complete genius. And to have access to him every day was like a miracle. He's so brilliant. It was fun.

[Dana Fox]

It was pretty much an all star team.

[Fortune Feimster]

It was kind of the greatest team of all time. Yeah.

[Dana Fox]

Is this the first musical that you've worked on?

[Fortune Feimster]

This is the first musical I've worked on, and now I've got, like, musical fever because what I.

[Dana Fox]

Okay, so that was my next question. Is there another musical coming?

[Fortune Feimster]

I'm. I'm working on Joseph with John Chu. So you know, but who knows if we'll. Who knows what'll happen with that? But, you know, we're.

[Dana Fox]

I feel like it will happen.

[Fortune Feimster]

I mean, he's got a lot of people who love him, so I'm just excited to support whatever.

[Dana Fox]

I want to see what you guys cook up next in the same space. That sounds incredibly exciting.

[Fortune Feimster]

I'll do anything John Chu asks till the end of time. He's the greatest. It's like, it doesn't matter what it is. I don't care. And hopefully it's got singing and dancing in it because now I'm, like, obsessed with singing and dancing.

[Dana Fox]

So many people have told me this about John.

[Fortune Feimster]

He's.

[Dana Fox]

Oh, you're just like, yeah, I. Whatever he wants, I'm in.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah, you. If you have the John Chu experience, there is no going back from it.

[Dana Fox]

I mean, look, I told you this already, but. Yeah, my niece will not take the glasses off. I will not take them off. She's such a baller with the glasses. And. Yeah, she's. It's. It has touched many, many people. So. Yeah. Thank you for the film.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, thank you.

[Dana Fox]

And I'm looking forward to the second, and we only gotten half the story so far, so we're not even done yet.

[Fortune Feimster]

Excited. It's so. It's so. There's a lot. It's incredible.

[Dana Fox]

Keep crushing the Oscar red carpet.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, thanks, friend. Hey, you were the one that told me that writers have to stop looking like we want to disappear into the shadows. So I made an effort to wear really bright clothes and try to look nice. So thanks to you, I am trying to pull it together.

[Dana Fox]

This is part of my campaign to bully writers and to be in the as they deserve to be. And you're crushing it. You took the bullying and far exceeded my.

[Fortune Feimster]

I just did what you told me to do.

[Dana Fox]

You're defying gravity. Look what I did there. All right, so my studio is looking to cash in on a classic Groundhog Day. But before we can approach Bill and Andy, or more likely, Andy's daughter, Margaret Qualley, because it's actually legal to cast a woman over 60 as a love interest in this town. Before we do that, we need a tight script. This movie is over 30 years old, and we really want it to resonate with Gen Z. We even hired the very in demand young writer, Chet gpd. But their first draft felt, I don't know, unemotional and like it was written by a robot. You can see for yourself. I've got copies of a scene right here, which you can see is just a total ripoff of the original. We're going to do a quick reading of this thing so we know what we're working with. Dana, can you read the action lines? Can you read for Phil and Fortune?

[Abdullah Saeed]

What a pleasure.

[Dana Fox]

You read for attractive woman?

[Franklin Leonard]

I sure can. It's very close to home.

[Dana Fox]

And action. Dana, take it away.

[Fortune Feimster]

Interior, Phil's room. Dawn. The digital clock radio changes from 5:59 to 6:00am the radio comes on playing the end of the Sonny and Cher hit I got you, Babe. Just as it did the day before. Phil sits up in bed, quickly alert and looks around the room. Something is wrong. Everything is exactly the same as it was yesterday.

[Dana Fox]

Okay, campers, rise and shine. And don't forget your booties because it's cold out there today.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Nice going, guys. That's yesterday's tape.

[Fortune Feimster]

Attractive woman, young, attractive, enters his bedroom.

[Franklin Leonard]

Phil, we're late for Groundhog Day celebration. That's the reason why we are here in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. So we can cover it for the news station we both work at. Did you stay up too late doing that hot new dance craze, the Macarena or something?

[Fortune Feimster]

Hey.

[Abdullah Saeed]

What are you doing in my room? We are just work colleagues. What if you saw me naked?

[Franklin Leonard]

I'd rather drink a keg of Zima. Since, as you said, we are at work colleagues and cannot imagine a single timeline where I find you attractive.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I don't have time for this. I just realized I'm living in a time loop. Just like in the movie Groundhog Day. I need you to help me break the loop.

[Franklin Leonard]

Okay? Just let me grab my beanie babies from my room first. It's 1993, so you might be getting.

[Dana Fox]

The vowel that this thing needs. I don't know, a human touch. And it's clearly set in the early 1990s, so I need you all to help me get there. So, who has good handwriting here?

[Fortune Feimster]

My handwriting's not bad. I'll be honest with you.

[Franklin Leonard]

Mine's terrible.

[Fortune Feimster]

I'll be the secretarial.

[Dana Fox]

I was gonna say, or has used a physical pen in the last decade. Danny, you're gonna be our scribe.

[Fortune Feimster]

Great.

[Dana Fox]

So what's gonna happen next actually, is a collaborative game. Finally. You guys should over perform.

[Fortune Feimster]

We're gonna nail this.

[Dana Fox]

The three of you are gonna work together to bring this scene up to the very high standards of my studio. Studio. But ultimately, only one of you are going to get the job.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, man.

[Dana Fox]

To start things off, I'd just love for you to bring this up to the present day. An alarm, radio Zima. I need the audience to feel like it's 2025. So just talk it out, Pretend I'm not here. Cross things out, write new descriptions, punch up the dialogue. Do what you do. Here's actually a blank skeleton, Dana, for you to write on.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, great.

[Dana Fox]

And you'll be our scribe. You're gonna have five minutes total to rewrite this scene starting next. Now I may come back with additional guidance in the future.

[Fortune Feimster]

Okay, great. The first thing we have to do, I mean, I can fix all. How about this? You guys start talking about the dialogue while I just tweak this opening thing. Cuz this is like, obviously has mistakes in it. I'll fix it.

[Abdullah Saeed]

So I was thinking it's like a.

[Franklin Leonard]

Podcaster instead of a radio dj.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah, exactly. Right. So it's like. But then it's like it's got to be an alarm.

[Fortune Feimster]

Like on an iPhone.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah, right. But then it does have to be something that. That clues the audience in. Wakes him up and clues the audience in.

[Fortune Feimster]

Right?

[Abdullah Saeed]

In a sense, I guess. His alarm could be like a song or.

[Franklin Leonard]

Siri.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah. I feel like you can set your alarm to do like an alarm goes off and it plays like, what's the coolest song from today? I mean, this is not my strong guys.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Not like us. Okay, so it plays Kendrick Lamont. And then I feel like the conversation would be like, oh, wow, that's an amazing Kendrick Lamar song. And you'd be like, yeah, he really bodied Drake with that one. And she'd be like, wait, what are you talking about? Like, those two are best friends. I don't know. Just work. Just spitball in here.

[Fortune Feimster]

Listen to the song.

[Franklin Leonard]

Again, not like, like us. They both work at a news station.

[Abdullah Saeed]

So there would be something about to.

[Franklin Leonard]

Be covering some kind of celebration or. Or we're making up a whole different thing.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Or it would be something 2025. So it's like executive orders.

[Franklin Leonard]

Uhhuh.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Right? So they're like, oh, they repealed school lunch or whatever. You know what I mean? So she'd be like, we got to get out there and report on. They got rid of school lunch. Lunch.

[Franklin Leonard]

Yeah.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Or something like that.

[Franklin Leonard]

Right?

[Abdullah Saeed]

I don't know.

[Dana Fox]

I got. I got to jump in. As a studio executive here, I have devastating news. Just finding out that the studio wants to recast Bill and Andy Sl Margaret Quali. Something about an age gap discourse. I don't know. But no worries, We've got even bigger stars attached now. Say hello to your new Phil and Attractive woman. Paul Mescal and Sera Ronin.

[Fortune Feimster]

That's amazing.

[Dana Fox]

The catch is neither of them want to leave their home country. And I want those sweet, sweet Irish tax incentives. So can we give this some Irish flavor?

[Franklin Leonard]

Top of the morning to you.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Top of the morning. And a little Irish cream. Literal Irish flavor.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, you were just getting.

[Fortune Feimster]

I was just getting started. I got so excited about my opening. An iPhone sits on a bedside table. The alarm goes off, playing Kendrick Lamar is not like Guinness falls on your head.

[Abdullah Saeed]

But the version of the Kendrick Lamar song could be. Be like a Irish shanty remix.

[Fortune Feimster]

Or we just start the podcast, and then the podcast is a guy with an Irish accent stage telling us that we're in Ireland and we're talking about wool sweaters and let's do that.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah.

[Fortune Feimster]

Welcome to Ireland, where we make cool sweaters.

[Abdullah Saeed]

He's like, oh, great.

[Franklin Leonard]

Let's get the day started. Yeah.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, love this.

[Franklin Leonard]

Thank you.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah, that's great. I love that for you.

[Franklin Leonard]

Ready to get today started? Let's go.

[Fortune Feimster]

I feel like we don't actually have glasses. You don't have to write lines for Phil anymore because Paul Mezcal wants to do it with a look, so we're. We don't have to do that first.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yeah, you're right.

[Fortune Feimster]

He's gonna do it with a look. So we can start with the attractive woman. Yeah, she's. Who's she played by again? Saoirse Ronan. Love her. Okay, don't. Would if you held a gun to my head to spell her name. Goodbye.

[Abdullah Saeed]

It's S O, I, R. S, E. That is correct. Thank you.

[Fortune Feimster]

How did that work?

[Abdullah Saeed]

7Th grade spelling be, champ?

[Fortune Feimster]

It's still. I can't. I still can't.

[Franklin Leonard]

You said the letters are going. We're late for the. We're late for the thing. You know about the thing.

[Abdullah Saeed]

We're late for the troubles.

[Dana Fox]

I gotta interrupt one more time. What the Gen Z kids want is romantasy, and we can't. We just can't have this be a time travel thing. It's got to be a little steamier. A little bit more steamy and fantastic. Steamier in a fantastical way. I don't know. I'm not into the romantic thing, but this is what. This is what they tell me the kids want.

[Franklin Leonard]

We haven't even gotten past them waking up.

[Fortune Feimster]

I heard the kids want romances where nobody fox.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, no. It's like a demisexual thing they like.

[Fortune Feimster]

Like a more romantic. Yeah. Less sexual vibe.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Oh, that's interesting. There have been studies so Maybe actually when he wakes up, he's like, oh, no, they're playing yesterday's tape. He's distressed. And she's like, oh, it's okay. And just sort of spoons his head and strokes his head. And she's like, it's okay. I'm your producer. I'm here to, you know, calm you down.

[Franklin Leonard]

And I hear you. I see you.

[Fortune Feimster]

That kind of emotional. Yeah, I like that. That's really good.

[Franklin Leonard]

Your feelings are valid. I'm holding space for you.

[Fortune Feimster]

Just the pink.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Okay.

[Franklin Leonard]

So is it still Irish?

[Dana Fox]

It's still Irish. Fair question.

[Franklin Leonard]

It's still Irish. Roman, I know you got to this in you. You can do anything.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, and then you can do anything.

[Franklin Leonard]

You put your mind to. You just have to get up and go to work already.

[Fortune Feimster]

I mean, I love this celebration.

[Franklin Leonard]

Start saying, what you doing? I know you're so ugly, but you. It's cuz you feel ugly, but you know what? You're beautiful.

[Fortune Feimster]

I mean, channeling. Channeling.

[Dana Fox]

Do you. Have you transcribed this?

[Fortune Feimster]

I feel like a piece of shit, frankly. I. This is why I record things is cuz I never.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I usually record where he's like, oh, no, here's the problem. I'm in love with you.

[Dana Fox]

Here's what.

[Abdullah Saeed]

You're my boss.

[Dana Fox]

Here's what I'm going to ask. Since we don't have anything on paper, I'm going, but. But I feel like good work has been done here.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah.

[Dana Fox]

I'm going to ask you to perform it.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, what was I just doing?

[Fortune Feimster]

That was.

[Franklin Leonard]

The performance was happening as it was being written.

[Abdullah Saeed]

I'll be the DJ if you want to be Phil.

[Fortune Feimster]

All right, here we going to read just this part at the top.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Okay, cool.

[Fortune Feimster]

Because I can't handle any of the other intensity of what's going on characters.

[Dana Fox]

Bring it on. Let's do it. Let's hear it.

[Fortune Feimster]

Interior, Phil's room. Dawn. An iPhone sits on a bedside table. The alarm on the phone goes off, playing Kendrick Lamar's Not Like Us. A hand hits it off, dragging the phone into bed and turning on a podcast with an oddly Irish jig at the opening.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Top of the fucking morning to you. Pour that Guinness over here. Lucky time. Arms and open those blinds because it's another beautiful day in the Irish countryside. Look at those rolling hills, matey.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, I'm. I'm glad you're happy, but I'm feeling sad looking at myself. I feel like a piece of shite. Feel like a piece of shite.

[Fortune Feimster]

Now you're also. You got to Go her.

[Franklin Leonard]

Hey, I need you to. To buckle up. You don't sit there and we Feel sorry for yourself. We got a job to do.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Okay, I hear you. I see you. Right?

[Franklin Leonard]

Yeah, I hear you. I see you. You can do it. And. But if you sit here and feel sorry for yourself and feel like you're a piece of, then guess what? You're gonna be a piece of. So I need you to. What are you drunk? You're staying up dancing to the. The. They're not like us, you know, Angle.

[Fortune Feimster]

On a Guinness on this bedside table. Because we need the money. We're gonna do the shot. Holding the shot.

[Dana Fox]

We need the money for the Guinness.

[Franklin Leonard]

Think.

[Dana Fox]

I think we've got a green light. The points go to fortune on this one.

[Fortune Feimster]

You took on so much of the log, so many of the God for you.

[Dana Fox]

Not only will you be writing, you will also be starring.

[Franklin Leonard]

Thank God.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Yes.

[Fortune Feimster]

Finally.

[Franklin Leonard]

That's why you. That's why you do. The table reads.

[Dana Fox]

Modern masterpiece. I think it's five points to 14.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Finally.

[Franklin Leonard]

Coming in hot.

[Abdullah Saeed]

Amazing.

[Dana Fox]

We've added up all the points and we have some results. In third place is Abdullah.

[Franklin Leonard]

Wait, what?

[Abdullah Saeed]

Typical.

[Franklin Leonard]

I really thought I was in last place. I don't know.

[Fortune Feimster]

I think you came flying back a lot of things.

[Dana Fox]

You came back, but you came back in second place with 13 points, which.

[Fortune Feimster]

Means how is it possible Is our winner won anything?

[Abdullah Saeed]

You won this and 10 Oscars.

[Dana Fox]

It's true.

[Franklin Leonard]

Winning in life.

[Dana Fox]

But here's the thing. You actually win absolutely nothing.

[Fortune Feimster]

Oh, thank you.

[Dana Fox]

Except for the honor of having your oldest headshot on our winner's wall. And the pride of knowing that nobody knows anything. Not even us. Actually, that's not true. I know one thing. If you have the chance to go back in time, please go back and kill both Hitler and Cortez.

[Fortune Feimster]

Yeah.

[Franklin Leonard]

Woohoo.

[Fortune Feimster]

That was amazing. You're so talented and wonderful.

[Franklin Leonard]

Oh, you're wonderful. Thank you.

[Fortune Feimster]

You guys are so great.

[Abdullah Saeed]

This was.

[Dana Fox]

Thank you to our guests, writer Abdullah Saeed and Dana Fox, and actor, comedian, and writer Fortune Feimster. And thank you all for listening. And always remember, nobody Knows Anything. You can listen to Nobody Knows Anything weekly, wherever you get your podcasts. Nobody Knows Anything is a production of the Blacklist and LA Studios in partnership with the Ankler. The show is hosted and executive produced by me, Franklin Leonard, Megan Halpern. Shana Naomi Crocmal, and John Cohen are also executive producers. This episode was produced by Monica Bushman and written by Megan Halpern. Claire Austin Culotte is our head writer mixing by Hasmik Pahosian. The Nobody Knows Anything team also includes Victoria Alejandro, Kathryn Mailhouse, Joshua Latona, Lisa Suarez and Tricia Durant. Original composition by E. Scott Kelly and additional music from Track Club. Support for this podcast is also brought to you by Gordon and Donna Crawford, who believe that quality journalism makes LA a better place to live. LA Studios operates within the homelands of the Gabrielino Tongva people. We recognize the painful history of displacement, setter, colonialism and erasure of the people, their language and their sovereignty. Visit las.comland for more information. We encourage you to get curious about the land on which you live and work.

[Franklin Leonard]

The Soul to Story podcast is about.

[Fortune Feimster]

How teaching kids to read went wrong.

[Franklin Leonard]

But now we have a story about a school district where things are going very right.

[Fortune Feimster]

Let me make sure my friends are sitting crisscross applesauce, hands in their lap. I've never had a chocolate that couldn't read.

[Franklin Leonard]

How did they do it?

[Abdullah Saeed]

When I tell some of my other colleagues that may be at other schools that this is what I do and.

[Fortune Feimster]

They would say, you kidding me?

[Franklin Leonard]

New episodes of Sold a Story are.

[Fortune Feimster]

Available now in your podcast. Apparently.