Thomas Lennon w/ Sam Morril & Mark Normand - We Might Be Drunk Podcast

Summary

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We Might Be Drunk | Ep. — Thomas Lennon with Sam Morril & Mark Normand

Date: June 1, 2026
Guest: Thomas Lennon

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Overview

This lively and sprawling episode welcomes actor, comedian, and writer Thomas Lennon (The State, Reno 911!) for a hilarious deep-dive into his varied career, the inner workings of the comedy world, stories from comedy and showbiz, and plenty of off-the-cuff banter. Hosts Sam Morril and Mark Normand steer the conversation through Thomas’s work on musicals, 90s sketch comedy, sitcoms, the enduring power of Eddie Murphy, Broadway musicals, strange Hollywood rumors, sports nostalgia, writing for TV and film, and the challenges and quirks of building a career in entertainment. The usual mix of drinks, digressions, and NYC comic energy makes for a fast-paced ride peppered with memorable stories, genuine behind-the-curtain insights, and lots of laughs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Thomas Lennon's Multi-Hyphenate Career

• Trading Places: The Musical ([00:09], [20:46], [22:25])

  • Thomas is promoting the new David Wain movie and discusses his work adapting "Trading Places" into a musical.
  • Explains the lengthy, laborious process of getting a Broadway musical off the ground: “Musicals take a real long time... it's like being a passenger on an aircraft carrier that’s making a real slow left turn.” ([22:40])

• Comedy Resume & Career Varieties ([00:17], [56:01], [56:54])

  • Thomas’s career spans screenwriting (Night at the Museum), stage, television (The State, Reno 911!, Animal Control), acting, and even writing novels.
  • “From the outside, I guess it must look like I feel busy. To me, it's always like, why am I not doing more?” ([60:44])

2. Tales from Hollywood & the Comedy Trenches

• Eddie Murphy Stories ([00:43], [02:29], [03:24])

  • Thomas recounts a surreal experience visiting Eddie Murphy's mansion to discuss a script (“a version of The Incredible Shrinking Man for Eddie”), navigating layers of security, meeting Arsenio Hall, and pitching the script even to security guards.
    • “You got to pitch the security. This is intense.” — Mark ([04:04])
    • “Imagine heating a pool that big. These are Norbert problems.” — Thomas ([01:32])

• Callbacks and In-jokes in Movies ([05:15])

  • Discussion around movie callbacks, especially in Eddie Murphy films: “Most references are Eddie referencing other Eddie movies.” — Thomas ([05:50])

• Musicals & Theater Geekery ([15:10], [35:34], [35:40])

  • The group nerds out about Bob Fosse, influences between pop stars and Broadway, reminiscing about “All That Jazz” and the musical theater ecosystem.

3. The State, 90s Sketch, and TV

• Origins of The State ([10:14])

  • How The State was formed at NYU after the founder was kicked out of another comedy group: “We viewed ourselves as like a sort of a punk band or something.” — Thomas ([11:10])
  • The crew wanted to be distinct from “mainstream sketch” and especially from “SNL that era.” ([11:37])

• Legacy of 90s Sketch Comedy ([12:09])

  • Comparing early sketch groups: The State, Kids in the Hall, Mr. Show, The Ben Stiller Show, and how each one contributed to the “absurdist” tradition.

• Not Quite SNL ([13:22])

  • Thomas never auditioned for SNL and muses on whether he would have wanted or succeeded there: “I've never...I don't know how I would have done at an SNL audition.” ([13:58])

4. Impressions, Stand-Up, and Character Work

• Bill Cosby/Bob Newhart Impressions ([07:34], [08:15])

  • Thomas demonstrates impressions and reminisces about learning to perform bits from classic comedy albums.
  • “If you know one thing about me, I think it’s that my Cosby’s—none, there is no equal.” — Thomas ([08:02])

• Playing ‘Gay’ Characters ([14:08])

  • On being frequently cast as gay characters and his affinity for Bob Fosse’s flamboyant straight persona: “It's like drama straight. I'm theater school.” ([14:33])

• Comic-Con Memories (as Dangle from Reno 911!) ([16:48])

  • Thomas shares the experience of attending fan conventions in character, being recognized, and dealing with sometimes awkward fan encounters: “If you're going to a fan convention, be the impulse buy.” ([17:20])

5. Showbiz, Rumors, and Urban Legends

• Hollywood Urban Legends ([29:01])

  • The crew riff on classic apocryphal stories: Eddie Murphy elevator stories, Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” origins, Richard Gere’s infamous rumors, and Danny Thomas’s glass coffee table.
  • “We used to have beautiful stories we told each other...Now it’s, ‘Have you seen this meme?’” — Thomas ([31:24])

• The Economics and Evolution of Fame ([20:46])

  • Discussing if the level of single-person stardom achieved by Eddie Murphy in the 1980s (when "everyone saw every movie") is even possible today.

6. Broadway and Musicals Today

• Modern Broadway ([35:33], [35:54])
  • Favorite shows seen recently: “Operation Mincemeat,” “Lost Boys,” “Book of Mormon,” “Death of a Salesman,” and the process of how certain properties get adapted for the stage.
  • “You’re gonna love it...Everybody’s flying around and their shirts are kind of a little bit oily.” — Thomas on “Lost Boys” ([37:14])

7. Life & Comedy Offstage

• Living in Wisconsin/Lake Geneva ([37:30])

  • Thomas talks about relocating from LA to Lake Geneva, appreciating the cold, and life outside the industry hustle: “I love to stare out a window...get a little sad, you know.” ([39:30])

• Parenthood & Family Life ([61:40])

  • Balancing comedy and family: “I kind of stopped doing stand up once I realized how I really liked it...but it is not super conducive to being home.” ([61:22])
  • “My son is 16 now.” ([61:40])

8. TV, Showbiz Realities, and Optimism

• Navigating New Media & Industry Changes ([55:53], [66:10])

  • “Everybody’s worried about everything, but...I also don’t worry about it because it’s like, you know, when TV was invented, people worried about that...” ([56:10])
  • Discusses pitching scripts today, being ghosted by executives, and adapting to digital platforms and YouTube’s dominance over other streamers.

• Writing and Career Longevity ([60:44], [63:14])

  • On doing a variety of creative work: “It’s good to diversify...because there is so much heartbreak in movies and theater and TV and comedy. It’s good to have eggs in some different baskets.” ([63:14])

• Self-Deprecation & Rotten Tomatoes Woes ([76:35], [77:10])

  • Hilarious reflection on career highs and lows in review scores: “The biggest hit of my entire life...on Rotten Tomatoes is probably, what, 40-something?” — Thomas ([77:10])

9. Money, Merch, and Staying Afloat (with Humor)

• Dangle Outfit Bootlegs/Spirit Halloween Feud ([78:50])
  • On discovering his Reno 911! “Lieutenant Dangle” costume being ripped off by Spirit Halloween under the name “Sergeant Short Pants”: “These fucking assholes...the knockoff Lieutenant Dangle outfit has better reviews than Night at the Museum!” ([79:36])
  • Financial advice: “Take every time you get paid, take 10 of it and put it in the stock market.” ([80:51])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Meeting Eddie Murphy:
  “I said, like, the way you would meet royalty, and Eddie went like, correct...That’s the perfect thing to say.” — Thomas ([06:28])

• On SNL & Comedy Group Ethos:
  “We didn’t want to be SNL that era, for sure. We wanted to not be that. Instead of doing...something that felt like it was covered before, we just wouldn’t do it. So...a lot of the stuff is pretty absurd.” — Thomas ([11:37])

• On Historic Sketch Comedy:
  “We viewed ourselves as like a sort of a punk band or something.” — Thomas ([11:10])

• Classic Self-Deprecation:
  “If you’re hitting 95% failure, you’re killing it.” — Thomas ([59:51])

• On Navigating Hollywood Now:
  “You can go pitch a high-level studio executive and you will never hear about it again. It’s fucking rude.” — Thomas ([64:14])

• On Making it in Comedy:
  “In comedy, we do more in a year than most people do in 20 years probably.” — Nick ([60:52])

• On Bootleg Merch:
  “...the knockoff Lieutenant Dangle outfit has better reviews than Night at the Museum. Welcome to my life.” — Thomas ([79:48])

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Important Segments & Timestamps

• Eddie Murphy’s House & Script Pitching: [00:43] – [04:15]
• Movie Callback References: [05:15]
• Classic Comedy Albums & Impressions: [07:01] – [08:45]
• The State Origins & 90s Sketch Rivalry: [10:14] – [12:09]
• Musicals, Trading Places Update: [20:46], [22:25], [35:33]
• Comic-Con as Dangle: [16:48] – [19:37]
• Urban Legends in Showbiz: [29:01] – [31:38]
• Lake Geneva & Life in Wisconsin: [37:30] – [39:30]
• Parenting, Standup, and Comedy Lifestyle: [61:10] – [61:40]
• Hollywood Pitching & Being Ghosted: [63:36] – [65:04]
• YouTube vs. Netflix, Streaming World: [66:10]
• Rotten Tomatoes Scores & Career Hilarity: [76:35], [77:10]
• Spirit Halloween ‘Sergeant Short Pants’ Bootleg: [78:50]
• Stock Market/Finance Tip: [80:48]

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Tone & Style

• Conversational, fast-paced, irreverent
• Heavy with inside-comedy and showbiz references, but peppered with relatable reflections
• Frequent self-deprecation and no shortage of bits, impressions, and comic banter
• Not afraid to digress, reminisce, or riff on pop culture and personal quirks

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For New Listeners

This episode is a feast for fans of comedy history, behind-the-scenes showbiz stories, and classic banter between comedians who know how to work a room (or podcast). Whether you’re here for Reno 911! nostalgia, stories of 90s sketch comedy, Broadway insider knowledge, or just a bit of absurd, adult fun—there’s something here for everyone.

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Upcoming:

• Thomas Lennon’s latest movie: Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pad (in theaters July 10th) ([81:33])
• Mark and Nick’s tour dates: Milwaukee, Budapest, Athens, and more ([82:19] onward)

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Memorable Last Word:
“Take every time you get paid, take 10 of it and put it in the stock market... Just do that forever.” — Thomas Lennon ([80:51])

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Transcript

[Mark]

So you're in town promoting a new David Wayne movie?

[Thomas Lennon]

I was actually in town. I also wrote a musical, Trading Places. I wrote the musical Trading Places.

[Mark]

You're like, you have a sweet writing resume.

[Thomas Lennon]

I do a lot of stuff.

[Mark]

What made you want a resume?

[Thomas Lennon]

Class. It's. Yeah, we took the song by Usher, and we made it into. There you go. Shit. You guys just have everything. You just look at everything as it comes up.

[Mark]

Yeah, this is the future, man.

[Thomas Lennon]

I know both those guys actually know. All I know. Three out of four of those, which.

[Mark]

Who do you know?

[Thomas Lennon]

I only want. I don't know, is Ackroyd.

[Nick]

What?

[Mark]

You know Eddie Murphy?

[Thomas Lennon]

I've been to Eddie's house.

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Mark]

We're going.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, we're already going.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, shit. I didn't know we were going. I would have puffed up my cheeks and stuff. Yeah, I got to go to Eddie Murphy's house one time. It was very cool.

[Nick]

What. Do tell.

[Thomas Lennon]

All right, what do you want to know?

[Nick]

Was it a party? Was it a Thanksgiving.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, no, no. It was just a little quiet hangout. Just you two getting some notes on a script that never happened.

[Nick]

Whoa. Norbit 2.

[Thomas Lennon]

It was obviously. It was Norbit 2. Which did happen.

[Nick]

Oh, it did, didn't it? Really? Joking.

[Thomas Lennon]

Isn't Norbit just a spin off of Nutty? Professor showed up.

[Mark]

He's just being big again.

[Thomas Lennon]

How much do I get if I win all the questions?

[Mark]

You get a glass of red wine,

[Thomas Lennon]

a picture of Eddie Murphy's house.

[Nick]

Oh, there it is. Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

I've never seen a photograph of it.

[Nick]

It's like a resort.

[Thomas Lennon]

All I know is it is like a resort, and I think they got, you know, like, heating a pool that big.

[Nick]

Damn.

[Mark]

Like Epstein without the guilt.

[Thomas Lennon]

Can you imagine heating a pool that big? I mean, these are Norbert problems. I don't know. Okay, that seems like it's right. I was not invited to the pool area to, like, splash around or anything.

[Nick]

Ouch.

[Thomas Lennon]

I was kind of there working.

[Nick]

Okay.

[Mark]

What was this?

[Thomas Lennon]

Very low. That's.

[Mark]

What was the script you were working on?

[Nick]

Can you say.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, I can say it never. It never happened. We were writing a version of the Incredible Shrinking man for Eddie. It was a remake of the old idea for Eddie, and the idea was that he was a Vegas. You're not gonna cross through frame with this.

[Nick]

Thank you. Your love handles are really killing me. Good Lord. That belt is ruined.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's not the worst wine I've ever

[Mark]

smelled, but Joel McHale.

[Thomas Lennon]

Joel McHale brought it. Joel McHale's. Cheers. Is a wine enthusiast.

[Nick]

I didn't know that.

[Thomas Lennon]

Of the highest order. Mikhail's. Yeah. Mikhail's a expert on wine.

[Nick]

You must know that. Oh, yeah, he's good.

[Thomas Lennon]

We were working on a.

[Mark]

It's pretty good.

[Thomas Lennon]

If it's from Mikhail, it's going to be good. I play his brother on a show. We don't have to plug the.

[Nick]

The animal control.

[Thomas Lennon]

Correct.

[Nick]

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[Mark]

So on that show, too. Mike Roland, Comedy Cell.

[Thomas Lennon]

Very funny, dude.

[Mark]

I like that guy a lot.

[Nick]

Cute kid.

[Thomas Lennon]

He's a very cute kid. He's a real cute kid.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

We're not going to talk about the big. The man just dressed in my outfit. Wow.

[Nick]

It's a dress.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Mark]

Are you flattered? Are you creeped out? What's the feeling?

[Thomas Lennon]

I like it a lot.

[Nick]

I would wear that if you bought me one.

[Thomas Lennon]

So we're out at Eddie's house. We get out to Eddie's house to get to Eddie's house to. For starters, there's a. There's like a gate like Jurassic Park. You know, like to keep out a T. Rex or something like that. So we get to the gate and the guy asks you, like, he's got his hand on his Glock. The security guy. It's not like lightweight security guys, you know, sometimes there's security guys like Trader Joe's Security or something is like, not a big deal.

[Nick]

Sure.

[Thomas Lennon]

When you go to. How are these pictures existing? When you go to Eddie's house, there's a Google Maps. The guys already have their hand on the weapon.

[Mark]

Damn.

[Thomas Lennon]

And they're like, what are you doing here? And you say like, oh, I'm going to see Eddie Murphy. And they're like, why?

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. You're like, we're working on.

[Mark]

Yeah. I'm not in a book or something.

[Thomas Lennon]

We're working on. We're working on a version of the Incredible shrinking man for him. And they're like, do you think that's a good idea? We're like, yeah. We're like. He's like a Vegas magician is like David Blaine. So everybody thinks he's doing it as a bit, but it turns out he's been, like, cursed by a real magician. They're like, okay, if you think that works, we'll let you in.

[Mark]

You got to pitch the security. This is intense.

[Nick]

Whoa. No.

[Thomas Lennon]

They did ask what we. What was our business with Mr. Murphy? You know, good for them. And then you get to Eddie's house, and then there's another gate the size of Jurassic Park.

[Mark]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

And that one just kind of opens. I don't know how that one opens. And then there's another armed guy, I think.

[Mark]

And then the Tony Montana. What a line.

[Thomas Lennon]

Third boss. If you're playing like. If it's like final bosses of going into Eddie's house.

[Nick]

Jesus.

[Thomas Lennon]

Is Arsenio hall

[Mark]

as the Jewish guy coming to America?

[Thomas Lennon]

No way. Arsenio Hall's hanging out at Eddie's house. Is he? 100%, yes.

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Thomas Lennon]

Third. Third boss. We meet right before Eddie was Arsenio Hall.

[Nick]

What do they. They did Sexual chocolate. Remember that. That church group in Trading Places. Is that what it's called?

[Thomas Lennon]

That's in actually. Although.

[Nick]

Coming to America.

[Thomas Lennon]

Coming to America. Although it has two characters from Trading Places. The Duke brothers reappear. Remember Mortimer?

[Mark]

That's right.

[Thomas Lennon]

And Randolph show up again.

[Nick]

That's funny.

[Mark]

Hobos, right?

[Nick]

Yes.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. And Eddie gives them like a pile of riches.

[Nick]

Yes. In a McDonald's bag. We're back. Yeah. Nice little callback in a movie which is. You don't see anymore.

[Thomas Lennon]

Can you think of one other movie callback to a completely different franchise where they reference a completely different movie where a character appears.

[Nick]

You got one? I think in.

[Thomas Lennon]

I don't know If I have one.

[Nick]

48 out. No. Beverly Hills Copy Cop. Not Ninja. They do a show both to find out of him walking by in a leather. A guy walking by in a leather suit and it's a red leather suit. And he goes.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's delirious.

[Nick]

He laughs at them walking down the sidewalk. And I think it's a callback.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's a great reference.

[Mark]

I would not have gotten that.

[Thomas Lennon]

So it seems like most.

[Mark]

The.

[Thomas Lennon]

Most of the references are Eddie references. Eddie's referencing other Eddie movies.

[Nick]

Well, we couldn't get Eddie. So we're going to talk about it.

[Thomas Lennon]

I forgot there's a guy in a. In a delirious jumpsuit.

[Nick]

Come on.

[Mark]

What's the vibe with Eddie when you're. When you're hanging?

[Thomas Lennon]

Very cool. It was very cool.

[Nick]

There it is.

[Thomas Lennon]

That. Oh, yeah.

[Nick]

So he's laughing. Look at this. Look at these idiots. But he's making fun of himself.

[Thomas Lennon]

Is that not a white dude in the jumpsuit?

[Nick]

Maybe that's why he's laughing.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's a fun joke of it. Oh, it's slightly homophobic.

[Mark]

I mean, that's. You think that's homophobic? Do not put on his old stand up, because that will. Holy shit.

[Thomas Lennon]

Very cool.

[Nick]

I met.

[Thomas Lennon]

So you meet Eddie and he comes out and he was very cool. Yeah. And I said. I said it's an honor. You know, I said, like, the way you would meet royalty, and Eddie went like, correct. Like. You didn't say correct, but the vibe was like. That's the perfect thing to say to me.

[Nick]

We went to the Netflix brunch and he was there and he, like, levitated in and the whole. You know, it's Sandler, Letterman, Seinfeld, all these guys.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nick]

Were you there?

[Thomas Lennon]

No.

[Nick]

Okay.

[Thomas Lennon]

I was not at that one.

[Nick]

All right.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's interesting because there's. It's Old Jew.

[Producer]

This is track listings for Delirious.

[Thomas Lennon]

Is that the Delirious?

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Mark]

Damn.

[Nick]

I don't remember that.

[Thomas Lennon]

I don't remember. I don't remember these by the titles.

[Nick]

I don't either.

[Thomas Lennon]

Titles don't.

[Nick]

There's no F bomb track titles.

[Thomas Lennon]

Don't remind me of the bits as much as you would think.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Because I know all the bits.

[Mark]

I remember hearing this. I mean, I remember consuming standup as just like audio as a kid.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Mark]

And it was like, kind of more intimate, kind of cool.

[Nick]

It's better. I think it's better.

[Thomas Lennon]

There's a couple records I can do. Probably the whole record.

[Nick]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark]

I mean, listen to Skank for the memories as a kid and being like, this is the greatest thing I've ever heard.

[Nick]

It's incredible.

[Thomas Lennon]

I do almost all of the best of Bob Newhart. If I probably.

[Mark]

Wow.

[Nick]

Driving instructor. I tried to get through a Cosby. I fell asleep.

[Thomas Lennon]

I can do the. I can do Cosby's driving in San Francisco.

[Nick]

Oh, yeah, the wine. Somebody put a stop sign at the top of the hill. Or that's up to put. To go to street in San Francisco called LA Monster Street. And somebody put a stop sign.

[Thomas Lennon]

You sent it over to binoculars.

[Nick]

We grab another one. Wow. That was a great cause.

[Thomas Lennon]

So if you know one thing about me, I think it's that my Cosby's none. There is no equal.

[Nick]

Just the later work.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, yeah. I can do. I can do most of Bob New. The best of Bob Newhart.

[Nick]

I hit me.

[Thomas Lennon]

Duh. I mean, you know, you do Abe Lincoln versus Madison Avenue, but it's Abe, you changed. Changed Forest Garden seven years ago to 87. No, no, Abe. See, no, I understand that they mean the same thing, but.

[Nick]

Oh, wow, look at Bob up here.

[Thomas Lennon]

If it ever comes up. Abe, you were a rail splitter and then an attorney. See, nobody quits being an attorney to become a rail splitter, Abe.

[Nick]

Whoa. I think that won an Emmy. That Alb.

[Thomas Lennon]

I've lost three Emmys, guys.

[Nick]

Or a Grammy. What happened?

[Thomas Lennon]

I don't know.

[Nick]

The state.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. What are they for there? Here's when Reno 911 started getting shorter, we got into a new category which was like short form Emmy. We never really got nominated. In the Normal. Yeah, you know, in the normals.

[Nick]

Sure, sure.

[Thomas Lennon]

It was as soon as we dropped weight, we dropped a ton of weight, and we got into short form.

[Mark]

How long? What's the minimum or maximum, rather?

[Thomas Lennon]

I think a short form has to be like under 12 minutes or something.

[Nick]

Oh, wow. Okay. So if you're ever looking to try

[Thomas Lennon]

to get an Emmy, go short form.

[Nick]

I didn't know that.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Little secret. It's the same size Emmy if you get it.

[Nick]

Can we talk about the state? Yeah, I used to watch that in high school.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Mark]

That's a crazy group of talented people.

[Nick]

Crazy group.

[Thomas Lennon]

Interesting Cats.

[Nick]

How'd that start? And how'd you get it on mtv?

[Thomas Lennon]

That was interesting. So should I do a plug for the picture here and then we don't have to plug it again?

[Mark]

Yeah, here it is.

[Nick]

Right.

[Producer]

All right.

[Thomas Lennon]

We're doing David Wayne's. Got a Ken Marino and David Wayne have a picture coming out called Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pad.

[Nick]

Check it out.

[Thomas Lennon]

Check it out.

[Producer]

Is that all right?

[Thomas Lennon]

It's fine by me. While the trailer plays. It's actually great. She's great. That's Carrie Kenny.

[Mark]

Oh, okay.

[Thomas Lennon]

Carrie and I went to theater. Can we talk over this as a please, please? So Carrie and I met.

[Mark]

Yeah, Mute it.

[Thomas Lennon]

Just Carrie, Kenny and I went to theater camp. We met. We were 16 years old. So I've known Carrie since 1986. 87.

[Nick]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. And we've worked basically together almost, you know, not everyday sense, but as close to everyday sense as you could. As you could really do, you know? Because then we did. So we went to nyu. We did. We were just a regular comedy group called the New Group. We actually got founded because the guy who started our group had been kicked out of different comedy group and NYU called the Sterile Yak. Todd, who's in the front of that picture there, he founded the state. And then we were actually. We were called a new group and we were. You know.

[Nick]

That's a lot of guys.

[Thomas Lennon]

Way too many, way too many. There's 11 members of the state.

[Nick]

Whoa. Where's Showalter? Oh, there. He's there.

[Thomas Lennon]

He's there. Backwards hat looking. Look how angry we all look.

[Nick]

I know. What's the 90s?

[Thomas Lennon]

It was grunge well, we're also pretty angry.

[Nick]

Man, that guy.

[Thomas Lennon]

Look how angry Joe looks in the front. We look just pissed off.

[Nick]

Joe's in a ton of movies.

[Thomas Lennon]

And we. I would say that we were. Weirdly, we were a sort of an. We're not angry people. But I think we. We viewed ourselves as cool sort. Yeah, I think we viewed ourselves as like a sort of a punk band or something. You know, we felt like we were react. Like we were reacting to sort of what we thought was sort of mainstream sketch that we.

[Mark]

What did you look at? You're like, I don't want to be.

[Thomas Lennon]

We didn't want to be SNL that era, for sure. We wanted to not be that. In fact, we'd rather. I think the reason, you know, the work holds up because we. Instead of doing. If we ever did something that felt like it was covered before, we just wouldn't do it nice. So we just ended up doing. But that's why a lot of the stuff is just sort of. Is pretty absurd stuff that we were doing, you know.

[Nick]

But the 90s had a run of this. It was like this Kids in the hall Mr. Show. It was kind of that. A Ben Stiller show for a Stiller show. In Living Color, to an extent.

[Thomas Lennon]

Stiller show also hit some amazing. Have you ever seen Stiller's True Stories about Bruce Springsteen?

[Nick]

No.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's a fucking great sketch from the Ben Stiller show. It's always, you know, you hear stories about Springsteen. Springsteen showed up. He played for four hours. He recobbled my shoes. Like, the stories just keep getting more amazing about, like, he burst through the wall like the Kool Aid Man. It was a great recurring character. Yeah. No, I'd say, actually, weirdly, those four shows in particular are sort of of a. You know, I mean, I feel like there's a lot of overlap in Sensibility, I know, between Bob and David. And, you know, we're all. We're friends with all the Kids in the hall at this point in our life. I played Dave Foley. Kevin from Kids in the hall has a musical about his life. I got to play Dave Foley.

[Nick]

Ken McDonald.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. Because Dave Foley passed. So.

[Nick]

He did.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, he didn't want to do it, and then he died.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, no, no, no. He passed on the project. Once you see the project, you're like, oh, I know why Foley passed. He wouldn't play this version of Dave Foley. But I was like, yeah, I'll play that version of Dave Foley. It. Yeah.

[Mark]

Did you ever go out for SNL or.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, I did not, no, no, I never did. Did you.

[Mark]

Did any part of you want it? Were you always like, oh my God.

[Thomas Lennon]

I would have probably loved it, but yeah, it just never, never came up. I met Lorne Michaels one time at like the Village Gate seeing some other sketch show, but. Oh, we were seeing, I think a group called Live on Tape. But no, I never went up. I don't know if I would have made it. I've never. I don't have a ton of great impressions other than my impeccable Bill Cosby,

[Nick]

Cosby and Newhart, which.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, that's a new hard impression. I could just recite it.

[Nick]

Uh huh.

[Thomas Lennon]

But I've never. I don't know how I would have done it at SNL audition, you know?

[Nick]

Yeah, I think you'd nail it. You're a funny guy.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's not always the full criteria.

[Mark]

You play a good gay guy.

[Thomas Lennon]

I do. I guess you get cast as a

[Mark]

gay guy a lot.

[Thomas Lennon]

I know that comes up a lot.

[Mark]

How do you feel about that?

[Thomas Lennon]

That's fine by me. I mean, I just seem, you know, I'm not. I've always been a sort of Bob Fosse enthusiast.

[Mark]

I can see that. Little Fosse in there.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. A little Fosse.

[Nick]

Hmm.

[Producer]

He's straight.

[Thomas Lennon]

I happen to Bob was straight too. Yeah.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

He just sort of seems like me, you know, There's a lot.

[Mark]

Yeah, but it's like, it's like drama straight.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, exactly.

[Nick]

Drama straight.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm theater school.

[Mark]

I mean, the whole opening to all that jazz is just all the women he's banging. That's like a five minute montage of like. Let's get out of here is the

[Thomas Lennon]

crazy thing about all that jazz. Yeah.

[Nick]

Great movie.

[Mark]

Oh, yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Maybe the best.

[Mark]

Maybe the best ending to a movie ever.

[Nick]

Yeah. Crazy Good opening too, with the pills.

[Mark]

Great opening.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Showtime. When has anybody else made a movie where they're so honest? Like, he's right. He's telling you the story of how

[Mark]

Dave Foley wouldn't have played that version.

[Thomas Lennon]

He's going to die.

[Nick]

I know. Yeah. By the way, Michael Jackson stole everything from Fosse. Pull up some of Fosse's moves.

[Thomas Lennon]

I just saw.

[Mark]

And you know what black people stole from Elvis?

[Thomas Lennon]

I saw that. Exactly. And it is.

[Nick]

Watch his moves.

[Thomas Lennon]

It is Bob Fosse and a very specific movie. Oh, it's the movie of the Little Prince. Oh, there it is. You got it.

[Nick]

Look at that. This is Fosse.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's Fosse doing Little Prince.

[Nick]

Come on. This is. This is Ripping. He's ripping off Fosse completely.

[Mark]

I do feel like the type of straight you are, though.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm not here when this goes viral for you, Sam.

[Nick]

I'm calling it.

[Thomas Lennon]

But look at that.

[Nick]

Every move.

[Thomas Lennon]

He also does flash a lady, which is also pretty weird there.

[Nick]

All right, that's kind of Michael, too.

[Thomas Lennon]

Fosse killing this.

[Nick]

I mean, that is.

[Thomas Lennon]

Maybe I am gay. Man, this looks really cool. No, but the type.

[Mark]

The type of straight you are gets a lot of women, I think. Don't you think it.

[Nick]

Oh, yeah, probably.

[Mark]

Cuz. Cuz there's like a safety thing, I think that you disarm them with your

[Thomas Lennon]

back in the era. Yeah. I don't know. It could. Could. We'll never know.

[Nick]

I mean, that's crazy.

[Thomas Lennon]

That is crazy.

[Nick]

And I'm not the only guy saying it. I'm just.

[Thomas Lennon]

Is this the first time people talk about. There's a lot of New York Knicks gear on the show today during the playoffs, and we're talking Bob Fosse.

[Mark]

We.

[Thomas Lennon]

We got a lot of range with you guys all day long. Now, are we saying Beyonce stole from Bob? Because I do not want to. Oh, no, she. That's different.

[Nick]

That's very different.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, no, it is not. No.

[Mark]

Mexican women of many interests. But I got to ask a question.

[Thomas Lennon]

But mostly Bob Fosse.

[Mark]

We love Fosse.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

His birthday is June 23rd. Same as day as my son. That's the way I know.

[Mark]

Well, so I know you're buddies with Nick Swarton. So I text him right before and I said, what do I ask him? And he said, he said to ask, what's it like going in character to Comic Con?

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's an interesting thing. So my feeling.

[Mark]

Yeah, you go in his dangle.

[Thomas Lennon]

I do them some. Swartz and I do them together sometimes.

[Mark]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

Now, he's not. He doesn't put on the turret cloth shorts and stuff. But my. Here's my thing. My thing is I don't do stuff. I don't really do anything. Oh, go to the Reddit one. Go to the Reddit one.

[Producer]

I can't.

[Thomas Lennon]

Reddit won't allow you.

[Producer]

Sign in and everyone will know my name.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, okay. But so I don't do anything halfway, you know, I don't do it. I do it.

[Nick]

Look at that.

[Thomas Lennon]

If you're going to a fan convention, be the impulse Buy, you know, you want to be that pointless candy that they get at the front.

[Nick]

You know, the virgins must have gone nuts when they saw you. Or are you Aged out.

[Thomas Lennon]

Who's that?

[Nick]

Like the guys at Comic Con when they saw the real Dangle.

[Thomas Lennon]

It does. It does have a certain. Yeah, it has a certain effect. I got touched by a lot. Like a lot of old ladies. Oh, no, no, no, no. A lot of. A lot of older ladies want to just kind of feel around a little bit.

[Nick]

Oh, yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

They want to let their hands do the talking. There we go.

[Nick]

Look, there's.

[Mark]

Hey, you're low key fit like, look at that.

[Nick]

Oh, yeah.

[Mark]

You kind of have to be to pull that outfit off. Sorry, Peters, but I think you.

[Thomas Lennon]

I think you look great also, by the way.

[Mark]

You look great.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's like 105 degrees outside New York City today.

[Mark]

It is.

[Thomas Lennon]

Did you wear it on the train here? Sure.

[Mark]

Oh, you're. You're amazing.

[Thomas Lennon]

You want to go goof around later and I'll go with you?

[Nick]

Oh, that would be amazing.

[Mark]

You meet.

[Thomas Lennon]

We go down to the West Village. You ain't never paint for a drink. I'm just talking Bob Fosse.

[Nick]

Red wine.

[Thomas Lennon]

We're having some red wine. Look like a park ranger stuff.

[Mark]

So are those. I mean, the lines must be crazy at those.

[Thomas Lennon]

It depends. I'll tell you, if you ever have a slow moment at a convention, it's the. It is the truly the long, dark tea time of the soul when you like, have a minute to just think to yourself, and you're standing in go, go shorts.

[Nick]

Oh, yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know, and you're next to Danny Trejo and you're like, hey, Trejo. And he's like, hey, Thomas, do you like. Do we. Is this. How do we end up?

[Mark]

You're in the good section if you're with Trejo.

[Thomas Lennon]

I spend more time with Trejo at this point in my life than I maybe would have expected.

[Nick]

Do you throw a sock in there or is that all natural?

[Thomas Lennon]

It's mostly natural.

[Nick]

Mostly. But.

[Thomas Lennon]

Well, no, what I will say what I do is I do double underwear.

[Nick]

That's smart.

[Thomas Lennon]

I wear two sets of underwear. And I just. I realized that at some point, like, if you're in that level of small thing, just do double underwear.

[Nick]

And you don't want a ball hanging.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know that. And there's a lot of just touchy stuff.

[Nick]

Aha.

[Thomas Lennon]

Also, what if you dribble or something? I don't know. You just like, what, double britches.

[Nick]

I get.

[Thomas Lennon]

It has been a new thing that I learned at the conventions and I'm pretty happy about it.

[Nick]

Hear, hear.

[Mark]

That pose is unbelievable. That's perfect. That's what you want out of a picture.

[Thomas Lennon]

I was walking. So I'm walking out of a convention early in the morning. It's, you know, 10 o' clock in the morning, and a Rascal scooter comes by and it's William Shatner. Whoa.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Shatner's at the conventions a lot and I. He's coming by and this felt really good. Shatner's zipping by me on the Rascal scooter and he goes, great legs. I was like, yeah, that was cool.

[Mark]

That's impression three, by the way.

[Thomas Lennon]

Let's get Lorne Michaels on the horn.

[Mark]

Were you a big Star Trek guy?

[Thomas Lennon]

No.

[Mark]

Me neither. But Shatner still has this, like, gravity to it.

[Thomas Lennon]

When I see one of those, I'm like, oh, yeah, this is great.

[Nick]

Yeah, I think he's 100.

[Mark]

He's super old.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, he's a 96. Whoa. I think he's 96 years old.

[Producer]

That is great.

[Nick]

And still with. Just went away. Great.

[Thomas Lennon]

He looks great.

[Nick]

95.

[Thomas Lennon]

Sorry, 95. Wait. March 22, 1931. Till now.

[Nick]

So that's. His birthday is in like, you know, two days.

[Thomas Lennon]

March.

[Producer]

That's.

[Nick]

I don't know where we are.

[Thomas Lennon]

When is this coming out this year? Are we in 26 or.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Peter's body is throwing me.

[Mark]

Can I go back to Trading Places for a sec? I mean, what made you. I love the movie, obviously. I mean, it's. That was a huge getting in. Eddie Murphy as a child was like, yeah, that was like, incredible because you get so many in a row.

[Thomas Lennon]

But Trading Places ever been? You know, I was talking about this the other day. We're doing a musical of Trading Places. It's been a lot of fun. But when. When Trading Places came out and Trading Places in Beverly Hills got this run of EDDIE MURPHY Movies, 48 Hours. Not only is there no one in the world that famous right now, I don't know if there ever will be

[Mark]

as 48 hours of musicals, Although slurs,

[Thomas Lennon]

a lot of rhymes, but, like, the amount of famous that Eddie was then, is that achievable?

[Nick]

No.

[Thomas Lennon]

Now I don't know if it is too spread out. When there was four TV stations and

[Nick]

everybody saw the movie, everybody saw any.

[Mark]

Every movie, we were more connected. Now it's like, it's cool because there's more of a middle class. How did we all see entertainment?

[Thomas Lennon]

But did we see Delirious on, like, hbo? Oh, no, we rented the vhs. We rented it because it was pretty dirty.

[Nick]

You got that right.

[Mark]

You even think about movie, What a

[Thomas Lennon]

beautiful girl like you doing in the islands. Crying boot.

[Nick]

That's number four. So.

[Mark]

What a beautiful girl.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know, your girl goes to the islands. The guy is swinging his dick.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

What a boot of a girl like you doing in the island. Crying boot.

[Mark]

I do it without a girl.

[Thomas Lennon]

Throws his dick over her shoulder.

[Nick]

Is that your own or is that the bodega guy?

[Thomas Lennon]

No, that's Eddie.

[Nick]

Oh, that's Eddie.

[Thomas Lennon]

Is that delirious or is that. That might be.

[Nick]

Oh, I don't remember that. Bitch.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's raw.

[Nick]

Blacked out, raw.

[Mark]

It's when your girl is great too.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, your girl goes.

[Nick]

Got great bits, got great moments.

[Mark]

The rocky bit is so fun.

[Thomas Lennon]

Your girl goes to Jamaica or someplace and she meets an island guy. Yeah, it's a great bit.

[Nick]

Great bit.

[Thomas Lennon]

Walks up with his dick swinging in the breeze.

[Mark]

Are you just watching Trading Places? Like I can make that. Like, how does that.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, no, that was the way that worked. Is the guy who. The producer of that is a guy who used to own Final Draft, the screenwriting software. I know it's a weird, boring story, but he thought it would make us great musical.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

And now we've been working on it for like seven or eight years. Musicals take a real long time. Just ask our friend Bob Fosse. But boy, they take a fuck long time to get a musical going. Really Thought movies were slow. No, Broadway musicals. Very. Like, like. It's like being a passenger on an aircraft carrier. That's like making a real slow left turn right for like a miles.

[Nick]

So like Book of Mormon, Hamilton, all that took forever to make?

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, yeah. No, some of those, you know, I don't know how long. I know they took a while and usually like you sort of stand them up. Like we actually Trading Places ran in Atlanta. Ah, yeah. And then we did a huge rewrite after that and now it's completely different, so it's all happening again. But

[Nick]

did you watch Blue Moon?

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, here it goes.

[Mark]

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[Nick]

Good point.

[Mark]

This is good stuff. And Willy's sold out three times in the first six months with over 50,000 happy customers. And they just restocked.

[Nick]

Whoa. Yeah, let me get a hit of that.

[Mark]

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[Nick]

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[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, his name is Dexter St. Jacques. Walk up swinging his dick. No. What a beautiful girl like you any good at smooth Bahamas on your woman? Bahamas. Yeah. This is the island for love. You should be being held right now. Okay. Hotel that your man standing Me go over there and tell him that you treat a woman like you like a princess. Constantly. Constantly. If he was my woman. Is that right?

[Nick]

Still hits. Still hit.

[Mark]

You got to be really good at standup to rock that outfit.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's right.

[Nick]

Of course.

[Thomas Lennon]

That is actually.

[Nick]

If you bomb that outfit.

[Thomas Lennon]

I would argue this outfit's better than the red jumpsuit.

[Nick]

I think how you like the purple and black?

[Thomas Lennon]

It's a little. I don't know, it's a little more subtle. Yeah, I mean, it's still. It's a purple paisley jumpsuit.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, look. People debate which ones. I don't. I like the raw outfit.

[Nick]

The red was a little more fitted, kind of better, but it's.

[Thomas Lennon]

I like the scarf a lot.

[Nick]

The ass in the red, though.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, but look at that. The scarf hanging with the purple outfit.

[Nick]

Come on. Yeah. All right. I do like the scarf.

[Producer]

And he's wearing driving gloves.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's fucking badass. Is he. Is he wearing driving gloves? Is that in Raw, he's got.

[Producer]

No. Yeah, in Raw, he's wearing driving.

[Thomas Lennon]

Wow.

[Nick]

You ever heard that old story where the Eddie Murphy's on a elevator with like, six of his bouncers, giant black dudes?

[Thomas Lennon]

That is apocryphal. There's no way that story is true.

[Nick]

Well, I'm just telling the story my entire life.

[Producer]

What?

[Mark]

What?

[Thomas Lennon]

What?

[Nick]

All right, try to tell it.

[Thomas Lennon]

Tell it.

[Nick]

All right, so he's on the elevator with like. He's like, in some LA high rise, going up to see his agent or whatever, one of these big old skyscrapers. And he's in there with six giant black dudes, sunglasses, they're all wearing black trench coats. And a blonde lady just happens to get in on, like, the sixth floor. They're going up to the 30th floor, and she's like, oh, geez, what the fuck did I walk into? And then she's just standing there, and they're all surrounding her, and Eddie Murphy goes, get her. And she goes, oh, my God. And she hits the floor. She's like, please don't rape me. Don't hurt me. And they all start laughing.

[Thomas Lennon]

Okay, here's the original version of that apocryphal story, okay, that I've heard is that it's in a casino, and it's Eddie Murphy and a bunch of, like, his bodyguards. And the lady gets in, and she's just won a bunch of stuff. She's won a bunch of chips.

[Nick]

Oh.

[Thomas Lennon]

And she's going up to the room, and she gets in the elevator, and he says, hit the floor. And she drops her chips and falls down on the ground. And he said, hit the button of the floor that you want to go to. That was the original version of the Eddie Murphy.

[Mark]

That makes more sense.

[Thomas Lennon]

Which makes a little more sense.

[Mark]

A misunderstanding over a gang rape.

[Nick]

I think that's a telephone.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's a game of telephone. But I believe even the slightly more polished version is still not true.

[Nick]

Oh, really?

[Thomas Lennon]

Do we think that there's.

[Nick]

No.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's, like, the Phil Collins in the Air tonight. Yeah.

[Nick]

Wait, what's that one?

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, you don't know this one Eminem even talks about? Yeah, Collins in the Air tonight.

[Nick]

I know the song.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know, the. Okay.

[Mark]

The woman was drowning, and he saw

[Thomas Lennon]

a guy, and Phil put the spotlight on the guy in the audience at a show because he didn't say that one.

[Nick]

No, no. Do tell.

[Mark]

And, like, that's how you confront him instead of just calling the police.

[Thomas Lennon]

Wouldn't that. But that's where it doesn't. That's where it falls apart. Yeah.

[Nick]

Oh, he's drowning a woman.

[Thomas Lennon]

No.

[Nick]

Or is it also a gang rape?

[Thomas Lennon]

This woman's being raped at sea.

[Nick]

Okay, now we're getting somewhere.

[Thomas Lennon]

And Richard Gere is the only person who saw it.

[Nick]

And then a German comes out.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, there used to be. We used to have, like, great stories, like, you know, we used to have, like, apocryphal stories that we all knew.

[Nick]

Well, there was no Internet. You couldn't look it up.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. You Just had to hear about someone blowing a whole soccer team, right? Or something like that.

[Mark]

That would mean now it's like, have you seen this meme?

[Nick]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mark]

It's not the same.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's not the same as. As spoken as our beautiful spoken memories. Like Rockstar blows a whole soccer team, right? Guy has gerbil but in his ass. We used to have beautiful stories we told each other.

[Nick]

What about the Dave?

[Mark]

How sick of that story.

[Thomas Lennon]

Tell each other such up stories.

[Nick]

It's fun.

[Thomas Lennon]

It was fun.

[Nick]

It's. It's a storytelling.

[Mark]

How much do you think Richard here could ask that too?

[Thomas Lennon]

Somebody started. Somebody started both of those stories.

[Nick]

You better believe it.

[Thomas Lennon]

Like, who's the person out there in the world that was like, wait, I got one. I got. I got one.

[Nick]

If you can write Harry Potter, you can write that.

[Mark]

What you think it was her?

[Thomas Lennon]

I've never, never heard Dave.

[Mark]

She got Dumbledore in the gerbil.

[Thomas Lennon]

What's the Dave Thomas?

[Mark]

I don't know.

[Producer]

I can't find that. Was it Dave Thomas?

[Nick]

Maybe it wasn't Dave Thomas. It was somebody where he would. On a glass coffee table and he would lay under the. Somebody would. On the coffee table. And he had got off on that. Not the Wendy.

[Mark]

That's an expensive fetish. Yeah, you got to keep replacing coffee tables.

[Nick]

Ah, you clean it windows.

[Thomas Lennon]

The guy. I don't think it was. It can't have been the little guy from Wendy's.

[Nick]

Was it glass coffee table. I forgot the guy's name. Danny Thomas. That's it. Danny Thomas. He's like a Broadway guy.

[Thomas Lennon]

Marlo Thomas's father. I'm not gonna go anywhere into this story.

[Nick]

There he is.

[Thomas Lennon]

There is no way this story is true. And I'm not affiliated.

[Nick]

How do you know?

[Thomas Lennon]

I mean, there's apparently with this story

[Mark]

on the show, they say Charles Lauden ate poop sandwiches. That was like a thing he was into.

[Nick]

Really great actor, by the way.

[Mark]

Witness for the prosecution. Check that one out.

[Thomas Lennon]

Marvin Blythe.

[Nick]

Yeah, he's full of.

[Mark]

Because it's like a weird fetish. I don't know. It's hard to find the Internet. I have a friend who swears by it.

[Nick]

Pooper nickel.

[Mark]

Well, but yeah, it's on there. Charles Lauden.

[Producer]

I'm getting there.

[Thomas Lennon]

One day. One day we're gonna be dead and somebody will be able to Google us with shit sandwich. They'll be like, no, it's totally true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Nick]

There's already an A.I. squeeze his balls.

[Thomas Lennon]

He'd find a book and Squeeze his balls in it. And then he'd let the elevator door take it up. Like there's gonna be.

[Mark]

Yeah, but it's funny when it's, like, a classy actor like Charles Law.

[Nick]

Right? Oh, there he is.

[Producer]

It did say it's in the story or somewhere

[Thomas Lennon]

and love to eat poop sandwiches.

[Mark]

No, he was disappointed by the commercial failure of Night of the Hunter and he decided to eat poop. It all adds up, guys.

[Thomas Lennon]

Night of the Hunter is a great.

[Mark]

That's a great movie.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, we gotta get in 900. It's the first ever appearance of the love hate.

[Mark]

Yeah, right. Robert Mitchum.

[Producer]

Dude, I think he was closeted homosexual. And that sounds like a nasty rumor you would make about a closet.

[Mark]

Wow, that makes sense.

[Thomas Lennon]

Damn.

[Mark]

So I'm part of the problem.

[Thomas Lennon]

Natural extrapolation of that. That feels weird.

[Nick]

You'll play him in a movie.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

I don't know.

[Thomas Lennon]

What is it saying? Same thing about Danny Thomas. Is that what we're saying?

[Nick]

Let's get to the time.

[Thomas Lennon]

We're starting terrible rumors.

[Nick]

The ADD in this room is out of control. We got, guys.

[Thomas Lennon]

By the way, I just looked at Danny Thomas's real name and I thought I had a stroke. Can you go down to Danny Thomas's real name?

[Nick]

Oh, one thing at a time.

[Thomas Lennon]

Just go down. Oh, wow, that's a lot Scrabble and I could never make anything out of it. I didn't know I could have made that with it.

[Nick]

That feels like a terrorist.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's a name.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Mark]

That's some Ellis Island. What's your name? Let's go with Danny Thomas.

[Nick]

Abu Wazu. Yakub Karaz is dead. Died like a dog.

[Mark]

Which, by the way, that's not how dogs die. Dogs get euthanized. They get put down.

[Nick]

Right, right.

[Mark]

Don't get just bombed to death.

[Thomas Lennon]

This is not true either. We're just doing this. There is no known public scam.

[Nick]

How do you know? People do things to the word poop. Oh, no.

[Thomas Lennon]

Who paid for this? So if. I guess if you throw money at it, you don't have to.

[Nick]

All right. See, he controls his own Wikipedia.

[Thomas Lennon]

Clearly, you can't put stuff in your Wikipedia.

[Mark]

When is Trading Places gonna be a thing, you think? Like, when do you think it's gonna actually preview?

[Thomas Lennon]

What we just did was the, like, reading scene. Broadway's a whole thing. There's, like, 40 theaters, but they're only owned by, like, three organizations, so, you know, the mafia is five.

[Nick]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

But Broadway's three.

[Mark]

Damn.

[Thomas Lennon]

There's just not that many yeah.

[Nick]

So Titanic is killing it.

[Thomas Lennon]

I hear it's great. I hear it's really good.

[Mark]

Seems fun.

[Nick]

My wife loved it.

[Thomas Lennon]

I saw. Did you see? I saw Operation Mincemeat. One of the best musicals I've ever seen.

[Mark]

Wow.

[Nick]

Pull it up.

[Thomas Lennon]

Pull it up.

[Nick]

Never heard of this. Is this a gay code? How would you never see.

[Mark]

Straight up the street, like, we gotta go.

[Nick]

A lot of things.

[Mark]

I heard the new Death of a Salesman is unreal.

[Nick]

Oh, really?

[Mark]

I hear it's unreal.

[Thomas Lennon]

Lost Boys is one of the coolest things I've ever.

[Mark]

I've heard. That's amazing.

[Thomas Lennon]

One of the coolest things I've ever seen.

[Nick]

All right.

[Thomas Lennon]

In my life. That show Mincemeat, I just said the other day, it's incredible. But Lost Boys, Tony, you think they fly around in Lost Boys?

[Nick]

I would hope so.

[Thomas Lennon]

They do.

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Thomas Lennon]

Do they fly around. So unbelievable how much they fly around in Lost Boys. You'll feel like you're hallucinating.

[Mark]

I took my niece to Book a Mormon a couple months ago.

[Thomas Lennon]

She's 13.

[Mark]

I don't know. How do you feel about it? I think it's great. I love it. I wonder how much she got. As I'm watching, I'm like, does a 13 year old. She's super smart, but does this 13

[Thomas Lennon]

year old fully get this?

[Nick]

We got.

[Thomas Lennon]

My wife's very Baptist parents to Book of Mormon and I was a little worried about how it was going to go. Right. When you get to Hasadiga Ibiwai and stuff.

[Mark]

Yes.

[Nick]

I was like, bam.

[Thomas Lennon]

That was tight.

[Mark]

That was good. That is the greatest song, though. I mean, incredible.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

No, no. Knock on Lost Boys. I like the film, but how did they decide to make this amusement? What goes through the. The channels and the grinder to God?

[Thomas Lennon]

You're gonna love it. Especially if you're on Grindr, because there's some. There's some sexy dudes, but you know what I mean?

[Nick]

There's a billion movies from 30 years ago. How do they decide that one will make money?

[Thomas Lennon]

You're gonna like it.

[Nick]

I know how they get that to.

[Thomas Lennon]

Everybody's flying around and their shirts are kind of a little bit oily. I don't know. Jury's still out on me, I guess. I don't know.

[Nick]

That's true. Red wine.

[Mark]

You're a cultured straight. That's what it is. A cultured straight. Mustache seems a little gay, but that's. I think that's a good thing.

[Nick]

Yeah. Very.

[Thomas Lennon]

Guys, what are we talking about? Great old rumors about people well, you live in Wisconsin. I live. We mostly live in Wisconsin. Yeah. We still have a house in Los Angeles that we go to sometimes but didn't burn down. Quality of life knock on. I haven't seen it.

[Mark]

Well, part of Wisconsin.

[Thomas Lennon]

We live at a place called Lake Geneva, Wisconsin.

[Nick]

Oh, very nice.

[Thomas Lennon]

90 minutes from Chicago.

[Mark]

Oh, wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's a sweet little spot. And you know, people rag on it as the. It's the. The place that Chicago people go in Wisconsin.

[Nick]

Right.

[Thomas Lennon]

But that's. That's me too. I'm a Chicago person.

[Mark]

I love Chicago.

[Thomas Lennon]

Across the lake for me is the Wrigleys. You got people like that, but you get sweet spot.

[Nick]

Oh, the gum fortune.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yep.

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Thomas Lennon]

They used to own the Cubs for a long time. Yep.

[Nick]

Look what you get two months out of the year out of this. With content.

[Thomas Lennon]

We actually live there a lot. It's beautiful. But you gotta. If you're gonna go there. That's. That house is.

[Nick]

That's called Teddy Murphy's bigger.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's called, uh, Stone Manor.

[Nick]

Cool.

[Thomas Lennon]

On the roof there. Yeah.

[Nick]

It's a cool place.

[Thomas Lennon]

It looks a lot like, uh. Yeah, that's. That's down the lake from me.

[Nick]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

But of all the places. What are you? Chicago guy?

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm a Chicago guy.

[Nick]

There we go.

[Thomas Lennon]

So we grew up Chicago and then I. This is the lake I grew up to going to as a kid. That's a stone manor. Oh, one of the big old spooky house. It's probably the spookiest house on the lake.

[Nick]

Beautiful.

[Thomas Lennon]

There's stuff that's less spooky.

[Nick]

Mm.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. You can go to lake your name and see more. You picked one really spooky looking house.

[Nick]

Really pretty.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's a boat called the lady of the lake draws her. Yeah. It's a sweet little spot. Yeah. We actually love being there in the winter. But you just have to be. The lake freezes and you got to be okay with the idea that, you know, for a couple weeks at a time It'll be like 15 below for a couple of weeks.

[Mark]

That's crazy.

[Nick]

That's when you go to la.

[Thomas Lennon]

I like it.

[Nick]

Oh, really like it.

[Mark]

You like the cold?

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. Get some writing done.

[Mark]

I'm not. See, I'm not against it here either.

[Thomas Lennon]

Window.

[Mark]

I'm okay with the winter.

[Thomas Lennon]

I like it.

[Mark]

Yeah. But 15 below is tough.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

But I get.

[Thomas Lennon]

I get a good. I like. I love to stare out a window, you know.

[Nick]

Sure.

[Thomas Lennon]

And get, you know, get a little sad, you know. I like the Smiths and stuff.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Same I'm a good window starer. Think about, you know, the way things with. How are you feeling?

[Producer]

Morrissey's hosting the. The final act of the CBGB's Fest.

[Thomas Lennon]

CBGS is having one show and he's doing. Is he doing 20 minutes of stand up?

[Producer]

And he's doing.

[Thomas Lennon]

They're gonna tell you some. Another thing about. About the dog meat festivals.

[Nick]

Number five. Hey, you're all wrong.

[Thomas Lennon]

None of which would get me on Saturday's night.

[Nick]

You know the famous Morrissey stories.

[Thomas Lennon]

You see a lot of famous horses.

[Nick]

Well, apparently he's.

[Thomas Lennon]

I've met him a couple times.

[Nick]

Very horrible to work with. There's that story where.

[Thomas Lennon]

I don't know that. Hold on, he said, trying to extricate himself from this part. I've never heard that specifically, he said. And then he leaned back, the microphone away a little bit.

[Nick]

It's all me again, not.

[Thomas Lennon]

I don't know anything about this.

[Nick]

So there's that old story where he's on the tour bus. They're pulled up to somewhere, I don't know, Detroit Big theater. Says Morrissey on it. They missed. They took 1s out. They misspelled it. And he said, keep on driving. Sold out. Around the corner. They drove by in the bus. 1s was off. And he said it. Keep driving.

[Mark]

My own agent misspells my name.

[Nick]

Yeah, me too. They call me Mike.

[Thomas Lennon]

There's two S's, people. Yeah, two R's. Two S's. So I feel like that's justified, though, a little bit. Well, come on.

[Nick]

I just agree.

[Thomas Lennon]

Pay attention to the details.

[Nick]

Sure.

[Thomas Lennon]

You fucked up the marquee. What's it going to be like back? Yeah, could be bad.

[Nick]

All right, we get it. You like Morsi.

[Mark]

You're a window stare.

[Thomas Lennon]

Defend him on a lot of weird stuff.

[Nick]

What else you got for Boris?

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, no, no, no. I don't. I've met him twice, and he was absolutely. Couldn't have been nicer.

[Nick]

Okay, okay, again, I don't know if this is true.

[Thomas Lennon]

Couldn't have been nicer to.

[Mark]

No, we have. We have some areas where we will not delve into.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mark]

You trash a nick. I'm like, I can't.

[Thomas Lennon]

Not gonna trash the Knicks, even though I'm from Chicago. And it was kind of fun for me because I lived in New York from the late 80s through all of the 90s. And I just want to thank the Knicks, specifically Ken Marino. He's got a picture coming out called Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.

[Nick]

Funny guy.

[Mark]

I love Camarino.

[Thomas Lennon]

We love Camarino, but we gotta get.

[Mark]

We tell him to come on here. We're fans.

[Thomas Lennon]

One thing that was really great is being a Chicago person and a Bulls fan during that era, during the 90s in New York, is. It was like my second job because Ken Marino would always, always bet on the Knicks, no matter what. Like, it didn't matter. Like, you know, you guys had Starks and you had everybody and you. I used to do a John Starks impression when I was this shopping bag, grocery. I was the best. I decided I would be the best shopping bagger that there ever was.

[Mark]

It's too high. He's too high.

[Thomas Lennon]

Too high.

[Nick]

Pull up Stark. I gotta hear Stark stuff.

[Mark]

No, he's lower than this.

[Thomas Lennon]

I don't think so.

[Nick]

Okay, let's hear about John Stark.

[Thomas Lennon]

Okay. Okay. Your money back.

[Nick]

You might be right about the SNL audition.

[Mark]

Lord Michaels. Why is he closing with Starks? What the hell is this?

[Nick]

Starks, Morrissey. We gotta update these.

[Mark]

And the way he pushed his teammates,

[Nick]

it's deeper to rise to his level.

[Thomas Lennon]

I think he's doing it wrong now. Well, he's fucking not as good at it as he used to be.

[Mark]

He's the nicest dude, too, by the way.

[Thomas Lennon]

He's great. He's a lovely guy.

[Mark]

But I had a rough one at a gig at MSG once for the nypd. And as I'm leaving, he put his arm on me. He's like, that was hilarious. When Starks does that, you're like, all right, I don't feel that bad.

[Nick]

That's great. No question is a happy time for me.

[Mark]

It's a little higher.

[Thomas Lennon]

No question.

[Mark]

Make me sad. It didn't make me sad.

[Thomas Lennon]

Like, guys, I tell you what, at this point in my life, I'm not going to put any more work into my Johnstar. I'm calling it. I'm considering it. Perfect. I'm going to let it exist the way it exists for space and time. Anyway, so. So it was a great era because, you know, the feeling is that the Knicks were always with Ewing and everybody gonna. Gonna finally beat the Bulls at some point. And guess what happened? You didn't.

[Nick]

It was. I remember so great. 90s bulls were unstoppable.

[Thomas Lennon]

Well, Jordan would have the flu and he'd score 55.

[Nick]

Damn.

[Thomas Lennon]

It was crazy.

[Mark]

He's the Goat. I mean, it was crazy. Jordan, Pippen, Rodman. It was unfair.

[Thomas Lennon]

I met Pippen.

[Mark]

How was Pippin?

[Nick]

You bang his wife?

[Producer]

Great.

[Thomas Lennon]

That great. Here's what it is. And I'm on the Record here.

[Mark]

Jordan son.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm moving the mic for yourself as I talk about my relationship.

[Mark]

Jordan son married her.

[Nick]

What?

[Mark]

Seven rings.

[Thomas Lennon]

Is that true? That is. Is that.

[Mark]

He did.

[Thomas Lennon]

Is that true?

[Mark]

He did.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Mark]

I think they got divorced.

[Thomas Lennon]

I thought I heard that too, but she's a. Look, I met. I met. Here's. Here's what happened. I met Scotty Pippen because we were both in first class on United.

[Nick]

Nice.

[Thomas Lennon]

Well, let me clarify. Fine. For me, I'm in first class, but he's Scotty fucking Peppin and he's like six, eight. Shouldn't Scotty be on some nicer than what Lieutenant Dangles on? I think he should. I think he should be like. I assure you, there's no chance Dangle's bumping into Jordan anywhere I go.

[Nick]

Right.

[Thomas Lennon]

He's at nicer places than I'm allowed. Scottie Piven and I are allowed at all the exact same places. Which is a sad sign about the contracts he had to sign.

[Mark]

He got fucked over.

[Thomas Lennon]

He got fucked. Because now he has to live like me. An ordinary.

[Mark]

He's not broke. He's. I mean, he's. But he got. He got a big deal with the Blazers at the end. But a lot of Jordan's money is from the shoe deal. I mean, that's Jordan's.

[Thomas Lennon]

Jordan's basketball was never even. It was a drop in the bucket.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

I mean, he had armor. He had. What was the hot dogs. He had Jockey, Nike.

[Nick]

Oh, yeah. He had a restaurant or two. Bunch of steakhouse.

[Mark]

Steakhouse.

[Nick]

A cologne.

[Thomas Lennon]

He had a bunch of steakhouses. What was the hot dog? He had.

[Nick]

He had a hot dog.

[Thomas Lennon]

Jordan had a hot dog.

[Nick]

Pull it up.

[Thomas Lennon]

Show to me. Hot dog ads. Bam.

[Producer]

Michael Jordan ballpark Franks.

[Nick]

No way.

[Thomas Lennon]

They plump when you cook them.

[Nick]

Was he Sprite too, or am I racist?

[Thomas Lennon]

You are definitely McDonald's. Both could be true.

[Nick]

That's true.

[Thomas Lennon]

The fact that you are probably are racist.

[Nick]

Good point.

[Thomas Lennon]

They pump when you cook them. Michael Jordan.

[Producer]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

Ballpark Franks would get a little. They get a little excited when you cook them.

[Nick]

Did he do milk as well or am I gay?

[Producer]

Yes and yes.

[Nick]

Thank you.

[Thomas Lennon]

They're not. I remember the month for this wine, by the way.

[Nick]

Oh yeah, this is good wine.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's actually true. This is Mikhail. Yeah, yeah. He doesn't around at all.

[Nick]

Yeah, no, no.

[Mark]

He called us out. I think we had like a shitty selection. And since then we've upped our game.

[Nick]

That's true.

[Thomas Lennon]

He sent you this? No. You got Ewing.

[Mark]

I loved Ewing so much.

[Thomas Lennon]

Dude. We all love Ewing.

[Mark]

You know, that's the thing too. It's not all about winning. Like, it's better not be. No, but. But as a kid, there's value in loving a thing that doesn't work out.

[Nick]

That's true.

[Thomas Lennon]

There is the 90s Knicks. But the 90s Knicks, well, here's the thing about them. They're a magnificent team.

[Nick]

They were awesome.

[Thomas Lennon]

But then there had to be something that could come along to be the foil of a team that amazing.

[Mark]

Jordan was. It just was unfortunate to be going against the greatest ever. It was great. I mean, Barkley missed out. Stockton, Malone, all these great players missed out. Malone did not miss out on impregnating a 12 year old, but he missed out on a championship. Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

With Rodman recently. You did? Yeah.

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Mark]

First class United.

[Nick]

No, Coach.

[Thomas Lennon]

UN United plus economy plus. I was actually just sitting on Carmen Elector's lap.

[Mark]

How was Rodman?

[Thomas Lennon]

If you go to maybe who posted it? Maybe Weird Al. There's a picture of me. Weird Al Rodman.

[Mark]

Holy.

[Thomas Lennon]

Jared Polecki and Jennifer Gray.

[Nick]

That's a fever dream.

[Thomas Lennon]

It should be.

[Mark]

And Richard Gere's hamster.

[Thomas Lennon]

And obviously not. Not pictured, but there it was. But Rodman, it's hard to put into. There's a photo somewhere. It's gonna.

[Nick]

It'll turn up images. Boom. No, there's you and Weird Al.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

No, no, Patton.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, no, it'll be. It's probably on Al's. I don't know where it was. Somebody's Instagram.

[Nick]

Private Instagram, but.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, that's Lake Geneva again. There's me now on my boat.

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Mark]

It's Weird Al, the man.

[Thomas Lennon]

He's the man.

[Nick]

I met him once. He probably the nicest guy.

[Thomas Lennon]

You seem probably the nicest guy.

[Nick]

Sweet guy. We Zinged him because it was. I did Opie and Anthony with him and everybody Zinged him. He's like, what are you doing, guys?

[Thomas Lennon]

What are you singing?

[Nick]

You know, why are you being so mean? We're like, you're like a nice, normal guy. We're animals.

[Producer]

Yeah.

[Mark]

Every other word on that show is ugh.

[Nick]

Yeah, I know. He was like, what are you guys so mean for?

[Thomas Lennon]

Rodman's interesting because, like, you know, he's 6, 7 and he still acts exactly kind of like the Rodman you're thinking about. Yeah. He has not like, he hasn't like, mellowed.

[Nick]

I like that a lot. Well, he's hanging out with Gigi Ping or no Kim Jong Un.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, yeah.

[Producer]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

He's the only guy who Ever gets to go to North Korea.

[Mark]

Apparently he brought a bunch of players with him on that one trip.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Oh, really? Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Didn't they make a. They made like a.

[Nick]

A music video.

[Thomas Lennon]

There was a news show about him going to.

[Nick]

My ex girlfriend had a huge crush on him. Dennis had to break up with her, right?

[Thomas Lennon]

Dennis was. Didn't. Madonna dated Dennis?

[Nick]

Of course.

[Mark]

Madonna and Pippin.

[Thomas Lennon]

Elektra.

[Nick]

Elektra.

[Thomas Lennon]

Wait, did Madonna date Pippin?

[Mark]

I think they hooked up.

[Thomas Lennon]

Can we have footage of that?

[Producer]

Mark, can you tell me about that?

[Thomas Lennon]

I could watch that.

[Producer]

Rodman's father.

[Nick]

No.

[Mark]

Absent father, right?

[Producer]

No.

[Nick]

Oh, yeah. Philanderer.

[Producer]

His name is Philanderer. He has something.

[Thomas Lennon]

His name is not Philander.

[Producer]

Like 24 kids by 19 women.

[Nick]

I think it's. Yeah. 20 kids.

[Producer]

Christian name is Philander.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's impossible. I'll look it up. That is impossible.

[Nick]

Things could be true.

[Mark]

This sounds like a Charles Lauden type of story right here.

[Thomas Lennon]

Let's see. I forgot about the smiley face hair. That was genius. The weird smiley face. You know that. Remember that guy Philander?

[Mark]

Not Philander.

[Thomas Lennon]

Philander's close.

[Nick]

Yeah, that's up there.

[Thomas Lennon]

Do you guys know that stupid sex. Remember Rodman left and just went to Vegas for a while.

[Mark]

20 children. And it was so cool that they just let him do it. They were like, he just needs.

[Thomas Lennon]

I have a theory about it.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

I have a theory about why they let Dennis do everything they let Dennis do. And it makes. It makes a lot of sense. Like when there's a guy on the other team that people think is crazy. Like, that's so helpful.

[Nick]

Sure.

[Thomas Lennon]

Like, imagine like. So when even the Bulls are like, hey, Dennis is crazy. We can't control him. So imagine how you feel if you're the Knicks and you're like, yeah. If he won't listen to Phil Jackson and Jordan and Pippen and anybody else, and he'll just off like, watch out for that guy. That point doesn't fucking care.

[Mark]

And you got to let a guy that crazy be crazy.

[Producer]

That'd be great.

[Thomas Lennon]

Says, let him be so crazy. There we go.

[Nick]

Wedding dress.

[Thomas Lennon]

Look at how little I am next to little Rodman.

[Nick]

Oh, you're cute.

[Thomas Lennon]

Look at me.

[Mark]

What a crew.

[Thomas Lennon]

That is a fucking possum.

[Nick]

Who's the white guy with the Jennifer Gray?

[Thomas Lennon]

Is it me or Jennifer Gray? There's three white guys in the picture

[Nick]

that I can write that I've never heard of.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's Jared. He's the most famous guy in the photo by far. Who's that guy's Jared Poleck. He's from a show called Supernatural. They have their own fan conventions just for that show.

[Nick]

Oh, wow.

[Mark]

I don't know it.

[Thomas Lennon]

We watch it at home. We call it Ghost Hunks because it's two guys looking for ghosts, and they're hunky as.

[Nick]

I love it.

[Thomas Lennon]

Really, really dreamy.

[Nick]

You're not gay enough.

[Mark]

Father. 29 children with 16 different women. See it? Take that.

[Nick]

Nick Cannon and Elon. That's more than both.

[Thomas Lennon]

I did not know anything about this, and I did read Bad as I Want to Be.

[Mark]

How is that?

[Thomas Lennon]

It's a terrific book. Dennis's book.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. He talks about sitting outside the palace at Auburn Hills with a shotgun in his mouth in the car.

[Nick]

Damn.

[Thomas Lennon]

Whoa. He had some really troubled moments.

[Nick]

You never hear about the dark side. You always think, oh, what a cool life.

[Thomas Lennon]

You always think, dennis seems fine. You always look at Dennis, you're like, you know what? If anything, he seems fine.

[Nick]

Right.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Mark]

But there's a beauty to that selfless type of player, the guy who's just like, I don't need the ball. I'm just gonna run amok.

[Thomas Lennon]

Imagine if you're fighting for a ball.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

With that guy.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Let him have it.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Mark]

As a kid, too. Like, no, take my toy.

[Nick]

Like, he's got green hair and a nose ring.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. Dennis has proven that he. It doesn't. Like, he's got bigger stuff on his mind.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

As opposed to bonking his head with you.

[Nick]

Right.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Well, we all had that friend in high school, when you got into a fistfight, he would go break a bottle over his head, and everybody else is like, oh, geez, all right, I'm not going.

[Thomas Lennon]

You can't fight. You can't really fight crazy.

[Nick]

Can't fight crazy. Which you could say Trump is a little of that. But Iran's crazy too, so they're like it. We'll go. After you.

[Mark]

Yeah. Both reality stars. Both a little. Pretty much crazy. Both kind of peaked in the early days.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Was Dennis ever on? Dennis must have been on.

[Nick]

He was on something. He must have.

[Thomas Lennon]

He was on the Apprentice Trump show, Right?

[Mark]

I think. I think so.

[Thomas Lennon]

There's no way Dennis was not on that show. Had to be. Right.

[Nick]

I could see them getting along. Meatloaf was if he likes Kim Jong Un.

[Thomas Lennon]

Dennis was. Yeah. Season eight.

[Nick]

Bam. Did he win camp? What was he.

[Thomas Lennon]

How do you do you win? Yeah.

[Producer]

Misspelled Trump's name.

[Thomas Lennon]

He famously misspelled Melania Morrison. He made memorable firings. Oh, he misspelled Melania's name.

[Nick]

Oh, we got to rewatch that season.

[Producer]

Invited back for season 13.

[Nick]

Wow, that ran that well.

[Mark]

Speaking of, was it NBC? Was the show with Matthew Perry, the Odd Couple?

[Thomas Lennon]

Was that NBC Odd Couple on cbs?

[Mark]

Cbs?

[Nick]

What, they remade that?

[Thomas Lennon]

I was. Not only did they remake it, I was in it.

[Nick]

You were? Which one?

[Thomas Lennon]

Felix Unger, number five.

[Nick]

How's that work?

[Thomas Lennon]

Let's see the play.

[Nick]

Oh, Matthau.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, the play is. It goes Jack Lemmon. There's the play.

[Nick]

The movie. The TV show from the 70s.

[Thomas Lennon]

Black Odd Couple. My Odd Couple.

[Nick]

What was the Black.

[Thomas Lennon]

The Black Odd Couple? Yeah, it was called Black Odd Couple.

[Nick]

Wait, really?

[Thomas Lennon]

It's called the New Odd Couple. Did you go to New Go New.

[Mark]

But everything is ripped off. The Odd Couple, like, even though. Even a great show, like.

[Nick]

That's a good point. There you go.

[Thomas Lennon]

There's the new Odd Couple.

[Mark]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

So I'm on. I'm. I would be the guy. I'm the guy. I'm the mustache one.

[Nick]

Yeah, yeah. The almost gay one.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, even. But still. Even. Even in the one I was in, I'm still the almost gay one. I'm Felix even.

[Nick]

Right here.

[Producer]

Is that Lamont?

[Thomas Lennon]

That is, yes.

[Nick]

What? From San Francisco? It is on the right.

[Producer]

And that's the guy from.

[Thomas Lennon]

Correct.

[Producer]

Barney Miller on the left.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yes. Yeah. No, that was a fun run. We did like, three half seasons of the Odd Couple.

[Nick]

How cool is Matthew Perry? He's a funny guy.

[Thomas Lennon]

We had a great time. We were very close. Well, we did that. We did a movie called 17 Again Together.

[Nick]

Easy.

[Thomas Lennon]

We did. Nobody remembers that. I did. Did a couple episodes of Friends with Matt.

[Nick]

Did you?

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm Joey's hand twin. Oh, you remember. I'm Joey's hand twin. Pull up, Joey's hand twin. I was in the Friends reunion.

[Nick]

How you doing, hand twin?

[Thomas Lennon]

Yep.

[Mark]

What was it like with Matthew Perry?

[Thomas Lennon]

We had a lot of fun. I mean, Matty's a complicated guy.

[Nick]

I.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know, we. He. You know, there's always ups and downs with Matty, but, like, when he was in his. I mean, he, you know, like, Matty wanted to be, like, a serious playwright. And he was, like, kind of a. He was a heavier personality than a lot of people I know. I mean, his, like, if left to his own devices, I think he would be like, mostly just kind of writing slightly sad plays, like, this is real vibe. And then he kind of accidentally became a tv, you know, like a primetime heartthrob.

[Nick]

Yeah. You know, dated Julia Roberts, for Pete's sake.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, yeah. He was dating Julia Roberts when she was working. I know that he was dating her when she was working on her Irish accent for. For Michael Collins from one of those pictures.

[Mark]

Ah, it's like the worst time to date her.

[Nick]

Yeah. You don't want to.

[Producer]

Was his father in the business?

[Thomas Lennon]

Matty's dad is, I thought, like a Canadian news guy or something.

[Nick]

Ah.

[Thomas Lennon]

I think of his stepdad is. His stepdad is the famous guy. Anyway, we had a lot of fun, all right. We both smoked cigarettes at the time. We smoked a million cigarettes together.

[Nick]

I could see that.

[Thomas Lennon]

Do you like smoking cigarettes in a Porsche?

[Nick]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

We did a lot of it.

[Nick]

How fun was LA back then? Portion around 90s LA must have been the tip top.

[Thomas Lennon]

Knocking, burning darts in a Porsche. Yeah, we had a lot of fun.

[Nick]

Yeah. Do you worry about tv, the state of TV movies and all that?

[Thomas Lennon]

No.

[Nick]

You're not worried?

[Thomas Lennon]

Nah.

[Nick]

You don't think it's shifted?

[Mark]

Well, you've had a lot of success. I mean, you wrote. I don't know if everyone listening knows. He wrote Night at the Museum, which is. That's.

[Nick]

You did.

[Mark]

It's a huge movie.

[Thomas Lennon]

Whoa.

[Nick]

They made three movies.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. There's actually a fourth animated one, and apparently there's gonna be a fifth.

[Nick]

That's insane.

[Thomas Lennon]

But, you know, I. Everybody's worried about everything, but. Yeah, and I worry about stuff too. But then I also don't worry about it because it's like, you know, like when TV was invented, people worried about that and.

[Nick]

Yeah, it's like, good point.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know, and then they're like, oh, some of the people buying studios are evil. And I'm like, well, I worked for the people that used to own studios. Weren't the nicest people in the world either. So it's like, what. Where? You know, so you're optimistic, I'm optimistic, and everything sorts itself out.

[Nick]

I like that.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's refreshing mostly, you know, and all you can do is keep doing good stuff. So you're here, you can keep trying to do good work.

[Nick]

And can we pull up his resume just some way?

[Thomas Lennon]

My resume. If you go to IMDb, it looks like a charades game of, like, a crazy person.

[Nick]

Right.

[Thomas Lennon]

There's no logic to, like, I'm in two Merchant Ivory movies.

[Nick]

Jesus.

[Thomas Lennon]

But I'm also in Boat Trip.

[Mark]

Is that Cuba Gooding Jr. Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm also in a low divorce. I'm also into Jerry seinfeld.

[Nick]

That's right.

[Producer]

11 photos I'm gonna go through.

[Thomas Lennon]

I get a little, little, little. Oh, that's a picture called. That's a Mike Jan picture also from the state. That's a Mike Jan movie called Organ Trail. Oh, very scary sort of western by Michael Patrick Jan from the state director also of. Of. Oh, you got 317 photos of me.

[Producer]

I'm only at 13 here.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, let's just keep. We'll just keep fucking going through and I'll try to remember any of them.

[Nick]

Oh, is that Rose Byrne?

[Thomas Lennon]

That's a show called the Big Leap on Fox. That was great. Same, same.

[Mark]

You've been on a lot of shows that went. But a lot of shows that haven't gone wrecked. Well, I mean, what's that like? When you really believe in something and you're just like, that's it.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. I mean, I've been in shows that were canceled at the table read also.

[Nick]

Really?

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, I'm. I'm doing a little too much in Friends. I feel like there. Look at that face. I'm doing too much. I'm doing too much. Turn it down. That is some cheesy. Those. I'm early in Hollywood. I haven't really been there that long because I should be. I could be doing less.

[Nick]

Any audition tips? I can't nail an audition to save my life.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, no, that is Hancock. Oh, that was fun.

[Mark]

Anything you auditioned for that you were like, I really wish I got it. And it went everything level. Which. Which is one that you thought you were. What's one that you were really close?

[Thomas Lennon]

Positive I was gonna be for like a couple months. It seemed very likely that I was going to be Ford Prefect in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Oh, then I was not. Yeah. The guy who got it was most deaf and he's excellent in it. But I confused you too.

[Mark]

All the time.

[Thomas Lennon]

I know we have. We're endlessly circling the same projects, but he's very good in the picture. But it was weird because I was positive I had it.

[Nick]

That's the worst times.

[Thomas Lennon]

You're positive you have it and then you know what?

[Nick]

You don't totally.

[Thomas Lennon]

You don't. Rodman gets scurries away with it and you're like, ah. But no, there's. I mean, every. Most auditions are heartbreaks.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know.

[Nick]

Damn.

[Thomas Lennon]

I just. I mean, I found out. I saw that I was on the list of, you know, people to consider for the Michael Scott role in the Office, which I never knew was true and they never saw me or anything. But there's a memo, I guess it's in the book about the Office and I was like, oh, that would have been neat.

[Mark]

That's cool.

[Thomas Lennon]

But I'm happy with my life.

[Mark]

Yeah. Who else is on that list?

[Thomas Lennon]

A lot of cool people. Lots of cool people were on that list.

[Mark]

Wasn't Bob Odenkirk on that?

[Thomas Lennon]

For sure?

[Nick]

He was.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, sure on that list. And he might have actually been in. In Paul Diamatti.

[Nick]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

A lot of people were on that list.

[Nick]

Martin Short.

[Thomas Lennon]

That seems like that would have been an odd choice, even though he.

[Nick]

I mean, he's a big. I think.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. It's almost like he's almost too famous to play that.

[Nick]

I watched his documentary, and he talks about how showbiz is 95% failure. Just audition after audition, movies flopping.

[Thomas Lennon]

For me, it's about 99, right? Yeah. If you're hitting 95, you're killing it.

[Mark]

Is there anything. Is there anything you passed on that you almost never.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, it's almost never happened. Like, pretty much never. It would have to be so. I mean, I'm in the. I'm in Puppet Master, the Littlest Reich. So, like, if I'm gonna be in that Reich, I'm in Puppet Master, the Littlest Reich. If I'm in that, what wouldn't I be? Yeah, like, almost.

[Nick]

You know, you're on this podcast.

[Thomas Lennon]

I was doing my garment shopping. Anyway. I'm always. I'm usually in the garment district on.

[Nick]

You got a glass of wine out of it?

[Thomas Lennon]

I got almost a whole glass of wine that was picked by Joe McHale and actually. Really solid.

[Mark]

Really good.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, really.

[Mark]

So is there any type of thing that you haven't done yet that you really want to do?

[Thomas Lennon]

Well, the Broadway thing was one. I've written a couple novels. That was pretty cool.

[Nick]

You're busy out there, Wisconsin.

[Thomas Lennon]

From my life. From the outside, I guess it must look like I feel busy. To me, it's always like, why am I not doing more?

[Nick]

You know, I get that on the

[Thomas Lennon]

inside, it always feels like you're not doing quite enough.

[Nick]

I would say in comedy, we do more in a year than most people do in 20 years, probably. Yes. The traveling, travel, meeting people, staying friendly.

[Thomas Lennon]

Do. We did.

[Mark]

We've done the road for the last, like, 15 years. How hard we've been on the road was, like, pretty crazy. I'm in every town, but I love it. I. I really love it.

[Thomas Lennon]

It is one of the hardest kind of lifestyles, too.

[Nick]

Oh, definitely.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Mark]

But it's also so rewarding. It's so fun.

[Thomas Lennon]

It can't. Yeah, it is. It's a real high yeah, yeah.

[Mark]

But like, to build. To build a home life. It's hard, is. Yeah.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

I kind of stopped doing stand up once I realized how I really liked it. I don't know if I was good at it, but I like doing it. But it's the kind of thing where it is not super conducive to, like, being home and being.

[Nick]

You got that right now. Yeah. I got a baby boy, and it's a lot.

[Thomas Lennon]

Very tough.

[Mark]

Do you have a kid?

[Thomas Lennon]

I do. My son is 16 now.

[Nick]

You're right. In the masturbation era.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Mark]

He seems pretty.

[Thomas Lennon]

I don't know.

[Nick]

I don't hide it well.

[Mark]

You hope they hide it.

[Nick]

Yeah, that would suck.

[Mark]

He's like. Yeah, he's jerking off a lot.

[Nick]

We've been.

[Mark]

We've been walking in on it.

[Thomas Lennon]

But yeah, it's like, it's tough because, like, the, you know, comedy is just always someplace where there's tons of booze and people want to hang out. And you're like, dangle, pick, man. I'll sit on your shoulder. Just like everybody, like, wants to.

[Mark]

You know, that's how this pod started is we were just drinking buddies. People want to come back in the day.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

You know, and you hang out less. So you do a pod.

[Thomas Lennon]

Right. And then you get. We get to meet folks.

[Nick]

There you go.

[Mark]

But it's cool.

[Thomas Lennon]

And watch. We get to watch all of Raw after this.

[Mark]

Is there anyone you really want to work with who you haven't worked with?

[Thomas Lennon]

I don't know. I mean, I keep. I like. The weird thing about me is I kind of like. I like doing all the different jobs.

[Nick]

Yeah. The variety is fun.

[Thomas Lennon]

Like, that's what keeps me at doing this. I think it's very good to diversify the stuff that you do. Like, I. As soon as I'm like, I'm never. I don't ever want to be Work and write movies again because it sucks.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

And it's a nightmare. And then you write a novel and you're like, you know, what I want to do is I want to adapt this book back into a movie. And then, like, it's just. It's good to diversify because there is so much heartbreak in movies and theater and TV and comedy. Like, so much of it is just, you know, shitty.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

That. It's good to diversify that heartbreak a little bit, you know, and have. Have eggs in some different baskets sometimes.

[Nick]

We wrote a movie and we're trying to get it.

[Mark]

I think we're shooting in July, which

[Thomas Lennon]

you're Just going to do it.

[Mark]

We got independent financing, so we got lucky. It's very hard to pitch stuff now. You waste like six months pitching. So we went to independent financing. We got it.

[Thomas Lennon]

But me and Marino pitched two things last year that were like, slam fucking done, like to the top. They seemed amazing. And you find out eight days later in an email, they're like, oh, no, no. They, they didn't want to say wait.

[Mark]

And there's not even like a big like, oh, like, no, no, I'm sorry.

[Thomas Lennon]

Used to be like the, the, the person you pitched to would call you and tell you why it didn't work.

[Nick]

Although I got. It's not for us.

[Thomas Lennon]

Or at least they would say something. But we've, we've now we're in an era of everybody's so used to being ghosted and ghosting people that like, you can go pitch a high level studio executive and you will never hear about it again.

[Nick]

That's true.

[Thomas Lennon]

At all.

[Nick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's fucking rude.

[Nick]

It's weird.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's weird.

[Nick]

I just pitched a kind of a reality show page of stage and everybody passed on it eventually.

[Thomas Lennon]

Did but tell you they passed or did you ask? You had to ask.

[Nick]

And then I said to my manager, why'd they pass? And she was like, I don't know. And so I emailed them and I said, why? I don't know.

[Mark]

Job to know.

[Nick]

So I got the why now from them and they said, well, it's too niche, blah blah. I was like, okay, thank you. That's all I need to know.

[Thomas Lennon]

But it actually having closure and stuff like that, it's also the way that like the world should work.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Like if people don't like the idea that you have say why?

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Don't just be like, I'm never speaking to them ever again.

[Nick]

Exactly.

[Thomas Lennon]

I will never speak to them. Like, just fucking say what you didn't like.

[Nick]

I know, but that's why the Internet is so it's fun because if you get a big pop on the Internet, you go, you could have had that. Yep.

[Mark]

I mean that was our careers. I mean you talk about kind of being like the anti SNL in the 90s, but we were, you know, with stand up specials we got passed on by everyone and we put our shit on YouTube and it just kind of changed our lives. Of course.

[Nick]

So way better and now.

[Thomas Lennon]

But I mean for the, you know, for the reference, when we went to do the like Marina 911 at Quibi. What? Quibi Katzenberg's little thing that he wanted to do with the.

[Mark]

Oh, we remember. Yeah, we got Pat. We got Our idea got passed on by Quibi.

[Nick]

Yeah, true.

[Thomas Lennon]

You poor things.

[Mark]

Yeah, we had a loaded shotgun in our mouth after that outside. Quibby said no.

[Thomas Lennon]

We were also the stadium at Auburn Hills. But the. The what they. They showed us what they were trying to compete with. And it wasn't with Netflix and it wasn't with the movie studios and it wasn't with TV. It was with YouTube. They were trying to compete with YouTube because the eyeballs, if you look at eyeball charts, like Netflix is amazing. It's YouTube's here.

[Nick]

Is that right?

[Thomas Lennon]

The chart is goes. You can't see the chart anymore.

[Nick]

Whoa. Pull it up.

[Thomas Lennon]

YouTube. Just do YouTube versus Netflix eyeballs like eyeballs or View. It's crazy.

[Mark]

But to talk about like your optimism, it's like you don't know what's going to pop for you. You don't know what's going to hit. So just have a shitload of plates spinning. Yes. Care about all those plates.

[Nick]

Yes.

[Thomas Lennon]

Viewer. Viewers. Viewership. Yeah.

[Mark]

But we didn't know. I mean, I felt failure doing that.

[Nick]

Yeah, I know. So did I. But it worked out. That's kind of how it goes sometimes.

[Thomas Lennon]

All 13% of all television screening in the United States is YouTube.

[Nick]

13% of all. Wow. 2 billion monthly. That's logged in too.

[Thomas Lennon]

So like 1/4 of the planet is watching YouTube.

[Nick]

Yowza.

[Thomas Lennon]

Well, Netflix has 8 or 9%. That's pretty fucking great. Yeah, but they're 5, 4 to 5% under YouTube. So you've gone right to put your thing on the thing that. I mean, it's like.

[Nick]

But you can't compete with YouTube. Everyone's uploading every second. Netflix. You have to wait for the new thing. Hey, here's the new special. Here's the new movie out. I feel like YouTube, there's always something new on YouTube.

[Thomas Lennon]

I will say that's one thing about watching YouTube stuff is sometimes you feel like, hey, this is filler. You just put this out today because you had to put out something today. And you can feel that sometimes, which I miss.

[Mark]

Like when you ever watch a movie from the 40s and it's like 90 minutes and airtight dialogue. Perfect. And now, I mean, look, we're part of the problem on this podcast we're on here. But we still. Our movie, I feel like, is tight. Joke, joke, joke. Like that's what we like.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, I've actually. I'm sure someone else has an expression for this, but I've Started calling it spacing, which is streamer pacing.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Because you start watching shows on any streaming service and you're like, who decided to make this 28 minutes longer than it needed to be?

[Nick]

Yes.

[Thomas Lennon]

The answer is because they want to have 10 of them. Yeah, but, like, this would have been covered. You're seeing stuff on streaming shows that would have been covered in a movie, as you said, in about 90 minutes.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. But if it's a streaming show, wouldn't it be great if there was eight to ten of these?

[Nick]

Yes.

[Thomas Lennon]

So let's just linger, and then we're gonna. We're gonna linger over here, and then we'll linger back there.

[Nick]

There you go.

[Thomas Lennon]

Everything lingers.

[Nick]

You're right. They make it a twist.

[Mark]

I ran into Nate Borgasse last night, the seller who told me he's coming back on the podcast.

[Nick]

Oh, really?

[Mark]

But. But I go, I'll make sure Mark doesn't fart on you next time.

[Thomas Lennon]

I really stink you.

[Nick]

Sorry, that was bad.

[Mark]

I'll make sure Marsh doesn't fart on you. And it goes.

[Thomas Lennon]

Thanks. It's like 100 degrees outside.

[Mark]

Oh, my God.

[Nick]

Dude, that's burrito from a bodega.

[Thomas Lennon]

I also feel like it got into my Joel McHale wine.

[Nick]

Sorry, Joel. Hold on.

[Mark]

Let me. Let me make sure. Hold on one sec.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, it.

[Nick]

Oh, it's your.

[Mark]

What the.

[Thomas Lennon]

Dude, I would like. I just want to make sure you don't need to see a doctor, because that was. That was legitimately like, covering up a fart.

[Nick]

Spray. Don't spray.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

That's horrific.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. Has a doctor said that you're okay?

[Nick]

No.

[Mark]

This guy worked with Matthew Perry in. He's worried about you.

[Nick]

I'll be there for you.

[Thomas Lennon]

I think you should probably. You should probably see a doctor pretty soon.

[Mark]

Oh, my God.

[Nick]

A priest and a seance in here. Some sage. Holy hell akbar.

[Mark]

That is a really.

[Thomas Lennon]

Danny Thomas's real name.

[Nick]

Three times backwards.

[Thomas Lennon]

He has to appear.

[Nick]

Yeah. Holy shit.

[Producer]

I'll eat a poop sandwich there.

[Mark]

That is brutal.

[Thomas Lennon]

I think.

[Nick]

I think it's passed. Jesus Christ.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's not all the way gone.

[Mark]

I mean, usually your cartoon farts don't smell.

[Nick]

No, that was a bad one. That was a burrito I had from a store. A bodega?

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Nick]

Down the street.

[Thomas Lennon]

Was it made out of cat food? What?

[Nick]

Oh, man.

[Thomas Lennon]

Do they have a letter grade in the window? And the answer is. We know that the answer is no.

[Mark]

Yes, that is. That candle ain't gonna help.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm just trying to smell the wine. Now, to get away from that,

[Mark]

someone was. Told me they do coffee grounds on a plane in case they're next to someone stinky.

[Thomas Lennon]

You ever watch the flight attendant will walk down with an open bag of coffee grounds.

[Mark]

Smart.

[Thomas Lennon]

And kind of like, squeeze it. Give it a little, like.

[Nick]

Yeah. Activate it.

[Thomas Lennon]

It'll kill a lot of.

[Nick]

I had a fat lady on a flight. She had the worst.

[Thomas Lennon]

That was her only character.

[Nick]

Well, it was more. I held out. I held back. Okay. She was a fat, heavyset woman of color. Wow. And she had, like, a tight body. So she had the worst fat and heavy set. Yes. Wow.

[Mark]

Mark this and Morrissey in the same episode. We're making a lot of enemies.

[Thomas Lennon]

You literally ripping farts. Yeah. She was a podcast called Ripping Farts and Starting. And Starting Feuds. Holy.

[Nick]

That's a good title. Farts and Feuds.

[Thomas Lennon]

Farts and Feuds. Welcome back.

[Mark]

We pitched that to Quibi, too. They wouldn't bite.

[Thomas Lennon]

You're gonna end up with a shotgun in your mouth outside the stadium in Auburn Hills listening to Daughter by Pearl Jam.

[Mark]

Quibi was. I mean, that was a crazy.

[Thomas Lennon]

I almost had two Quibi shows.

[Nick]

Really? Almost Swip bragging. Yeah.

[Mark]

Quibby and Ciso.

[Nick]

Where was that, too?

[Mark]

Ciso.

[Thomas Lennon]

I had to produce the show for Ciso. Really?

[Nick]

Oh, wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Anything else?

[Thomas Lennon]

That's when we ran out of names, remember?

[Nick]

Yes, yes.

[Thomas Lennon]

We just took anything from Danny K and we put it.

[Nick]

Vimeo as well. Remember Vimeo?

[Thomas Lennon]

Vimeo's still around.

[Mark]

Vimeo is good.

[Nick]

Now, this to be.

[Thomas Lennon]

Vimeo is where you, like. If you make a video. That's too.

[Mark]

We lost him. We lost him.

[Nick]

All right, all right.

[Mark]

We lost him on the mic.

[Nick]

This is the second time Lennon's been shot.

[Mark]

Oh, my God.

[Nick]

Oh. All right. That's it. That's it. The chamber's empty. I had to get the last one out. It was. It was bubbling, bubbling crude. Holy hell. Sorry, Tommy. Good to have you back.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's good to be here.

[Nick]

This is your Reno911.

[Mark]

Is there any pressure to bring that show back? Do people hit you up all the time?

[Nick]

Oh, that was a classic.

[Thomas Lennon]

I mean, we have done a fair. Like, we. We reboot it here and there, and, you know, it. It's sort of an evergreen thing. It's not super complicated, you know?

[Mark]

Yeah, yeah, we.

[Thomas Lennon]

One nice thing. People think that, like, it's weird.

[Mark]

It has.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's having a moment now because people are like, it's so incorrect. You know, it doesn't give a. That's.

[Nick]

Well, I guess you said The N word.

[Thomas Lennon]

Actually, by a lot of standards, it would be. Yeah, but to us, it was always just like, oh, this is just funny. We are. We're not. Not. We're not. We're never gross for to be gross. And we're never.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know, but we also never filter. The show is very. Not filtered.

[Nick]

You know, same with us. So, yeah, obviously, I had a crush on the blonde Wendy. Wendy.

[Thomas Lennon]

Why wouldn't.

[Mark]

She's great. She's awesome.

[Thomas Lennon]

And a ditch.

[Mark]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

I don't think she'd mind me saying she's a dish. Yeah. Wendy's. Yeah, she's a.

[Nick]

Is that her?

[Thomas Lennon]

No, that's Carrie. Also a dish. My dear friend. Yes. The state was. Nobody wanted us to do anything. No one gave a. We would do live shows and things like that. And MTV was doing a show called you Wrote it, you watch it. David was an intern at MTV on some other news and stuff, and he'd heard about the show, and he said. We pitched. We said, hey, can we make some videos for this show? And they were like, no. And we're like, oh, okay. And then we did the thing that ended up changing our lives in show business. And it's still, I think, what you were just talking about. Instead of pitching it, we went and shot three sketches.

[Nick]

That's the way to do it.

[Thomas Lennon]

And we gave. We walked in and gave them to them, and it was like, look at this.

[Nick]

And wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

That. From that. We got. You watch it. From your. You watch it. We got the State. Jon Stewart was the host of that. So Jon got the Jon Stewart Show. We got the State. And then from the State, you know, viva variety and Reno 911.

[Nick]

Wow.

[Thomas Lennon]

Probably, I don't know, 30 movies of some combination of these people have made. I mean, most of these people are in Gail Daughtry, the movie.

[Nick]

Oh, it's great. You guys are still buds.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Producer]

Anyone in here sort of not doing what they want to do today?

[Thomas Lennon]

Every single person in the group pretty much does what they. Todd does art. He does, like, art installations. And Todd is the founder and the pilot in the front there. Todd lives in Seoul and does, like, art installations and stuff.

[Nick]

Interesting. Yeah. What the hell?

[Thomas Lennon]

Everybody, pretty much everyone else, almost everyone in that picture directs movies.

[Nick]

Cool.

[Mark]

I thought that was young Todd Barry in that flannel for a second.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, that's David Wayne Showalter is one of Hollywood's biggest directors. Ken obviously directs and is in everything. I'm in a lot of stuff. That is Kevin Allison. He has a very popular podcast called Risk Scary stories. Have you done risk?

[Nick]

Many years ago.

[Thomas Lennon]

Did you fart on him?

[Nick]

He didn't have one loaded, but what the hell. The guy.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's a bummer because he pro. He might be into it.

[Nick]

That's true.

[Thomas Lennon]

He's probably of the state your best audience for that.

[Nick]

Oh, okay. Good to know. Well, I took a risk. This guy in the brown jacket.

[Thomas Lennon]

Joe Triglio.

[Nick]

Joe. He does.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm often mistaken for Joe.

[Nick]

What is the scene where he's on drugs?

[Thomas Lennon]

Super Troopers.

[Nick]

I could pinpoint it.

[Mark]

Super Troopers.

[Nick]

So good.

[Thomas Lennon]

Still not super bad.

[Nick]

Super Troopers.

[Mark]

I think it's in both.

[Thomas Lennon]

Is Joe in us?

[Mark]

He might be in both.

[Thomas Lennon]

Joe's. I know in super bad.

[Producer]

What's his last name?

[Thomas Lennon]

Joe Lotruglio with a lo and then capital T again.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

He is the member of the state that I'm most often mistaken for. No, otherwise I'm mistaken for a member of the Kids in the hall quite a bit.

[Nick]

Oh, Bruce or Dave.

[Thomas Lennon]

I think I'm more.

[Producer]

I don't know.

[Mark]

Dave. Oh, he's not.

[Thomas Lennon]

Who's the guy in Super Troopers you're thinking of?

[Nick]

That's who I was thinking of though. You nailed it.

[Thomas Lennon]

Really. But he's in. Joe's in, I mean, a million movies.

[Nick]

Christina Hendrix, ex husband.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's not. Joe's not. Joe's never married. Yeah, Joe was never married to Christina Hendricks.

[Nick]

That guy was married to her.

[Mark]

We've been through this on the pod before. We've literally done this before.

[Nick]

Well, we drink a lot of it.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm in a terrific movie with Christina Hendricks. You can watch it. It's called Pottersville.

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Thomas Lennon]

At one point it was at an actual zero on rotten tomatoes. I think now it's at 16. Can we go to rotten tomatoes? Pottersville.

[Nick]

Wow.

[Mark]

Zero. Crazy.

[Nick]

That's.

[Thomas Lennon]

Zero is almost impossible because you have to have enough reviews, right. To. To eat, to register. 14%.

[Producer]

Yeah, right.

[Mark]

Yeah. But look at that popcorn meter.

[Thomas Lennon]

That is. It only is good by comparison to. But again, another thing about life. Look at my. The biggest hit I've ever been affiliated with. It's just both ends. You're just. Look at Night of the Museum.

[Mark]

It's like having a baby on the podcast.

[Thomas Lennon]

The biggest hit of my entire life that I've ever been a part of on Rotten Tomatoes is probably what, 40 something?

[Nick]

Maybe.

[Mark]

Whoa.

[Producer]

That's crazy.

[Nick]

Whoa.

[Thomas Lennon]

Welcome to my fucking life.

[Nick]

So you never know.

[Mark]

Yeah, but it's got. Look at the popcorn meter.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's still not that good. That's an F. That's a yeah, see, that's a terrible review.

[Mark]

But is that crazy when you write that? Are you like, this is going to be so well received or what?

[Thomas Lennon]

I've stopped thinking that a long, long time ago. Wow.

[Nick]

You wrote.

[Thomas Lennon]

And even worrying about it because.

[Nick]

Impressive. Impressive.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know, comedy generally doesn't get reviewed that well.

[Nick]

You got that right.

[Thomas Lennon]

You know, but I mean, it's about to have its fourth or fifth film. Wow. So it's like, you know, you gotta. Oh, thank you. Did you just rate it nicely? Thank you.

[Nick]

Good man sake. He's not a member. Did you get to direct that as well?

[Thomas Lennon]

No, no. God no. That's Shawn Levy. Probably the biggest director in Hollywood currently.

[Nick]

Wait, what is Levy done?

[Thomas Lennon]

He just did one called Wolverine. Deadpool versus Wolverine.

[Mark]

Pretty big.

[Nick]

Very bad. Geez. I heard of. You heard of this guy?

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, Sean Levy. Huge deal.

[Nick]

I don't know Levy. All right.

[Thomas Lennon]

You'd like him. He's a good guy.

[Nick]

Okay, great.

[Thomas Lennon]

Don't rip a fart on him when you meet him.

[Nick]

I won't.

[Producer]

Quick question. So when my kid goes to night. Museum night at the museum, do I

[Thomas Lennon]

get a little kickback from that? I do.

[Producer]

Do you get kickbacks from this outfit?

[Thomas Lennon]

I get a very small kickback from that outfit. It's not as good as you would think. Yeah, no, I don't get anything from when they go to the museum. No, from the outfit that is an officially licensed lieutenant. I. I'm gonna tell you right now, I don't do as well as you would like. And. And I'm just gonna. Can I quickly. If we're starting fucking feuds.

[Nick]

Yeah. Hell yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm gonna start a real, real, actual feud.

[Nick]

Bring it on, Fetty.

[Thomas Lennon]

I'm gonna give a great big F you to Spirit Halloween.

[Nick]

Oh, shit.

[Thomas Lennon]

Now here's what I'm gonna say. If you try to find the Lieutenant Dangle outfit at Spirit Halloween, you're not gonna find it. You know why? Cuz? Look up Sergeant Short Pants at Spirit Halloween. They've made up their own.

[Nick]

They ripped you off.

[Thomas Lennon]

They've made up their own Lieutenant Dangle outfit. As if there's just always cops in shorts.

[Nick]

There we go. Wow.

[Mark]

Yo, give him a bad review, dude.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, that. That might be the official.

[Nick]

Again, this is.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, no, no. Sergeant Short Bands cop costume. Yeah, so they. They've made up. They've made up their own version of it.

[Mark]

It's getting some good reviews. Look at that.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's got great reviews. These fucking asshol. Oh, this the. The knockoff Lieutenant Dangle outfit has Better reviews than night at the museum.

[Nick]

Welcome.

[Thomas Lennon]

Welcome to my life.

[Nick]

Wow. Spirit. You. This is why your airline went under, guys.

[Thomas Lennon]

This is why you up. Your airline. Oh, no, you can give it a good review. It's all right. You know what? A rising tide lifts all ships.

[Nick]

Say you ripped the guy off.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Mark]

And if you listen to the podcast, go to Spirit Halloween and destroy it.

[Thomas Lennon]

No, no, no, no, no. A rising tide lifts all ships. But you can also get the official one. Some fucking place.

[Mark]

All right.

[Thomas Lennon]

Don't destroy Amazon.

[Mark]

Hold your fire.

[Thomas Lennon]

Not that this is an ad for Amazon, but I think they have the real.

[Mark]

They need a boost.

[Thomas Lennon]

You're wearing the real one over there. That's the real one over there. It looks good.

[Nick]

Hell, yeah. I was wondering. I always wonder how guys like you stay rich. And then it's stuff like this. These little nickel and dime things. There's streams of revenue coming in.

[Thomas Lennon]

Did you see? I wonder how guys like you stay rich.

[Nick]

Well, you've been in the game for six decades. Yeah. So you always wonder, is it Peter? Does it fizzle?

[Mark]

I'm glad the fart wasn't the most insulting thing you've done.

[Nick]

You know what I'm saying?

[Thomas Lennon]

No, no. But here's what you. The real secret of that is take every time you get paid, take 10 of it and put it in the stock market. Yeah.

[Nick]

Oh, is that right?

[Thomas Lennon]

Someone's telling you that right now?

[Nick]

No.

[Thomas Lennon]

Oh, you need a time machine where I tell you that like 20 years ago.

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Just do that forever.

[Mark]

Now that.

[Thomas Lennon]

Dude.

[Mark]

Fanduel. Go, Nick.

[Nick]

Or.

[Thomas Lennon]

Or Fanduel. Yeah, Lance. All right.

[Nick]

Well. Yeah.

[Mark]

Well, dude, it's been awesome having you. This has been a great episode.

[Thomas Lennon]

You want to go spend some real money in the garment district?

[Nick]

Yes. Let's do it. Let's make our own show.

[Mark]

And remember, pull up the movie one more time.

[Thomas Lennon]

Gilded Daughter. It's a great picture. G A I L. Where can people see? Oh, there's a trailer. It comes out July 10th. Everywhere in the world. It's in real movie theaters.

[Mark]

Wow.

[Nick]

Hell, yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

Real movie theaters. July 10th. If you like, anything with the state. Camerino, David Wayne.

[Nick]

Love it.

[Thomas Lennon]

These are the people behind Wet Hot American Summer, obviously. Wanderlust, wanderlust and the 10 and, you

[Nick]

know, all the good.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's a great premise of a picture. It's a premise so funny. I was like, are they. Is this gonna get made? And then they. They made it it.

[Nick]

And that funny was so funny that you're worried it sometimes it's so funny.

[Thomas Lennon]

You worry Is it really going to get made?

[Nick]

Yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

But this one did get made. Oh, it's at a 74. Holy.

[Nick]

Hey, it's quite an upgrade from Night of the Mew.

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah, almost.

[Nick]

It's almost double true.

[Thomas Lennon]

Almost double the Night at the Museum.

[Nick]

Long titles. Sometimes it was actually.

[Thomas Lennon]

I think it was longer.

[Nick]

Really?

[Thomas Lennon]

Yeah.

[Nick]

You know, it's like, whatever, Jackie. And what are we looking at, Johnny Make?

[Thomas Lennon]

We're looking at your tour dates. We're plugging dates.

[Nick]

Plugging dates, baby.

[Thomas Lennon]

We got June 7th. Let's see. Where is the closest you are to anywhere I live? All right.

[Nick]

I'm going to Milwaukee.

[Thomas Lennon]

You mean Milwaukee?

[Nick]

Yeah. If you want to do a June

[Thomas Lennon]

6th at the Improv, I will be very. I don't get to Milwaukee till, like, the couple days after that.

[Nick]

Okay. That's what they all say.

[Thomas Lennon]

Walk is a beautiful town. Hiding in love.

[Mark]

Milwaukee.

[Thomas Lennon]

Hiding in plain sight.

[Mark]

It's awesome.

[Thomas Lennon]

Somebody was very smart and they were looking for a cool place to live. There wasn't, like, already crowded in a bummer.

[Nick]

The cold, though.

[Mark]

But it's a great city.

[Nick]

It's a great city.

[Mark]

Underrated.

[Nick]

I'm going to June. I'm excited.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's why Prince stayed in Minneapolis.

[Nick]

That's right.

[Thomas Lennon]

Keeps away some of the kooks.

[Nick]

There you go.

[Thomas Lennon]

Who's playing Budapest?

[Mark]

Me.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's gonna be.

[Mark]

And by the way, tickets still available in Budapest. That one is looking rough.

[Thomas Lennon]

Not that many.

[Mark]

No, no. Everything else is moving.

[Thomas Lennon]

What's available?

[Mark]

Hey, what's the best seat I can get in Budapest? Lisbon's doing great. Athens, doing great. Adding a show in Warsaw.

[Thomas Lennon]

Where are you gonna be in Athens?

[Mark]

I don't know.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's the hottest city in the world. And I don't mean that in the best way.

[Producer]

Best seats you can get.

[Nick]

All right.

[Thomas Lennon]

That's the best seat I can get right there.

[Producer]

Yeah, It's.

[Thomas Lennon]

How much?

[Nick]

28 Gerkies.

[Thomas Lennon]

28 Gerkies.

[Nick]

That's a lot of people.

[Thomas Lennon]

Actual pickles, man.

[Mark]

Two Cornish owns.

[Thomas Lennon]

I knew their economy was up. I didn't know it was like.

[Nick]

Like pickle. Yeah, that was a pickle.

[Thomas Lennon]

It's a pickle economy.

[Mark]

Yeah. We got. What do I have?

[Thomas Lennon]

You know, Zagreb. You're gonna kill it.

[Mark]

Oh, Zagreb, dude. We're doing well in Zagreb. Budapest, not looking great. Vienna, Warsaw.

[Thomas Lennon]

Have fun.

[Mark]

You have fun adding a second show. Helsinki, Stockholm and Copenhagen. Gonna be a lot of fun.

[Nick]

Hell, yeah.

[Thomas Lennon]

I just learned that that's how you fucking spell Copenhagen. And it blew my mind.

[Nick]

There you go.

[Thomas Lennon]

I didn't even Know that looked like a word.

[Mark]

It's a great city.

[Nick]

Great beautiful town.

[Producer]

Mark, where are you gonna be?

[Nick]

I'll be at the Irvine Improv. Come on out. That's a big room we got. We got one show left to sell out. Then we got the Tempe Improv.

[Thomas Lennon]

Picture of me backstage of the Irvine Improv not to bring.

[Mark]

I think there is.

[Thomas Lennon]

Tell you why it's there. I think it got moved from. From the Hollywood one. And they're just like, ah, move here. You can go.

[Mark]

Yeah, Irvine's a good one.

[Thomas Lennon]

I got moved down to Irvine.

[Nick]

Great, great club though. Mark Ridley is in Detroit area. Royal Oak, Cleveland Hilarities and Seattle. Emerald City side. Spurs in Tampa and the clubhouse in the Hamptons.

[Thomas Lennon]

Going out to that cobs you got a couple nights.

[Nick]

Cobs is.

[Thomas Lennon]

Here's the thing about Cobbs. You don't even need to be good to play Cobbs. Cobbs is such a friendly place.

[Nick]

Great crowds.

[Thomas Lennon]

You could just try.

[Nick]

I'll fart up there.

[Thomas Lennon]

You could just try stuff out. Yeah, you can really try stuff out. And because San Francisco and Cobbs in

[Nick]

particular, the best places in the world, Nashville and Pittsburgh.

[Mark]

And you have to cancel some of these if we shoot that movie.

[Nick]

But you better believe it.

[Mark]

It looks like we're shooting it, so that's what I hear. Fingers crossed.

[Nick]

All right. I'll believe it when I see it.

[Mark]

Awesome to hang out with you, Thomas.

[Thomas Lennon]

Pleasure.

[Nick]

This is a treat and an honor.

[Mark]

Cheers.

[Nick]

Hey, slam chamorcy Sunday's the day for

[Thomas Lennon]

my next bender A bit of fever wreck, you know the fear juice. Close. I've had a little too much burping and Norman's talking shit about the Pope and I get down in the same way up on the roof like a cops coming and naked Samuel is feeling dangerous I'm out to lunch here in New Orleans this woman doesn't look like I remember her and I get down in the same way we might be true.