Rob Reiner

Summary

Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (Sometimes)

Episode: Rob Reiner

Release Date: September 10, 2025
Host(s): Ted Danson (Woody Harrelson absent from this episode)
Guest: Rob Reiner

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Episode Overview

This episode features legendary director, writer, and actor Rob Reiner in an intimate, free-flowing conversation with Ted Danson. Ostensibly celebrating the release of the "Spinal Tap" sequel ("Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues") and its companion book ("A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever"), the episode organically weaves through tales of Hollywood lineage, improvisational comedy, creative breakthroughs, growing up Reiner, the making of iconic films, relationships across generations, and heartfelt reflections on advocacy and democracy. The tone is candid, warm, and affectionate, marked by mutual admiration and deep dives into the craft of comedy, the bonds of show business family, and the perilous state of American politics.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Comedy Lineage and the Roots of Improvisation

[02:08–04:01]

• Comedy Legacy: Ted and Rob bond over being part of a vast comedic “tribe” that stretches back to Sid Caesar’s Show of Shows alumni—a club that includes Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Neil Simon, and Rob’s own father Carl Reiner, among others.
• Anecdotes about Jimmy & Abe Burrows: Ted recalls director Jimmy Burrows’ links to that world; Rob and Ted swap stories about mutual friends and formative early TV days.
• Lovely Penny Marshall Digression: Ted (jokingly) recounts a brief, funny experience making out with Penny Marshall for Laverne & Shirley and both express fondness for her.

"First of all, there's Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, my father… anybody who made you laugh in the second half of the 20th century is represented."
— Rob Reiner, [02:15]

2. The Genesis and Impact of This Is Spinal Tap

[04:26–13:25]

• Ted’s Confession: Admits only just watched Spinal Tap the night before, instantly loving it.
• Origin Story: Rob details at length how Spinal Tap evolved from a one-off satire for a 1979 ABC special to a landmark film, improvisation at its heart (see [04:59–11:18]).
  • The project’s rocky road: studio rejections, indie spirit, making a 20-minute test reel, lucky breaks, persistence.
  • The group created an extensive “backstory Bible” for the band, which enabled them to improvise with total authenticity.
  • Comparisons to Curb Your Enthusiasm—both rooted in deep improvisational backgrounds.
• Improvisation as Foundation: Entire dialogue was improvised, with only outlines provided.

“We realized when we were working on this screenplay… there was no way we could communicate in screenplay form what this was going to be… It had to be cinema verité and all that."
— Rob Reiner, [08:46]

“It’s like jazz musicians... you fall in and you just start riffing with each other.”
— Rob Reiner, [16:55]

3. Spinal Tap’s Rocky Reception and Enduring Legacy

[18:49–21:33]

• Initial Reception: The film flopped at test screenings—audiences didn’t get it. Rob read "the worst, worst cards ever," but laughed at the creative misspellings of 'movie' ([19:55]).
• Rock Musicians’ Identification: Over the years, real bands (like Sting’s) came to deeply identify with the film, embracing its truthfulness about the music business' absurdities and heartbreak.

“It became, slowly, part of the rock and roll scene, where bands on tour would have the tape, the DVD on their tour buses... and I think of it as we created this fictional band and this kind of parallel universe. And then all of a sudden the real world started creeping in.”
— Rob Reiner, [20:25]

4. ‘Spinal Tap 2’: The New Sequel

[21:39–26:08]

• Reluctance Turned to Excitement: For years the group resisted a sequel, but winning back rights (after legal wrangling) and finding an organic story—reuniting after 15 years apart—changed their minds.
• Commitment to Authentic Musicianship: Every note in both films is played by the actors themselves, and major music stars (Elton John, Paul McCartney) appear in the new film.
• Shared Joy in Reunion: Rob likens their creative "schnadling" to the camaraderie Ted recognizes from Cheers cast dynamics.

“We never got any money... Over the years, with DVDs and videos and foreign sales and all that, we each got 82 cents.”
— Rob Reiner, [22:06]

“They love to play with each other. So even if they hadn’t played long, they fall right back in... just like old friends.”
— Rob Reiner, [25:44]

5. The Companion Book: “A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever”

[28:03–29:43]

• Structure: The book is double-sided: one side covers Spinal Tap’s behind-the-scenes history, the other features ‘in-character’ interviews (à la Marty DiBergi).
• Writing: Rob wrote most of it with help from his Spinal Tap co-creators and journalist David Kamp.

"If you flip the book over, the other side is called Smell the Book. Marty DiBergi, the character I play, interviews the guys in character and they talk about their lives. So you get both."
— Rob Reiner, [29:17]

6. Growing Up Reiner: Lessons from Carl and Early Showbiz Roots

[33:16–43:54]

• Early Television and Family Influence: Rob recounts watching his dad on TV, spending summers on the Dick Van Dyke Show set, and a (mostly affectionate) anecdote about grabbing Mary Tyler Moore’s rear as a teen, with a comic payoff decades later ([35:38–37:46]).
• Professional Self-Doubt and Growing Validation: Rob shares how his father was emotionally reserved and slow to openly validate his talents, but pivotal moments (directing No Exit at 19) changed their relationship.

“It’s the first time I ever heard validation like that… And [then] he said: ‘I’m not worried about you. Whatever you decide to do, you’re gonna do it good.’ And that was a big deal.”
— Rob Reiner, [43:54]

7. Collaboration and Directing Philosophy

[48:18–53:57]

• Favorite Film: Stand By Me is Rob’s personal favorite, as it represented his own sensibility and confirmed he could blend humor, nostalgia, and drama ([48:18]).
• Collaborative Atmosphere: On All in the Family and on films, a spirit of communal creativity (“creative communism”) prevails, favoring open suggestion regardless of hierarchy.

"This is the best interview I’ve ever had. Why? Because we’re just talking… They always, everybody, they look at notes, they ask a question that’s on a list… but this is just natural."
— Rob Reiner, [41:00]

8. The Role of Advocacy and Lessons from Norman Lear

[64:06–69:57]

• Taking on Advocacy: Rob traces his activist roots to Norman Lear, whose People for the American Way modeled using fame for good (church/state separation, etc.). Rob’s own efforts include landmark propositions for early childhood in California, helping lead the fight for marriage equality, and environmental work.
• Serious Risks for Democracy: Rob offers sobering reflections on American democracy’s current fragility, drawing from personal and family history (his wife’s mother survived Auschwitz; his uncle fought at D-Day), and sees alarming parallels with autocratic trajectories elsewhere.

“I saw you can use your platform, your show business platform and whatever fame you got, and you can put it towards something you believe in and make a difference.”
— Rob Reiner, [64:49]

9. Politics, Hopelessness, and Hope

[69:57–82:42]

• Democracy at a Crossroads: A frank assessment of threats—autocracy rising, rule of law under siege, social media-disinformation storms, and the fragility of America’s bonds.
• Why Hope Matters: Rob still sees hope, suggesting that history has always been a battle between “good and evil,” and that vigilance, activism, and modeling hope—even if the outcome is uncertain for older generations—are essential.

"I know that the positive part of me thinks we can go forward and we have to preserve this. We have to have an example that we can show the rest of the world to say this is the way we should all live together as one."
— Rob Reiner, [81:03]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On finding your tribe:
  “If they [friends] got [the 2000 Year Old Man], that was a bond, you could know. OK, if they dug that, then I could connect with them.”
  — Rob Reiner, [39:28]

• On rejection and parental praise:
  "In front of him [his father], I auditioned, and he said, no. There’s no bigger rejection—your father says you can't do it. But... he came backstage afterwards and he said, 'That was good. No bullshit.' And that was a big deal."
  — Rob Reiner, [43:54]

• On Spinal Tap bootstrapping:
  "We made 20 minutes with backstage footage, concert footage, and interview footage... and I showed it to [the exec], and I said, 'this is the kind of thing we’re going to do.' He said, 'I hate this.'"
  — Rob Reiner, [07:52]

• Heartfelt Laughter:
  "I'm full of it because I literally watched it for the first time last night. It was amazing."
  — Ted Danson, [15:27]

• On politics of the moment:
  "I’m hoping this is a massive step back that we’re taking right now in hopes of us moving forward. But it’s scary, because it may not be."
  — Rob Reiner, [69:32]

• On hope through darkness:
  "We have to jump in and stay vigilant… you and I may not leave this world seeing it where we want it to be, but ultimately it can be there."
  — Rob Reiner, [82:29]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Comedy lineage, Show of Shows, and early influences: [02:08–04:01]
• Making of This Is Spinal Tap: [04:26–13:25]
• Improvisation philosophy and group dynamics: [13:25–16:55]
• Spinal Tap cult following and new sequel: [18:49–26:08]
• The book "A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever": [28:03–29:43]
• On Carl Reiner, Dick Van Dyke, showbiz childhood: [33:16–39:28]
• Validation from his father, summing up their relationship: [43:54–45:19]
• Reflections on directing, acting, film bests: [48:18–53:57]
• Advocacy roots, Norman Lear, Prop 10, marriage equality: [64:06–69:57]
• Contemporary politics & democracy in peril, hope and resilience: [69:57–82:42]

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Tone, Feel & Ending

Warm, deeply personal, often hilarious, and sometimes somber, this episode captures Hollywood’s legacy of kinship but also faces squarely the urgency of our current moment. Rob Reiner’s humor and candor, paired with Ted Danson’s open admiration and self-deprecating warmth, make this a genuinely insightful and moving longform conversation.

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Recommended For

• Fans of Hollywood history and improv comedy development
• Those interested in behind-the-scenes stories of comedy’s greats (All in the Family, Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, etc.)
• Listeners seeking reflections on legacy, family, and activism
• Anyone worried about the state of democracy—and hopeful for better days

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Catch “Spinal Tap 2: The End Continues” in theaters September 12, and pick up “A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever” for the full story!

Transcript

[Ted Danson]

Where everybody KNOWS your name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try [e-mail] Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and and affiliates price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states.

[Rob Reiner]

This is the best interview I've ever had. Why? Because we're just talking.

[Ted Danson]

Suck on that, Conan. Okay. Welcome back to where EVERYBODY KNOWS your name. I am so happy to be talking to today's guest director and writer Rob Reiner. He has just a magnificent body of work, the Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally, Spinal Tap, Stand By Me, A Few Good Men and much more. And by body of work, I don't just mean his movies. I'm talking about his career of advocacy, which we'll also get into. Many of you will be excited to know that Spinal Tap 2 the End continues, which Rob directed and co wrote, hits theaters this weekend, September 12th. There's also a companion book that's out now called A Fine Line Between Stupid and Clever, the Story of Spinal Tap. So let's meet him now. Rob Reiner, I'm actually very excited to talk to you.

[Rob Reiner]

Thank you.

[Ted Danson]

You're one of my heroes.

[Rob Reiner]

I never saved your life, though. That's what a hero does. I don't think I should be in that category of hero.

[Ted Danson]

All right. You're part of a lineage that I am part of, too, but way down kind of the line of a tribe of funny people.

[Rob Reiner]

Yes.

[Ted Danson]

Who I am so grateful to be considered part of that tribe, even though I'm down the line a little bit.

[Rob Reiner]

You know, it's funny. You know, I have a picture in my office and it's the people who have written for Sid Caesar, the old show of shows. And I look at that and I think, oh, my God. First of all, there's Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, my father, Joseph Stein, who wrote Fiddler on the Roof. I mean, anybody who made you laugh in the second half of the 20th century is represented. And I thought, wow, that's the world I come out of.

[Ted Danson]

Exactly. And I got to be introduced to some of that world because Jimmy Burrows, whose daddy, who Jimmy directed all the Cheers and co created, but his daddy, Abe Burroughs, was, if not part of that team, was around that team doing absolutely.

[Rob Reiner]

Jimmy Burrows directed the first his first TV movie that he directed was a movie that I did with Penny Marshall. And every Morning, he would come in and I'd say, it's Abe's boy. And then he would say, hi, it's Carl's kid.

[Ted Danson]

I love Jimmy.

[Rob Reiner]

He's a great guy.

[Ted Danson]

Still doing great. Speaking of Penny Marshall, I spent one lovely day making out with her really nonstop in front of cameras, I'll give you that. It was Laverne and Shirley, and I played the fireman who she was gonna marry. And then he burned.

[Rob Reiner]

Oh, he burned up, yeah. Oh, that's so sad.

[Ted Danson]

But there was one scene, literally, where all we did was in the background kissing.

[Rob Reiner]

Wow.

[Ted Danson]

Fondness for her.

[Rob Reiner]

See, I didn't know about that.

[Ted Danson]

No.

[Rob Reiner]

But I. I might have gone to the set and observed had I known.

[Ted Danson]

Probably not, no. Okay. There's so many things I do want to talk to you about. So here's. It's not a confession, but I am pop culture and I are just, you know, I'm just now starting to say, oh, snap and think, oh, what a wonderful phrase. I. Last night, for the first time, Mary has seen it many times, saw Spinal Taps.

[Rob Reiner]

Oh, really? Okay.

[Ted Danson]

It was one of those things I've lied about over the years and said.

[Rob Reiner]

Of course, of course you don't want to admit that you hadn't seen. No. This Spinal Tap.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah. And I am obsessed with it. We. I laughed my ass off. It is amazing. And everybody knows this because everyone else has seen it, but what I loved was Take Me through it because it first was an existing group because you. In the 70s, you brought them on to just sing a song before they.

[Rob Reiner]

Were, but it wasn't existing. And basically we created it for this TV special I did for ABC. It was called the TV Show. And it was on in, I think it was 1979. And the show was a satire of all different things in television, sitcoms, commercials, you know, everything. And one of the things we satirized was a late night TV rock and roll show called Midnight Special, Right? And on that thing I played Wolfman Jack, introducing this band that we created for the special called Spinal Tap. And they did a song called Rock and Roll Nightmare, which was, you know, like an MTV video live mixed mix of things. And they started improvising off camera in these British rock and roll, you know, characters. Harry, Michael McKean, Harry Shearer, Michael McKeon and Chris Guest. And we thought, gee, what great characters would be great someday to find another venue to explore these characters. And we put it aside, we said, ah, you know, that was that. We went our separate ways. Harry and I started working on an idea for a movie was called about the life of roadies. The backstage, you know, was a tour and how they get from one city to the next. And then we read that there was a movie going to come out called Roadie with Meatloaf. And we said, okay, forget that. We put that aside. Meanwhile, Chris and Michael did a little video of these two British rockers running into each other in a hotel, in a lobby, and vaguely remembering that they played in a band together at some point. And they were improvising and they showed us the video. I said, wow, what a great thing. What if we, instead of a tour told by, you know, from the roadies point of view, we do it as the band's point of view. And the four of us got back together and said, let's see if we can come up with an idea of how to do it. And we had this idea to do a rock and roll documentary, like a satire of the last walls and those kinds of rock and roll documentaries. I went to a guy that ran Marble Arch, which was Lou Grade's company. I said, look, give us, you know, we have this idea. And they said, great, here's the money for a screenplay, Will. The four of us sat down and we realized when we were working on this screenplay, there was no way we could communicate in screenplay form what this was going to be because it had to have a documentary feel. It had to be cinema verite and all that. So I to the guy, his name was Martin Starger, he ran ABC later. And I said, look, I said, give us the money that you were going to give us for the screenplay, which was $60,000. And I said, I'll make you some of the film and I'll give you a sense of what it's going to be. So he gave us the money and I put in 25,000 of my own money into it. The guys chipped in 5,000, we had 90,000. And we made 20 minutes with backstage footage, concert footage and interview footage. And I put it all together and I showed it to him and I said, this is the kind of we're going to do. He said, I hate this. I don't like this. This is terrible. I said, oh my God, what am I going to do now? So we had this 20 minute film and we started shopping it all over town trying to find somebody that would go ahead with. Karen Murphy, who was the producer of it, said we were going from studio to studio. I had a. Literally had a can of film under my arm, 20 minutes. And I said, karen, if we ever get this made, we're going to be able to tell the story that we went from studio to studio, put a 16 millimeter 20 minute film and showed people and we could. And. But nobody said. Everybody turned it down. Nobody said, finally there's a movie that they're making at Avco Embassy. Some, you know, like, take this job and shove it or one of those types of movies. And they're looking for a director. And this guy named Peter Turner, who was not my agent, he was an agent, William Morris. I wasn't even with William Morris. He said to this woman who was shepherding the project, Lindsay Durant says, what about Rob Reiner? And he said, well, what has he ever done? He hasn't done anything. He said, I saw this 20 minute piece and you should take a look at it. She looks at the piece and she says, well, forget the movie. I'm trying to get. What are you doing with this? She dug it and she said, what are you doing with this? I said, I can't get it made. I'm trying to get it made. She said, I can. If you can find some money. I think I can convince the head of Avco Embassy, who was Frank Capra Jr. Frank Capra's son at the time, I think I can get him to distribute it. And I said, okay, once you have a distributor, it's not. It's easier to get money. I got a little bit of money. I went back to her and I said, okay, we're ready, let's go. And then Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio, Norman Lear, who created all in the Family and all that, they bought Avco Embassy. And what happens oftentimes when you buy a. They scrap everything that was in development, including ours. We were done. So I was very close to doing. And then they said, no, this is 81.

[Ted Danson]

Basically.

[Rob Reiner]

This is if you shot it in 84. No, we shot it in 82. So it is like 81. And so I go to Alan Horn, who was running, you know, he was the head of business affairs and he was. Became one of my partners at Castle Rock. I said, alan, please let me just talk to Jerry. And Norman, let me just, please. I. Let me. Give me a. Get him a meeting, puts together a meeting. Jerry, Norman, bunch of other executives there. And I go in and I go crazy. And I'm screaming, I'm going, it's the best movie. This is going to be a big hit. It's got rock and roll, the kids will love it. Repeat business. I'm going crazy like Yeah. I leave the meeting and I'm told after I left the meeting, Norman turns to everybody else and said, who's going to tell him he can't do it? You know, so. So they let me. They let me do it, and, you know, then the rest, as they say, is history. Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

Okay. Couple questions going back.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. How did.

[Ted Danson]

Did you know Michael, Christopher and Harry before you had them write a song?

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, yeah, we. We all knew each other and work together over the years.

[Ted Danson]

You knew they were amazing musicians.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, we knew. I knew everything about them. Chris was in an episode of all in the family. Michael McKeon, his best friend was David Lander, David Landau. At the time, they were Lenny and Squiggy on Laverne and Shirley. And so I knew him from that. And Harry. Harry dated my sister for a while. But this is before that. He was on a show called the Credibility Gap, which was a radio show, and I did a little guest appearance on that. So we all knew each other and we all worked together in different ways.

[Ted Danson]

Okay. Next thing is. I thought I. Maybe I misunderstood that there was a gap between. Okay, this is. We're gonna do. But we. If you're going to interview and truly do improvisation, then you need to have a backstory, because these people were friends and either bandmates or friends since they were little kids.

[Rob Reiner]

Right.

[Ted Danson]

So wasn't there a block of time, like months or a year or more or something where they literally. You all. Or they all got together and made up an entire backstory?

[Rob Reiner]

Yes, that's true. But we had created the Bible, the backstory, the history of these characters when we were developing the 20 minute piece before that. So we had, you know, we knew that Nigel and David knew each other from the time they were kids growing up in Squatney. We made up a place and they, you know, bonded in. Over the music. So we created all these characters. We had a good backstory. We knew the bands that they had played with and all of that. And when we started the film, we basically just had an outline of what we wanted to have happened. But all the dialogue was all your questions. Everything was blues. Everything was improvised. The whole. The whole thing was improvised.

[Ted Danson]

They didn't even have the questions.

[Rob Reiner]

No, no, no, no. They never had any questions. They never knew what I was going to throw at them.

[Ted Danson]

Okay. So, I mean, my experience of that kind of filmmaking is curb your enthusiasm.

[Rob Reiner]

Right.

[Ted Danson]

But even Curb had to build up on air, I think a history. It was. It didn't come in, you know.

[Rob Reiner]

Right.

[Ted Danson]

Yours was so. Theirs was so Firmly, you know, organically in them, that there was no acting going on. It was so subtle and real and in the moment.

[Rob Reiner]

Yes.

[Ted Danson]

That I don't think you could get any other way unless you had built this Bible that they had lived.

[Rob Reiner]

And we did. And we did. And the Bible is fairly thick. I mean, it talks about all the. Their. Their parents and. And, you know, what bands they played with, what other activities they did besides music. I mean, we had a whole. We created a whole world for. For all of them. But it's interesting you meant you bring up Curb because, you know, I did an. You know, you were on all the time. But I did one episode and it was early on in the. In the run, and it was. I. I think that Larry started making him a little bit more formed as he went along. Because it was very, very loose when he first did it.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah, it was. You would get a call. What are you doing tomorrow? Yeah. And then you would bring your own clothes.

[Rob Reiner]

Right. And almost you're essentially playing a version of yourself and Larry is playing a version of himself.

[Ted Danson]

I was playing a function. My function was to push him into a corner and piss him off so he would explode more coming out. But anyway, I'm so knocked out by. I mean, really, a lot of times when you see actors improvising, you know that they have a script and then the director says, okay, go ahead and do one and improvise. You can see it sometimes, you know, no matter how good they are, there's a. Oh, they just did a end of the scene riff.

[Rob Reiner]

Right.

[Ted Danson]

You know, and it feels funny and maybe you get a good laughing. But this was impeccable, you know, and so believable. I'm full of it because I literally watched it for the first time last night. It was amazing.

[Rob Reiner]

Well, you know, it's interesting because people always ask me, well, is your first film and you did it without a script? I don't know how would you do that? And I always say that that was easier than doing one with a script for me, because that was my background. I was raised in improvisation. I was with.

[Ted Danson]

Wait, wait, tell me that.

[Rob Reiner]

What do you mean? I had my own impro group that I started. And when I was.

[Ted Danson]

I do not know that.

[Rob Reiner]

When I was in college, I At ucla, I started a group called the Session and I acted in it and directed it. Larry Bishop, who was Joey Bishop's son, was in it. Rick Dreyfus, Rich Richard Dreyfus was in it. And we were together for a year. Then I was perform with the committee which was a San Francisco based improv group that came from the. The Second City and that in Los Angeles. I was with them for a while, so that was my background. And it was also the background of, you know, Harry, Chris and Michael. So when we were thrown together, it made all the sense in the world to do it that way. It felt comfortable. It's like jazz musicians, you know, you get together and you may not even know each other, but if you. One guy plays the bass, one guy plays drums, one guy's a piano and guy plays sax, whatever, and you fall in. You just fall in and you just start riffing with each other.

[Ted Danson]

Sorry, let me just. The whole drummer and one of them explodes.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, well, yeah. Spontaneously combustion, right? I thought it was. Which happens a lot more than you think, right?

[Ted Danson]

Yeah, just a little green something left.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, a little green globule left on his drum seat.

[Ted Danson]

I thought it was a very funny moment. Very funny line. And then in the middle of a concert later.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, well, you want to hear the crazy part about that? So we have, you know, obviously Spinal Tap has a series of drummers. And by the time we do the sequel, 11 drummers have passed on. 12.

[Ted Danson]

11.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. We don't. 11, we think. But in this one we had, you know, one guy choked on vomit. It was somebody else's vomit, but they couldn't dust for vomit, so they don't know whose it was. Somebody exploded at the Isle of Lucy Jazz Festival. Somebody exploded on stage. You know, somebody designed. Died in a bizarre gardening accident, which, oddly enough actually happened to one of the guy on.

[Ted Danson]

In.

[Rob Reiner]

In Toto Porcaro. He died because he was gardening and he had some bad, you know, pesticide or whatever. But the point is, we have all these drummers dying and we wanted the drummer that we had before at the end of the first film, they wind up in Japan because they get resurrected. They got a hit in Japan, they're going to go there. And we found, and this is totally serendipitous we found when we were putting the film together, there is a flashpot that goes off in Japan in front of the new drummer. And so we said, wait a minute. If we marry that. If we marry that to the other drummer and we put it together, it looks like the drummer that they had blew up. And then when the smoke clears, the new drum, the guy in Japan is there. So it's a weird luck we lucked out with that one.

[Ted Danson]

So a couple of things. It was not necessarily received as the second coming that it has become.

[Rob Reiner]

No when we first came out, we previewed it in Dallas, and people just didn't get it. They thought. They came up to me and said, I don't understand. Why would you make a movie about a band nobody's ever heard of? And they're so stupid and they're so dumb. Why wouldn't you do about the Rolling Stones or the Beatles? I mean, what is this? I try to explain. It's a satire. We're trying to make fun. And the cards, you know, they have cards where the people fill out after the movie to tell you what they think of the movie. And so I looked, first of all, we had like 20%, 30, 40% recommend. It was the worst, worst cards ever. But I was a little bit heartened by the fact that I. I found in these cards five different ways that they spelled the word movie. And so I thought, okay, so it was M, O, V, I, E. M O, V E, Y, M O, V.

[Ted Danson]

E, E. Easy mistake.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. And my favorite one was M O, V, E. Move E. So to me, I said, okay, maybe they're not such geniuses here. They didn't get it.

[Ted Danson]

Also, you had people over years come up to you. Rock and Rollers, Sting, people like that come up and go, I don't know. I watch it and I laugh, but I also cry.

[Rob Reiner]

Yes.

[Ted Danson]

And I'm not sure which. And Death does have that.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. Well, every. It became. It slowly became part of the rock and roll scene, where bands on tour would have the tape, the DVD on their tour buses and they watch it religiously. And I think of it as we created this fictional band and this kind of parallel universe. And then all of a sudden, the real world started creeping in. And it's like this weird Mobius strip where it keeps folding into itself. So these real bands all of a sudden start saying, yeah, I have that same moment. I have the same rock and roll moment that these Spinal Tap guys have. And then the guys are playing Wembley Stadium. They're playing Glastonbury, Royal Albert Hall, Carnegie Hall. And they become part of the rock and roll world. And real rockers start playing with them. So it's like it's this and that. The second movie that we made, the Sequel, you know, the End continues. We have Paul McCartney in there. We have Elton John, you know, in there. So it is kind of a weird hybrid.

[Ted Danson]

Okay, you moved on. So let's move on to the. Well, it's not the sequel. Or is it?

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, it's a sequel. This is sequel. 40 years after the first one, right?

[Ted Danson]

It's not just Spinal Tap 2. It's Spinal Tap.

[Rob Reiner]

Spinal Tap 2. The end continues.

[Ted Danson]

Right, but the 2 isn't that.

[Rob Reiner]

The 2 is a Stonehenge, a little Stonehenge thing that looks like a two. Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

Okay, so what changed your mind? Because I know you were asked by hundreds, you know, thousands, when are you going to do a second one? And now you are. And have.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

Comes out September 12th.

[Rob Reiner]

Right, September 12th. But it's funny because we never wanted to do a sequel. We always said, ah, we did it. You know, it's done. We're not going to do it again. And just time went by and, you know, it became part of the. It went into the National Film Registry through the Library of Congress. It became phrase goes to 11, got into the Oxford English Dictionary. All these things happened. And then Harry and God, God bless him, Harry Shearer, he. He. We. We never got any money. We never got anything. And it's going to sound really weird, but over the years of 40 years, with DVDs and videos and foreign sales and all that, we each got 82 cents. I'm not kidding. It sounds weird, but that's what it was. And so Harry says, this is ridiculous. How come we never. He sued the company to get the rights back, and after many years, he was able to win and got the rights to the thing. Now we have the rights. What are we going to do with it?

[Ted Danson]

Right?

[Rob Reiner]

And we said, well, I don't know. What should we do? We said, should we make a sequel? And they said, no, we've. We've. That's passed. We're not going to do it. We sat around, talked, talked, and then an idea started coming out of a real place, which is they hadn't played together for 15 years. The guys.

[Ted Danson]

The guys.

[Rob Reiner]

They hadn't played and they hadn't, you know. So we said, oh, what if it's a thing about these guys haven't played together in 15 years? They haven't talked to each other in 15 years. Maybe there's bad blood. What could that be? And we started exploring all that, and it grew out of a very natural place. We said, okay, let's revisit them and see where they are now. And. And what would force them to have to play?

[Ted Danson]

And is the bad blood talked about, or is it. Do you actually see bad blood?

[Rob Reiner]

You, you, you, you, you, you. We kind of allude to it and we say something, you know, as. As David says. David saying, help us, Michael McKinnon. There was a stick in the spokes, and we don't say what it is. And you find out over the course of the film what it was, what was going on and why they. They went their separate ways, but they're forced together to. To do. To do a concert.

[Ted Danson]

All of them are great musicians. Play their instruments for me because I did work with Michael recently, two or three years ago. And he's brilliant. I love him. I love his acting. It's amazing. I had no idea he was like a rock star when he sings.

[Rob Reiner]

Oh, no, no, they're all great musicians. And what's interesting is everybody thinks when you see a movie, oh, somebody's playing for them or blah, blah. No, no, these guys can really play. And there's a moment in the second film that's coming out where Elton John is talking about it. And I said, I'm so curious that you would want to play with these guys. He says, no, no, these guys are real musicians. He says, no way.

[Ted Danson]

Is that you, Rob?

[Rob Reiner]

Are you the me as Marty deburge? I'm asking Elton John on camera, why would you pick to play with? He says, these guys are real musicians. He said they're not like normal heavy metal musicians. He says, you don't see a guy in a heavy metal band playing a mandolin, which Chris Guest plays very well as. As Nigel. So these guys can really play every note that you see in the first film and second film is played by them.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah. You can forgive the people who thought, why would you follow such a come. Yeah, because it's so real.

[Rob Reiner]

Intensely real. Totally real. Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

Okay, so you did it. Have you seen it? Obviously you have. What am I saying? But is it.

[Rob Reiner]

It's good.

[Ted Danson]

Are you glad you got back together?

[Rob Reiner]

Yes, I am. And what we found is, first of all, they love to play with each other. So even if they hadn't played along, they fall right back in.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Rob Reiner]

And just like old friends, you know, you haven't seen a long time, you fall right back in. And Chris Guest calls it schnadling, where you, you know, start doing shtick with each other, you know, and by play, back and forth. And we fell right back into that. Right back into what we always did.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah. My experience was cheers. 11 years.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

You don't see people because of lives and the way they are sometimes for a year or two or three and. But as soon as you see them, you're madly in love, giggling your ass off and do.

[Rob Reiner]

And. And falling back to the same roles, not necessarily in the characters, but how you were with each other in the making of the. Of the show then you find that.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah, very much so.

[Rob Reiner]

I mean, that people don't. Yeah, that happened to me on the, you know, I was writing on the Smother's Brother show when I was.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah, you got to bring me when.

[Rob Reiner]

I was 21 years old, you know, I was one of the, I was the youngest writer. Steve Martin was the other young writer. And we were kind of thrown together. I was 21, he was 23, whatever. And we, you know, we were the youngest guys. Then they had a 20 year reunion for the Smothers Brothers and we were all brought back. And it was so weird because we fell back right into the roles that we played back then. No, Steve Martin at that, you know, at that point had become a huge star. I had gone on and become successful and all that. And so. But when we're back together, I'm getting coffee for them. Steve is going, you know what I mean? We were the young, we were like the nobodies, you know, again.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah, Mary, always my wife Mary. When we went back to this prep school that I was back in Connecticut, I was 13 through 18 and some of these, you know, we were 13 year olds. And we go back and Mary goes, Ted Danson, who she's only known as Cheers and whatever degree of success and all of that that I have had, you know, when I step back and I'm 13.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, terrified.

[Ted Danson]

Absolutely don't know how if they're going to accept me. All of that just comes flooding back. Why the book?

[Rob Reiner]

The book came because they called, said Simon and Schuster said, what about a book you can write, you know, at.

[Ted Danson]

The same time you'd done the sequel or.

[Rob Reiner]

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, we wrote, I wrote most of it, you know, with the help of the guys. And also the guy named David Camp who was really helpful, but nobody had ever put down the history of what we talked about, how this got made and how the sequel got made. And also we said, but we also want to talk about the history of the band, this bible that we created and who these guys were. So we, we, we suggested, let's do a book that's in two parts and you on one side is called A Fine Line between Stupid and clever, which is my favorite line in the first film. And it's. That's written by me and the guys. And then if you flip the book over, the other side is called Smell the Book. Yeah, See, look.

[Ted Danson]

Oh my God, I'm doing it right now.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, yeah. See, Want to smell the book that says fine line between and Smell. The book is written by is an interview. Marty Deburge, the character I play in the film, interviews the guys in character and they talk about their lives. So you get both. You get the.

[Ted Danson]

Good for you. Yeah, good for you. Okay.

[Rob Reiner]

And it's a fun read. You'll have a lot of fun reading that thing. If you haven't. It's really fun.

[Ted Danson]

I have two copies, one of which you'll sign.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. If you're nice to me and you've been very nice to me so far. So far, very nice to me. So I think I'd probably will sign it.

[Ted Danson]

You'll have to sign it twice. Mail the book and the other side.

[Rob Reiner]

All right, sure. I'll sign one as Marty and one is Rob.

[Ted Danson]

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[Rob Reiner]

Wow.

[Ted Danson]

Freshman year.

[Rob Reiner]

That's, that may be good that you did that maybe.

[Ted Danson]

But I am behind.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, well, I, I, we, I've told this story, but my father was on television before we owned the television.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Rob Reiner]

And so, so, so I, we bought a television so we could look at him, you know, on Saturday night when he was on with Sid Caesar. That was the world I grew up in.

[Ted Danson]

When, where were you? Sports. Young wise.

[Rob Reiner]

Yes, I was sports. I was good with sports. Played baseball mainly. I was a good baseball player and I, we, we moved to California and you know, they made fun from New York and they made fun of the way I talked. They, you know, that they say, say coffee, say ball, say, you know, so they made fun of me and the only way I could fit in is I could play, I could play baseball. So I, I was able to fit in in that way.

[Ted Danson]

Okay, that took you. When did you bump into. Oh, I, I, maybe I want to follow my dad's or if not my dad's foot, I want to do something in entertainment.

[Rob Reiner]

Well, you know, my folks told me the story. I don't remember doing it, but they said that one day I came to them and I said I was 8 years old at the time and I said to them, I want to change my name. And they thought, oh, this poor kid, he's worried about being in the shadow and having to live up to his father and all this. So they asked me, they said, well, what do you want to change Your name to. And I said, said Carl. And, and, and so I obviously I, I looked up to him. I thought he was the greatest. I mean, he is, he was, he, he, he was a genius and he was brilliant and he had. So, you know, the Van Dyke show is like to me still one of the best sitcoms ever made and was groundbreaking at the time. So I wanted to be him. And as a kid, when I was off from school during the summer, I went with him every single day for three months. I would go with him to Desilu Studios where they did the Van Dyke show. And I spent all day there and I'd watch how he worked with the actors and rewriting and, and all. And I sit and how they positioned the cameras and everything. It was like, you know, it was like school for me. I think I was probably a pain in the ass to him because who wants. It was like bring your kid to.

[Ted Danson]

Work, 9 year old kid every day.

[Rob Reiner]

You know how old I was? No, I was 14, 15, 16. And you know, during, during high school. Oh yeah, yeah. And the famous story which Mary Tyler Moore told in her book. So I'm not saying anything out of school one, I think I was about 14 years old and I don't know what possessed me. I mean, she was gorgeous. She wore those capri pants and I grabbed her ass. Just nothing, I couldn't help myself. And she told my father on me.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Rob Reiner]

She said, you know, and my father called me in, he said, did you grab Mary Tyler Moore by the ass? Yeah. And I said, yeah. He says, don't ever do that again. And we had a kind of a smile on his face. I think he wished he could have done it. But anyway, there's a great payoff to all this. And she wrote about it, told it on Letterman and all this stuff. Years later, they're doing a reunion show, Van Dyke. Now, if you remember, if you watched the old Dick Van Dyke Show, Laura Petrie, which is Mary's character, she used to say, oh, Rob, she always would ever say that like that. So now they're doing this reunion show and over in cbs, in the Valley, I go there and now I've already, you know, been on all the family. I've directed movies and stuff. So I'm, and I, I walk in, they're finishing up a scene where Dick is in a tuxedo, Mary's in an evening gown, it's very formal. And they finish the scene, I tell the camera, I said, just keep rolling, keep rolling, don't, don't stop. And so I walk in there and I say to Mary, I said, mary, look, I just want to say I've never apologized. I've always felt bad about what I did when I was 14. I really feel bad about it. And I said, but you were so beautiful. And my hormones were raging and I said, look, you're beautiful now. I mean, if I wouldn't get in trouble for sexual harassment, I, you know, she then literally bent over, stuck her tush out. I grabbed her tush and she went, oh, Rob. And it was a 20 year payoff to what happened before.

[Ted Danson]

That TV that I got when I was at Stanford University, turned it on. My first TV. Turned it on. And no exaggeration, it was 11 o' clock in the morning reruns. Dick came out and tripped over the ottoman. That was the first thing I saw. Really?

[Rob Reiner]

Oh, really? Wow.

[Ted Danson]

And I was hooked. I was hooked on the show. I was hooked on.

[Rob Reiner]

Wow.

[Ted Danson]

Mary Tyler Morris hooked on Dick Van Dyke. I used to stalk him during my cheers years.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

You know.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. Dick is amazing. He's 100. 100 years old.

[Ted Danson]

We both were part of that. I remember that evening.

[Rob Reiner]

Oh, yes. When they did the tribute to him. That, yeah, that was great. He was, he was 99 then, I think. Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

And then we all went to his house.

[Rob Reiner]

Oh yeah. In Malibu.

[Ted Danson]

And he's, he's just sharp as a tire.

[Rob Reiner]

It's so funny. Amazing. He's amazing. Well, you got. He's gonna be. He's 100 this year and Mel Brooks is 99 this year. And they, you know, these guys are still incredible.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah. Watching your dad and Mel Brooks was one of my great joys too, later on. I mean, it was usually something I saw in a rerun kind of thing.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

Was it a hundred year old man, 2,000 year old?

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. Yeah. You made him a lot younger. He'd be happy to hear that. He's only 100. No, 2000 year old man. That to me, if you look at, listen to those albums, they're the most brilliant comedy albums ever done. And as a kid, I used to come home, listen to it every day. I would listen to it and I, and I would know whether or not I could be friends with somebody if they got, if they got that, that was a bond, you could know. Okay. If they dug that, then, then they're, I could, I could connect with them.

[Ted Danson]

Okay, going back one more second. How come Smothers Brothers knew to hire you to write?

[Rob Reiner]

Okay, so I was with the committee in, in, in Los Angeles and one day Tommy Smothers comes in to see the show comes into. We were on the Tiffany Theater and.

[Ted Danson]

They'Re on TV during the show. Pre canceled it.

[Rob Reiner]

No, they're on. As a matter of fact, he was gonna produce a summer show and was gonna be called the Summer Brothers Smother show. And it was to star Glen Campbell. It was the first thing that, where Glen Campbell became, you know what he became. And so he was looking for writers. He was looking for people that, you know, we're music oriented and comedy. And he saw me on stage and Carl Gottlieb, who was a good friend, and he was one of the members of the committee, and he just plucked us out of the, out of the cast and Carl Gottlieb and myself, and we went to work on Smothers Brothers for Glen Campbell initially for the summer show, and then we were hired, you know, for the. When it came back in the fall in 69, we were hired back for that.

[Ted Danson]

This is pretty all in the Family.

[Rob Reiner]

Oh, yeah, this is. Yeah, this is. I would say this is two years before all in the Family.

[Ted Danson]

One more thing while we're, I think, in this era was you said your dad wasn't overly complimentary or whatever, but you did something. Was it a play that you directed?

[Rob Reiner]

Yes. What? What? First of all, I just want to say something before we go further. This is the best interview I've ever had. Why? Because we're just talking and, you know, whatever background you have, you know, they always, everybody, they look at notes, they ask a question that's on a list. This is now, now that I've said this, I'm probably gonna you up here, but I mean, I didn't mean to do.

[Ted Danson]

Anyway, you're gonna fuck me up because I have tears in my eyes because I so respect you, where you've come from, all of that.

[Rob Reiner]

No, but I'm, I'm, I'm being dead serious. I mean, I, I never had a thing like this anyway, so. No, I mean, when I was young, I don't think he thought.

[Ted Danson]

Can we just stop one second?

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

Suck on that, Conan. Okay.

[Rob Reiner]

Conan's very good. Don't get me wrong. He's very good. Very good.

[Ted Danson]

He's my hero, but go on. No, I saved my life.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, no, anyway. Oh, you did. So that's a real hero.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rob Reiner]

You'll tell me later what that was, but no, he was so. Yeah, no, when I was young, he didn't really think or he didn't see me the way others did and the Way Norman Lear did, obviously. But I was in a play in summer theater when I was 18 years old, and they did a production of Enter Laughing, which is based on his book. It was a play that Joe Stein wrote based on. And I got good reviews, and people seemed to like it. But he thought, oh, you know. And he never had. He didn't ever say anything that, you know. But you could. I found out later from Martin Landau, who was a good friend. He said, you know, your father always thought, I don't know what to say to this kid. I don't know if he's. You know, he wants to do this, and I don't know if he can do it. And then when I was 19, and. Oh, and then he was doing the film of Enter Laughing, and he was directing it, and I auditioned for a part, not the main part that went on, but on the part of a friend of his. And in front of. He rejected me. And so, you know, I auditioned for him, and he said, no. And I thought, oh, my goodness, this is. You know, it's not. There's no bigger rejection from, you know, your father say you not. You know, you can't do it. So then time goes by. And then I'm 19, and I direct a production of no Exit, of all things, a John Paul Sartre play. And Richard Dreyfuss was in. That production was in the theater here in Los Angeles. And my father came to it, and he came backstage afterwards, and he looked me in the eye and he said, that was good. No bullshit. Just like that. It's the first time I ever heard validation like that. And then I went and visited him the next day at his house, and we're sitting in the backyard, and he says, I'm not worried about you. You're gonna be okay. Whatever you decide to do, you're gonna do it good. And that was a big deal.

[Ted Danson]

That's huge.

[Rob Reiner]

That was a big deal. But it was like, not until I was, like, 19 or 20. Yeah. And then I went on, and then he would say, you're a better director than I ever was. Oh, this is interesting. So one year, when this is Spinal Tap came out, this is in 84, he had a movie called all of Me with Steve Martin, and he did four movies with Steve Martin, but this one comes out, and you know how they have these top 10 lists at the end of the year, or the best 10 movies of the year, and all of Me and this is Spinal Tap were on a ton of lists together, And I thought, wow, this is really Cool. When has it ever been that a father and son directed movies that were in it? And we look back, none that never happened, that's never been. And then we have our walk of fame in Hollywood, the thing, the star thing. And they're right next to each other. And then a few years ago, they brought us to Grauman's Chinese, and you put your hands and your feet in the cement and the both of us did it at the same time. So it's so cool to me, the whole thing of, you know, I love him so much, and I. And I think about him every day. And he still guides me to this day. His voice is in my head. And when anything I ever do, he guides me.

[Ted Danson]

Forgive my ignorance. I'm assuming your mother passed away.

[Rob Reiner]

Yes, my mother passed away a few years before my dad. My mother was eight years older than my dad, but she died at 94. He died when he was 98, having been together 65 years. 65 years. And my mother, on her 60th wedding anniversary, people were asking her, what's the secret? What keeps you together? How do you marriage together this long? And she said, the key is find somebody who can stand you. Not somebody you can put up with, somebody who can stand you, because that's what it is. I mean, you know. I mean, every marriage, you know, you got to accept the other person. That's the only way it works.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

The only time I get really mad at Mary is when I'm wrong. Yeah, it's only when I'm wrong. And if she's wrong and I see it, it's like, oh, that's sweet, you know, she's wrong.

[Rob Reiner]

But does she admit she's wrong?

[Ted Danson]

Yeah, but not in the moment. But later on, she's incredibly trustworthy to turn around very shortly.

[Rob Reiner]

That's a great, great quality.

[Ted Danson]

Oh, it's.

[Rob Reiner]

That is a great quality.

[Ted Danson]

Because otherwise you're not gonna. You're not going to grow because you're not going to tell your shitty little secrets because.

[Rob Reiner]

And the other person. And do you. Do you admit when you're wrong?

[Ted Danson]

Only when it just becomes so blatantly funny that I'm trying to not, you know.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. And listen, I'm wrong a lot. Yeah, I'm wrong a lot. And I usually admit it pretty quickly. I mean, not always, but pretty quickly. But that's the key. I mean, you're living with somebody and you just have to accept. Listen, everybody's got issues. They all have. You have to accept that those things are coming. My father said When I was young, he said, if there's something about the person that you're with that annoys you, know for a fact that that is never gonna go away. So if that annoying thing is something you can live with, he said, it's like a fly buzzing around your ear. If you're okay, you'll be okay. But if you expect that annoying thing to disappear, then you're gonna be in for trouble.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah. It's like we're all imprinted with all this pile of stuff.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

And that doesn't go away.

[Rob Reiner]

No.

[Ted Danson]

You can choose or learn not to have a knee jerk reaction and to be that person.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. Yeah. Look what we're descending into here. This is becoming.

[Ted Danson]

You know, in a minute, I'm gonna make you cry. I'm kind of the Barbara Walters podcast. Yes. Okay. Wait, you did all these amazing films. The first one, it sounded. Sounds like Stand By Me is the one that made you go, oh, I can be this other thing, which is touching, moving, real funny, amusing, but something really impactful.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. That was the first film. And people always ask me, what is your favorite film of the ones you know, make 21, 22 film, whatever. And like, I always make the. Oh, yeah, but you love all your children, even the crappy ones, you know, I mean, so the film. But the one that means the most, man, I don't know if it's the best. Whatever. The one that means the most is Stand By Me because the first film was this, a Spinal Tap, which is a satire, and my father had trafficked in satire his life. The second one is the sure Thing, which is essentially a romantic comedy for young people. And my father had done romantic comedies with Doris Day and James Garner and all this. So I was playing in a similar sandbox to where he was. Stand By Me was something way, way different way than anything he would have ever attempted. It was. And it was a real extension of my sensibility. It had humor in it, it had nostalgia in it, and it had melancholy in it. It had all these things. And I said, this is really a representation of the way of the kinds of films I would like to make. And so if it's accepted, then, you know, if it's rejected, then I'm in trouble. If it's accepted, then I'm getting validated. And it got accepted and it did well. And I was like, okay, okay. I can marry humor with drama, and it can be okay. And I remember When I was 17, I was an apprentice at the Bucks County Playhouse. I was building scenery and all kind of thing. And one of the first plays they had there was A Thousand Clowns, which was a Herb Gardner play. And it's very funny and very moving and dramatic. And I'm looking at this and I'm going, wow, you can take something really dramatic and have real big laughs in it and marry them. I said, if ever I get to do anything, that's the kind of thing I want to do.

[Ted Danson]

So I'm bad with names. In my defense, it's not just age. I've always been bad at names. But who was in the movie of Thousand Clowns?

[Rob Reiner]

Thousand Clowns.

[Ted Danson]

The Amazing.

[Rob Reiner]

Okay, it was a James Whitmore, I believe.

[Ted Danson]

In the movie.

[Rob Reiner]

In the movie, yeah. Oh, Jason Robarts. James Footmark was in the. Was in that. The thing we did. Oh, no. Jason Robarts.

[Ted Danson]

One of my favorite.

[Rob Reiner]

Jason Robarts. Yeah, yeah. And Marty Balsam.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah. So an amazing.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's. It's a great. It's a great film. And. And. Oh, and Herb Gardner once said to us, he came to a. To a run through of all in the Family. We used to, you know, like, you guys would do Cheers. You know, you'd have your run through before you went on camera. You know, you do your run through and then afterwards you take notes. You know, they come and they give you notes and da, da. And we had a thing where we all contributed. You know, I had written a number of scripts for the show, and, you know, Carol was a writer. So when we did our, you know, note session, we'd all be sitting around, the writers, the producers, Norman, the actors, and we'd all trade notes, you know, and I'd say, hey, if you take that line and cut that and give that to Carol, and maybe we lose that, you know, we'd all contribute. And Herb Gardner is used to the theater where you don't change a word unless the author says it's okay. And he's looking at this and he goes, wow, this is like creative communism here. What if. What are you doing? You know? But he was, like, astounded by it. And then the other thing he told me he directed a film. I think it was I'm Not Rappaport, which was a. I think that's the film he directed. And he said to me, he said, did you ever hear the crew members say the Silent Schmuck? And I said, what do you mean, the silent Schmuck? He says, well, you know, you're working. And the cameraman will. You'll say, this is where I want the camera to be. And the cameraman said, you sure you want that schmuck. Schmuck under the breast? Because they think they know better. And so, yes, you hear the silent schmuck from everybody, the director, because everybody thinks that they know the best. Yeah. So you're. You're the silent schmuck.

[Ted Danson]

I'm the perfect actor. I have never. I do not have the brain, the storytelling brain. I don't have the desire to be a director. I want the directors to be way smarter than me. But I love acting.

[Rob Reiner]

But that's the best kind of actor because then you're com. Then you're totally focused on what it is you have to do and what they want you to do. I don't like acting and directing so much, but I was always. When I was doing on the Family, I was always looking at the other actors thinking where the audience is, where the cameras are. It's not the way to do it. The way to do it is the way.

[Ted Danson]

The way you do it. You're in training to be a director.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, I was. I was. But I remember doing a Woody Allen movie. I acted in one called Bullets Over Broadway. And I show up and I see that it's, you know, it's very dark. It's outside at the Minetta Lane, you know, areas, a little cafe. And I'm saying, boy, this is really dark. I don't know. Unless they've created some kind of film stock I'm not aware of. I don't know how to see it. But it's Carlo De Palma's. The D is the director of photography. It's Woody Allen. I'm not going to say anything. I'm an actor. You don't want, you know, I don't want to say. So I go in there, I just do it and whatever. Then I get a call the next day. They looked at dailies, it seems. They said, it's a radio show. We can't see anything. It's black. We have to reshoot it. But, you know, you don't want to insinuate yourself if you're, you know, if it's somebody else's.

[Ted Danson]

Isn't he or wasn't he. I don't know if he still does it. But the. Wasn't he. The. A third of his budget would be to reshoot.

[Rob Reiner]

Yes, yes. He always. He always looked at the movie as a first draft.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Rob Reiner]

And I remember Jeffrey Curlin, when we were leaving the set, he says, see, at the reshoot.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Rob Reiner]

He always knew that there was going to be. Yeah. There's going to be a reshoot.

[Ted Danson]

Tell me quickly because I want to get to Norman. How did you get hired? Do you remember that moment?

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. I mean, for all my family. Yeah. Well, I mean, they had done two pilots at ABC that were rejected before it went to CBS and was done at cbs.

[Ted Danson]

Came from England, right?

[Rob Reiner]

It came from England. It was a show called Til Death Us Two Part. And it was very much, you know, it's very much the way Archie Bunker's character is portrayed. And in the first two pilots, they had two different sets of Mike and Gloria's. They had two actors that played. And those pilots got rejected. And I think I auditioned for one of them, but I was not developed yet as an actor. Then they were gonna do for cbs. In the meantime, I started to work for Andy Griffith. He had a new TV series called Headmaster, and I was one of the writers, along with my writing partner, Phil Mishkin. We wrote some episode, like four or five episodes for the. For the new show. One of the episodes we wrote was about a young teacher who falls in love with his student, a high school student. And I played that character in the show. Norman saw that and he thought, oh, he's developing. I mean, he's developed. And so they had me come back in. I went back in and I auditioned with Penny Marshall, who I was. I was living with at the time. We were about to get married. And Penny obviously didn't get the part. And I got it because they said Penny looked more like she would be Jean Stapleton's daughter.

[Ted Danson]

Right.

[Rob Reiner]

But Sally Strothers look more like Carol's daughter. So.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah. So as you mentioned Penny, I want to mention Michelle. So you guys met during the shooting of.

[Rob Reiner]

Of When Harry Met Sally. And this is an incredible story because what you see at the beginning, throughout When Harry Met Sally is all these stories of how people met. And it was. It came out of something very natural. When I asked Alan Horn's father, you know, who was at a dinner party, says, he was quiet. I said. I said, Mr. Mr. Horne, how did you and Mrs. Horn meet? And all of a sudden he lit up. A guy who was not talking and he said, I was in a Horn and hearted restaurant. And I looked, saw this woman come in. I turned to my friend, I said, see that woman? I'm going to marry that woman. Two weeks later, we were married. It's 50 years and we're still married. I put that as the first story. So all these stories are great. And whenever you talk to people, how they meet. So I'm in pre production for When Harry Met Sally. I'd been married for 10 years. I'm now single for 10 years, making a mess out of my dating life, in and out of relationships, which became the basis for When Harry Met Sally. And I'm looking at a picture on a coffee table on a Premier magazine, the COVID of Premier magazine. There's Michelle Pfeiffer. And I thought, you know, I had had lunch with her, a professional lunch number, months before, and I heard she was getting divorced. I said, maybe, maybe I'll call her. I say this to Barry Sonnenfeld, who's the director of photography, who's now become a director. He was a DP at the time. I said, maybe I'll call Michelle Pfeiffer. And he said, no, no, you're not going to call her. I have a friend in New York. Her name is Michelle Singer. You're going to marry her. I went, what? Who's Michelle Singer? Said, she's a friend of mine. She's a photographer. And the first question I asked, does she smoke? And he said, yes, because Penny Marshall had smoked, you know, like I said, the state of North Carolina, every day of her life. But so I didn't want it. So we didn't meet. And she didn't want to meet me because she heard I rejected a smoker. So we didn't meet. Now we're three quarters of the way shooting the picture. We're on outside on a brownstone on the Upper west side and we're about to break for lunch. I look across the street and I see Barry's at the time girlfriend, Susan, who's now married to him and this other woman and very attractive. And I looked, I said to Barry, I said, who's that with Susan? He says, that's Michelle Singer. I said, that's Michelle Singer? He said, yeah. He said, what are you doing? He's well, when we break, we're gonna go for lunch at Docks. You know, it's over on the west side. Because you break for lunch in New York, you go to whatever's closest. I said, well, maybe I'll join you, you know. So I go to the lunch and I'm sitting there with Billy and Meg. Not Meg, wasn't there Carrie Fisher and Nora Ephron. Bruno Kirby and Nora Ephron. And Michelle are talking over in the corner there. And Michelle says, I can make better vichyssoise than this. And I'm thinking, boy, what a bitch. I'm really attracted to her, you know.

[Ted Danson]

May I remind you that she's actually in the other room listening to this. Okay, fine. I just thought maybe you'd forgot.

[Rob Reiner]

I have a problem. Really attracted to her. So I, I, I, I. After lunch, I kind of walk up to her and chat her up a little bit and we talk a little bit. And I thought, you know. And so I asked Barry, I said, you know, find out if it's okay if I call her. I said. He said, it's okay. I call her. And we started seeing each other. We didn't, you know, during this film. And one thing led to another and, you know, I changed the ending of the movie. Yeah. Because at the end, I had. I didn't figure I was ever gonna be with anybody. I couldn't figure out how to be with anybody. And I had it where Harry and Sally don't get together. They run into each other in New York, they talk a little bit and then they walk in opposite directions. But I meet Michelle and I said, well, I see how this works. And I changed it so that they, you know, I reshot the ending where Billy. You see Billy running and seeing Meg at the New Year's Eve party.

[Ted Danson]

Thank you, Michelle.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, thank you, Michelle. And what I hear, and this is. I've heard, is that people who like that movie will put it on at 10:30 at night so that it ends with the Happy New Year thing.

[Ted Danson]

Oh, I love that.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. Isn't that a great, Isn't that a cool thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ted Danson]

I love that. What we do for a living does create community and a sense of belonging out there in the world.

[Rob Reiner]

And I think it used to do it more than it does now.

[Ted Danson]

I agree. I think we have to be careful.

[Rob Reiner]

And I think because, you know, I've told this story many times. But when all the family. And by the way, a lot of young people didn't even heard of all in the Family. This is a show that was number one for five years straight. They never even heard of it. But when we were on, we were number one in the country for five years. And every single week, a country of 200 million people, 40 to 45 million people would watch that show.

[Ted Danson]

Unbelievable.

[Rob Reiner]

And There was no DVR. There's no TiVo. There's no tapes. If you wanted to watch it, you had to watch it when it was on. That meant 40 to 45 million people are having a shared experience. And it is community. It is a communal thing. And then you talk about it the next, you know, when you ever saw them at the office. Now you have a show on whether it's, you know, on cable, I mean, or, I mean on streaming or it's on the air. And if you get 10 million people, that's a big hit. And they don't even see it at the same time. They see it at different times. You can't even discuss a show. Did you see the lattice white lotus? No. No. Don't tell me. I'm only on episode number thing or I only saw the first two seasons, whatever. And so that communal thing that you're talking about, I think I worry that it's fraying.

[Ted Danson]

I do too.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

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[Rob Reiner]

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[Ted Danson]

This is a good place to switch gears for me if you don't mind and if we, we don't have to go here if you don't want to, but this has been your life. You are a political, not partisan necessarily, but political animal, politically active.

[Rob Reiner]

I have been, yeah, did.

[Ted Danson]

And Norman is one of my heroes. What he did in life with his success and he was always encouraging to me when I started being an ocean advocate, he was always there, always encouraging.

[Rob Reiner]

And.

[Ted Danson]

I did not have obviously the relationship you did, but I literally would just about get down to my knees when he was sitting and talk to him whenever I could. And I know he had the same impact on you. What do you think was the first. Do you remember back at first, overtly. Oh, I'm going to. I'm gonna take this on and do it. I know you did a lot with education.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

But was there stuff before that?

[Rob Reiner]

Well, what. What I. What I got from Norman. And he was like a second father to me. He really was. I. I was closer to him. The only one. My father was the only one I was closer to. But when he started People for the American Way, which was all about a separation of church and state, which is about, you know, everybody should be allowed to pray and believe how they want or not believe at all, and that it should not be brought into the public, into schools and public places like that. When he started People for the American Way, I saw, oh, I see. You can use your platform, your show business platform and whatever fame you got, and you can put it towards something you believe in and make a difference. And that was the first time I thought, Saw that you could marry those two things. So the first thing I did was a thing. On early childhood. I passed a thing here in California. Proposition 10. Yeah. And I took it upon myself to make sure that I was not thought of as just an actor and at the time, a meathead, you know, who was from all the family. I studied and learned everything I could. It was a natural progression from what I felt could be done to help society. If you could nurture children early on in their lives, they're less likely become drug addicts or early pregnancies or, you know, go into crime in some way. And I learned everything I needed to know about it, about how the brain develops in the first three years and so on. So that when I faced reporters, I could answer second, third, fourth, fifth tier questions. I could answer everything. And I knew they could not go, oh, he's an actor, he's a thing. And so I got this thing passed and we went up against the tobacco industry in California because the idea was we're going to tax tobacco to use money for early childhood for the first five years. And I got it passed barely, because they had 40 million bucks they threw at us. We had a very small budget. And then Governor Davis at the time asked me if I wanted to chair the state commission that oversaw the implementation of the. Of the act, which was at the time about $750 million a year. It's now much less, because part of it was to raise cigarette taxes and that reduced people smoking, which was also a good thing. So I did that for seven years. I was up in Sacramento all The time and I worked on this and the first time I, you know, commissioned a meeting and was chairing the meeting, I said to everybody, and it's public hearing, they're public. I said, look, I said, I'm an actor. I said, today I'm going to act like a commissioner, but I will become a commissioner. I will understand how this. So I did it for seven years, and we got a lot done. And it's still. The first five is still going on here in California. Then after that, I worked environmentally to stop Washington Mutual from building a city in the Santa Monica Mountains. And the, you know, it's still now pristine there and Amiston Ranch. And then we, with Michelle, we. We filed the first lawsuit, first federal case that made it to the Supreme Court to provide marriage equality, which is. Which now is the law of, of the country. And that one is gonna. Is in danger a little bit. Just like everything, everything is in danger now. Just like they gutted the Voting Rights act and they've gutted, you know, Education Department. Yes, all of that. We're gonna see gay rights being attacked as well. And so we're in a very, very, very tough time right now. And, you know, 250 years it took to. To build this democracy in fits and starts and not always pretty. And, you know, but we've always managed to move forward. I'm hoping that this is a massive step back that we're taking right now in hopes of us moving forward. But it's scary because it may not be. I mean, it's much easier to break some. It takes six months. This guy's breaking 250 years of constitutional democracy down. And I don't know if we're going to be able to build it back so quickly. It's scary. I mean, you know, I talk with, you know, my wife, her mother was in Auschwitz and she lost her entire family in Auschwitz. She was the only one that survived. And my Uncle Charlie, my dad's brother, was at D Day, part of the D Day invasion, and fought in 11 major battles in the Second World War. And millions and millions of people died so that we could preserve democracy. And so we could say, never will this form of fascism be on our shores. And here we are 80 years later, and we're in the midst of it. And make no mistake, that is what is happening right now.

[Ted Danson]

And to people who go, oh, that's an exaggeration. Unfair comparison. You say what?

[Rob Reiner]

Well, it's only an unfair comparison when you think of exactly what Hitler did. I mean, Trump is not, you know, invading countries and doing all that, but what he is doing is trying to turn America into an autocracy in the model of Vladimir, of Putin. And if you look at what Putin did when he took over, he made the oligarchs pay. Any deal that they wanted to cut, he would get a piece of. And if you've seen lately, Trump is basically trying to partner with the big corporations, you know, the national American based corporations and others, so that the government gets a cut. And I'm sure it means he will get a cut. And what it does then is it starts to control. Not just he's controlling the courts, he's controlling the universities, he's controlling law firms, he's doing everything he can to control everything. Once he has business on his side and not pushing back, then you have the danger of becoming an autocratic state. Not in the way Hitler did it, but in the way the modern autocrats like Putin, like Erdogan, like, you know, those.

[Ted Danson]

I sit here, I mean la, it's kind of vibrant right now because of immigration and ICE and how they're going about it and not really trying to fix the problem, but just use it as a fear tactic, I feel. And I go, okay. And because I see friends, people I've known, people I admire, people who work hard, staying in their homes, you know, well, afraid to go out.

[Rob Reiner]

I mean, it is about fear and it's about cruelty. This is, you know, playing to a very, very specific base. It's a white Christian nationalist base that wants to have a white Christian nation, believes that America was founded as a white Christian nation. We did a documentary called God and Country which is about that. But, you know, if you look at his coalition, it's. It's those people who are, you know, want to push their religion or push their ideas on it. Then you have a group of very, very wealthy people who are selfish and who don't care about anything but that. And he's put this coalition together and a lot of people who are ignorant and don't, you know, racism, the racism is at the core of a lot of this. And that's a very dangerous cauldron of a constituency that he's put together.

[Ted Danson]

Right? So I question myself. So I look at myself and go, well, wait, what are you really doing, Ted? Are you hiding behind your. Well, I will try to put light and good and caring and nurturing out into the world. And I do, and I want to. And that is kind of who I am. Well, so what? Is that enough? I keep looking at what do you.

[Rob Reiner]

Do, but you can only do what you can do. I mean, you know, we have. We're limited with our power, whatever. I always look for, you know, this is something. This is a conversation that my wife, Michelle, and I have had every day since Trump was elected. What do we do? What can we do? And I keep saying, what can we do? I don't know. I initially thought, okay, if we win the midterms and not just win them, but win them by a large, you know, swamping 30, 40 seats, whatever, then it at least sends a message that says the country is not behind what you're trying to do. But now he's gerrymandering in Texas. He's gotten the Texas legislature to agree to flip five Democrat seats into becoming Republican seats. Gavin Newsom is fighting back here in California, which I admire immensely, and he's trying to fight fire with fire. But the truth of the matter is, if you look at the map and every state decides to go down that road, we're not gonna win. We're not gonna win if everybody does that so they can gerrymander us out of. Because all of our constituents are in urban, mostly, mostly, not all, but many of them are in urban areas. And so it makes the carving of these. Of these borders to skew towards the Republicans. So if we don't win in the midterms, then I don't know what you can do, except to win big in 20, 28 and then start to turn the ship around, which is going to take years, if not decades, because he has taken such a wrecking ball to our democracy and to our Constitution and to the rule of law. He doesn't care about the rule of law. He breaks it every day. And if there's a ruling he doesn't like, he doesn't pay attention to it. He won't live up to it. And, you know, it was said when they were finished, the Constitutional Convention, when people came out, they said, what do we have? What have you guys given us? And they said, you know, a republic, if you can keep it because it's fragile. Democracy is fragile. It's all based on whether or not we all share a set of values and that we all honor the rule of law and that we all honor the Constitution. But if you don't care about the Constitution, if you don't care about the rule of law, then what avenue do you have? If you don't have a legal recourse, because you have somebody who says screw the law, then where do you go? It has to be some kind of political movement. And the political movement has to happen, hopefully, in the midterms, But I don't have a lot of faith right now, but if not, then in the next presidential election. And who's going to emerge right now? Gavin Newsom is the, you know, and J.B. pritzker are the only two that I see on the, on the horizon. Gavin is fighting like a dog. I mean, he's out there calling every lie out and hitting very hard. So, you know, we've got to get behind somebody who's willing to fight to, you know, to keep this democracy. I mean, we want it to survive. We want it to be the beacon to the world. We want it to be the shining city on a hill. Because if it succeeds, what it means is that a diverse group of people, religions, gender, nationality, sexuality, all can live in one place. And if we can show that, that means that bodes well for the whole world. It says, yes, you can put all these people in one place and we can live together. Right now, Trump is making it so we can't live together. He doesn't want it. He's trying to divide it, and he's doing a pretty good job of it.

[Ted Danson]

Okay, all right, all right.

[Rob Reiner]

Get me off my soapbox.

[Ted Danson]

No, no, no, no.

[Rob Reiner]

The end. Continue. 12. Get back to that.

[Ted Danson]

No, it's good. It's good to talk to. So I feel like I should be talking to people on both sides of the fence to try to literally understand, because I don't. And I do know that I can be a condescending, judgmental dick. Sometimes when I look at people, I go, wait, why are you doing this? You know, this. You're hurting yourself. You're hurting your farms, you're hurting your.

[Rob Reiner]

Well, you know, if you look at the.

[Ted Danson]

But, but I do, But I am a. I, I do know that if I were on the other side of my condensate, condemned, you know, condemnation. Yeah. That I would be pissed, too.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah.

[Ted Danson]

I'd want to flip me the bird. And I know there's a lot of that.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, well, you know, you know, the elected officials, the Republican elected officials, many, many, many of them know what's going on. They know better. But they're also worried about their power base, and they're worried about not getting elected and all that stuff. And it's a show of real weakness. There's no profiles in courage coming out of the Republican Party right now. Some of them are true believers. Don't get me wrong. Some of them are true believers and believe exactly what Trump is Putting forward. But a big chunk of them are saying, no, no, this is ridiculous. You listen to what JD Vance said about Donald Trump or what Marco Rubio said about Donald Trump or what Lindsey Graham said about Donald Trump before he was elected. You just play that. They've done 180s. Every one of them has done 180s because they're frightened. They're frightened of losing their power base.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah. Ha ha.

[Rob Reiner]

You know, it's okay.

[Ted Danson]

Here's, Here's. I mean, I got. I mean, in my desire to have everyone like me.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah. Well, I like you.

[Ted Danson]

Thank you. So, one down. It's good to remind myself. Yes, yes. It's good to be nurturing and caring and loving and try to provide hope. That is who I am. But there's a big, big real world out there, so don't be naive, Ted. And this is a little bit of the real world, you know, So I appreciate. Thank you for talking about it.

[Rob Reiner]

Yeah, no, I'm. I'm happy to do this. I'm happy. Yeah. Happy to do it. I mean, I've been speaking out for a long time. And, you know, I was on Twitter. I've been not on Twitter anymore, but I used to be on Twitter, and I built up a pretty good following. I had like 2 1/2 million people, and all I did was talk about politics. That's all I ever did on the, on that thing. And the, the, the. The reactions I got. It was just astounding. My kids would read it and they go, dad, what are they saying about you? You know, it started out libtard. Libtard. That's okay. I don't care about that. But then they started saying pedophile, and you're on Epstein island and all this stuff. And it's just, you know, the power of social media and disinformation is. An AI Is frightening. Frightening because that's the basis for an autocrat to be able to take over is you control the media in such a way that you confuse people and they don't know what's true and what's not true, what's real, what's not real, and you can't believe your eyes. Yeah. And so you say. He comes along and say, I am the only one can point you in the right direction.

[Ted Danson]

Sorry. Forgive me. Do you have grandchildren?

[Rob Reiner]

No, not yet. Not yet.

[Ted Danson]

But you have children?

[Rob Reiner]

I do.

[Ted Danson]

Okay. I think, well, I can't turn to my grandchildren and say, it's kind of hopeless. You have to turn to your grandchildren and go, here's the hope. Here's hope. Here's love and hope.

[Rob Reiner]

Well, there is hope and here's where I think there is hope in every single one of us. There's good and evil. I mean, the greatest story, Star wars, it's good versus evil. And there's that battle. It goes on in the world. It goes on within each of us where we have evil impulses and we have good impulses. And the hope is that good impulse impulses, the better angels, as they say, win out. And I believe they can. You know, history will show that there's always been wars and so on, but, you know, in fits and starts, America has become better and better over the years. So like I say, this may be a huge step back that we're taking, but ultimately, I think, I know that the positive part of me thinks we can go forward and we have to preserve this. We have to have an example that we can show the rest of the world to say, this is the way we should all live together as one. I was just in the UK and people are looking like, what's going on in America? What is happening there? We used to look to America as the place of the beacon of hope. Now it's like you've gone to the dark side and you can't argue it. They're right. But the light side, the force and the evil and the Darth Vader, we can win. We can win. But we have to stay.

[Ted Danson]

We have to jump in.

[Rob Reiner]

We have to jump in and stay vigilant. And you tell your grandkids that you and I may not leave this world, seeing it where we want it to be, but ultimately it can be there.

[Ted Danson]

Yeah. Thanks. Really fun talking to you.

[Rob Reiner]

It was great talking to you.

[Ted Danson]

Smart, smart, smart man.

[Rob Reiner]

Thanks. Thanks. It was great to talk to you.

[Ted Danson]

Well, I love talking to Rob Reiner. I love the community that I am privileged to be part of, those people who try to make the world giggle. It was really fun to talk to him. Thank you. Be sure and catch Final Tap two. The End continues in theaters this weekend. And while you're at it, pick up the book. It's called A Fine Line between Stupid and Clever. That's all for our show this week. Special thanks to our friends at Team Coco. If you enjoyed this episode, send it to someone you love, subscribe on your favorite podcast app and maybe give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts if you're so moved. If you like watching your podcasts, all our full length episodes are on YouTube. Visit YouTube.com See you next time where everybody knows your name.

[Rob Reiner]

You've been listening to where everybody knows your name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson sometimes. The show is produced by me, Nick Leow. Our executive producers are Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross and myself. Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez, research by Alyssa Grohl, talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Bautista. Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Antony Yen, Mary Steenbergen and John Osborne. Adam Pali here and I'm John Gabris. We're a couple actors and best friends who you may know as the hosts of the TV show 101 Places to Party before youe Die. Now we're bringing you a comedic look at health and wellness with our new show, Staying Alive. We'll have guests like our friend, actor Jerry O', Connell, ketamine therapist Dr. Stephen Radowitz, Paul Scheer, Ego Wodom, Gillian Bell, Dr. Dolittle. Staying alive with John Gabris and Adam Pali is out right now. Get them a week early and ad free with SiriusXM podcast plus on Apple Podcasts. Bubba Wallace here with Tyler Reddick.

[Ted Danson]

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[Rob Reiner]

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