"David Duchovny"

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That's linkedin.com slash smartlist. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. This episode of Smartlist is sponsored by Allstate. Checking Allstate first could save you hundreds on car insurance. That's smart. Not checking the day's weather forecast before breaking out new suede shoes. Big oops. Confidence started high, but that fashion optimism dissolved fast into a wet reality. Yeah, checking first is smart. So check Allstate first for a quote that could save you hundreds. You're in good hands with Allstate. Potential savings vary subject to terms, conditions, and availability. Allstate North American Insurance Company and Affiliates, Northbrook, Illinois. Hey, guys. This is welcome back. This is the first time I've done this, that we're doing the show since we... Did it last? Well, no, we made a... Didn't we make a blood pact? I mean, I would... Not that I know of. Did we not make a blood pact? Who did I make a blood pact with? Oh, no. I'll figure it out later. All right. In the meantime, let's go to All New, Smartlist. Smart. List. Smart. List. Hey, you know, JB, somebody said to me the other day, you've become like the Jack Nicholson of the Dodgers. Oh, yeah. You're at the Dodger. You're on the broadcast. A lot. A little high compliment. I know. I know. And Shawnee, you were there with them. And the guys were like... Somebody said that the guys were like, hey, there's two thirds of the Smartlist crew. And, you know, where's everybody? We really... We had such a joy. I mean, Willie, if I had three tickets. I know. Sure. Sure. This was last week. It was dinner. This week. It's the game. I mean, you know, most people would be like, hey... And Shawnee, worse? No, no, no. Worse still good for Rome, right, Shawnee? Oh, this is what it is. This is like, you're getting me back for all the holidays that Shawnee and I went on. I mean, the stamps on your passports. No, we missed you, Willie. We really did have a nice time, didn't we, Shawnee? Oh my God. It was so easy. Breathe easy. We haven't done that in ever. And it reminded me, Willie, of... I took you to the... Was it Game 1 of the World Series last year when Freddie Freeman hit that walk-off, France? Oh, yeah. How good was that? We were jumping around like... What was the last game? ...which was a beauty contest? The last game of what? Is that the famous last game last year where the guy hit the ball? I believe it was the first game. It was the first game and it was the World Series. Oh, series where he just got a basis loaded home run like the last. Yeah, and then the series continued for the Yankees to go ahead and... They kind of dropped the ball on the whole series. Yankee fans will know that pun. Oh gosh. Well, you just... You're alienated 50 million people. Listen, the Yankees are going to get another chance. Well, who knows when this is going to air, but it seems like they might get another chance. I also... Look what I just fucking did like five minutes before we came out. Playing with the dog outside and I ran inside and I fucking tripped over him and to break my fall, I grabbed the door and my fist finger went all the way back here. Oh, God. Really? Yeah, just like five minutes ago. I was like, wait, so you're on ice right now? Well, just in case, yeah. Well, luckily, no joke. Luckily, you're done with the play. I know. Could you imagine? No. Could you imagine? No. No, can play. Can play. Can be able to play. I know. Oh, that Ricky. It would be good night Oscar if that were the case. Incredible. Wait, Sean, why have you asked me and then my wife separately if my dogs are good with other dogs? Because I want to bring Ricky over, but I don't want to bring him if your dogs are going to attack me. Why would you be bringing Ricky over? Because I might come see a movie this weekend. OK. But you spend three hours plus over at Gens every week. You don't bring Ricky. Look at the judging face. I just don't understand. Like what's going on? Is Ricky having separation anxiety lately? No, no. It's just a thing. As a dog owner, I just don't like to leave him alone for like three, four hours. Jamie, I would describe your face as a scowl right now. It's a scowl. No, but I would like to bring him over to Gens, but they don't get along. Well, yeah, but so I was like, oh, if your dogs get along, it'll be great. I could just bring him over. And if not, by the way, that's fine, too. But I put the bigger issue is why do you and Scotty feel like Ricky needs so much constant? Like dogs can be left alone. And by the way, you just spent almost a full year out of the country. I know. I don't know how he fed himself. He fed himself. I don't know how you drove yourself around. Listen, this is going to be controversial, but we live in an era where people bring their dogs over to other people's houses. A lot. And I don't, I'm not judging you, Sean, on this, but people do it. And they're just, and they're like, I got my dog with me. I'm like, what do you mean you got your dog with you? It's not okay. Yeah. And I'm a dog. I love dogs. I've had lots of dogs. I have a dog. But you don't need to bring your dog with you when you go to somebody else's house. I like the dog. I'm not saying that you don't. Then continue having more morning playtime with them then. People show up. I got my dog with me. Oh, you've got your dog with you. What if everybody brought their dog everywhere would be mayhem? This is what I love. This is what I love. People are like, well, I'm a dog person. You must be a, you're a monster. Oh, sorry. You peed. Where are your paper towels? No, this is what I love. That's not what I mean. I love the, I love the conversation that I know happened this morning and Jason's face as he was having it with Amanda. It was a couple days ago and I've been really stewing on it. Shawn, Amanda's like, Shawn, just text me if our dogs are okay with other dogs and you turn with your cup of coffee or just sludge, your cup of sludge. And I said, fucking what? What? By the way, he's, you know where he is? He's in his chair in his little study with the wire going in. He's watching MSNBC. What the fuck did he say? And then he barely moves and he looks at her and she's at the door because she's too scared to come in because she sees the pre-skeleton. She knows brother. She sees the pre-skeleton. Who knows what stage of gummy he's at? You know what I mean? Yeah, I will scratch. He's afraid of dad. Yeah. You know? She does a very tentative little, yeah, little knock. Yeah. Honey, sorry. Are you, sorry. Are you not on commercial? Is it not commercial? I guess I tell you what, I tell you who's not tentative. Oh, nice. Oh, let's get into it. Yeah. Uh, check the, check the chat. Hang on one second. Oh yeah. Oh, by the way. Yeah, sorry. Before we, before we go, before we get into our guests who we want to talk to immediately. Yeah. Tickets to the Hollywood Bowl November 15th. Oh. For SmartList Live. Wait, wait, do I need to buy tickets for that? I'd really like to go to that. Do I need to buy tickets? Yeah, we're giving you two comps. We're going to give you two comps. One for you and then plus one. You got a plus one. I'd love a stage seat. I'd love a stage seat. If you have a stage seat. A stage seat. You got, you go to smartlist.com slash live. For the Hollywood Bowl show on the 15th of November. Guys, this is going to be, it's going to be very nerve wracking for us. Cause what are we doing up there at the Hollywood Bowl? We can barely do this. We're barely doing this this morning. I will tell you that my guest is, is one of our biggest stars in, in, in the movie industry. So it was my guest. Really? Yes. My guest also is one of the biggest stars out there. Let's have a little side bet. You will be the biggest star in the Hollywood Bowl. Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to be the biggest stars out there. Let's have a little side bet. You and me. You and I. I can't wait. I'm going to have a single up on a, on a camera. We're going to, we're going to single up on you. When JB, when, when my guest comes out, gets announced. Oh, and you'll know why. Oh yeah. It's going to be great. It's going to be great. It's going to be a guest that's going to make me nervous. It's going to be, it's going to be so great on so many levels. I can't wait. All right. You can be the judge between Will and I's guest. Will, let's you and I have a little side $10 bet of who is the best. Okay. Who is the bigger guest and Shawnee, you get to decide and we'll do 10, 10, 20. We'll do a 10, 10, 20 and presses. Automatics. Automatic presses. Okay. All right. I tell you what we are. We're pressed for time because we want to get into our guest who is, get this, award-winning actor, writer, director, New York times bestselling author, podcaster, singer, songwriter, multiple albums, multiple Golden Globes, multiple Emmy nominations, SAG awards. He's known for his, an iconic TV show, which was his sort of breakthrough, even though he'd been doing it for a long time. He's got a degree from Princeton. He's got a master's from Yale and literature. Oh wait a minute. He still has unfinished PhD that I want to ask him about. I'm too. He's one of the all time greats. You guys, it's David Dukovny. Oh, David Dukovny. Hey David. Was that not who you were going to guess, Shawnee? No. I thought it was David Dukovny or Louis CK. Oh. Wow. Wow. Often, often, often mistaken. I don't think Louis has a master's in literature. I'll do respect to, from Yale. You said Princeton. You said Princeton as well. And Princeton first. Is that true? David, welcome. Christ. Is it true? Yes, it's true. Thank you. God. This is so wonderful. David, why would you, why would you, you're such a great actor? Why would you, you're such a, you know, I remember the, we spoke about a year ago where you had dinner with me. Let me just say I don't like the tone of that. Why? Immediately. Why? Why would they give you a degree? No, no, no. It wasn't that. It wasn't that. Why? It wasn't that. No, the why would I, the why would you, because you, you, you graduated, you were, you were ahead of your class in high school, and then you go to Princeton, and then you go to Yale. Jesus. And then I feel like you, you lowered yourself to come into show business a little bit. You know, a little bit. Why would you do that, David? Well, clearly I have a, a gaping hole. A gaping hole inside me. But yeah, he decided to slump it. Yeah. He slumped it with us morons. Yeah, what is that? What, go ahead. No, that's it. What, no, I want, I just want to know, I want you to walk me through your academic prowess. I'm fascinated with all this stuff. Well, I, at Princeton, I majored in English literature, and I wrote my thesis on Samuel Beckett's novels. Come on. For a while. Wow. Because, well, let me tell you why I wrote on the novels, because nobody writes on the novels, and I didn't have to do that much work in research, because I could just make the shit up myself. All right. This is pretty, this is nothing to compare it to. Yeah, no chat, GPT cheating. It was an open field. And then what happened at, that was Princeton or that was Yale? That was Princeton. And then I took a year off and I traveled, and I didn't really know what I wanted to do at all. I just knew I wanted to be a writer. Then I thought, I applied for a Mellon fellowship, which I got from the Mellon Foundation, which they were trying to lure people that might go into money making businesses and steer them towards academia. So it was for people to get PhDs who might, you know, not be able to afford staying in school. So I got one of those and I went to Yale, and I thought that I'd become a professor of English literature and then write novels in my summer times. That's the plan. Wow. Christ. And forgive me, have you written like a hundred novels and I'm an idiot? I've written five, four, five novels. Wow. Yeah. And I just had a book of poems come out. Yes. Oh, that's cool. David, this is... By the way, he's also, he's admitting the fact that he's put out a number of records. He just finished a tour. Am I right? You just finished a tour in Europe. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, no, this was in the States, this one, but go ahead. But last year you were on tour in Europe. And I listened to your records. By the way, your music is great. Oh, thank you. Sometimes, and I mean this with all of your... Sometimes when you see people who do multiple disciplines and they're like, I'm going to put a record out, you listen to your... Yeah, it's pretty good. Your records are really good. I mean, they're very... No. They're really good. They're really good. And I'm a music lover. Yeah. Really, really good stuff. Yeah. Thank you, Will. I love that tune, Heller High Water. I think that's a great tune. Yeah, it's really good. What type of...is it rock and roll? Yeah, I guess it's...I'd say it's rock and roll. Yeah, like 70s rock, late 60s rock. Like Yacht Rock? Not quite like Yacht Rock. I'm not very jazzy. I stay off the water. I try to stay off the water. Yeah. No, it's kind of like indie rock in a way. I mean, sorry to forgive me for saying that. I'm a 90s indie rock dinosaur. It's amazing. Yeah, well, the 90s was kind of like the garagification of 70s rock in my mind. Yeah, interesting. And so I think 70s and 90s have a lot in common. And you're playing the guitar there and you're singing as well? I don't play the guitar on stage because I'm kind of self-taught on the guitar, so I have an inability to play it the same way twice, which is not very nice for my band. Yeah, yeah. So I write the songs. And you sing them? And I sing in my fashion. So on stage, you have no guitar as a crutch? Nothing to do with my hands. I think that's where you're going. That's just kind of where you're going. Yeah, so you just kind of work the mic and the cord. You know, you hold onto that fucking mic stand for dear life is what happens. I wouldn't know what to do. It's like a life jacket. You're like Liam Gallagher does that, you know? Oh, you have this amazing because, you know, when I first started performing live, I just thought, well, I'm like the MC. Right. I want people to have a good time, you know? And I'm dancing around and making a fool of myself. Oh, there's dancing. It was actually my wife said to me, you know, you don't have to move around so much. Oh, no. And then I saw, you know, then I saw Liam and Liam is just still, you know, he's just still in his hands behind his back for the most part. Yeah, kind of leaning up in a way. And it's really powerful to be still. Yeah. Do you close your eyes a lot? Sometimes. Sometimes I close my eyes and then I go, this isn't good. There could be shit happening out there that I need to keep an eye on. Do you ever go full sea and just turn your back to the audience? But, but, but David, David, I just want to say, so you were, David, you were self-taught on guitar. I think you only started playing guitar a couple of years before your first album. Is that true? True. Yeah. So, so you barely, you basically teach yourself how to play guitar for a couple of years. Then you have the audacity to be like, all right, well, I'm going to write a record. And how are you, do you know how to read and write music? How did you do that? How was that process? No, I don't know how to read and write music, but here's something that you guys might appreciate as actors. When I decided I wanted to learn guitar, I'm not, I'm not 100% self-taught. When I decided I wanted to learn, I was doing Californication at the time. And I said to the, I said to Tom Capon as the producer, I think Hank Moody should learn how to play guitar. So I could get the free lesson. Oh, that's amazing. The intelligence permeates everything you do. I know, I know. It's, he's, he's playing four dimensional chess, if that's a thing. So I, I also was singing. I'm not, I'm not like Sean. I can't, I'm not that kind of a singer. I'm not either. Which is sad. Yes you are. And it's been a, it's been a journey to try and put over the song. Because I can hear melodies that I can't, that I can't necessarily sing, which is weird. I never thought that was a possibility. Well, you know, I'm just really quick. Sometimes the best singers are the quote untrained singing, you know, because you don't think about it. You're not in your head about it. You know, David, when we, we had Michael Stipe, our friend from R.E.M. on here a while ago and he was talking about that. Wonderful song. It was so good. And that first record that he made when he was down in Athens, Georgia with those guys, Radio Free Europe, I think was their first single. And he was talking about, he basically was singing gibberish and he didn't know how to sing. Do you remember that guy? He was talking, he was like, I just kind of winged it. Yeah. Because he didn't know what it, and he kind of taught himself how to, and he got better as he went. I think the correct term is wong. He wong it. He wong it. He wong it. Sorry, Jason. I don't mean to embarrass you. I'm so sorry. Stickler. He got an answer in English from a school bus. So, hey, hey Sean. Hey. Okay. I really speak in music, struck a chord with Sean. Now David, this is, I don't read, and I'm not, I'm not proud to say that. You strike me as a reader though. I'm surprised to hear that. I appreciate that. He reads scripts. He doesn't read like for pleasure. A lot of this is the glasses. It's just the glasses. But to be an English major, and to say you want to be a writer, and you are a writer, and to be a profan, it just, it sounds like a lot of reading. A lot of, of sitting down with nothing else going on. There's total silence in the house. Maybe there's a little bit of classical music or something. Nothing with lyrics, because that'll distract you. But like, and Will, I wanted to ask you about this too at times. And then I just, fuck it, I don't want to talk to Will. How do you do that? How do you just say, of all the things I could be doing, I would rather just sit in this chair and shut out the world and stare at this stack of paper and go left to right, top to bottom, word after word after word after word. So I'm not reading Hebrew at all. That's what you're saying. Yeah. I mean, I just, I wish my, I wish my parents for all the good that they did. I wish they had somehow tricked me into really loving that process. Because there's so much that I'm reading. Are you talking about writing or reading? Reading. Reading, yeah. Writing I've got. But it's the reading that's, I don't know. Have you ever, have you ever loved reading a novel or reading poems? I have. I've had, I've backed into a couple of those, but it was, you know, it wasn't by choice. I do not read for pleasure. All the jokes JB that I make about you not reading, I will say, of the, of the, the handful that I mentioned that you have read, you've always said you really enjoyed reading them. So that's what's surprising to me. I'm like, why don't you double... It is the time allotment. It is the decision to go sit in a chair in a quiet corner of a house and, and shut everything out and do that. There's so much discipline in that I have for other things, but I just don't have for reading. I'm so envious of that. Yeah. I think it's just, it's, it really is just comes from my parents, I think, from my mother's side. She was a, from a small town in Scotland. And the only way to advance for her family, which were generations of, I did that 20, I did that route finding a route show. Oh yeah. So I found out that, that I come from a long line of fishmongers. Oh, so. Wow. That's wild. So the only way out of the fishmongering business, in fact, one of, one of my ancestors' occupation was widow of fishmonger. Oh, I didn't even know that was a job. Not high-paying. How does that pay? How does that pay? Not well is my guess. No. Well, you need the person to die, first of all. Yeah. I mean, that's a... You need to be included in the will. Yeah. And so the only way out of, the only way out of that place in society was education for my mother. So my mother was the first woman, first person in her family and a woman in the 1940s to go to college. And so she was very much just somebody who believed in the power of education and of reading and writing as a social climbing tool. Wow. Wow. Is also is the appeal, the appeal of reading sometime, like the pure escapism of, because I do remember this one book I really enjoyed reading once. I was once on a job that I didn't enjoy. I didn't like where I was. I was on location somewhere and I was lonely. And it was great to just like, I was dying to get back into the book, any chance I could because it would travel me from where I was. That feeling is amazing. Yeah. Well, it used to be, I think the place of books has been taken by TV and movies, that escape. But before there was that technology, this was what you had. And people used to read books on set, I think way back in the day. But JB, I would say that you, as somebody who travels a lot, you're on a lot of, you're on planes a lot. Yeah. And it's a lot of time to get that escape where you're not watching. Can I send you one of my books? Yes, please. Yes. Send you one of my books for plane ride. It's baseball contingent. Is it? It's near baseball. It's called Bucky fucking Dent. I made a movie of it. I made a movie of it. But I want you to read the book. I'll send you the book. Now, well, that sounds like nonfiction. No, no, it's fiction. Is it? It just uses that moment in time as a job. And then does that make you a big Yankee fan? I am a big Yankee fan. And I heard what you said earlier. You got a big day today. Big day today. So David, so David, all of this to say is... My father's family, his father wrote for the forward, which was the only Yiddish daily newspaper in America, the longest running one. And he wrote kind of in a Dickensian way, he wrote cliffhangers for the paper. He wrote stories about little Nell or whatever, somebody being tied to the train tracks, that kind of a thing. And my father, his entire life, my father had to work kind of a nine to five job, but he always said he was a novelist. He always said he was a novelist. And at the age of 73, two years before he died, he published his first novel. So he was a hot young novelist at the age of 73. So I'm coming out of that kind of history of respect for the word, respect for the efficacy of the word, respect for education. Just it was all, that was part of my growing up. That was part of my foundation. And we will be right back. My home like your home, it's a retreat, right? It's your nest, right? And you want to be able to just lay out in that nest, you know, after a long day. So you know, like my couch, like your couch is probably deep. It's soft, highly crashable, right? The home should show off who you are. 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Visit your local Ashley store or head to Ashley.com to find your style. We know parents want to feel confident as their teens are navigating social media. With Instagram teen accounts, teens get automatic protections by default. Teens between the ages of 13 and 17 are automatically put into a protective experience. That means they get built in content settings for what they see, contact limits on who can contact them and time management tools like daily time limits, and time management tools and time limit reminders, as well as sleep mode, which mutes notifications from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Plus, teens under 16 need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to help protect teens online at instagram.com slash teen accounts. When you want your spring break to feel like, and your kids pool day to feel like, and your hotel bed to feel like, and room service to feel like, because at Hilton, hospitality feels like, your cabana's ready. Would you like fresh towels? It matters where you stay. Right now at hilton.com. Hilton for the stay. And now back to the show. That's funny, Dave. My dad also who worked forever, but he's been retired for a while, but since COVID has written two novels. Amazing. And he wrote his last one and came out when he was 86. He's just written it. Oh my God. He's just done it last year. What is the name of it and where can purchasers find it? Yeah. Like plug it. Yeah. And it's the Monmouth manifesto, which is an interesting novel and it's sort of historical fiction if you will. I love that. This is about when caterpillars change into... No, it's about the American Revolution in a way. Monmouth County, New Jersey is the reference. It's about loyalists going to Canada based on one of my ancestors and about really at the heart of the revolution. I was just trying to do a moth joke. Okay, sorry. You don't want to get into it. Really? This is why you're a Canadian. Let the readers buy it and discover it. What's his name? My dad's name is James Arnett. Are you sure? Yeah. Emerson James Arnett, if you will. Oh, yeah. My dad wrote me off. Oh no, Sean. Sean, do it. Oh God, he would be so much fun if it wasn't so true. He wrote me off. No, no. He wrote a goodbye and no, no. He wrote a goodbye note. He wrote... See ya. That's where Baye came from, by the way. He came from Sean's dad. Baye! Wait, wait, David, David, David. So I do want to... So you graduate, you go to... I kind of want to stick with Sean. We've done a lot. Anytime you have a question on Sean, please interrupt me. You decide and you're studying English lit and you get a master's and then what's the moment you go like... All right, I'm going to put this down for a second. I'm going to dip my toe. What was your first acting job and why did it come about? I was at Yale. I was getting my PhD or so I thought. And Yale is famous for its drama school and they have a lot of productions going on all the time. So I decided I was going to start trying to take classes over at the drama department and they were very loose about it. They would just let me walk in and do writing classes because I thought maybe I'm going to write plays because the idea of writing novels or poems seems so very lonely to me. And I was 22, 23 years old and I was just sitting in a room all day long alone trying to write. I was like, this is fucked up. This is not... That is romantic as you thought. No, but I liked collaborating. So I thought, okay, I'll write plays and that way at least I'll get out into the world. And so I met all these actors and they're always looking for bodies because there's so many productions going on around in Yale and they said, hey, come and do this thing. There's Arthur Schnitzer play we're doing, which name escapes me, but you can play the Count de la Tremue or something. I had one or two lines and I liked it. It wasn't like, oh, this is a revelation. In fact, I thought, oh, well, I'm comfortable and I was so comfortable in between the first and the second performances. I smoked a joint. Have the second one go. Yeah. Not so good. That's really funny. I was so cocky. I was like, I got this. And then I was like, oh, I don't have anything. I'm watching people looking at me. Did you then sign up for acting classes or did you start taking classes in New York with a woman named Marsha Haufrecht who taught Strasburg Methods. She was associated with the Actors Studio and that was wonderful because she was completely supportive. It was all about the interior world, all the things that are so difficult to work on when you're actually a working actor. But were you thinking about it in terms of like informing your playwriting? Was that part of it? Yeah. Yes. That's what I was telling myself. So it wasn't like this is going to be my future occupation? No. I thought if I'm going to write plays, I should probably know what it's like to say these whatever lines I'm going to write. Maybe if they're sayable up on stage. And so that was my approach. And then at some point I was just like, I liked, I played sports my whole life and I liked the team aspect of acting and of making things. I liked the high wire kind of, you know, put up or shut up feeling. Did it ever frustrate you that it didn't hold the same sort of academic rigor? No. No. Because it is not, with all respect to our colleagues that are actors, it doesn't have this sort of high brow sophisticated reputation that a playwright would. No. It's just a different game. It's just a different game. It's like baseball and basketball, whatever. It's just, I look at life as a series of games or setups and this was just another game. And I knew it had different rules and I knew that I would have to examine different strengths in order to check. Yeah. And probably less constraints too than writing in, because it is such a different discipline. It probably started exercising a different muscle creatively that you're like, oh, this feels good. Yes. It was the emotional aspect of my life which had been neglected because I was, you know, I was in academia, which doesn't really prize, you know, being volatile. So the emotional side of it and the teamwork side of it is being satisfied. But do you feel like this fucking academic superhero that you have inside of you has been satisfied, has been utilized properly in your life thus far? Yes. Now that I, when I started writing novels about 10 years ago now, and you know, people, I go on Goodreads and I'll read, you know, people's suggestions. Yeah. Or you will. You will. Yeah. People, I will, I will be accused of showing off my learning when in fact I don't write with any books around. It's all in my head, you know, if I'm quoting something or if I'm referencing another great work of literature, it's coming from my head. It's coming from my memory. That's crazy. That's amazing. So I'm not doing it just to show off, but it's part of me. And I really feel like I finally joined in the conversation with these people that I grew up reading and loving and feeling like this is the conversation I want to be involved with. And I'm sure you guys have had this as actors where you're like, okay, now I'm in conversation with the people that I want to be in conversation with. That's true. That's true. And then what about, did you, sorry, Shani, did you ever end up writing any plays or any screenplays? Have you kind of married the two? Yeah. Yeah. The novel writing came out of not being able to make a screenplay. Bucky fucking Dent, I wrote as a screenplay probably in 2005 or 2006. And then I couldn't get it made. These are usually my soul goes towards like more independent kind of stories. And so Bucky, I couldn't make. I got close. I got close. I got close. I couldn't make it. But then I finally did. And then I made it as a movie. So you flipped it. You went the other way. So you write a screenplay. Because Will always talks about it. It's IP now because now your book is IP. So they love that, right? I don't know if they love that. Reverse engineering. I mean, no, Hollywood loves that. If it was at a book first, then we'll make it. I'll just say that as a director, you know, writing the novel of the screenplay was the best preparation I could have done as a director because I just knew. So now I'm not suggesting that you have to do that next time. I'm just saying for me that worked. Is there a genre that you like writing more of than not? Oh, I mean, I'm just of the, I guess, you know, I go back to the movies when I started acting, you know, like James Brooks, just these movies that can live in a real terms of adearment, you know, sobbing, but also laughing. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Just like real emotional stuff that like emotional, but fucking funny. Yeah. And back and forth. Yeah. So that's, that's always the balance that I'm looking for as an actor too. It's always the balance. I'm looking for that's where I live. So what ended up because so to go back to my, what ended up becoming the first professional acting gig that you had that you went up for and you got professionals of funny words? Well, you know, that you got to pay, that you got to paycheck that you had to fill out a W4 or whatever, you know? Well, I'll tell you about two. The first one I got paid for, and then there's the first one I did, which was even better. But the first one I got paid for, I believe was a Michelot beer commercial. Wow. And I got on set and the guy told me, okay, you're at the bar here, the guy, the director, said you're at the bar here. The guy. Yeah, that guy, some guy said you're at the bar. This guy says I'm at the bar. And you run into an old professor of yours and you guys have a conversation and you're happy to see him. And I was so fucking tight. I was so nervous. I'm 26 years old. I mean, I'm not young, young, you know? And I had kind of staked my life on this path. Like I wasn't going to get my PhD. I wasn't going to be a professor. And I just thought, okay, I'm going to do this thing and I'm going to be good at it. Now I get on set and I'm like, I'm just tight. Because you feel like you needed to do so much. I just didn't know. I didn't know it was going to be so fucking tight. I know exactly what you mean, man. I know exactly what you mean. You needed that joint. It wasn't that, it wasn't like, you know, oh, I'm in the right place. Yeah, right. It was like, no, I'm in the wrong place. Yeah. The cameras pointed at you. What? The film guy comes in. I can't do, I can't lie on the ground and go, ha. So there's pretzels there. And I start, I toss one up, you know, catch it in my mouth. And the director's like, that's, I love that. I love that. Oh no. And I just remember, again, that was my lifeline. And I was like, so I did it for like 10 minutes. And then I just remember the director going, okay, with the pretzels, we got the pretzels. I thought you were going to say you could never get it in your mouth again. No, I was, that I could do. So that was the first paying job was, was Michelob. The first job that I remember was my acting class went and my, my acting class put on a night of one acts and I decided to adapt this Charles Bukowski short story called the copulating mermaid of Venice, California. Sure. And sure. Sure. As one does. Sean's always referencing that. Yeah. It's a painting, Sean has. I just call it mermaid. Yeah. Yeah. So in this, in this story, these two guys, kind of unemployed guys watch the hearse unload at the Venice morgue. This is not a true kind of geographical thing, but they can see it from the beach and they know the timing of it. They know when the guys are going to come around, they know when the body is going to be unattended and they're going to steal a body. So they do, they steal a body and they, you know, and here's where, you know, the guy is like, you know, it's Bukowski and it's like the logic kind of fails you, but they open it up and it's a beautiful woman and I decide I'm going to have sex with her. And then I'm so ashamed of myself that I forced my buddy to have sex with her. And sure, you have this on your wall, Sean. I'm not sure. It's how it's supposed to be. Yeah. So then I, I said, we go, what are we going to do to the body? I don't know. I swim her out to the ocean to get rid of the body. And then I come back and I say, she wasn't dead. She turned into a mermaid. She was beautiful. She swam away. And so it's this like, not beautiful after this, it's this gross, horrible necrophilia and then coupled with this high romantic. It's just Bukowski. Yeah. So we decided we're going to do it. And I asked the class, you know, which, which, which of the women in the class is going to be the corpse and everybody's like, yeah, it'll be me. It'll be me. But then when the time comes to do it, nobody shows to be the corpse and we're stuck. And we had been the place where we were making these plays was a, a, it was an S and M. Dudgeon. Sure. Well, you know, of course, they're not, they're not used during the day. And so they're not used during the day. And we got to use it for two nights by cleaning up. We had to clean up. And that was a whole other different story. Yeah. There was the, the, uh, madam there was named Magda and she heard that we didn't have a body. So she said, why don't you use one of my blow up dolls? Oh my God. This is how things happen. So they're Yale. So, oh, she, yeah, right. And I'm thinking maybe I should have stayed at Yale. So I, um, I put up a, I had always put up like a bulwark on front of the stage to lay a body down so nobody could see the body. They couldn't see what was going on when I was supposedly making love to this, uh, body. And, um, so I had this blow up doll and, uh, what I, I hadn't been able to rehearse with her. And, uh, so as I was copulating with her, her arms and legs started flying out because she's only made it air. Right. So the audience sees this. Sure. Like, like a used car lot, the things that you are. I'm trying to do this most intense scene, young actor. Like I'm really like, sure, I'm fucking edgy. Yeah. And the audience is laughing and laughing. And so in between performances, I went to Paragon. I hope you know it. It's a sporting goods show. Very well. And I got four ankle weights and I weighed down her wrists and her ankles. So the next time she, she didn't, she didn't have as much weight. But you still had the squeaky. The other part of it was when I, I walked through the audience and I, I go, I put a pail of water off stage where I was going to go because I swim around and I'm come, you know, I got to be wet. And so I walked through the audience and I'm sure the audience is like, oh my God, this is the worst thing I've ever seen. And I'm thinking, yeah, that's right. I'm an edgy motherfucker. And I go, I go around the corner to, and I realize it's totally quiet. There's no door. They can just hear me sponging myself down. They can just hear me. Oh my God. So that was, that was my first play. How long did it last? It was two nights. Okay, great. Those two full nights. Two full nights. So you do, so you do the Bukowski where you're, as you described making love to a inflatable doll in an S&M dungeon. You do the Mikolo. You threw away a PhD at Yale for this. What am I mother saying? Yeah, your parents, your parents must have been at this point, they're beaming with pride. And so then, but then what's the sort of the first, because I'm leading up to X-Files, so I want to get into X-Files a little bit. We'd be remiss if we didn't get into X-Files because I was a fan of X-Files and I watched it. Yeah, exactly. So you, so you get that and that leads to what? You mean, because what was the first film you did? An old girlfriend of mine whose name is Maggie Wheeler. That's her married name. She's a terrific actress. She was on Friends Quite a Lot. When you give an address, her friend's quite a lot. First and last, okay? She's on Friends. She was Janice on Friends. Oh yeah. Chandler's, yeah. Yes. Oh yeah. Yeah. So Maggie was doing this film with Henry Jaglam who just passed last week. And Henry's this Maverick independent filmmaker. And Maggie was going to be one of the three stars of this film called New Year's Day and she asked Henry, you know, can you, David's acting now? Can you, can you see if you can put them in? So Henry did and I had a couple scenes in the movie and they were, they were good and they were kind of notable enough to kind of get me going here in LA and get an agent. And you know, at that point it was like, it wasn't like get your sad card. It was like, how do I get film on myself? Yeah. How do I show people that I'm not a vampire and I don't disappear when I'm on my phone? Well, people didn't have, they didn't have phones and you kind of put shit on YouTube the way kids can now and create their own stuff. So it was really this one, it was one long scene in New Year's Day that really kind of opened it up for me in LA. And then I, you know, I auditioned forever here and didn't get tons of stuff and would get, you know, feedback. You moved LA to be, to do it, to go all in. Exactly. What were you doing to pay the bills while you were swinging to miss them? I was doing commercials. I would get commercials. So no, no, no waiting tables, no bartending. I bartended. I catered. Where did you live when you were here in LA? I lived on 4th Street in Santa Monica. I got a sublet there. Oh, way down there. Yeah. An efficiency apartment, which means it didn't have a kitchen, which means I did my dishes in the shower when I was in the shower. David. Yeah. Wow. I mean, dishwashing liquid is pretty good. Wait, fourth and what? I lived on Ocean Park in second for years. Oh, fourth between California and Washington. Yeah. Right by the stairs, you know, like, that was my gym. I'd go to the stairs. That's been in California. I catered too. I catered for a wedding at Anthony Edwards house when I just moved here. And I was like, oh my God, it's the guy from ER and I'm in his kitchen. Yeah. It was so wild. And then, and then you were shooting pretty much next door to him when you guys were doing Will and Grace, right? That's right. It was crazy. And you did a lot of commercials too back then. Tons. Yeah. It's the only way to pay the bills. We talked about, remember you had those commercials that you were doing like when Will and Grace was on, some of them came out. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Yeah. That was wild. I had two, I had two commercials, two on the Super Bowl in 1998. What were they? One was a Bud Light commercial. I did a Bud Light commercial. Oh, really? When? 1987, 1988. Well, you did Miller Light and Bud Light. Yeah. Mickalope. No, Mickalope and Bud Light. I was all over the beers. I love that. I was King of beers. Wait, so David, so when did you, I mean, because I was a big sci-fi nerd person. So X files, that's what you're getting to, right, Johnny? How did X files come about? I know you're sick of talking about it. I know you are. And forgive us. Forgive us. We're just fans. I didn't ask. But I'm ready to listen. Jason read the books. Yeah, it was just an audition. And I remember at that point I was not wanting to do television. You know, at that point there was a real divide between television actors and movie actors, which has been erased in the past few years or the past 20 years. So it was really, you know, I'm not a TV actor. That was my sense. I'm going to... Who was your North Star in film? Who did you want to be? Well, I mean, I didn't want to be Brando, but he was my North Star. Gotcha. Right. Did you ever write any of the X files? Yeah, I did. You did? I wrote and directed two or three of them. Yeah. That's cool. One of them was a baseball one, Jason. Oh, yeah. I can't believe we haven't made this. I know. We'll be right back. Oh, boy. You know, we talk about closets a lot on this show. We sure do. Kicking the door down, coming on out. Basically talking about that closets are for clothes. Oh, that's new. And I've taken that too much to heart because my closet is stuffed. I've been meaning to go through my closet. We should sell some of them. We should sell all of them. I should sell it. I mean, listen, you know, what feels familiar in my closet, maybe I should sell some of me exactly what someone else is searching for. Buy, sell, and discover affordable secondhand fashion you'll love with the resale marketplace, Depop. Reselling can feel overwhelming, but on Depop, getting started is easy. Just snap a pic of your item and Depop can take care of the rest, including suggesting a price to help sell. One of the best parts, there are no seller fees, which means you keep more of your money No printer required. And you can even choose a convenient drop off. No matter your style, Depop is where people with all kinds of tastes come to sell and shop. It really is for everyone, parents selling kids where people shopping for the perfect outfit for a Friday night out and anyone who wants to express themselves and play with trends on their own terms. Start the Depop app now and start listening today. We know parents want to feel confident as their teens are navigating social media with Instagram teen accounts. Teens get automatic protections by default. Teens between the ages of 13 and 17 are automatically put into a protective experience. That means they get built in content settings for what they see, contact limits on who can contact them, and time management tools like daily time limit reminders as well as sleep mode which mutes notifications from 10pm to 7am. Plus teens under 16 need a parent's permission to change any of these settings to be less strict. Learn more about teen accounts and Instagram's ongoing work to help protect teens online at instagram.com slash teen accounts. This is a paid ad by BetterHelp. You know you've heard me talk a lot about my mom and how funny she was and how much we love her but boy was she a huge inspiration to me. She gave me the tools I needed for the work ethic I have and the funny bone in my body. She's one of the best human beings, if not the best human being I've ever known. Women deserve to be celebrated but we should also recognize that many women carry emotional weight at work, in relationships, in families, and in the roles they play for others. Whatever you're navigating, career expectations, parenting, caregiving, or more, therapy with BetterHelp can help you check in with yourself, unpack what's feeling heavy, and build healthier pathways forward. BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform and handles the initial therapist matching work for you. 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You know, you're just like, if I'm going to do it, I want it to win. I want it to go. You do the pilot, you want it to get picked up and picked up. Yeah, sure. And then it gets well received and you're like, well, all right. Now let's fuck him. Can I just stop for Tracy? Can I just say, so the testing process, you don't know what Jason just alluded to and David knows, we all know. It used to be, I don't know if it still is the way, but what would happen is you'd go in for a show, whether it's X files or willing grace or whatever it is, and you get the audition and you go through and then you get a call back and you'd read for producers. Then what they do is they sort of take, for any given role, they might have three or four people who they decide that they're going to, as they call it, bring to the network. And that means that they're kind of their select pick three or four people for each role. And before you go and do this final audition, usually like in a conference room or something in an office building, the most uninspiring place you can imagine, before you do that, for a day or two before your agents in the show negotiate your contract, a five year contract, and you sign it before you go into the final audition. In the lobby. Right before you watch it, so they got you. So you're broke and then your agent goes like, here's your contract. We've agreed you're going to get $25,000 an episode for the next five years. It's a lottery ticket. Yeah. And you're like, oh my God, I'm so broke and I'm going to get $25,000. An episode for the next five years. And you're doing the math and you're like, and then I'm going to buy a new car. And if you weren't nervous before, you're petrified. And you sign it. And then you go, once you sign it, they take the signed executed contract. So that you have no leverage if they give you the job. You are going and you then audition for all the execs at the network and then you're waiting and they decide whether or not you got the part. So you're so nervous. They have you so over the barrel, you never realize you're never not over the barrel in that process. And it's really uninspiring and it's a very specific thing to get good at that, to be able to block that part of it out, to then go and deliver at the final moment. It's you're kind of you're sure. Yeah. You're fighting out of a hole, right? What a what a factor that David was like, it was an offer. But anyway, it wasn't an offer. So, so, so David, so David, your process is you're kind of, you're a little conflicted about doing a TV series, but you want to do it. And it's a great paycheck. So you go in and you sign the contract, you do the test. Now you and then you do the pilot, right? And so then now they've got the executed thing and then the network. Sorry, again, for Tracy, then they decide from all their pilots what shows are going to make it on the air next year. So you're waiting for a month or two for that. Yeah. And then they go, great, your show is happening. You're in it and we've got you for five years. And then what happens a lot is you go, oh my God, this is so great. I'm going to make 20 or $25,000 an episode. And then two years in, if you're lucky enough that it's going, you're like, Hey man, I deserve way more than 20. Yeah. I got to get out of here. I got to say available for all the feature opportunities. I think are waiting for that. So you know that process, right? Like, so you're, you're, you're there and you're doing X files and you guys come out of the gate pretty hot. It's a, it's kind of a hit. Am I right or wrong? It's a hit on Fox. And if you can remember that far back, Fox was really like not, not a real network at that point. Just started. Just like 93 when 93, they didn't have programming, you know, across the board all day, all day long really. And, you know, they had married with children and I can't remember, you know, they had made nine or two. Tracy Yellman. Yeah. Yeah. But they're really not the upstart network. So they didn't have a big drama kind of like, no, not at all. And we didn't need to get like huge numbers to be a hit for Fox, which was nice because we Fox wasn't even in all the homes. Who was running Fox at the time when you guys were there? Do you remember who was running it? Garth Ansier. Who was it Garth Ansier? I don't use that NBC. I think. Yeah. He was one of the starters of Fox. Yeah. I can't believe you remember that name, Jay. Um, what was it? WB. He didn't want me for a gig and I had to re-audition. You ready for this? I, for my buddy, Michael Malley show, we did the pilot. I get the pilot. We do it. We shoot it. It gets picked up to series and then he didn't want me and I had to go back. Sandy Gruchel. Two months later. It might have been Sandy. I had to go back two months later and re-audition for a part and do a scene in a conference room, a scene holding up pages that I had already filmed. Terrible. That existed on film. My job. Terrible. That's crazy. In a conference room in Burbank. That's crazy. Wait, you don't need to see me do this in the room. It's. Do you remember what year that was, Will? 1999. That's when I first met you. Yeah. I met you at the up front. Yeah. That year. That's right. Um, did you get it? Well, I did actually. Yeah. Again. Well done. I got it again. You imitated yourself and. What a fucking victory. Do you think I had, I think I can't count it. I think I had a thousand beers that night. That's not enough. That's not enough. Wait, David, were you a sci-fi fan when you got it or not? And are you now not, not at all? No. Wow. How about that? No, not really. So, so you get X files, you go up to Vancouver, you guys start doing it. It's a hit for Fox and then it really starts to, when's the moment you can feel that it's kind of pushed through to the general. Probably like the third year, just globally, it felt just huge. You know, it was a global hit. Yeah. Massive. How did you like relocating up into Vancouver for so long? Well, I loved it at first. Yeah. Um, because I didn't really have any roots in Los Angeles. You know, I just, uh, I, I had come here to try to get work. Um, and you weren't going to, the blow up doll wasn't going to start crying. I mean, they can perform a lot of duties, but tears are not one. I'm not going to speak for her. She, yeah. Um, Jesus Christ. But I will tell you, but so I hear, this is what I hear. Yeah. Oh my God. So I, you know, I don't know how you guys feel about Vancouver, but it's a beautiful part of the world. And I just never been in park. You've never been. I've never been. I want to go so bad. How is that possible? It's the greatest. It's gorgeous. So beautiful. Uh, so I loved it. And, uh, yeah, I didn't mind being out of LA at all. Yeah. I just loved being up there. And in a way we got to just focus on doing the work. There wasn't any kind of LA around us. There wasn't any kind of that, whatever heat that was happening, we were kind of cut off from in a really good way. And, and, and in many ways, it was my education as an actor, having to go to work every damn day for 14 hours. I mean, these were really long days and I really taught myself how to act. How soon into the run of it and the success of it, did you start thinking, all right, good here, ready to move on and, and, uh, and maybe parlay some of this into, you know, what would you have your eyes on? Was it still features? Yeah. I mean, that was really, you know, I had that kind of a bias, you know, that was kind of baked in from a young age. You know, the, the, the TV shows that I watched when I was a kid, that was, it was quantitatively different. Yeah. I think in it, you know, that it's not the way now. But you, you, you saw, I just remember that the, the, you, you had very much a, um, a movie, um, style of acting. In other words, you, you, you're very subtle. Well, that's how I would not get. That's why I didn't get, I would audition and not get any roles in television. Right. Uh, I would say he's a, he's a movie star and I was like, I can't, I don't have a pot to piss in either. So can you get, can I please play puppet man? Can I get that part? All right. Um, David, I want to ask you about like time management because you're a musician. You're, you literally write novels, which is amazing. You, you act, you do some other stuff. I'm sure you haven't mentioned how do you, how do you, how do you manage all of that on a daily basis or weekly or monthly, whatever? Do you pick a priority that you focus on or would splice it? Whatever, whatever's like in front of me, um, is, is what I'll do. Songwriting can happen at, at any time, pick up a guitar, but, uh, with writing a novel, everything has to stop and I have to work on that for a few months. I write really fast and, and, but it's an intense experience of like eight hour days doing that. And then of course I can't write when I'm acting. I can't write when I'm directing. Um, so that, right. Do you have a, do you have a, a goal in your, in your mind that is louder than all the other goals and that then informs how you allocate your time? That's probably the problem that I have is I don't really have a goal except to satisfy some kind of itch or, and that's a daily itch, not a weekly or a monthly or no, it's a lifelong kind of a thing. It's just, uh, for instance, like I want to make a, a series out of one of the novels that I've written. Um, and that's, that's really my greatest ambition at this point, but there's, there's also a movie I'm shooting in February that I wrote, but I'm not directing. I'm just acting in. So you've got a new series airing now. I think we're November. Yeah. Uh, don't really, thanks for not having me on the live show. I mean, dude, that's for movie stars, bro. I'm pretty good on my feet. Yeah. Yeah. Malice. It's a Amazon, um, comes out, I'm not sure November 3rd or something like that. What's it called again? Malice. Malice. Okay. Yeah. It's coming November on, on Amazon. And by the way, David, we'll get you to one of the, one of the, we have these new stage seats that we're going to do on the live show. I was listening. Yeah. I was listening. Thank you. Uh, but, uh, I, you know, if I was wondering this, I think we've had people on who have been part of something that's, that's sort of really struck a cord, um, you know, culturally the pieces as Sean would say, IP, but, but, but part of X files, obviously over a number of years, you know, had this, has this intense following and had a, and I was one of the followers. I used to watch it religiously back in the nineties. But I saw the film. I saw the first film. I didn't see the second film. The first film was a big hit. Do you, is there that thing when you run into people who are big fans of it? Do you ever feel a response? Weirdly. I'm just like a responsibility as the sort of the, as the caretaker of that thing of X files is, does that, I don't want to say there's a burden, but like you're the guy, you're the front facing face person of, of the, you feel that. Yeah. Well, of course there was a time when I wanted to leave it behind, you know, and reinvent myself, but then over the years, you, you begin to, uh, respect the, the kind of power of the show and the, the size of the show and, and the meaning, the, the meaning that it has for people, you know, at first, when you're younger, you think, Oh, it's, it's not because of me, but it's, it's personal. And then you realize it's not personal. It's just that this thing has a place in people's lives and I represent that to them. Yeah. And I'm an asshole if I don't respect that. I say that all the time. I, I'll, you're kidding. No, I do say that a lot. I know I, I do say that all the time. I said it before on here where you become famous for playing a certain role or in a movie or whatever it is. And then you spend several years trying to distance yourself that because you want to be able to play all these things. And in doing so, you alienate the fans that made you kind of, because they are, they are in love with you because of the thing that, that you just said that you made them feel. And you're doing a disservice. And I always say that I'm an asshole if I don't embrace the character Jack from Will and Grace and what it did for so many people. All that character is exactly. Exactly. And you're also depriving yourself the, the, the, the treat that, that, that you deserve, which is like, how lucky, how rare it is to be a part of something that helps. That's right. That's exactly right. It is rare and you, and you get old enough to, to appreciate that, you know, that you got to do something that was, that was great, that did strike a chord with people. And when you're young, you don't, you don't think like that. It takes a few years to get it. Oh, I need to appreciate that more. And, you know, No, it's funny. I read somebody, I made the mistake, David, of reading your comment a while ago with somebody saying like, he thinks that he doesn't, uh, that he should have had more of a thing or whatever about me. And I was like, no, motherfucker, I'm so grateful for any time that I was able to do anything that even anybody liked for a moment. What a joke. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, you're talking, and I'm a guy, I don't, I don't even have my high school diploma. Like the fact that I'm still like, the world doesn't owe me. I don't know. The world doesn't owe me a living. We're so lucky that we've been able to do this at all. I did so not the way I think about it. Now I'd like to ask a question that Sean's too shy to ask. Did you ever learn anything doing the X files? Here we go. Gives you any sort of confidence that we are not alone. And Sean promises not to tell anybody if you could just, Yeah. It's just us four talking. I, I never learned anything, no, but I, but I have the same kind of sense as when I went into it, which is it seems to me that the, the impossibility would be that we are the only sentient. Yeah. I mean, there's just too many galaxies, too many planets, too many Goldilocks planets. Right. So the odds to me are slanted way in favor of, of the existence of extra treasures, whether or not, you know, we, we haven't, we haven't advanced technologically enough to reach out to them. Yeah. And they, And they might be all around us and we just don't have the technology to see it. Right. They don't want us to, they're, they're, I always look at it, you know, when you see all these things, these congressional hearings and stuff about pilots who run into these shapes or things that are moving in ways that we can understand. I always think, I always think, oh, we're, we're so dumb. We think that they want to, that we need to connect. And they're like, no, no, no, you guys, you guys. We're good. We're good. Yeah. We're good. We're watching you. You know, we're just watching you guys. We don't want to have anything to do with it. You're ripping over yourselves like a bunch of ding-dongs. Didn't, didn't we have, we had a guy on once that, uh, had, and you know, and, and I'm, I'm, I'm paraphrasing here. Um, but he said something that was really sort of interesting that it makes a lot of sense to me that, that perhaps they are all around us in a way that we can't see just like our cell phone service or radio waves, you know, from like television with, it's just flying all around. You don't see any of that, that, that the ones and zeros or whatever the hell it is that fly around that make our phones, they, they could be all in that stuff. Yeah. They, they live in the space between the space. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The dark matter. The dark matter. The dark matter. I used to say this thing with, uh, are you aware of like the phenomenon of like a ship of fools? Do you remember that from the middle ages where, uh, it was a great Robert Plant song. Is that, is it? It could be. Um, but the idea was that they would take their deviance and criminals, they're incorrigible criminals and they'd put them on a ship. You know, they didn't have space for them. And they just put them on a ship out to sea. Floating Australia. Sometimes, well, sometimes, you know, you'd encounter a ship of fools and it was, it wasn't a fun thing. Right. Well, they weren't armed. They shouldn't be armed. No, no, they make sure they were. But my theory about because, because so much of, uh, alien abduction testimony has to do with being probed, Aenle and having their teeth drilled. My theory was that alien civilizations were putting their deviance and dentists on a ship. I see. I'm sending it out into the galaxy and somehow they've come in. We can cut this. We can cut this, but why, why are aliens so obsessed with Aenle? Why would you want to cut that? Don't want to offend, don't want to get any comments. So if you're not, you're not reading and you're not writing and you're not writing music and writing screenplays and doing all this stuff. What is this is sort of the Sean question that you have. What do you, what are you doing? And is there anything you do in your downtime that you're like, what's your guilty pleasure? Is it, would be surprised to learn what do you do in the space between the space? Is it gardening? Nice. Anything dumb that you do, you go like, oh man, I'd be embarrassed if people knew I did this stupid thing. I don't really. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm so bad with hobbies. I really should have a hobby. Not one. It's, it's really a problem. Do you have, do you do 25,000 things? It's really a problem. Are you playing basketball? You playing golf or cross country skiing? Or what do you do? I wish I was playing basketball. Um, yeah. No, no, I feel bad. I do. I do that. Shit. And you're, and when, when people like me, when dummies like me are watching television, you're, you're reading. So you're not watching. No, no, I watch, I watch TV. I'm watching black rabbit. Come on. Oh, yeah. Black rabbit airing now on Netflix, starting Jason and Jude Law. What about, what about? I get films brings you black rabbit. So it's not like, uh, you're not watching below deck or anything like that. No, but I do watch, I watch a love Island. Sure. I do. But then I realized 45 hours. Yeah. I mean, it's not like a 15 hour season. No. They make, somehow they make 45 fucking hours out of that nonsense. But so you watch baseball. Is there another, is that your number one sport? To watch basketball is probably my, the lakeers are going to be good this year. It could be. Okay. Who's your team next, where do you live? I live, I live in LA. Okay. Why the next, cause I grew up in New York and, you not awake when we started the podcast, well, there was, there was, there was some doll fucking and stuff like that, but you just kind of a state, I think that was just like an hourly thing that you were doing in New York. I'm walking in New York. You stayed with you, huh? How are we gonna side text you? This is terrible. I'm just glad he's not lying. What if the next time we watch Jason on TV at the Dodgers game, he's sitting next to a blow up dog? Oh my God. He was the other day. With an X-Files t-shirt up. Aw. Wait, David, I have an idea for you. Okay. Come on. So because you write novels and you're not a sci-fi thing, you wanna sell a lot of copies of something? Do like, you know, Bucky Funk fucking Dent was baseball adjacent. Do whatever you do brilliantly and just make a little sci-fi adjacent thing. Just a little bit, right? Well, this is the, well, that episode of the X-Files that I wrote and directed that I want Jason to watch because it's called The Unnatural. And it's a baseball. Oh, I like that. Oh, all right. So you'll have to, I did that. Wilford Brimley, do a cameo in that at all? No, but... Wilford Brimley. M.M.M. at Walsh. Wow. Wow. That's pretty, that's a, that's Wilford Brimley adjacent. Yeah. I love M.M. at Walsh, by the way, just as a quick aside. And yeah, he was fantastic. And he, did he give you a $2 bill? He didn't. No, he does that with a lot of faux or did. I had one and then... Then we just made David feel bad again. This is... This is before $2 bills were being made. It's not hard to make. Probably feel bad. Well, he replaced an actor who got ill. So he was a, he was a, he had short notice and there was a lot of dialogue. His character was really the exposition man in this episode. And at one point he turned to me, because I only think he had a couple of days with the script. He got, you know, and he said, this isn't writing, it's typing. I was like, well, I did the typing. So... Thanks a lot. And at one point he fucked up. It was so great. Instead of calling me Asian Mulder, he called me Asian MacGyver. And I kept it in. There you go. Did you really? Oh yeah. Yeah, it was too good. That's great. That guy was so good. I just remember, what was the one he did with Michael Keaton? No, you know, the great cleaning sober. Yeah. And he was also in Fletch. Yeah, he was in Fletch. He was the doctor in Fletch. He was a great guy. Yeah, he was a fantastic guy. David, you're fantastic. Yeah, you're fantastic, David. We've gone over, we rarely go over. We've gone over with you because we love talking to you. So, Malice is out, Amazon Prime, we'd be remiss if we didn't mention that again. Mm-hmm, yes. And we got a ton of... Can I plug Black Rabbit again? Should I do that? Please, please, please. What service is that on? And we have a chance to... Where do we find that? Yeah. Very, very nice of you to share some of your time with us, sir. Yeah, we did this. I'm so glad. What a joy. Thank you for coming on. You know, I love your show and thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. You guys are great for coming on. Thank you, David. Actor, writer, screenwriter, novelist, musician, smarty pants. And all around great guy, David Duke Company. Thank you so much, David, for your time. Thank you. It's been a joy having you. Thank you. Thank you, David. Thanks, David. All right, bye. Double D, double D comes... Double D. ...to the smartless studio, I guess is what this is. Yeah. Welcome to the smartless studio. Yeah. Smartless is shot in front of a live studio audience. He's real slick and cool. He's just, well, he's confident. He's smart. When you're smart, you're confident. He's very confident. Yeah. I didn't know half that stuff. That's amazing. Because you're not smart. You're not smart. That's true. I'm not gonna uncool you. I mean, it is true. I mean, think about it. He graduated like head of his class in high school and then he goes to Princeton, then he goes to Yale, and he gets a master's in English literature. And then he starts to work on his PhD. And while he's working on his PhD, he's like... He gets a Michelope spot. Yeah, I'm gonna go there. I wanna go there and start doing some acting lessons just to sort of see how that is. Yeah, I mean... But what, could you imagine being his parents, you're like, oh boy, baby, we hit the lotto. Look at this kid. We're... Can't wait to brag about this with our friend, and then they go see his first job, and he's become an actor. And he's fucking this guy, damn inflatable. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's nothing more disappointing than just going, I wanna be an actor. All right, well, maybe he's good. Hopefully he's good. And then they go see his bang in this doll. Yeah, I know. I know. But he landed on his feet. He did. You know? Boy, did he ever. He landed on his feet a few times. Yeah, he's such a... We didn't even get into californication. We just, he's just done so much. God dang it. He did some movies too. He did a bunch of movies, and he's just... He's got this new show. New show called Malice. Malice. What do you think it's about? What do I think? What do you think Malice is about? What do you think it's about? Is it about a guy's girlfriend, and her name is Alice, and it's like, it's Am apostrophe Alice. Oh, oh, Alice? Yeah. No, this is my Alice. No, this is my Alice. Yeah, maybe it's about that. It could be. Why don't we just throw everybody in? Well, Bennett suggests, this is... I'm calling him. Jason, you said he landed on his feet. Maybe on his... Bipartite... Psymoids. Psymoids, which is... What is this? The symptoms and treatment options are... It's from the Melbourne podiatrist. No. You're not gonna take Bipartite? No, I'm not gonna take it. I'm not gonna take it. I'm not gonna take it. I'm not gonna take it. I'm not gonna take it. Bipartite? No. No, okay, all right. Have you seen the new show? By chance? By... No, we're not taking that. How are you doing that? How are you overruling with that? With just like us? I tried to tee you guys up with, what do you think Malice is about? I thought maybe one of you ding-dongs had a bio. You know what I thought you made me say? Is it a biopic? A bad guy, a girl from New Orleans. Whose whistle was that? Whose is that? That's Chris. That was really good. Oh, we gotta start adding the whistle. Yeah. 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