hello everyone and welcome back to conversations with Tyler today I'm chatting with Brian cman who is a producer director and screenwriter he's the co-writer of the movie Oceans 13 and the movie Rounders the producer for films including The Illusionist and the lucky ones the director for films including solitary man with Michael Douglas and the documentary this is what they want for ESPN and the co-creator showrunner and executive producer of
Showtime billions and super pumped the battle for Uber and his podcast is the moment and my own daughter thinks this is one one of the sagest sources of Life advice out there Brian welcome that's awesome to hear because as you know my my son Sam uh certainly has a high opinion of you and your work and uh it's funny to me that you two know one another really before you and I knew each other and she knows you I think more as a podcaster than as a
movie and TV person awesome that's great I love people people who interact with me via podcast and who uh get on the wavelength that I'm on on the Pod I do feel very connected to and I understand why they're connected to me so that's great I have to meet these people like us more somehow right isn't that strange it it is uh but but they do do you feel this way I I do think that someone who's listened to enough of the moment enough episodes of the
moment they do have a sense of the things that animate me and the things that animate me are so much a part of who I am that in a sense they do really know me um or they know a a part of me or they know me uh when I'm trying to access the part of me that's most alive the best of myself and so when I meet someone and they're they're they're a person who spent a lot of time engaged in that way it's it's not hard to find a
way to connect do you feel that way too absolutely and some of the people who think they don't know me in fact they do know me they just can't believe that's what it means to know me like that's it yes uh and well I think also though one it's hard to believe that somebody has not only the catholicity of interest and knowledge that you have but the depth of interest and knowledge that you have so when uh I'm sure when someone
meets you they're they're trying to understand how a human being has that entire range you know well thank you I have some very simple questions for you about the history of Television to start with so I grew up in the
1970s and I've long wondered why was TV so bad for so long before the so-called Golden Age maybe you could date that to the 99s or or or the atis but why weren't shows in the 70s and 80s better than they were or would you challenge that
premise well you know I also grew up in the 70s I was born in ' 66 and I'm not sure that the hypothesis that it was bad is correct it certainly wasn't in in general as an art form operating on the level that Cinema was operating on or the level that music in part was operating on during that time but if we look at say children's television I could argue that Jim Henson and Sesame Street for what it was and aimed at what it was aimed at was as
important as any television that's on today uh so I would say that Jim Hensen moved the art form forward he figured out a use case for TV that hadn't really been done before and um he created uh a way of thinking about the medium that
was really different and then look Hill Street blue shows up in the80s uh and I think figures out how to use certain techniques of theater and Cinema and novels to tell these TV stories and like any other business when that started to connect
then people in the business started to become aware of what was possible uh and so yeah it was a function of three channels to answer a question yeah in the main of course TV was worse no doubt about it but there were high points and
I think those high points pointed the way toward the high points that came later like for me NYPD Blue is the network show that's on fully on the level of any of these shows that came after and you know David milch cuts his
teeth on um and Hill Street Blues there's a wonderful book by Brett Martin called difficult men that's about showrunners and it starts in a way with botcho and milch in in that time period and it's a great look into uh how this
idea of showrunners created um modern modern television and you know HBO needing something all these sort of business reasons underneath it but people who came up through originally um Hill Street were able to kind of go on
and start this Revolution and in your view how how good really was I Love Lucy is it just a few memorable moments like vitamine of vamin or is it actually a show or it'd be good episode after good episode like the surprise I was going to say like we could look at shows [Music] um well so so obviously she was an in incredible physical performer an incredible comedian her timing was amazing but also when you asked the
question I started thinking about the ' 50s and I started thinking about directors like Sydney lamt and people who became worldclass directors of Cinema and who started by directing those live television um presentations
right those plays and all that stuff on TV in the 50s and so look it was the dawning of um in Industry it was the dawning of this art form in a real way I Love Lucy has incredible moments I've certainly seen every single episode and
I think probably not just because making this stuff is my job it was never ever a moment that it was my favorite show but I love Western I grew up watching Western with my dad and Chuck Connor The Rifleman it might not be a good show but I think there are elements in that that are synchronous with movies and have similar I can ography and maybe were're able to deliver that in a digestible way that made you curious about what else was out
there like what that was inspired by or what that was um inspiring so if we move to the current day there are many quite good TV shows but why aren't there many more what is the scarce factor is it directors is it money is it viewers caring is it screenwriting all of the above how should I think about that as an economist well art as you know because you are such a dedicated consumer and thinker about great art you care a lot about it you
can hear a piece and it does something to you and yes like if we look at a music if we look at uh I like if we look at [ __ ] Brew just for a second and how it was received in its time and how people think of it now on the one hand
we could say well music can be reduced to just frequencies and so these frequencies for whatever reason that we don't yet understand are pleasing to us and you may say well want us to come to [ __ ] Brew with an understanding of
bbop hard bop this whole thing or I might say to you I don't think so I think you could put that record on in fact to somebody who doesn't come in expecting Jazz to be something and they might be hit with it in a way that suddenly it Nails them which is to say that the effect that storytelling art has is in a sense because we don't understand why it's magic and so when you ask why there's not more that's better it's like it always comes down of
course as an economist you might say well how are we incentivizing people to make this stuff how are we drawing the best people into it and I do think uh on the whole television is a writer's medium and that you need to uh incentivize and reward writers to be willing to turn themselves inside out to create amazing stuff but I might flip it and say how much truly amazing stuff is there in any given art form at any given time you might take a
snapshot of it and because so much stuff has to come together the writing has to be incredible first of all the concept has to be one that Nails the moment in time I mean you know the way Franzen was talking about the the duty you have to write the Great American novel and it's one that takes in in some way processes the world that you're living in that could be a science fiction novel right it could be a historical novel but in
some way it is hitting off the times in which you live so a um a great piece of Television whether it's Madmen whether it's the Larry Sanders show whether it's NYPD Blue that I was talking about earlier or um if it's The Sopranos
it needs to conceptually be something that the times want to engage with it needs to have us a writer or writers with an incredi clear sense of purpose and they have to be talented enough and ready to give What It Takes and then the
magical Alchemy of their words the camera and that group of actors has to uh take flight and so you can hire really talented people and sometimes it doesn't work and sometimes suddenly almost miraculously it really does work uh and so this is why someone like David milch and that's another book I would recommend as milch's book which is one of the best maybe the best book ever written about television the one that came out last
year uh when you think about a guy like that who was able to write some of the best episodes of Hill Street and then NYPD Blue and then create Deadwood that does feel to me as somebody who does this stuff miraculous why is Israeli TV been so
good in the last 10 years suim Chael prisoners of War there's a lot more actually there are great shows you know I I don't know that that's I want to give you an answer but what I really think is one thing I've
learned all right if you when your daughter says the stuff about that there are things um that she hears me say I would say one of the things that I really have felt the older I've gotten is just an incredible comfort in saying I don't know like whatever that amalgam of things are that's created the ground to be fertile enough and then the artists to be ready to make the work that they're making and to have it connect I don't know I haven't
studied it and I so I don't have a ready-made um answer for you I I think in a more Global sense we're pulling back from 30,000 fet there was a moment when I thought South Korean Cinema was just incredible um it's been for a a long time and I remember watching this series of eight or 10 or 12 movies and I had a thought that it was a moment in time where the the movies from South Korea without ever mentioning what it feels like to have North
Korea as your neighbor as this bully as this invasion of your psyche they would never say that the movies weren't about that at all yet receiving those movies I felt part of why they were so potent was that it had their they were suffused with that idea somewhere in the consciousness of the people making it and so it it had that kind of um effect because you felt uh this need for Freedom you felt this this uh this sense of encroaching Doom this
sense of wanting to Define themselves the people in the movies and the filmmakers and so perhaps something similar is going on anytime um a certain area starts to produce work that's really good uh and important um but I
haven't given the Israeli stuff the same amount of thought that I gave that South Korean stuff a few years back I just watched old boy on a large screen for the first time do you like that one well that's a great one yeah for me um yeah
it's an incredible movie The Original uh I for me um uh bad boy uh sympathy for uh lady Vengeance those are two that I think are are great but there are many many movies from 10 years ago that and 12 years ago from Korea that are I I'll text you a list that are just great mother is very good memories of a murder is the earliest one I know I'm sure I haven't seen that one I know I haven't seen that one somehow I missed that one no I
missed it I'll watch it for sure and when people watch TV shows often these days they binge so they'll watch many episodes in a row uh I don't do that I like to watch something like one a week at the margin do you want to
have your viewers binging more or binging less what do you prefer how do you think about that tradeoff I loveing I loved the experience of watching Mad Men week to week and I'm so glad that I got to watch it week to week it was almost like a
holy day in our house Amy and I would uh we would you know start taping it so it would just get a little run up before you would start cuz madman actually had commercials oddly enough um even the later years very few commercials and they would chunk it so that it was great but um so there's something about the anticipation and then seeing something when it airs and having when Twitter was slightly different I really loved having
a conversation on Twitter during a show that was meaning you know after a show that was meaningful you would watch the second to last episode of Mad Men and then you could see what seen wall was saying on Twitter and you could talk to him and you could talk to mattz Aller sites and you could sort of engage in that way and that was incredibly fun but the crown is probably my favorite show the bear and the crown and I'd say both
the bear and the crown I binge Amy and I binge those shows and the experience this year of watching The Bear was an extraordinary experience to bingit because I felt like I was immersed in Christopher stores imagination in the way he saw the
world and it was like reading a novel and the kind of Novel even a big novel that you read in a weekend and that's what we did we we watched on a Saturday and Sunday and it was an incredible experience but I think to binge
something like that it the show needs to be great and we also picked moments to stop we picked moments to stop and think about it and talk about it and then picked a moment to stop and wait till the next day I think both things have their um both things are rewarding you know I feel like the crown is built to binge and the way that it accretes really works in a binge model and I have a feeling that Madmen because there were so
many Quiet Moments in Madmen because madman was about visual images and about um symbolism I think because his business was about semiotics and so when you would be able to walk away and think about what you saw it was
really rewarding um the crown is rewarding too in those ways but I think they're built slightly differently David and I don't really think about it in um making billions I think we just want the whole thing to add up to cre as I say
but also we do want you to be able to watch it in discreet does combining food and television viewing did that make American food worse because Europeans don't do that so much oh yeah eating at the kitchen table
watching is absolutely I yes I I look I don't I mean it's a I love the question I love uh well yeah you should eat your food have a conversation with yourself or your family depending on your situation and then get ready and watch stuff on
the other hand if you've worked really hard all day and you just want to sit down and eat and watch something I mean I I feel like there for certain things I do think there's I'll use the word read to read them you know I do think that there's a wrong and a right way to read certain pieces of material on the other hand It's Entertainment and so if people wanna be entertained while eating a burger and watching the thing I think that's all
right I think that um I think the people making stuff to a person I would say just to Circle to your question earlier man people making this stuff are trying really hard to make it as well as they can and the answer is never that they're
not sort of working themselves to their greatest capacity given their level of exhaustion but I don't think then they require you to watch it under certain circumstances I think you want certain people watching it that way someone
writing about the the you know I would prefer that someone writing about the work is focused on it uh but I would FL you know how do you feel about audio books like do you feel that somebody a run listening to one of your books is having uh an experience similar to the experience of sitting down with a pen and underlining when they read it or is it not at all similar to that if I was reading it I would feel fine about it I don't like to
listen to audiobooks but if my readers are listening I think that's great but the people who read them they're somehow weird and corny and I feel it ought to sound like me and it doesn't and I get that if it sounded like me it might sell fewer copies but I don't care about that I would if I were you I would insist on doing it yourself you don't do it yourself now you know my last book they oh you know you should do it yourself
then they got the book they're like well we're gonna have someone come in and do this uh again it was probably an okay commercial decision but it sounds like a martian oh I feel like it's really crucial I I couldn't agree with you more you I really want authors reading their own books and I want to feel the intonation from the author and particularly someone whose voice is so familiar to people now from the podcast I feel like if I bought
your book on audio I'd want to hear you reading your book well we will see is there a television purchase that you would be willing to recommend to our listeners what you watch why you think it's best no because things change and the
truth is your settings so many I think there's such a high quality now in the televisions where people get screwed up is in the settings like you got to go in there you got to read go pull up like a cinematography magazine and just pull up
what cinematographers tell there's it's Ryan Johnson's talked about this online the great director and writer and um like I asked Ryan when I got the last TV I got I wrote I asked Ryan to just tell me what to set my television up to and I just set it up to exactly his specs so that now it looks great and is that online somewhere oh yeah you can find it it's just turning off it's just turning off a bunch of the stuff that's set set
up for watching sports only and um and it will it really fixes it make returns it to looking like you want it to look as close as it it can yeah now let's say we put you in charge completely and you get to redesign Multiplex movie theaters you can't make them like the Hollywood palaces of the 20s but within reason what are the changes you would make to improve the movie watching experience this is not about making more money it's
about making the movie better what would you do well you started like a good Dungeons and Dragons dungeon master you started by taking away the first thing I would do right you made it more difficult I mean the first thing I would do is make
sure you could have a zigfield like screen because that big screen is immersive and you're lost it and that and the sound quality I mean I think this stuff's I think it's basic like if um Greta Gerwig or Chris uh Nolan
are they're setting up their movie to look a certain way whatever you need to do in the movie theater to recreate the experience that they last had when they approved it sound and picture sometimes you'll walk into a theater and it won't be bright enough like it won't be to enough candles right so that stuff drives us nuts um or they won't have it just like I would just want people to Really Care the projectionist to care the people
setting the thing up make sure that it's like lit properly make sure that all the speakers are working properly make sure that the sound ratio is what the filmmakers wanted I'm those are my modest sort of beginning things right and then I do love seeing a movie on a giant screen like seeing Mission Impossible even uh at the IMAX a proper 70mm IMAX was a phenomenal Movie goinging experience I mean I there was only 13 I think proper IMAX 70 mm
theaters in the country and it's you know there's one 10 blocks for me in New York City and it's a thrill to go to that theater to see a movie every time I go see a movie there for you as viewer how Crow did do you want the movie theater to
be I'd like 2/3 to 3/4 full or totally empty depending on the film nothing in between what's your view my very favorite time to see a movie is the first screening of the day on a Saturday morning uh and probably my second
favorite would be a really full screening on a Friday night where I have the seat that I like which is dead center but the aisle um and I love early morning seeing a film like I remember seeing trie of life that great Terence mik film at the old Lincoln Center theater you would go downstairs the independent cinema and I was a Saturday morning and I was alone and I I felt like I was alone with Malik's Vision that theater cared a lot the screens
were small but they cared a lot about the screens being accurate and I felt lost for three plus hours I was in a reality that I didn't normally live in and I didn't create and I was experiencing the world the way Terrence Malik saw the world and that is an experience that I wish everybody could have it rewards it just rewards you it rewards your time and and effort so that's my favorite first thing in the morning on a Saturday morning and
when is it you prefer to see the movie alone no companion no partner just you you mean uh which movies do I prefer to see that way yes so sometimes times a sad movie I might prefer to see alone like what if the other person doesn't find it sad it's a bit of a Discord I love see yeah I would say I'm I'm lucky in that Amy is a great movie going partner because she's also a filmmaker and we we tend to um if we don't receive them exactly the same way
and David LaVine my creative partner um same thing but I love seeing movies alone I would say and I love seeing a movie for the second time alone that's I would the answer is really when I when I go see something for the second time like the master pta's movie The Master um and then the other thing I love to do why is that better the second time tell tell us that first so being alone the second time because the first time
you're you're swept up in the film you're swept up and everything go you're with somebody you're like can you believe this moment uh look at that shot of him going across the um soft Flats oh look at the look on Philip SE
Hoffman's Face In This Moment you're you're but you're kind of like in it together and then the next time when I'm alone I think I'm able to be I've seen it so it's not about just being swept away and it's not about being analytic
but analytical but it is about allowing myself in a very uh private way to notice things and then take my time noticing them and thinking about them thinking about them as it's going I know what the story is I saw the night before
and so there's something about the Solitude of a second time I mamian I remember seeing a second time and because I I had a question in my head okay how did he get to this you know the voiceover is kind of reminiscent of uh
the way Melville would sometimes do voiceover like in Bob uh lambour or something and so you're like okay what is this how did he decide that that's the approach he's taking why how is this used so well why does this movie both
feel so intimate and first person and yet have this omniscience and like I had some questions that and so the second time I could like alone kind of allow those questions to wash over me and try to see if I came up with answers to them
why are so many movies today too long and yours are not I'm very happy to say but how'd that happen well I'll get to that but I want to say one other thing about um uh the other thing I love is like um I remember the first time I saw she's got a it and I didn't know who spele was nor did I it blew me away right it CH so I was thinking about movies that really like changed me and that was a movie that changed me and I remember going to
see it and in Boston I was a sophomore in college and um I went oh I didn't say in Boston because I went to Harvard I did not I went to toughs so don't think I'm trying to be smart um and uh subtly say that I didn't but um the Harvard people say Cambridge right yeah right sometimes sometimes they say New England I went to a small but so I um I remember going to see it and all I wanted to do was bring people to it and I went back so I saw it
right and then when he reveals that it's him at the end because you're watching it you don't know he's Mars Blackman because it was so early in the thing he wasn't famous yet I remember the theater I saw it on everything and all the next I went back I went three days in a row to see that movie and I brought groups of people and that is I love that with all forms of art I love when you stumble upon something that has the thing about
it that reminds you like for me I wasn't yet somebody who was doing this I wasn't a filmmaker I didn't even know I could be a filmmaker I didn't know I could be a writer but there was something about the way Spike Lee used language and he
used Cinema that blew my mind and I had to share it with people and so that's the it's in a way it's a very personal experience but I wanted it to become communal and that's like the gift of the movies I wanted to and I remember
bringing groups of people both nights um so like I say I saw it Friday then I saw it Saturday night and I saw it Sunday mat and sharing it like that Tyler was I felt it was like this is why there are movies you know this is why this art
form is so fantastic because and I remember experiencing it with those people and loving it just as much all three times that I saw it and movies being too long what happened there or are they Noto too long I don't know my
friends say they're too long I've never heard someone say oh I want more movies that are 2 hours 49 minutes yeah I mean is Citizen Kane too long no but that's Citizen Kane right is Casablanca too long no that's kasaan is the third man too long there's so many movies it's like the 13th best movie that came out this year and it's almost three hours and those are too long I mean it just depends on like look that's that thing
where for a long time people would slam an artist for making a double album and yeah a lot of double albums there's like a lot of fat but when I listen to the river and then I listen to the what would have been the single album of the
river the double better I the Double's better I love certain of the songs on um be true is great and I wish that was on the bigger record but the bigger record's there for a reason and um so for me look I'm somebody who wants the
artist like I love Tarantino's movies and I want his movies to be long I'm I'm happy to sit there and see the full Exorcism of his you know him fully exercising his um Vision uh and I don't I don't really think that the studios let people most people make movies uh that are just too long I remember once I don't know W Anderson I don't know him but I met him once and I I love his movies and I love that his movies are 90 minutes and I asked him
once the one time I met him we were screening a film he invited some people who happen to be in town who he knew were fil film people and uh so I got to watch a movie with them and afterwards we were just talking about movies and I
said like it these movies of yours they're 90 minutes and he said yeah I found that the things I'm me the concepts I'm interested in don't really support a journey that lasts longer than that and he's an incredibly disciplined
filmmaker and so I was like that makes total sense but I can you imagine telling PT now um let's say Magnolia perhaps some people find aspects of Magnolia uh to be really about a filmmaker working some stuff out for the filmmaker's purposes but there are other people who find those parts of the movie incredibly satisfying and I think when somebody is a a masterful artist like PTA let's give them the room to do that but I'm also
someone who doesn't like baseball games being shortened and I don't like pulling pictures who are pitching a perfect game in the eighth because the pitch count so I'm a bit of a romantic when it comes to this stuff and uh so I'm indulgent of The Wishes of both filmmakers and pitchers speaking of Magnolia what has happened to what you might call old school movie stars so this is 2023 there were major films with Harrison Ford at
80 and Tom Cruz at whatever age in the lead roles good for them I'm all for that but why is there no Next Generation a very top movie stars well let's see if Margo Robbie is that why isn't she she very well may be if you look at how she's built her career it's very possible that she will be but who's the next Harris and Ford it's a big gap right 30 years and it's not clear who you would put in that same post well how old should I'm not
asking it rhetorically like how in your mind how old should that person be now like what what a where what where on the Continuum 53 and they've been doing it for 16 years and have at least three or four excellent movies under their belt perhaps Bradley Cooper let's see what happens with the Bernstein film because perhaps Bradley Cooper is that person um perhaps Matt Damon is that person I mean it's a difficult question
because you're really asking I think about what happened to the movie industry um and let's say also let's adjust I'll do a little bit of like let's adjust so life expectancy and how long one can do this so is Tom Cruz at
60 Harrison Ford at 53 and if so is Tom Cruz that person and also of course there's the question of mystery and all that stuff right for like we didn't know anything about Jack or we knew funny things about Jack or Pacino also those
guys are still doing it like those people are still making movies and that's another I mean bogy died th you know the generation before those guys just died William Holden and bogy like they died off um and it kind of created
room but as you said you still have Harrison you know doing this stuff I'm sure that you as is the case with myself you know many very smart people who just don't understand movies very well like if you showed them tarkovski Solaris
they'd be bored no matter how big the screen if you had to explain in his few Dimensions as possible what differentiates the really smart people who get movies from the really smart people who do not get movies what's going on there perhaps openness perhaps the ability to not have to analyze in real time and to experience and um and perhaps it's a Gateway thing I find Casablanca is a remarkable tool to solve this problem because Kane
is slow and Kane Citizen Kane is slow and Citizen Kane um is very much a masterpiece with a capital M Casablanca sneaks up on you Casablanca is just fun like it's fun from moment one like um Citizen Kane is portentous not pretentious but portentous right from the moment it starts you understand you're supposed to take something very seriously it's in everything that Wells does Casablanca is a delight and I find that I have found that no one
I have never met anyone immune to Casablanca charms and so it's a Gateway into understanding what what makes great Cinema be because it's if you get them now a lot of people are resistant to to um sitting down and turning it on or
sitting down and watching it but if you get someone to watch 10 minutes of kasablanca and 10 minutes in you go hey all right cool you tried let's go they're like no no no what happens and then you got them and so I do find it to
be be an incredible thing um to kind of hook people I think all the presidents men is another great example of a film that does that because right away you are in this mystery and it doesn't announce itself as like proper Cinema but it is proper Cinema and it deploys all the tools of proper Cinema and it's another kind of Gateway uh film as is Raiders the first one you know uh and I so I think that the answer is I I and
then I guess you know I guess there's some people who can stand in front of a painting and it just doesn't move them and then maybe they think I don't like paintings and maybe they don't like carvaggio but maybe they like Jasper
John's but they don't know that they like Jasper Johns because they would never go look at a Jasper John's um or you know they don't like Jasper John's but suddenly they see something else that speaks to them I mean poetry
functions the same way right Tyler like why are people immune to poetry and and other people it just speaks to them but I see a kind of clumped distribution when it comes to cinema and Americans almost everyone I know quite likes
Casablanca but they draw a line somewhere just as people will draw a line maybe with modern art or abstract art and they won't let felini or Bergman or whatever else you want to put on that list and who who crosses that line and
who doesn't oh that's interesting well okay is it like this though like I don't understand a tonal composition I don't enjoy a tonal composition uh I understand what it is as an exercise but as a listener I'm not I don't want to put in what I would have to put in to get out of it what some of my friends perhaps get out of it right and so it like Bergman I mean I once was talking I was once talking to an author who I admire a
great deal um Mark help and Mark said uh Mark helin wrote a soldier of the Great War um uh and um winter tale not the political journalist so they're different people not halin but helprin and and he talked about the
cost the emotional cost of reading novels after 50 and that the way a novel can stir you up because the best novels are about death and essentially whether they are or they aren't they are right and so the best movies Bergman is about death
Bergman is about impermanence right and so all the great works of art in some way or another are about impermanence and people often don't want to deal with impermanence and so it you have to kind of decide how you're going to deal with that when engaging with art because when art can affect you that deeply uh in a way that it it makes you think about impermanence May maybe you don't consider that a good time maybe you can
watch Michael man a cinematic Master make heat because although there's death in it it's not really about death uh it's about consequences and that's entirely different the other stuff's about impermanence regardless of deserve regardless of
consequence uh and so I think that that might perhaps that gets to um in some way gets to the answer to that question because yeah speaking of death what's your favorite Hitchcock movie yeah I mean um it's funny I was watching I was
watching him talk yesterday about um the use of staircase imagery in films it's a very boring answer but North by Northwest I watched it pretty recently and was just blown away by it I would say the coldness of Hitchcock is not um the coldness of Hitchcock and the sort of uh his style of directing performance he's a master he's the greatest but it's not my personal favorite uh right there's a difference between what we understand and can fully
appreciate and what we just love and I'm not just someone in love with with his movies are Jerry Lewis movies funny sometimes yeah sometimes they are I mean he as a as a human character obviously he's a uh complicated figure but I don't I
don't I don't go back I don't go back to his movies very often why does comedy seem to stand the test of time less well than drama so if I watch silent movies that are supposed to be funny there's some chaplain it it
quite speaks to me but for the most part I just think this isn't funny a lot of movies from the 1950s to me they're just flat out not funny bringing a baby I enjoy but very few early comedies what what's happening there and they don't cross borders as well either as you know well I think you know so couple answers to that well I mean comedy clearly is of its time because that applies to stand-up comedy too like people our age
there's literally nothing in the world that seemed funnier than the first two Steve Martin albums and you could try those albums on some younger people and they because the world took a lot of what he did no part of what he did seems stunning or surprising now but on the other hand man maybe it's just about like truly great stuff is what lasts because thin man is still as entertaining if I put on thin man I agree even thin man yeah right the
first two yeah if you watch the first two those movies are so [ __ ] funny and and endearing and charming and just amazing maybe it's just that they were great and the other stuff wasn't great but I've done the test as I wonder if you have with I've done the test with like because it's a long time now from when Eddie Murphy and Bill Murray were in their Prime making those movies back then those movies and it's 40 50 years
later 40 years later certainly they still really work Stripes is still very very funny and Trading Places is still very funny and so you know those things can last but thinman okay that's another movie that I would say to people like if you think you don't like old movies watch Thin Man what's the Steven Spielberg movie that you feel is quite deep in some underappreciated way if you had to pick one I'm yeah I mean I'm somebody who I I
don't join the the people who condemn Spielberg for being a populist and I loved the movie about him that came out last year I mean I just loved it couldn't have loved it more his me his you know uh film as Memoir um agree yeah
I loved it and some people really didn't like it and I just have to say I it was my favorite movie of the year I mean I just loved it so much um well I think Close Encounters is a great movie um you know it's about alienation right and uh I
think it's a a great film and ET is a great film and um I I think either of those serves as a pretty I think Close Encounters is probably the one that's quite quite deep even if on the surface it doesn't seem that way which is the mor recami book that is especially deep and not sufficiently appreciated I'm glad you asked I saw that somebody wondered about mami I'm glad you asked the question for me it's hardboiled Wonderland but I love that
would have been my number two choice I what's your number one choice well I think Kafka on the shore is like an astonishing so to me Kafka on the shore is it works so well uh and it shouldn't work it doesn't it it encompasses the
entire experience of life and and Love and War it just encompasses it just encompasses so much um and every page is entertaining the thing about Haruki murakami to me and why I think he's the living writer that captures my imagination the most is
that he never forgets the reader he's completely consumed with the personal he's completely consumed with making these things live for himself and to be fully Personal Expressions of how he feels and sees the world yet yet his incredible magical mysterious gift is that he makes every page entertaining for you the reader and I he's so I've read every single Mami book uh more than once except um I've held out two to read
for when he's no longer producing books uh and um because I want to have two that I can read later that I've never read uh but I find him a Marvel a miraculous Marvel and I'm I I I'll never forget reading um Norwegian Wood for the first time and
and just understanding that there was somebody out there working at the highest possible level that you could work at as a as a writer what's your favorite book about poker and why I know you've bought hundreds of
them I have um there's a little known book so the books about poker that that are the non-fiction book you know a Alvarez's book is is perfect it's a perfect book I highly recommend it um Anthony Holden's book is really entertaining Peter alon's book about the World Series of Poker there are many many great poker I'm leaving so many out there's a tiny little book called King of a Small World by Rick Bennett I don't even know if
it's in print it's like 210 pages and it's about Maryland poker games and I've read that book 10 times it is a perfect encapsulation of a certain kind of Poker life that existed a while back and I'm leaving books out and I'm sorry but I do
have one of the biggest poker book collections I've been collecting poker books for 35 years um how is Maryland poker different well back then they were though those games were at these like fire stations they had to be under fake
Charities and it's this whole kind of Byzantine set of rules that allowed these couple Hustlers to live in it and it's I never get to play in that scene and I'm glad cuz I would have been flee but this guy creates these Incredible characters it's really he really this guy wrote um a really special book oh but if I have to just mention um because it's not something maybe um if the other writer who I think is the best writer in
the world and he also dabbles in magic realism and he wrote for me the best book ever about a person who's in the world of gambling and that is William Kennedy's Billy fail's greatest game uh if I I have you ever read that book no
never read it Tyler it's as good as Kennedy to me is like you know another one of these people like Kennedy I think should have won the Nobel I think that that Al Ben cycle is a stunning achievement um and I think that Billy
fa's greatest game is his best book and it's about every thing that's been about gambling since I think in some way this book is kind of like in the same way that um David MO is the big con is the where every single con artist
movie came from Billy F's greatest game is like an text of sorts and I I highly recommend it what would be something you feel you've learned about the poker universe that a well-educated American is likely to simply not understand or
not know about it that would be surprising and not obvious it's very well this is basic but it's not obvious to most people which is you probably can't win when you say probably where does the probably come from why not just you can't win well like you may be one of those gifted freaks who can sit down and suddenly the math makes sense and reading people make sense but basically if you don't study basically if you don't study and think about
poker at least a little bit every day like I think about poker every day and I am not a worldclass poker player I'm somebody who I track my results very closely and um I'm flat like uh by the end of the I'm usually flat and I play a
lot of Poker and being flat is a gigantic Victory some years I win a little bit and some years I lose a little bit but basically in competitive difficult poker games I'm flat I think about poker at least I engage in some
way with materials about how to be better at poker every day and um that's where it's like chess it's like required I think and people so in your home game oh okay I can tell you in your home game that's your casual Monday night game if you have a rotating group of 12 people to make your nine or seven who show up what you don't know is that at least two of those people actually are taking it almost as seriously as a job that's the
thing that most people don't know what's your greatest weakness as a poker player I think you'll understand that I'd rather not say jayen Brunson overrated or underrated underrated let's go he's properly rated now that's what I
think he was underrated it's one of the only times that Nicks got an asset I think it's one of the only times that Nicks got an asset um uh below what should have been the market price for that asset and I I love him and um I
think he is he he overd delivered which like has never happened hasn't happened since Bernard King probably and for the next where someone just um overd delivered Sho Otani though underrated and are the Knicks going to get Joel
embiid the coast theorem says they should right so you think that he he he is going to force a trade he is going to force a trade of some sort well this is August of 2023 but it seems to me at this time not impossible that Harden
leaves Philly and embiid wants out not that many teams can actually attract him and the Knicks are one of those tell me if I'm wrong wrong well New York market right yeah but what pieces would we if he forces a trade meaning if it's not when he's free agent as many draft picks as the CBA will allow yeah but Daryl's gonna want Brunson so it's uh Daryl's can't do that and you can't do that and or then and so it's a I would love let me just
say this and Daryl if you're listening he's my I'm friends with Daryl as I know you know him too Daryl if you're listening um I think it'd be a great idea just take some draft picks and give us jol and beid I think it solves all your problems what is it you really think of New Jersey anyway I uh I loved Fred armon's version of David Patterson when he would just say New Jersey with so much contempt my wife's from New Jersey so the one thing
I will say is uh I'm from Long Island originally and she's from New Jersey and I always figured no matter what I would marry someone where they would be able to use as a kind of trump card on me well what do you know you're from Long Island but at least she's from Jersey let's say I'm in Manhattan and I'm looking for good food what is it you think that you might know that I do not being a northern Virginia But ultimately from New
Jersey well David Chang is a Virginia so he certainly figured it out and uh I think you should look at the places he recommends in Virginia and just go to those places but I would say um yeah a lifetime of being in this city and eating in this city I think I've uh developed relationships with chefs and so I might know where chefs are eating and that might give me some insight also like um just knowing where some younger people who aren't
able to spend a lot of money are finding great food is a valuable thing to know in the city because someone's always opening an amazing spot and and um you know there are people here who really want to find out what that spot is before it becomes impossible to get into and so you just kind of learned to have an instinct for that but also where like the place that's not Hipp or cool is I'd say I really do know that I know the
place that like if you want to go to Great Diner go to Jo G's and don't worry about where the internet is telling you to go if you want to get a great steak a pav just go to Lucien which was really hip 20 years ago but isn't hip now and
so those kinds of things which is like I could take you to 25 uncool places places that are not hip and not cool where we could just have something perfectly prepared and delicious and you would leave really happy and there would
be nothing about it that felt like you were a part of a scene and maybe that's something that only someone who's lives here could put together and what's the part of town that is most ripe for further exploration in these directions you know like I'm in the Upper West Side it can be tough going I feel there aren't that many good places I mean what's what's wrong with you people if I'm in the East Village I'll do better but it's sort of everyone
feels that way now and then I start thinking well there's some trick here this isn't going to last well the Upper West Side does now have New York's best restaurant in Tatiana but um other than that you're totally right the upper west side's Been A Wasteland for food um because F but you know there's practical reasons because that's a neighborhood people move to to raise kids and they're not going out to eat as much they're
they're at home they're it's just you know whereas the West Village you know or the Lower East Side or like Midtown like midtown east you know or over in Korea Town there's just so much great stuff that's kind of unexplored let's say you could spend three days at a retreat and you get to choose two or three other people who will show up and talk with you for those three days now people in cinema you can already do that right maybe some other
people too living people who are the two or three people you would choose well can these be friends of mine or you don't want them to be friend no you can already do your friends right so no they can't I can't I can't say Seth
Goden even though I would say Seth Goden um oh I well heroi morakami that would be great I would uh even though I'm not someone who has cats I would Supply them if uh he um wanted to be there I I will tell you I would love to
be able to talk to Donald Hoffman for a few days because it would take a few days for him to be able to find where I could understand him well enough that we could really communicate but I would want to take that time to
really understand his theory about what reality is like I feel that would be an incredibly useful thing to be able to sit with him and and get the building blocks so that I could begin to understand where where he is um and then I think
you have to say Bob Dylan be because if you were able to be in a spot where Dylan was and if Bob assuming for this game that Bob was interested in Sharing uh not necessarily you wouldn't have to share autobiographical details
we could all assume that like you know you I've read all of I know all the sort of things but if if if I assume that Dylan is perhaps the wisest person he must be the smartest person he's an accident of Nature and is like let's say
the smartest wa human walking around I would want to understand what it is that he understands um in a way that if if if there were a way he could explain that to me well you have a career Dylan has a career what do you think you can learn from his career well I said this to Paul Shader on the podcast on my podcast once you know it's a great I don't know Bob Dylan's ability like for instance you know he said that he wrote the Kennedy song He's
like on those there was some interview he gave where he's like yeah I wrote this song you know he said something about like wear in temporal where in time he wrote it that was just not true because he didn't want to talk about the fact of when he'd actually come up with it which was recently to comment about the world we were really living in like I think he told some story about writing it seven years ago or something like that I think
he's great at taking pressure off himself throughout his career from any externality um and I think the the clue is what he said when he won that award when he said you know you can um my father said to me that a man can
debase himself so much that even his own family will turn his back on them but God never will and I tie that to the thing he wrote in in the book of lyrics about that poem he wrote about Woody not song for Woody but that poem he wrote
about Woody when he talks about going to the hospital to visit Woody and uh Woody Guthrie for those who don't I know you know but just people don't know when he goes to the hospital to visit Woody and Woody let him clean his bed pans and stuff because Woody wanted to show Bob that no man should be a hero to another man that he was just a person and he produced this work because of what he was willing to do to himself to produce
this work and I think there's something about that moment and Bob saying the thing about the basing himself and all the [ __ ] he made up in Chronicles that per that the lesson is that none of the externalities matter yes Bob wanted success and it's always confusing with Bob because he's a multi-headed Hydra and all that stuff but at core he's this writer who always found a way to hear only his own voice and to have the
confidence and comfort to then serve and produce that that voice only for those people who were willing to try to hear it and I think as an as any kind of an artist that's almost impossible to do you tell yourself you can but it's very
difficult to do it because there's all sorts of other considerations that come into play and it seems to me that only Dylan and miles and like Chuck were able and willing to do that Bruce had John landow but Bob really you know
who he could bounce this stuff off to kind of make a third thing out of it whereas it it seems to me and like RM did that for five years but but Bob has done that for 60 years right so it's it's crazy I mean do do you think that the read I have of Dylan and what he does is does it does it line up with your read absolutely study the past is another career lesson from Dylan I think and just keep on going be willing to reinvent
yourself and uh choose your audiences wisely the ones you care about yes but be willing to reinvent yourself not in the David David Bo is a great artist too but a different kind of artist not I to me anyway not reinvent yourself um to
fit the times but be willing to reinvent yourself because it's what your inner voice is telling you you need need to do to stay an artist right I think is what he's doing yes last few questions how happy are people in the movie
business when the strike's over thrilled but in general is the people is this long-standing cliche someone wants to be a movie star want to be a director at the end of that pot of gold are people happier than average less happy Vish onand I interviewed him two weeks ago he said he thinks the top chess players are really happy would would you say the same about your line of work uh when engaged in the work so onset doing the work that's the time
that people are really yes Taking Flight the rest of it I think for people at times can be hard uh because of a series of of pressures and things there are some people who seem to be able to be happy but I don't know that it draws happy people to it I don't know that that if you're happy you feel like this is the form of expression that you need to engage in but I do think on um in the making of something that you care about I think that's where
there's a lot of Joy at The Meta level what did you learn from your dad obviously very particular things but viewed largely it's an enormous question and he only died seven months ago so it's a hard question it's obviously a question
I've been thinking about the answer to a lot I would say there are the basic things of like loyalty which I mean um but I would suggest I thought a lot about um my dad was somebody who never felt intimidated to have any
conversation with anybody and this idea that no one is better than anyone else was important to him even if it might not have seemed like that that is he had a really egalitarian idea about people's capacity and that uh you had to keep your eyes open because greatness could show up at any given moment and that is something I've carried with me I think he probably wouldn't have expressed his curiosity in the way I express my curiosity but he
had a similar kind of curiosity and appreciation for greatness and I think that I chase greatness in the same way that that he did at the meta level what did you learn from your mom how to love people uh with your whole heart and not hold back is there an unrealized dream or project you have again current conditions aside but that somehow the world won't let you make it I mean yeah we always wanted to make Billy faan's greatest game and it's said
in Albany in like 1910 and it's really very difficult kind of a thing just if you could man it it's got magic realism in it but if you could somehow that I'll tell you there are two things and the other thing is American tabloid which is one of the greatest things ever written about what's at the heart of a certain kind of America James elroy's American tabloid clearly to me is best the book that's going to live on
of his and um I mean like Dalia K too same confidential but but for me American tabl was this guy at the moment in his life as an artist when he was kind of firing an all cylinders but before what he did before even to himself they became tropes is the wrong word it's I don't mean it negatively but he hadn't fallen into a Groove yet even the cold 6000 even cold 6000 is like almost like in reaction to American tabloid whereas American
tabloid is its own thing and to me what's the heart of American tabloid could just be the most staggering and crushing um television series and it's been very hard to try to to do that um and that would be an amazing thing to be
able to do I can see the problem with Albany 1910 but American tabloid sounds commercially viable to me at some point yeah people have owned it and it's just challenging to it's just challenging to put together final question what is the
next thing you will set your mind to learning about I am I I really want to learn about um I want to take my knowledge of Opera up uh a a huge um amount so Opera would be one thing uh because I didn't like it till I was like 52 years old and I really like it now but only some and I don't understand why yet I don't know I have no idea why I put on one piece and I love it and I put on another and I don't dig it at all and I'm kind of curious
about that so that's like a simple little one um and then the the bigger one for me is related to um uh physical fitness and working out I've been uh working out a lot and uh I kind of want to see if I can return myself at 60 to like I'm 57 by 60 if I can somehow uh turn myself back to the basketball player I was at 30 if you send me your Korean movie recommendations all send you my Opera Brian cman thank you very much thanks Tyler this is great