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All right, let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck Knicks what's happening?I'm Mark Maron This is my podcast.Welcome to it.You know, I'm shooting.I'm recording these things a day or two ahead and
And my life has really been on set.And it's been pretty exciting in a lot of ways.Because, look, Michael McKean just signed on.Justin Long is in it.You know, I knew this already.I've already worked with these guys.
And as you know, Lily Gladstone, Sharon Stone, Talia Ryder plays my daughter. Judy Greer today.It's just, come on, man.So many funny people.But I gotta be honest with you.Justin Long, who I didn't know.I haven't seen him in a while.
He was in Dodgeball and a bunch of other stuff.Seems like a funny guy.But he comes in to do this thing.He's playing an influencer who's already a little old to be an influencer.But you guys, one of the funniest days I've ever had.
I mean, to be around someone that just is so fucking funny that all day long, you know, we're riffing, we're improvising and he's just doing shit.We're breaking up on camera all the fucking time.And I was like, this is amazing.
Why can't I have this every day in my life?The laughter.Where's the fuckers that can make me laugh all day long?Where are they in my life? It was just so good.I mean, obviously it makes it special when it doesn't happen every day and all day long.
And you know, you can't laugh all day, every day.You'd be a fucking moron.Maybe not, maybe not.Maybe you'd be the happiest person in the world.I don't know, but it was great.
And Michael McKean's a pro and it's great to hang out with him, sit around, talk about music, movies, people he's worked with.He's playing my manager. That's what I've been doing.We've got a week and a half more That that that's it.
I'm a little punchy I'm a little punchy today on the show I talked to uh, billy corbin now this guy He's a documentary filmmaker, and he first got noticed for his 2006 doc, Cocaine Cowboys, about the Miami drug trade.
He just made the documentary From Russia with Lev, executive produced by Rachel Maddow.And the funny thing is, I've known this kid for a while.
because look, I know he's been making movies, these docs and stuff, but his mom and my mom were good friends down in Florida for years.And I tell him this, I mean, for years, I had to hear about this kid.
You know, his mother was always like, well, Billy's in Hollywood, Billy's doing this movie, Billy.And my mother's like, what about Billy?Do you know Billy?I'm like, all right, enough with the Billy kid.I get it, he's doing things.
But now he's like, he's down in Florida and, you know, he's got some, you know, a past in trying to be a child actor, which he was for a bit, but he makes good documentaries.
And this documentary about Lev Parnas and the Ukraine debacle where, you know, basically Trump during his presidency was trying to blackmail
He's trying to coerce the Ukrainian government to feed him some kind of dirt on Biden, or he wasn't going to give them arms.He wanted a quid pro quo, dirt and you get your stuff.This is like, you know, aid.That was the impeachable offense.
But this character Lev Parnas is kind of sucked into Trump's orbit.And he's just like this, Guy, it's, I can't even explain it.
The kind of experience it is to watch this guy being sort of this Trump acolyte and this Ukrainian national and, you know, his life in trying to do Trump's bidding in the Ukraine.It was like a clown show.But now he's, you know, he's reformed.
And in terms of how he, he's apologetic.And it has an interesting ending. in terms of the conclusion and how he has come to Jesus moment.It wasn't Jesus, but you know, it was, he woke up from the bad Trump dream.But yeah, it's a great documentary.
I really enjoyed it and it was great to talk to Billy.Yeah, so, you know, you guys know what to do.I would certainly vote for Kamala.
I would do that so at least we can salvage what is left of decency and democracy and at least cultural representation.And I would try, again, I'll say, to talk reason into your friends that are not voting at a protest or throwing their vote away.
And as you know how I feel, and I've always felt, this is not a Democrat and Republican contest.This is a Democrat and a fascist movement contest.It's hard to even act normally.
It's just like one of these things where you go through your life and then you have that moment like, well, fuck, this is gonna happen next week, one way or the other.There's no stopping it. And it's really on the wire.
I mean, it's fucking crazy, but it'll happen.And I just cannot bear or begin to imagine the type of anxiety and aggravation and anger and just insanity of another four years of that fucking clown, Trump. And look, it's my opinion.
I've talked about it forever.I've talked about fascism forever.I've talked about whatever.It's just, I'm exhausted and it's happening.
Just remember, and I wrote this in the update, which kind of got a little juice to it because I put it up on the fucking whatever. But in the face of cultural annihilation, do not annihilate yourselves.Do not take that on.
Find a way through, find a way to hold on to your voice and live your fucking truth.Because if the worst happens, that's gonna be the challenge.How do you hold on to your voice?
Hold on to your fucking personal truth when everything you know about what's right, wrong, and free is annihilated.Upbeat, that's all I'm doing.It's all upbeat from here on out.Look, Billy Corbin has done this movie from Russia with Lev.
It's on the free streaming service, Documentary Plus. You can watch it there.You just go to docplus.com or get it on Apple TV, Roku and other platforms.It's a very good doc.
It's almost endearing, but it is a very thorough sort of look at what a fucking criminal Donald Trump is.And this is my conversation with Billy.We had a lovely talk.
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Now if I can just get your levels right.
Check one, check two, loud Jew, loud Jew, Jew cackle.
Yeah, yeah, not yet.No radio cackles yet.
Do you do enough radio to have figured out how to do the radio cackle?
I sort of, I back up or I'll go.
Right, but it's like, it's not even, you just wait for the other two guys to laugh and you're like.
The other two guys.There's always the other two guys.
I used to do a joke about that, like, all morning radio is like, there's a main guy, a funny guy, and then a baffled woman.And it sounds like this.It sounds like, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.Oh, fellas.Yeah.That's the structure.
But you don't, you're not on the morning.
No, I used to like drop in on that show on on a Friday show Yeah, and I actually did it because the comedians were there promoting the improv.
Yeah, that weekend And so I would come around just like talk movies opening and I would just meet the comedians and that was like My fucking playground.Oh, yeah, that's that's why you liked it.
That is why I liked it I got I started a lot of friendships that way.It was funny.I discovered in that era that comedians who were
traveling with their iPads or staying in the club apartment or hotel or whatever, they would sit and watch Netflix streaming, and they'd watch Docs, and they would watch some of my shit.So I was like, this is fucking cool.
Yeah, I'm gonna go hang out with comedians to see if they know who I am.And if they don't, I'll ask them if they have their iPod with them or iPad with them.
That was the only, no, no.The ones who didn't know who I was were more fun.Gilbert Gottfried was the most fun.I had brought my Dirty Jokes DVD to have him autographed.He was gonna be there that day.And he autographed it.
Dear Billy, stop talking to me.That's what it said, Gilbert Gottfried.
Amazing.I watched him bomb that weekend at the improv.
Well, that's not an unusual thing.
That's really Gilbert at his best.Gilbert bombing.It was amazing.Yeah.So what were you going to say?What were you holding for the mics?Didn't you?Oh, so since about, I don't know, 2009.
my mother would say to me, Billy, when are you going to be on Mark's podcast?Why aren't you on Mark's podcast?And I'm like, I don't know, mom.She's like, I'm going to ask Toby.I'm going to be like, I was like, that'll help.
And she's like, and then in 2015, she sends me a text message with this article that says Barack Obama is going to be on Mark's podcast.And I text back, that's amazing.Now I'll never be on Mark's podcast.
You know who we had on after Obama?We had Rich Voss on. Yeah, he's a great guy.We do have a history.Your mom and my mom were pretty close friends for a period.And then, I don't know what happened there, but my mom, she's out of the apartment.
My brother moved her up into a place.She's doing all right.Is she?Yeah, my brother's in Florida.He's up in Jupiter.
That is, that is Florida.That's like, because in Florida, the further north you go, the further south you are.It's like the more Florida it gets.
Yeah.I can't say he's particularly thrilled.You know, it's not, uh, you know, I don't know, you know, Florida is like such a fucking shit show that, but you seem to love it.
I have a... Someone described it as like, Billy, you love Miami, I'm just not so sure you like it very much.
I think maybe that's a... Yeah, but it's full of the juice.It's got all the... Not anymore the juice left.
Not Jews.Oh, I'm sorry.Jews.Yes.No, I know.Yeah.Yeah.Yeah.
I know the Jews are running the characters and story ran the Jews out.No one talks about the fundamental move right of Florida and what it's done for the Jews, the ones that didn't die.Are they leaving?
Well, when the deli started closing, that was like the red flag.
It was there was Rascal House.
Rascal House, which is now Little Moscow. Well, there was one, the Rascal House was down on the beach, right?Somewhere in Sunny Isles.
Not far from my mom's place.Not far at all.
I used to love that place.And you just see the old Jews there.They bring the free basket of pastries and bread and they're just filling up their plastic bags.We can just take these.
Yes.And we'll keep bringing more.
That's how they went out of business.People sitting there for coffee in a free bread basket.For six hours.
Yeah.I guess like, I don't, it really, I don't even know what, uh, You know, what to make of the cultural landscape of Florida anymore.
I mean, it was, you have to remember, the Democrats have been a non-entity in Florida since the turn of the century, since Jeb Bush's era.
Do we call it the turn of the century?No, I like that because, you know, your generation, for us, the turn of the century was 1900. And now you're like the turn of the century.Well, the turn of the century meant like all the old days.
And now you're, you're talking about it.And so I, you know, I was already a grown person.
It was, it was 1999.It was 25 years ago.Yeah.Quarter of a century.I know I was 30 years old, 35 years old.Yeah.Got the turn of the century.I remember, I think I saw Jerusalem syndrome.Yeah.Oh one, Oh two.Oh two.How old were you?I was, no, I was five.
No, come on.Where'd you see Jerusalem Syndrome?Well, you came to the South Beach Comedy Festival at some point.I don't know if- That was one time.Yeah, I don't know if you did the show, but you talked a lot about it.
That was the worst. It's the worst.Nobody came to that thing.They put me in a theater.There was no one there.I think Stebbins opened for me.
I think you were at the Colony, maybe?It was a theater, right?
A little theater?Yeah.Yeah, and I had Stebbins open for me, and he's doing his dark, weird shit for my little grown-up audience, and they didn't know what to make of him.
I thought it was a good show.Both of us did.Yeah, well, that was good.
You mean the friend you bought or the guy you met?
You mean the other guy?I do.Well, it was like, well, in those days, I think it was like our moms talking like, oh, my son's in the business.Oh, my son's in the business.We've never been in the same business.
It was the most annoying thing to me. for years to hear my mother try to kind of paraphrase what your mom was saying about your career as a child actor.And I was like, the fuck, who is this fucking kid?What is she doing to my mother?
Like, what are you?I always felt like, you know, Billy.I'm like, I don't even know this fucking guy. How much do I hear about this kid, Billy?What was he on?Parenthood?What was it?
I was very impressed because I knew you from Conan.I watched you in the latter half of the 90s.At the end of the century, the end of the last century.Before the turn of the century.It all turned.It turned so bad.And I thought,
Like, you were like a beatnik poet for me in that time.I was like, oh, that's nice.People who sort of informed my evolving worldview.Really?
It was like, well, there was Miami people like, like Neil Rogers on the radio, Carl Hyasson, the columnist, the novelist.
And then.That's what I think.That seems to me to be like the kind of root of. of how you look at Florida is Carl Hiaasen.You knew there was menace and beauty and corruption and, you know, and it's something that spoke to the country at large.
And dispel me of the notion that I was going to leave behind a better Florida than the one I was born in.
No, Florida is designed to only get worse.
By design.Yeah.Yeah.I was born for crying out loud.I was born in my dad was working in Fort Myers, Florida.So I was born in Fort Myers, Florida, in Lee Memorial Hospital in Lee County, not named for Spike.Right.By the way.Yeah.
So, you know, like this is floor.I mean, that is that's people don't realize because Florida, they think of Miami or Orlando, the happiest place on Earth.And Florida is the South.It was the Jim Crow.Miami Beach was the Jim Crow.
I did a show at the fucking University of Florida, where is that, in Tallahassee?
Oh God, no, that's in Gainesville.FSU is in Tallahassee.
So FSU, Florida State, I'm doing a show like a month after Trump won.And it was like, it was part of the series.So I was at the college.It wasn't like a comedy club.So they had had Louis Tomlin.
So there was definitely an audience of sophisticated people, but it was at that time where I realized because I went to a coffee shop or whatever and I just saw like, you know, huddled old, you know, Democrats almost like having a secret meeting.
I'm like, this is what it's going to be.This is what they're afraid to talk in public.They've got to, you know, they can't talk too loud and this is what it's going to be.
This is going to be an underground movement of people who want to talk reasonably about the political, uh,
a breakdown of this country.I mean, there wasn't going to be any reason or logic or facts.That's the most troubling thing.And I experience it every day is that, like, there used to be a certain set of facts.
We'd agree upon the water is wet, the sky is blue.Now we can have a conversation, a policy conversation about how do we achieve our goals?It used to be like like
Like John F. Kennedy said, we all inhabit this small planet, we all breathe the same air, we all cherish our children's futures, we're all mortal.Let's start there, now let's work together.
And at least have some barometer of journalistic integrity, but now because of how technology and the internet works, you can just throw everything into doubt, and once people the seed is planted, that the doubt happens, and then there's no anchor.
And it gets malevolent, because it's not just like we don't share facts, it's that line from Kennedy, we all cherish our children's future.It's like, I'm not even so sure about that.
If we can't agree that putting more guns in schools is a net negative for children, where do you even begin?It's like, well, the answer to the school shootings is more guns.It's like, well, wait a second, hang on. Two plus two equals 12?
Like, what are we doing?It equals a Mexican standoff.Russian roulette, in our public school system.
But, so you're born in Lee County.Yeah.And then you grow up in where, Miami?
Yeah, my, well, my parents were living, they were only living there because my dad was working there.So I was born there while he was working.How are their parents?They're great.
I tell people that your mom sold my parents the home that they were divorced in.
Well, that's impressive.I think it might have been the only home she sold.She was not really cut out for the real estate agent life, my mother.
Your mom did her a favor.That's surprising.And then I imagine she helped them sell it again after the divorce.I wonder.Two sales on the same house.Yeah, and that was it.
That was the end of her real estate career. Not cut out for the cutthroat business of real estate, my mother.
I have to tell you, there are early bits of yours that come up in our daily vernacular at home and at work.Obviously, I travel a lot, so lobby waffle is a regular part of the conversation.Oh, the lobby waffle.
And we'll you know, I'm often giving local politicians Helen in Miami It's kind of the thing to hobby of mine and yeah We'll very often get very self-righteous in the office and one of us will be like, I'm Billy Corbin Documentarian provocateur and I want to see my FBI file.
Okay, I'll wait All like all the time, but there are
I'm so glad you liked that bit.I loved that bit.
It was too I think from like the first one where it's like we don't have anything provocateur and that was we say that all the time provocateur, you know, like Zeitgeist and but like There were two bits.I think what was on your first album?
There was the the bit about that like like worldview shit And I saw, you know, you're like, I think about 15 years older than I am.I was gay was, but and I was like, oh, it's like, that's this is how this is where I'm going.
It wasn't so much aspirational as it was inevitable.Right.I was like, oh, that's I'm looking in the window to my to my future.
Well, yeah, I think it's like, you know, it's a sign of like you can talk like that. And then you can have those thoughts publicly, and you can make them funny, and you can, you know, you can, you know, blow minds.
But you weren't a character, like, like you were the same guy on stage.I go both ways with that.For years, I was like, why can't I just become a character?All these guys seem to just be characters.
And I think I was just so desperately trying to be myself that I ended up with that.
I just, it just, it were like, I don't know, it spoke to me and I like, Like, well, there's one that you did about like the solace you found in the thought of suicide.I love that bit too.Like, like, like, Hey, I can always kill myself.
And I was just like, I don't know.I was just like that.
I remember my dad telling me once, like, Bill, things will never get so bad in your life that you would ever have to, when I was a kid, like, so it made me think about suicide and like, oh, just come to me, like, let's talk.
And then I was like, oh, but that doesn't mean I can't think about it in a very,
My favorite line of that was that the tag was the spiritual reprieve of the faithless.I knew it was a deep thought and I knew it was not going to get a big laugh.
One of my favorites is, it was after 9-11, And you were in New York, of course, and you're doing like that first record.Yes.And and it was about and I'm definitely not going to do it justice.
Yeah, it was it was that that the world survives because of women saying no.That's right.Oh, yeah.Without them.
We're going to blow up the buildings.No. So yeah, we have people coming over, go get some ice cream or something like that.
And I just like, well, but that, but that was like a very like profound and it prepared me for like husbandry and girl daddom.
And like it, it, it real, I think about it a lot that, that without that, like we just were left to our primal idiotic kind of state.
And that's what it looks like now.
Yeah.That's where we're at.
What it looks like.And hopefully like now it's really a battle between, you know, the horrible men and women.Yeah.
I mean, really the baby machines, Mark.
Yeah.But no, like the, you know, there's outside of sexism and racism, there's no reason not to vote for Kamala.
That's well, but misogyny and racism are very powerful, very powerful forces.I mean, the Democrats have either ingeniously counter-programmed this election or it's 2016 all over again.Well, God forbid.
I can't even, I don't even know, man. I don't even know, like, I don't know what's going to happen, but I know it's going to be a nail-biter and... But why?Why should it be?That, to me, is the insanity.
Look, you can sit and, like, ponder that all you want.I don't fucking know.I know I'm doing a joke.I was doing a joke.I shifted the joke.
Like the joke used to be like right now when Biden was still in the game, he used to say, you know, it's just everyone's just waiting for the right guy to die.And then I'll leave it at that.And I'll go, that's a that's a bipartisan joke, actually.
And then I shifted it last night for the first time.I said, how is it possible that 50 percent of the people in this country are just fucking shitty people?And then I go, I'm going to leave it there, because with that, it's still a bipartisan joke.
Nikki Haley, of all people, she tweeted earlier this year. that I had like covid brain, like things, things that I know come to like they're on the shelf too high for me to reach.And then they come like a few seconds later.That's just aging.
Is that mid forties?Yeah, it's starting.I remember my producing partner, Alfred Spellman.He got he was the first person in our family to get covid.And he was described.He's like, I got a headache and I'm nauseous.That's your mid forties.
I'm pretty sure all the symptoms.That's every day.I used to say I wake up like that. Yeah, I wouldn't know if I had long.I never feel good.Yeah.But she tweeted, whichever party drops their 80 year old candidate first will win in November.Oh, good.
I hope she's right.Right.But why is that not kind of like if the Democrats were going to anoint a successor here, it should have been a napalm candidate.Call it Oprah, George Clooney, Tom Hanks.I don't give a shit.
Just like why is it still a statistical dead heat in the only seven states that that matter?Yeah.In this in this. I don't know.
I don't think we're going to figure it out, but for me, it's just sort of like, wow, people are really brain fucked.
I mean, like, yeah, I think, I think really what it is, is that I don't think a lot of people think in depth about the repercussions of, of making this decision.Like, I don't think that other than shameless fascists,
I think a lot of people just see this as like, well, a president's a president.They still think that way.You know what I mean?Like, I like that guy.And that's as deep as it goes.It's fucking dangerous.Of course, stupid people are dangerous.
And it's most people.I'm going to, I'm going to get emails about that.Not too many.None of your listeners.
Yeah.I'm preaching to the choir here.
But, uh, all right.So, so what happens?So you're, you're taking in too much Mark Maron as a young man.
Yeah, that was my 20s dude.
Yeah.Yeah, just freebasing.Yeah, Mark Maron.Oh, but not really freebasing.
Do you have, are you married?I am.Oh, you are.And you do have kids.
I, I honestly, this is like a part of my life that I don't talk about because like for really, mostly not their privacy, but like their, their safety, because you just talked about the kind of psychopath that we live in.
Do you get pushback from anything? You're doing are you expecting it for death threats and the like sure from just from this new thingers It hasn't aired yet the Lev Parnas thing.
Yeah, it's on MSNBC No, it predates that because I've been pretty vocal politically and on the radio Wherever I mean, I have a weekly podcast because Miami that oh, yeah, I talk I online I'm I'm when I was like, you know, perpetually and perennially online Yeah, I would I would
Like I just want to punch up because like that's the era of you we did a documentary called screwball yeah about a rod and steroids and baseball and right and it was The Wall Street Journal of all places called it like the baseball movie that explains America and to me it was like about we had We've talked about a moment ago common common value so like you know American values were like the it was the
the golden rule, right?Do unto others and treat people with respect and honesty, integrity, and you'll get that back.Or tolerance.Just tolerance for fuck's sake.I'd settle for that at this point.Totally.Yeah.Like who gives a shit about.
Yeah.Yeah.You don't have to like people, but this is supposed to be a democracy.
Yeah.You know, the people have spoken.
Shut up.Yeah.And so I would settle for that.But the new American values seem to be like just
bully, be a dick, punch down, and you'll become the highest paid baseball player of all time, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, or yes, kids, you can be the president of the United States.So that's where the pushback started to happen?
I think, I don't know that, when did it start to happen?I just, it was, I think about your friend, Adam McKay, who went from making these really big, absurd comedies to making like these political movies, still funny, but yeah.
And I think really the great recession, for lack of a better term, radicalized him.And he said, I need to be doing something more important.I watched that movie again.I've watched it three times.It's a masterpiece.
It kind of is.And at first I was like, I had a real problem with the sort of celebrity element of explaining, you know, economic policy or whatever you would call it.
But that annoyed me at first, but the more I watch it, it's just like, it's the best.
Do we call our sub-genre of non-fiction filmmaking pop-docs?Yeah.So, like, that to me is what that is.That's like, how am I gonna, you know, and it's Trojan horse storytelling.
I tempt the audience with the sugar and then slip in the vegetables, you know, sneak in the healthy shit.Well, you have to.
You have to.I mean, that's all of a sudden, you know, because then at that moment, people are like, oh, I'm thinking.
Yeah, but don't don't tell them it's I'm learning it's not even I'm thinking my my cue has been filled with Documentaries that I quote have to watch end quote, but that after I get home after a day of dealing with your fucking world Yeah, I'm like I'm not gonna like I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get into bed and opt in to getting angry about something that I can't change tonight or I confused about right or and I'm like I just need to go to bed like I thought I thought I know how I felt about that and
And now I don't know.Don't challenge me.It's bedtime, right?You know, so like, but that's why I love it.And I got to tell McKay, I was like, dude, one of the best documentaries of like the last 15, 20 years is the end credits of the other guys.
The other guy.They did this animated infographic about what a Ponzi scheme is.And it's fucking. this brilliant piece of nonfiction shoehorned into the end credits of this hilarious, absurdist buddy comedy.
Well, that was funny about the big short and also just about explaining that that time is that it was all a fucking Ponzi scheme.
It was all a Ponzi.And so that that is, I think, what the rise of Trumpism did for us at our company at Raconteur.We felt like, well, now we have a responsibility and obligation with this pop doc thing.Like the gangster movies are fun.
The sports docs are fun.Cocaine Cowboys and The You.And that's fun.But like, We all kind of have a responsibility to channel our energies, our skill set into something more proactive.
Yeah.But, but like, it seems like even with the cocaine cowboys in the sports docs, you know, in the pop movie, I mean, you're still talking about politics.
I mean, like the weird thing about what's happening, I'm just, I'm in the middle of this book, uh, autocracy Inc that,
What is shifting is that, you know, democratic politics are losing ground to sort of shadow politics of autocrats, that there's a world of financing and power that happens among autocratic, you know, governments.And they're huge.
I mean, you know, China, Russia, India to a certain degree, like all these people have massive economies.So if it gets to the point where the U.S.says we're going to put sanctions on them, they're like, we don't give a fuck.
We'll sell the gas to the Russians.
We don't give a fuck.Iran, you know, it's like crazy.I would say the Florida Democrats never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.And the Florida of today is the America of tomorrow.
Totally, it's a pantry dish, Texas and Florida.That's how it's gonna look.You got this libertarian shit show with people who are down there with enough money to stay out of the fray and not pay taxes.
And then you've got like, you know, these kind of brain addled, either religious fanatics or just fucking angry brainwashed fucks to do the- Hey, hey, I call them my neighbors.Sure.Is what I call them.
Well, I mean, like, you know, I guess I can be a little more diplomatic. But okay, so you were coming up in Florida, but it wasn't always the intention to be this righteous motherfucker.At some point, you were like, I want to be in show business.
I wanted to tell stories, and as a kid, I really did.
I hear about people telling stories so much now, it's like there's a new buzzword.I'm a storyteller, or authenticity.
25 years ago, I named our company Raconteur.25 years ago.I know, but when you were a kid, running out here with your mother to audition.That became my after-school hobby.My younger brother was a real athlete.
And a really gifted athlete and he should be on that pamphlet, famous Jewish sports legends, my little brother.He was just good at, he excelled at everything.He picked up a bat, picked up a ball, he was just a hockey stick.He was just amazing at it.
And so I, on the other hand, struck out at my first at bat at the North Miami Beach T-Ball Optimist League.So that was, baseball was not- That was the end of the sporting career?I was like, yeah. when the ball is sitting on a stick.
I had that moment with sports.
I got hit in the face with a ball in center field.I'm like, this isn't for me.No.
And I retired pretty quickly.And so I remember I saw a girl, Jennifer Schatz.She lived in the neighborhood, in the shtetl in North Miami Beach.A high-end shtetl.High-end shtetl.
It was a pretty working class shtetl that in the cocaine cowboys era became a little bit nicer.You chose to live there. I didn't, my parents did.You weren't forced there.No, no, we were not.Yes, it was not.We were not ghettoized at that point.
It was self-segregation.It was working class Jews.Yes, absolutely.And so I saw her on TV in a Sears commercial riding a bike.And I thought that that was what I was like six.I was like, that was the coolest thing.I knew her.
And now she was inside the magic story box.And I was like, I want to do that.So my my dad called her dad and was like, how do you do that?And so my mom.That's the Jewish thing.Totally against it. Yeah, what do we do to get my kid on there?
Yeah, who's her agent?My agent was Ada Gordon at JFK just for kids in Miami Well, okay, so your mom was against it.My mom was totally she had read She didn't want to be a show mom.She didn't want to turn into that.
She read Shirley Temple's autobiography and Drew Barrymore's autobiography She'd be like by eight years old He's gonna be on the coffee by nine on the pot and by ten on blow and like I want and this is a terrible business for children I want not
So my dad was my stage mom, and then after school, that was my activity.In Miami, there was like a ton of auditions and stuff like that in the 80s, so I would go out every day on auditions.
So, okay, so you're doing that, you're running around Miami doing commercial auditions and bit parts and things that are shooting in Florida?
Yeah, well I did like a commercial for, I mean you name a sector, sandwich meats or toys or cars or detergent and I did a commercial for it just out of Miami.So you were a working little actor?
I was a working little actor and I enjoyed it, like it was my Activities like what yeah, what kids do I fuck baseball?Yeah?
I just and I couldn't do it so this seemed to be something make-believe seemed to be something that I could do and then I Did a movie with Ernest Borgnine and Linda Blair.I had like one line in old Ernest Borgnine old Ernest
Borgnine and Linda Blair and I was in a scene with a guy named Scott Weinger who came out here and blew up.He was the voice of Aladdin and he was on Full House.He was a Florida guy?Scott was a Miami kid, absolutely.
And so they, then I got, Ron Howard came to town and he was casting for Parenthood. Okay, and it was gonna be one of the first features.
They shot at Universal, Florida Okay, and in Orlando, and so they came down to Miami looking for kids to play these roles where you know We had to cry to curse that was my so that was the moment where my mom had to go with me because then it required Travel for right weeks or months on end in Orlando and so dad couldn't take off work, right?
He so begrudgingly Begrudgingly she came with me on parenthood to Orlando.Okay, that's how that was her transition.Did she enjoy it sage motherdom?
I think I wouldn't say enjoyed it, but she was a very like protective mom So she was good at it, but she was happy you were happy.I guess she was happy.I was happy and she There wasn't any give with her.
It wasn't like she wasn't going to be negotiating for her like compromising for her kid.So she was exceptional at it in a way that like other parents.Yeah.In fact, one of the parents who years later would convince me to not do that, do it anymore.
Oh, yeah.It's not like because some of the parents were were pretty awful. Yeah, so you do parenthood parent.Oh, yeah, and and I have a real partner.I curse in the movie.It's a principal I I still get checks for that.
It's the it's the craziest a dollar and 45 cent check sometimes They're the checks are lower than the stamp.Yeah, like that.Yeah interesting though, and then you're like, where was that even off?Yeah And like Croatian television.
Yes, it says it on the state I always I'm always sure cuz sometimes they're like a few hundred bucks, and I'm like yeah shit This is like how does that a major run?
Yeah this this we gotta get a forensic accountant get your manager on it you know NBC Universal you have to
Or you won't get the bread.Dude, how would I know?Like, for $400, for $200, for 28 cents?
Yeah, but sometimes, like, you know, for Marin, the series, like, we, my manager had them do forensic accounting at Fox or somewhere, and it's like, there was a lot of money there, dude.Really?Yeah, man.
Because, like, they don't know where to send the checks, or they don't try.Yeah.But, yeah, sometimes there's just fucking money sitting there that, you know, that doesn't make- Like, they don't know where you are.Whatever it is. Yeah, whatever it is.
It's dubious, but but it's not an uncommon practice to call them on it and have them didn't find it Honestly, I just but but I'm not I couldn't possibly be entitled that to that much with the three or four lines That I had in that I know I get it My mother was appalled because Opie was making her son curse in a movie So she come on because I cursed in the movie.
She's mad really mad.She's
Thought it was funny that was the joke that was the joke yeah a little kid was eight-year-old nine-year-old was running around cursing and That was the moment when I saw Ron Howard his whole family was on set everybody was in the movie or involved in a movie And I was like oh because I watched him on like Nick at night like on the Andy Griffith show and yeah yeah happy days, and I was like oh I'm like
That's the moment where I understood that that was the goal, right?That like, yeah, you might being an actor is like a thing that kids do.Like when you go to soccer or ballet after school, you don't grow up to be a soccer player or ballerina.
This is something that kids do.And then when you grow up, you don't want to be the guy taking the direction you want to be the guy.
Yeah, maybe.Yeah.But like, yeah, he was a lifer show business life.Yeah.And he had the freedom to kind of keep building.
I think he's a rare story.He was terrific.There was so like he knew everybody's name He was it like felt like a family on that said it was very he's a nice guy Yeah, it was very like comforting and very cool.
It was up to the nice guy thing really does Yeah, really and later I years later.Here's a lot of years later I got to interview him for a documentary we did and I told him I'm like you're the reason why I'm
I'm here doing this because I remember you and everything fuck no well.I mean no he knew my part in the yeah in the movie I mean that movie is like like plays to this day.
Yeah, it's a big movie.It's a family movie It's a class, but that triggered that that got you in the game, and so you were yeah
So that was and then Scott my buddy Scott came to LA for a summer Yeah on a family vacation slash do some auditions because this manager came and was recruiting like Miami kids Okay, so I became one of those kid we went out.We came.
I'd never been to LA before yeah We came how old and I was this was 90 1990 yeah, so how old you so I'm 12.Oh wow okay?Yeah 11 or 12 yeah
We did the universal tour we did total tourist shit, and then went out on auditions, and I booked I booked something while we were here for a few weeks yeah, and so the Manager was like why don't you come back for pilot season right?
What's pilot season?Yeah back when it existed?Yeah?That's how that became a thing and then we got into that cycle of of pilot season, which, yeah, like, now, now actors can be on, can you be a series regular on multiple shows?
Back then, they owned you for that cycle.So you could come out here, if you booked a pilot, which I did every year, you couldn't do any, you could do a guest spot, you could do a movie.Even if the pilot doesn't go.
Even if the pilot, and that was the thing, too, is they would just, even if the show got picked up, it'd still fire you, replace you, write you out of the, like, so.So you're starting to learn that.
It took me a while to be like I remember like year after year and every year I did the thing yeah I was I booked a pilot.
I did a movie I did a bunch of guest spots right you know and I did some cool some really cool shit I got to play Judd Hirsch's son on Dear John for a few episodes.I think every Ben Savage me and you.Every Jew.
Who's an actor of any kind will eventually play Judd Hershey's son.Judd Hershey's son.That was when, and that was when, I remember when I was like, this is like the perfect, well, all the casting on your show was perfect.
I mean, like, it was just like, I was like, really?I was like, it's Toby.I was like, that's crazy.I was like, that's crazy.I mean, Jesus, that was brilliant.And then Judd, and I just like, I got to be a patient on Empty Nest.
I grew up watching Richard Mulligan.I knew Richard Mulligan from SOB. Yeah, I watched Blake Edwards movies.Sure.
Yeah, this is yeah, you know yeah Bullshit funeral like I just you know I was like I got to be a patient on empty so it was really cool And then my you know here's here's the the way it ends is that I did a show it was right It was right.
It was on the Warner Brothers.Yeah, it was a pilot But they called it a presentation which meant that we had fought you know fewer days and less money to do a pilot yeah, and so it's called odd man out and John Dexter Ned Strauss wrote it and we
There was a fuck I'm not gonna name names.There was a there was a mom on that show and of one of the other kids yeah, and My mother, I remember being in the car with her driving home from the Warner Brothers line.So we lived in Westwood.
And I was doing, we lived in Westwood during the Rodney King riots too.That was wild.And my mother was livid.Like I could see like her white knuckles on the, and she was, she was, she had quit smoking.
So she had a styrofoam cigarette that she would like, you know, just to get the oral fixation, you know, going, get the emotion going. And so she was like, I can't believe this lady.I can't believe, and I'm like, what happened?
And you know, she said to, they were just chatting the stage.
I hate that I'm calling her a stage mom, but she was like, um, you know, every year before we leave Miami for LA for the pilot season, Billy's father and I sit him down and go, do you want to keep doing this?Are you sure you want to keep doing this?
And he says, yes.And you know, like, and then we do it.And so she, This woman says to my mother about her daughter.Yeah, she says oh, well.She knows that if she doesn't work.
We don't eat And she was dead serious, and this girl had been like in diaper commercials like this was a girl who had been put to work right since she was a baby yeah, I was and my mother was like appalled and I was kind of like you know what I think I'm
I think I'm good.I think I'm done with this.And so also on that show, by the way, was Hillary Swank.She played his sister in that show.I always played like the Jewish Urkel.
I'd be like, I'd be either the little brother or the best friend who would like, you know, come in from next door or kind of a thing of the lead.
So that was back when being a Jew is an ethnic type.
There was a well, there was a place for us.Yeah.And other than controlling the weather.
which is all we really do now.I'm surprised I have time for this.I got to get on the computer.
George Soros, ZWB, the Zionist Weather Bureau over there, triangulating the space lasers on the west coast of Florida and all.
Retired basically I was like 14 or 15, and then I remember my my manager was like well the next year was like well Go on tape will fax sides right nobody knows what that will fax side sure so I was like okay We'll do it so we did a backyard video And they fucking flew me out to play the little brother again like not a really essential role Yeah in a Fox pilot called reality check yeah, and so I
It was wild.I come in, do the last audition and they go, OK, you got the part.I never that's ever happened to me before.I go in the waiting room.They said, you got the part.We got to go down the hall.The cast is waiting to do the first read through.
And I'm thinking, like, this is like the least important role in this show.Why?So I walk down the hall, I walk in.Hillary Swank is there. And I'm like, Hillary, what are you doing here?She's like, what are you doing here?
I was like, I'm in this show, I'm in this show, that's wild.So my last two pilots co-starred Hillary Swank.Giovanni Ribisi was in that show.
Oh my, the younger sister, she's like one of the highest paid actresses in television now, from Big Bang Theory, was on that show, in that pilot.The blonde?Yeah.From the flight attendant, I like her, what's her name?It's crazy.
Don't don't spoil don't spoil this for everybody But yeah, but the the the EPs that the creators and showrunners on that were David named David crane and mark to Kaufman again and so What what happened was is that we do this show it was this pilot it was not a good?
And I left high school, I was now enrolled in a normal person's school, not like Valley Professional, like some strip mall, like, child actor.I did, like, strip mall child actor school.
Like, I went to, I was going, I was, I call it a real school, it was New World School of the Arts, which was, like, based on the high school performing arts, and yeah, so.In Florida?Yeah, in Miami.
So it wasn't a normal high school, but I was enrolled, I was going, and so this was kind of disruptive, and so, um, Needless to say, the show that you've never heard of did not get picked up.And so what happens from there?
Because David Crane and Martin Kaufman did two pilots that year.They did Reality Check for Fox and they did something called the Untitled Courtney Cox Project for NBC at the same time.And so Reality Check does not get picked up.
I become the youngest filmmaker in Sundance history at the time Hillary wins what two at least two Oscars David Crane and Martha Kaufman get their other show The NBC pilot did get picked up and it got a title.
Yeah, and that was friends Yeah, and so to me like that was the moment where I'm like, oh like life isn't just about what happens.It's like what doesn't And like that because that show gets picked up.Yeah, that's when I realized I was like mom.
What are we doing here?I'm like the goal is to get on a pilot that gets picked up.I'm stuck on some probably terrible Show years for years.
I'm a lot richer, but I don't know that I'll be happy I don't know that I'll ever fucking work again And I'm like I just want to go and like do my own thing and and I realize like reality check gets picked up It might have ruined all of our lives
Yeah, and the person by the way There was there was definitely people on that show who were like the fact that that show didn't get picked up ruined My life was the worst thing that ever happened with that girl's name Christina something who is the one from Big Bang Theory?
Why can't I remember now?
I don't know before mid-40.
We're like Just why never watch every show you know so I didn't either to be fair.She's got a really Kaley Coco.Yeah, that's it good for you.See it's that it's coming.It's it it's I Thank God Miami we're all I'm on Miami Standard Time.
I just want to say that was a no Google Pulls yes Yeah, but so when okay, so I don't do goo.I refuse when I have a moment like that I'm like I'm not yeah, I sometimes refuse, but then I'm like fuck it What is it?
I imagine it's contributed to memory loss, I would think it has to.So you go back to Florida, you're out of the game, and you finish high school?
I finish, yeah, well I start, my sophomore year in high school, I start my first production company with my producing partners.One guy... Same guys?Yeah, that I work with today.One guy I've known so long, our mothers used to bathe us together.
Come on, we were sophomores in high school.Yeah, it was weird.
No, I Literally I know him since we're five or six years old from preschool David Sipkin and then my other partner Alfred Spellman I met in TV production class in ninth grade in middle school in Highland Oaks middle.That's crazy our teacher he
Handed us the keys to the studio.She said I you you two had something you work together, and you produce the morning news That's a sophomore in high school.You start a production company.
Yes our first production company What was the goal the goal was to make movies the goal was to tell stories?Have fun and to and to kind of be a director like Ron Howard right well who was giving you the money?That was that was the problem mark
So, so we production company by name only.No, we, we, we came up with this shtick where we were going to do educational videos by kids for kids.Okay.Like write scripts about, they had an angle at that moment.
Um, they had just introduced an AIDS education curriculum into the public schools, but all the teachers were petrified.They didn't know what to do or how to teach it.So we said, let's write, I wrote a script.
Well, you're lucky.And now in Florida, it's against the law.
So you wouldn't be able to teach it at all. No, well, but, but, but fortunately now kids aren't having sex anymore.Teenagers are not having sex.They're not?Abstinence, that solved the whole problem.Finally worked.Yeah, it finally took.Yeah.
And so, so we're, we're on our way.So do you make these videos?Yeah, we did.We made three of them.And you got paid.And we, we didn't get paid.We got money to make them.They were like community service.We didn't, we didn't get paid.
Like a grant almost.Exactly.
They were grants.That's exactly right.And, and they were in kind people from the community donated equipment and stuff like that.And so that's, that's how we started.
Right.And so you go to college though?
Yeah.I went to the university of Miami.And you're still doing the production company?I'm a functioning illiterate.Yeah.That's what, that's correct.What'd you study?I studied political science, um, film writing, screenwriting.
So you widened your, uh, your, uh, your talents.I guaranteed I'd be unemployable.
Yeah, no, but but you're already in show business So you knew at least when you went into college what you wanted to learn I mean political science and film writing that seems reasonable for a guy who knows what he wants to do You weren't just sort of like partying and I don't know what I want to do No, I was not a partier, but I I was really interested in kind of a pre-law curriculum That's what poli sci was for and and then also with with screenwriting is that I tell people like the best
acting class I ever took was screenwriting.The best directing class I ever took was screenwriting.The best editing class I ever took was screenwriting.The best cinematographer, on and on.
There's just, as soon as you understand that craft and those rules, you are ready to break them, and you're ready to have at it.So are you making films in college?Yeah, we did.
In fact, we took a leave of absence to work on a feature, and then I took a second leave of absence.A fictional feature?Yeah, a scripted thing.It didn't take, and then there was something, It was the dawn of the digital era.
We had gotten DSL in the apartment.I'll never forget where we went from dial up to DSL.Big day, big.And like with Napster, I'm like, we could get a song in 90 minutes.We can download a whole song.This is, this is earth shattering.
Like this is, this is going to change everything.And it was like fucking amazing.And so, but the writing was on the wall.Like I remember Alfred saying like,
Listen, the way this fucked the post office, you know, the way it's kind of fucked the written word, you know, the end of the news and business.And like this is going to, cause this technology is only going to get better and faster.
It is going to fuck the recorded music industry.And eventually our, what we want to do will not be so far behind.So let's kind of stay low overhead.Let's stay agile and flexible.And the digital video was just happening.
Remember like, but also like, it's going to fuck the, the paradigm that existed, but ultimately it helped you.
It was a democratization.Yeah.
Because first there was, there was like this democratization of production where digital video made shit smaller, cheaper, more accessible from a production standpoint, but then film, which was incredibly onerous and expensive.
And, um, and clearly what was going to happen is there would eventually be a democratization of, of distribution.Yeah.And that was the internet.
via the internet, and we were like, okay, let's stay sort of on the cutting edge of this, and Alfred was like, let's do, we had just tried to do a film on fucking 16 millimeter, and he's like, let's do something on digital video.
I mean, the guys out of Orlando, the Hacks and Films guys, did Blair Witch Project on a camcorder, and it became this, yeah, we weren't looking to do that, because I remember seeing shit that was shot, you know, Mike Figgis did Super 8 or 8 millimeter, he did like Super 8, he did like this,
This video thing, there was, um, what was it like?There was, there was a thing at Sundance with us that was like a parody of a reality show.
And, and it would, but it was everything that was shot on video, like Blair Witch, it incorporated the concept of video into the, it was inherent in the concept.
And everybody knew what that looked like.
Right.And that's because, and even if you're a lay person, you're not a film person, you know, the difference between watching a video and watching film.
But they were using it as a tool, like they wanted it to look a part of the story.
So I said, Alfred, I'm like, maybe we should do nonfiction like audiences are accustomed to seeing docs and news in video.Why don't we make a documentary?We had never made a documentary before, never took a documentary class.I love documentaries.
I watch them.I read about them.And but we're like, OK, let's. do that then.And so it became this perfect storm of Alfred talking about the technology, me saying, well, I think the best use of it is this way.
And then we started hearing about this story coming out of Gainesville, your favorite place, Gainesville, Florida, the University of Florida.
The story was there was an exotic dancer who was alleged, who had claimed that she had been raped at the Delta Chi fraternity house in the spring of 99 and that the entire night's events had been caught on videotape.
And that videotape had been released publicly as part of a case of filing a false police report against the woman.These very kind of like open what we call sunshine laws, these public records laws.
So she did not get protected by rape shield laws because they claimed that she was
The offender right in this matter and we and what happened was I spoke to a couple guys from the shtetl I say that by because a lot of people go to you know our flagship universities fsu and and university of florida So two guys I grew up with I say that like we come from very similar backgrounds educations neighborhood socioeconomic status and one of them said
Hey, do you hear about this video?They were calling it the rape tape.
Yeah in Gainesville And I'm like and as people would get it for through the public records on VHS Yeah, what have like keggers to watch the thing like Rocky horror style at their house or fraternity house?Whatever.
It's pretty grotesque and one guy says to me Hey, um, do you see the video?Like it's disgusting.I haven't been able to sleep.It's haunting with these guys to this woman is terrible.
And then I spoke to another dude that I knew that we all knew who was like, this woman's a liar.She tried to ruin these guys life.And I was like, how did these two guys watch the same? video that we expect to tell some objective truth about a crime.
And they have completely different views about what they witnessed, whether it was consensual sex act.And so that's when I was like, well, maybe we should, this should be that first doc on video that we should.
And one year later, we were at the Sundance Film Festival from the moment of like getting the idea in January of 2000 with raw deal, a question of consent.Yeah. And it got a lot of heat, got a lot.He was on the front page of The New York Post.
Did it have any ripple effect legally?You know, did did she get justice?
Not really.Well, I mean, people watch the doc and and just like you're watching the video and disagree because we put it together like a court case.And that's still how we put our docs together.
It's like we might be making a case, but the audience is the jury.So it's like, here's the evidence.Here's the the testimony.And you just you decide that's like.
That's like old-school journalistic doc making in a way in a way yeah You're not inserting yourself and your personality on screen.You're not walking around Doing a shtick are you generally no in that one?
I only I had to chase the state attorney around the block That's the only time you see me on camera because he wouldn't give us an interview You don't make it about you, which is another form of doc.I won't even like unless it's I
Completely essential to understand an exchange or or it's a laugh I was like it's funnier if you hear me my my interplay with the subject I don't even like putting my voice like from off-camera in the dock if I avoid it right so I'd nobody wants to hear from me They want to you know the thing that's compelling to you is those docks where you know you are you know you've been given these sides to
And then you axed.Yeah.Yeah.And, uh, and you kind of, you feel, you decide even the new one is, is sort of like that and it's all left.
I mean, you know, you've got to, you've got to weigh this guy's morality and then his contrition and then, you know, his, his act of defiance, like, but you still got this guy.Yeah.
And you either trust or you don't, you believe you don't his since you can question his sincerity.I'm cool with all of that.Yeah.Well, there's no reason to trust him.
You know like but but but by by presenting Lev Parnas from both sides and how he was treated in the media And then you know what he decided to do and everything else Well, I mean, but like before we get to that.
I mean you did you know you've done like 20 fucking doc Well, this was the decision is that true?I just asked my partners the other day.I'm like what did we I? We did that one about the Peter, uh, I love that.That's it.Yeah.
It's an interesting guy, kind of a dark story, but the cocaine cowboy thing that got you a lot of heat.
Yeah.Yeah.I mean, that was our first, like, people think it's our first doc, but it was the one we did right after.Cause raw deal.Everybody was like, Hey, now you've been anointed the bells of the Sundance ball.
And your post actually wrote that about it. They're like, where are you going to go move to New York or LA?And as obvious as it was to people that we would move to New York or LA, it was just as obvious to us that we would go home to Miami.
Cause we didn't want to be three more schmucks peddling our wares in New York or LA.Why not be where it's all happening?We wanted to be the Miami guy.Like, so people would know we'd have a calling card, which is why we made cocaine cowboys.
Cause raw deal wasn't necessarily, it was a Florida true crime calling card, but it wasn't the Miami calling card.It wasn't about, it wasn't a Florida story. Right.Right.
It wasn't where like city was character and people are going to be like, Oh, those are the, the Miami storytellers and nonfiction.
But my, you know, my favorite saying is that like LA is where you go when you want to be somebody in New York is where you go and you are somebody and Miami's where you go when you want to be somebody else.Right.
It's, Oh, you know, I used to say it's for people at the end of their lives or at the end of their ropes.Yeah.Right.Yes. I don't know if it's still that anymore.
It's, it's, well, it's still a sunny place for shady people.It always will be.And it's still that place of like transformation of second chances.It's not like in New England, it's like, what's your name?Who's your daddy?There's legacy.
There's history.Miami is like one of the youngest cities in America.And we are like America's perpetual belligerent teenager.It's like the new shit, the new day. Everybody's a Gadsby, everyone's nouveau riche.
But there's like a tremendous influx of Latino culture too that like is kind of defines it, doesn't it?From everywhere.
Like now, like pandemic forward, like the influx accelerated all of the worst trends of Florida accelerated in a really violent way.Like everything about, you know, the Miami of today is the America of tomorrow.
Just the, the, the, the unaffordability, the crumbling infrastructure, um, the, the toxic politics, Rising tides, rising tides.And like all of it, like Miami has every 21st century problem, all of that.And we're doing nothing to confront it.
Well, it was, I remember being at my mother's years ago, eight years ago, nine years ago.
And we were staying on the beach, me and a, an ex-girlfriend of mine and the water had risen into the fucking road, like into the one, like on a sunny day that I came up and I'm like, what the fuck is happening? Did something break?Yeah.
The world, the planet is broken.It's very biblical.It's very biblical down there.
We're constantly reminded of our, you know, it's, it's funny because, because like, you know, the, the legend is that Ponce de Leon discovered Florida on a search for the fountain of youth.
And like, I am constantly, we're constantly reminded of our mortality in, in Florida.It's just, it's crazy, man.It's amazing.
But but yeah, you did a lot of you did a lot of the sports stocks dogfight.
No, I mean, I mean cocaine cowboys But but like you've done you know what you're doing now And I imagine you have access to money from a few sources when you want to do something Well, there was a while like we've survived multiple iterations of this industry.
It started as indie film and It was great indie film, you know, doctors, dentists, friends with money who believe in you, not necessarily the project and want to see you succeed.What's their ceiling usually, like 50 grand?I mean, not barely.
Like you'd get five here, 25 here, you know, like you just put it together.And then you do the film festivals where there was like a tiny gaggle of gatekeepers of the so-called
Documentary distributors, which there was precious few yeah at that in the raw deal in cocaine cowboys days Yeah, and nobody got cocaine cowboys Nobody wanted to make we can get meetings with everyone after raw deal after Sundance sure we pitch cocaine cowboys to all the quote buyers at the time Yeah, nobody wanted to make it nobody got why nobody was interesting.
Oh, oh Like, didn't we see this in like Miami Vice and Scarface?We're like, well, first of all, no, you've never seen this in nonfiction, number one.And number two, how many Italian mafia stories are you going to tell over and over and over again?
Elliot Ness and Al Capone.Like, we're going to do this.And nobody, dude, nobody, nobody wanted to make it.So we had to scrape together for Cocaine Cowboys.
And then suddenly it was like a real, it was this idea that like, cause we're still pitching in New York or LA, which were like vacuums of creativity in, in, in the quote unquote industry.
Like how else to explain in our lifetimes, uh, you know, uh, uh, two Truman Capote movies at the same time.Volcano movies at the same time to asteroid Hurley to Robin Hood, but like every time they, Oh, Hey, Hey, someone just green lit a volcano.
Don't we have a volcano script somewhere?Let's dust that off and then like, let's make dueling volcanoes.Like, does anybody care?Like, volcanoes are hot.It's like, just who, who cares about, but we got to compete with the other volcano.
We're like, well, we think that this is like coming around like the 20 year nostalgia cycle of like Miami in the eighties.Like we thought like this was the perfect time.
Grand Theft Auto Vice City was the biggest selling video game at that time of all time.Scarface just had like its 20th anniversary.Yeah.And I think on DVD it outsold like Jurassic Park and E.T.I had a whole second life Scarface.Yeah.
And as this hip hop legendary.
Well, that's what made the movie.I just talked to Pacino.I mean, when that movie came out, the critics were like, what is this garbage?
You know I thought it was a masterpiece because it's practically a documentary I mean Oliver Stone Oliver Stone did his research I will tell you did his he did his he did his research in Miami when you read that script And it's it's it is a composite of like everything that was really happening in Miami at the time Even though it's considered this sort of like absurdist or operatic yeah It was fucking spot-on dude and and so we wanted to tell those those true stories and nobody really was down
Well, so how's the business evolved in terms of getting things made?Well, there was a time when like I said, there's an indie pure indie film Yeah, and then there was a time when?We were doing commissions.That's how like 30 for 30 like ESPN's came.
Oh, that's right What is I talked to that guy who did that great OJ one?Oh
Ezra yeah, the best fucking masterpiece like that was like I called the first documentary to become an EGOT I don't know how it won the Tony, but it just won deservedly so every award Yeah under the Sun right just that to me was the I call that the last 30 for 30 That's like the mic drop.
How do you do?How do you keep doing anything?Yeah?But we just like We wanted to do we wanted to keep doing this popdoc thing because cooking cowboys our take was
Um, that this isn't a documentary because like documentary had that stigma of like the teacher rolling in the film projector and you're like, Oh, right.And, but we wanted to make like, we wanted to make a gangster movie.
We were like, how would Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese make a documentary?Like, let's do that.You know, um, a lot of gray, a lot of colorful characters of, of dubious at best morality.
And you had to go track them down and talk to them, track them, went to prison.Yeah.
And and found the people that we because that was the other thing too if it does all that work We all do I mean everybody who like everybody's got to do that I take all the press on it and then break down who the prime players are and figure out you know how to put together the story in that way dig into files dig into Depositions and find out who we with the hitman Rivi Ayala in cooking Cowboys.
He was in a unique position where in Miami-Dade County He had a deal to confess to countless homicides in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.So he could talk.He couldn't talk about murders in New York or in Broward County, you know, another.
But he could talk chapter and verse about the homicides that he was aware of or participated in in Miami.And it was dozens of them of men, women and children.And so he was in a really unique position to to speak freely.
Good for you, and I wanted to do first-person productions.
I didn't want to ever I did it for me It was all about you know I and we not they and she like yeah You can always find a lawyer or a cop or some of the next-door neighbor someone who will talk about a person or an event But like I wanted the people who did it now that calls into question memories agendas revisionist history that to me is part of the fun and the challenge like I said I
And then when you got a guy who won't shut up like Lev, then you can bring a lawyer in just to, you know, for a little color.Dude, when when Rachel Maddow interviewed Lev, which is where we first discovered him as a character in January of 2020.
Yeah.Like he was there with his lawyer.And Rachel thought, like, well, I'm going to interview the lawyer basically.And then Lev's going to chime in.The lawyer said not three words the whole time.And Lev was in jeopardy at that time.
Well, usually people go on with their lawyers just so the lawyer, if needed be, they can go like, no, no.Right.
Shut up.Yeah.Well, we you know, Alfred always jokes that that are half jokes that in in Florida, when you get out of prison, your first call is to your mother and your second call is to us to make a documentary about you.
That was the real rare case where we were making a documentary about a guy on his way. Federal prison like our first interview with him, which is not in the doc.
It was like our Development if you saw him on on Rachel, but you don't get you don't contact Rachel at that point.
Oh, no No, we so we have a running list, you know, like a Google Doc Yeah, like, you know, we call our genre Florida fuckery.So whenever Florida fuckery rears its head, which is usually, like, there's always a Florida connection.
You know, I mean, 9-11, Watergate, OJ moved down, you know.So, like, there's always that Florida connection.And so, we, things come on our radar and we're like, we're interested now.
What's happening now, which is not great, is that documentaries are getting made too soon.They're getting made too quick.Like, you need some perspective and some objectivity.
Oh, yeah, because it's a Netflix thing.They know they can pull eyes.It's just, it's not good for preserving history. Right, right, right.It's good for keep the sorted story going.
And whatever the agenda of the person you get access to is, without the perspective and without more people who may be willing to offer that.And so we, so Lev was on our list when he gets indicted in October of 2019.
Southern District of New York, okay, but he he was arrested on a plane in at the airport in DC His home in Florida got raided where his wife and isn't there an indictment in Florida wasn't the fraud indictment from Florida?
It was all out of the Southern District of New York Yeah, they took it over.They took all Lev related cases over.But I, I, I call the Lev Parnas story is, is, um, it is, uh, Tom Clancy.If, uh, Jack Ryan was played by Jackie Mason.
Yeah, that's like what this store and it's one of our favorite Florida fuckery stories because it's about Florida men.
behaving badly with international implications like the butterfly effect of just like a Florida man acting a fool and Suddenly the course of history is so for people who don't really have him perspective You know he and Igor
were brought in as these Ukrainian emissaries for the Trump administration through Rudy Giuliani to try to pressure Zelensky to open up a probe into Hunter Biden, ultimately, which led to the impeachable crime of Trump withholding aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky played ball with his Hunter Biden investigation.
It's so stupid. But that's really what it ends up at.
And in fact, Lev and Igor attempted to shake down not just Zelensky, but his predecessor, Poroshenko.So it was two successive Ukrainian presidents.
Dig up dirt on Biden, on Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, and get the Ukrainians to announce an investigation into Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.
Yeah, an alleged bribery and or money laundering through this corrupt energy company, Burisma, that Hunter Biden had what they called a no show job on the board, a paid gig on the board.
But but they you know, they they couldn't even manufacture evidence. They couldn't do these guys.So it was it reminded me of number one, George W. Bush nominated Harriet Myers to the Supreme Court like that very short lived.He's like, I need a lady.
Where's the nearest lady lawyer to my office?Like, oh, her making her.This is what Rudy's like.Oh, I know some Ukrainians.We have some Ukrainians.Yeah.And like and they're like, they'll do anything these guys.
And so he recruits them to be like like into espionage and into like a shadow diplomacy operation. And these guys are probably the least quiet guys that you could recruit.
They're hustlers.They're con men.
Well, I think that's what's great about the doc is you really kind of establish, you know, Lev's history of, you know, just being, you know, this, you know, hustling, grifting and, you know, like a organized crime adjacent or full in guy.
But he's like got this demeanor where, you know, like he's not one of these guys.He's not like a made guy.He's a guy that's going to like survive on his charm and facilitate things for whoever.
And then hopefully before it gets too ugly, get out without getting killed and with some sort of favor owed.
And he's not a political guy. He wasn't even registered to vote in 2016 when he was supporting and helping to donate money to Trump.
But I like the whole original story that he comes over from Ukraine.He ends up, you know, young and he got into some trouble in Ukraine with some heavies.He ends up in Coney Island with the rest.It's Jewish, right?Brighton Beach, yes, yes.
Seems very Jewish.Very Jewish.So he was part of that, you know, that Russian kind of purge of Jews, I guess, in a way.I don't know how it worked in the Ukraine.Yes, exactly, because it was Soviet Ukraine at the time.Right, right.
Absolutely.Because there was anti-Semitism.
Well what there was a time where they're like, okay, you can get out now.Yes, and like thousands and you better get out, right?
Yeah, and that that's how his wife is futures third wife and fourth baby mama, Svetlana.That's how she got out.She seems very pleasant.She is.I mean, to me, she's the star of the movie.
I remember meeting her and I was like, well, I, I decided she was going to be in the movie about a year and a half or two before she decided she was going to be in the movie.
Cause I was like, you know, like she helps Lev make sense a little bit more in a way. And I feel like it's a bit of she loves the guy and he knows he's kind of half a clown Absolutely.
Yeah, I mean she's the one who says like, okay if this were a Hillary Clinton administration or a Barack Obama administration or a Joe Biden industry or even a George W Bush administration Lev Parnas doesn't get within 500 miles of the president of the United States let alone be one of his plumbers like Nixon, you know
like like a Watergate burglar, you know, for for Giuliani in Ukraine, like, you know, and that's really what it was.
Giuliani was like the Howard Hunt in this metaphor here of like and the and Levin Igor were Trump's plumbers is exactly what they were.And Svetlana is like, this guy's not qualified to do anything.
What the hell is he running around the country on behalf of the president for thinking he's going to get a medal?And she is the one who's trying to talk reason into him the whole time.But he's slipping.He's just slipping away.
I, so this is a little bit of a way into a Trump brain.He, he refers to it as, as a, as in a word he made up, but doesn't know he made up.
He was coltonized is what, is what he, I think that like, you know, I think what that really explores though, in terms of what that cult means, I don't think people, you know, it's easy to say they got brainwashed or whatever, but when you have proximity to, to the most powerful person on the fucking planet,
I mean, it's very seductive.Intoxicating.He admits that.And he admits that his initial motivations were purely financial.He was looking for money.
Yeah, but also like the funny thing about him is like, you know, while you're talking to him post everything, like as, you know, Lev now, you know, he still refers to, you know, without thinking to deep state as a real thing.Yeah.
Oh, yeah, because I wanted to understand his state of mind at the time, and he was a true believer in all of this bullshit.Yeah, like a true believer.And so and she, you know, and Svetlana watched him go from like, OK, this is a hustle.
He's trying to, like, buy influence in the Republican Party, which, I mean, in a in a in a legendary and historic way, put up a for sale sign, like just in front of sure.
He had his own money laundering operations and fronts to to make money very hard at work doing in the laundry business Yeah, absolutely and and he was currying and so she thought led was just on the hustle and then comes to realize like no No, he's like way in over
He doesn't even know how to do it.
He doesn't even understand what the fuck's going on.That's the thing about Trump in particular.It's like anybody who gets intoxicated and seduced by the power, it's like, look at what's come before you.You're going to get thrown under the bus.
Yeah, there's a forest lawn, like sized graveyard of like the people that he stepped on and used it.Yeah.And, and fucking discarded, you know, absolutely.
And, and she, so I, and this is a little bit of a cheap sort of how the, uh, you know, how, how the, uh, the sausages, but like when I met her, I was like, okay.
And when we did the deal with MSNBC earlier this year, and I realized I was going to have like 89 minutes, you know, without commercials to tell the story, I'm like, I need some shorthand here to make this
How did, how did Rachel sign off on this?Because that's a pretty, that's an honor.Cause she's like, you know, really a, one of the smartest journalists around.
And I, you know, I know her and it's like, she's not, you know, she, to have her trust you with something like this, that's a big deal.
Well, we had, like I said, Lev was on our list, if you will, a Florida men list and in late 2019 and then it was January of 2020 when Rachel did the interview with him.Yeah. really against his own best interests.
He did that interview and he- Was he trying to save his ass then?Is that- He was looking for redemption.Right.This was a guy without a country because he betrayed both of his countries.Well, yeah, it was like he thought he was going to get killed.
Yeah.And, and he, so this was a guy who was hated by the left for being a treason weasel.
And he was hated by the right because he did the worst thing in the world, which was turn on Trump.That's the worst thing you can,
And that's where this, the Solyndra campaign came everywhere.
Like, you know, everyone's saying they didn't know him.
He was a suppressive person.He was excommunicated.But it's hilarious.So like, he's like on his phone, he's got a thousand pictures of him and Trump.And Trump's like, yeah, I might take a picture with it.Every, he had, he had documented everything.
That stuff, that recording that I guess Igor did of Trump putting a, like a, a, a political hit out on the ambassador.What was her name?
Marie Yovanovitch.Yeah. That recording, I believe, documents the first time that Trump had ever heard about that woman.Well, who that woman like you didn't know, Marie Yovanovitch.He didn't even know Ukraine had oil.And what do you say?
She's like, get her.This is this is the. This is the reality show foreign policy of a reality show president.It was literally the fucking boardroom at the end of The Apprentice.
He was like, get rid of her.I want her out.Get her out.Yeah.It was it was mob shit.It was it was TV shit.It was just like it was make believe.But but this was a professional year or so later.She's out.Yeah.
And it took him that long because and this is this is the thing that that's I think so frightening about this moment.You were saying earlier about how people think like, Oh, we survived four years of this the first time.It's just another presidency.
It's just another term.Here's the thing.Love him or hate him. people like Jeff Sessions, Mike Pompeo, Rex Tillerson, John Bolton.Believe it or not, there were adults or even maybe statesmen in that first administration.
People, deep state, people that they would call the deep state, but people who respected norms and, I don't know, allies and NATO and things that kept peace in the world for more than half a century. there were people, there were guardrails in place.
Those people are gone.And Lev says, you know, now he says like, he goes, who's, who's going to be the attorney general now?Alina Haba, who's going to be the NSA director?Kash Patel?Yeah.
Who's going to be like, who, like who's going to be the, like, what are we, like, who are the people that are going to, like Steve Bannon's going to be the CIA direct, like what, like, like these are the, these are the president's men?
Well, this is, but that's how autocracy works.I mean, that's how like a dictatorship forms itself.
I mean, once you get rid of the norms and people are dumb enough not to know what they are, it, but I think that's exactly how these guys want to do business.
You know, the way that Trump wants to run it and all these fascists, they just want, you know, like I'll call Putin.Don't we don't need no idea.Don't make a news about it.
I'll call him diplomacy.Yeah.
Right, because it's just this voice network of autocrats that can, you know, operate at the behest of themselves, frighten the people or get them brainfucked, and then just, you know, through their own self-interest, you know, run the global financial system.
I think there's some people who are in a cult.
I think there's some people who are too... In Florida, obviously, there's a very large elderly population who find themselves the victims of con men and get to... And a lot of them are too prideful to complain or to report it because they don't want to admit that they've been had.
So I think there's some people in that position with Trump too, because if they admit now that this whole thing has been a fraud or a lie...
They're the fools who got duped.But they're still hedging their bets for the next administration.They don't need to admit anything.
I mean, some of them are doing that, probably preemptively, if he wins again, who are like, now's the time to finally go fuck Trump.But they're going to come groveling if he wins again.But we don't have to go there.
No, we may have to go there in a month.Let's enjoy the month.
But like this Levin has come to Jesus moments and his contrition and, you know, but I think that in this documentary, I think you put it together, you know, through his personality, through the way that the Trump operation was structured, you know, through Giuliani doing this stuff.
And, but then- You mean our next attorney general?Yeah.Rudolph Giuliani.Trump cut him loose a long time ago.He just never, never goes away.He just never goes away. But there were some interesting things about Giuliani in a brief moment in the doc.
You talk about how he was the mob prosecutor.He was getting rid of the mob in New York and now it turns out that it was envy.He loves the fucking mob and he wanted nothing more than to be part of it.And he got his mob with Trump.
But I think the way you sort of laid out the real crime against the country and the real reason why the impeachment made sense and should have stuck harder and the scariness of the fact that, you know, people don't really realize just how fucking awful a thing that he did by denying an ally aid to serve his, you know, political prospects in the future.
I mean, that's a big deal.And I think people need to be reminded it needs to be explained to them. There's one guy on the news that is worse than Watergate, and he kind of is.
I think the just the fire hose of fuckery that we in the shit we ate for, you know, four years and have really for the subsequent four years as well since that administration left has just been so overwhelming that we memory hold scandals that would have otherwise sunk in.
any other political career campaign.And they were catastrophic.And arguably, I know the word gets thrown around a lot in context of Trump, but treasonous.And totally.
And in the case of Ukraine, you, you know, you had a situation where Russia was going to roll over this this country.They had been occupying them since 2014.Yeah.
And even though we just think of the war kind of heating up, you know, more recently, they've been there since 2014.Yeah. Trump just saying, it would be a shame if something happened to your nice little country over there.
I know you need some help, and Congress had already approved hundreds of millions of dollars in aid and weaponry and things.And he's like, but do us a little favor.The perfect phone call, as he called it.And he only stepped in.
as mob bosses do when their underlings fuck up the job.When he's like, I told you to go and take care of the thing, and now you fucked it up, and now I gotta fucking make the call.
That's what that call was, and it sent alarm bells all around the intelligence community.Anybody who was on the call or who read the breakdown of the transcript of the call, people were like, we have a serious fucking problem.
And that problem is gonna obviously metastasize in the event, I mean, whenever Putin wants to leave Ukraine, the war's over, he can just leave Ukraine.But that's not what he, he's holding out for November.
If Trump had won in the second term, he would have let Putin take it. Oh, yes.He's a real estate guy, Mark.It's a real estate deal.It's a real estate deal.But I like how you keep it on Lev.
You know, you move through all this stuff, but then Lev has a come to Jesus moment.He unfucks his brain.Does he, does he though?Well, that's a good question.
But after, because like those kinds of guys, you know, they can, they can turn on the waterworks.They can cry a little bit.Yeah.
People, people forget the con is short for confidence.
Yeah.But but there is like these moments where, you know, he he all of a sudden becomes very kind of like, you know, pro-democracy, you know, feels bad.
But ultimately, the human part of it is the thing he seems to feel the worst about is putting Hunter Biden into a position that he didn't deserve.
Well, I'm starting the whole avalanche onto this, you know, this hopeless drug addict who, you know, all all the only thing I knew about Hunter Biden was from right wing means and from this show.Sure.Because like it was the first time.
when I was like, where he felt like not this enigma or this boogeyman, but he humanized him.And it was a conversation that like, that I was like, oh, he's just a guy with a problem.
And like, we all are guys with problems.The thing that people like, my interview with him was to show like, you don't think this kid was a problem for his father?The idea that his father would say like, yeah, go make some deals with me.
This out of control crackhead who was like, you know, just like, he's gone. You know, like, you know, and that's never discussed.And, you know, Joe won't discuss it.And, you know, Hunter would discuss it.
But that guy had to have been a fucking nightmare for Joe Biden.
Nightmare.I so I talk about this with permission, but my brother is 17 years sober next month.Yeah.And so. We've been through it.My family has been.Sure.You know, the life savings to put him into rehab only to only to relapse and the whole.
We've been through the whole cycle again and then repeat.
Yeah.Well, yeah, there's a point where you're like, well, we've done everything we could.And now it's just like, you know, there's nothing we can do.Dead or in prison.
Or now my brother's a dad. He's got two kids and a house and it's fucking it's dude.It's a miracle.
It's a it's a miracle And so I think anybody who's been through that I think a lot of people have of course recognize in Joe Biden That like well probably the enabler.
Yeah, certainly the empathy right the like that relationship speaks to it yeah that relationship really speaks to me and yeah, and so it was it was kind of all these things and I and so but Lev was stuck in
the right wing meme machine of the boogie manification of Hunter Biden.And Lev.Yeah.And eventually, eventually.But like Lev was.Well, he got that machine rolling and that's why he feels he seemed to feel.Lev was like.
You know, I said, you tried to destroy this guy's life.And Lev said to me, I did like not like I think I was successful.He he takes responsibility for the legal problems that that Hunter Biden has to this day.He's like, we got that.
We put the spotlight on this guy.He goes, who I thought of as a mark.
as a target, he said, and didn't think of him as a son, a father, a brother, a husband, never thought of him as any... Yeah, he thought of him as this degenerate crackhead who we're gonna use to guarantee... Hang his dad.
We are going to conspire or attempt to collude with a foreign power in an effort to meddle in the 2020 United States presidential election.
And we're going to do it through this fucked up kid of a presidential candidate.
Who was not a presidential candidate yet, but Donald Trump was. petrified of Joe Biden entering the 2020 race.Yeah.And so he's like, we have to stop that.We have to head that off at the past.That's what Rudy Giuliani was charged with.
And he they were going to do it by exploiting Hunter Biden's addiction.
And really exploiting Joe Biden's love for this boy, I think, as well.Like it was it was a pretty grotesque and insidious plot.
Well, what's interesting is like, and I, there's actually a spoiler to this thing if you haven't seen it.So I don't want to please, I don't want to do fine.I think that, I think the cat's out of the bag.
It's all right.It's pretty.Oh, yeah.
Well, I mean, he ends up, you know, the big, the big moment of the doc is that, you know, it's a, it's a, a face to face with Hunter with a sort of a seemingly, you know, heartfelt apology.
MSNBC put it in the trailer. It reminded me a lot of- They were using Hunter again.Do you remember the movie?He's being used again.You exploited for, yeah.Do you remember the movie Ransom with that Jew lover, Mel Gibson?Yeah.
So Mel Gibson, the big twist there was he turns the ransom around and he's like, this isn't a ransom for my kid.I'm putting it on your head.He does that on TV, right?And so that twist is in the trailer.
And I'll never forget Brian Grazer, who I love, the producer.They asked him like, dude, why did you give away the big twist of the movie in the trailer.And he goes, butts in seats.Butts in seats.So whatever, Mark, just tell them.Tell them.
But it's actually, it's really an addendum.It's a postscript.Totally.You know, you can't, I mean, the thing could exist without it.It did, in fact.
Motherfucker up until July of this year.Yeah, a month and a half before delivery You didn't need it.
You just it was the final sort of piece to humanize the the the Jewish guy We had you know, so we had been involved in this for like two and a half years
years by the time we brought it to Rachel, because the dock market was shit, particularly the dock market.So you had a dock and you presented it to her.
We started working on this in three years ago in the summer of 21, because I had reached out to Lev earlier that year.We finally got him to sit down ahead of his trial and then after his conviction, but prior to sentencing.
And we got the first interviews in the can to develop this thing.And not only did the dock market go to shit with the strike, not with the strike, or just happened to be at the same time.
you know, the conventional wisdom of the water balloon effect of scripted getting squeezed and non-fiction, you know, unscripted blowing up, did not happen.
Everything just, the industry said, you know, the studios were like, hey, you know what we could do?We could just reboot this whole fucking operation and, you know, and figure this out while we don't have to spend money and we don't have to work.
Yeah, it gave them a great opportunity to keep people unemployed.
Yeah, and it's worked, it stuck, it took.Sure.And so the, And particularly the political dock market was dead.Nobody wanted to get involved in the 2024 cycle.They were like, let's just steer clear.
You saw the Apprentice movie, like everybody just wanted to steer clear of Trump content.
And so- Well, that's because like, you know, like, and I say this a lot that like, you know, these, these corporations like Netflix, this tech company, you know, they want to exist in a Trump presidency.They don't give a fuck.
They're not, you know, let me give you the we were talking about red flags of fascism just to keep it positive for, you know, for for Yom Kippur for the new year.The. in Florida, the end of Florida will not be when the flood comes.
It will be when the insurance companies abandon Florida, when you can't get a 30 year mortgage because the banks are like, this is not a going concern.
And insurance companies are like, we're not going to insure you because we're not going to go bankrupt on this godforsaken place that, you know, the mother nature clearly wants to reclaim the wetlands from.
So so that's going to be the death knell when when it's only for people who can afford to build, rebuild and self insure.And then it's over. Yeah, it's kind of similar here with, you know, democracy and free speech.
We had a lot of trouble getting, you know, insurance for this doc, which is an essential deliverable for any doc.You can't.What is it?You know, it's errors and emissions insurance, just the insurance policy in case you get sued.
If you get sued, it covers, you know, you know, there's deductibles, of course, but it it covers per incident, you know, or yada, yada, yada. Every doc, it is like number one deliverable, like you can't hand them a doc until you get the policy bound.
Right.And you get a price and you have to agree on there's going to be there's going to be a premium and then there's going to be a deductible and everything.And we couldn't get covered because Trump
Trump world are so litigious in no small part because he's playing with donors money Yeah, it's not even play he can he can sue by the way.He doesn't prevail in that.
He doesn't prevail in any of these cases He might even have to pay fees and anti-slap.He doesn't care.He doesn't give a shit in court his money.Keep it in court yeah, so but that to me was scary because it's like well if
If documentarians and journalists can't get covered, can't get insurance, then we can't do this.We can't publish this anymore.And that to me, just like Florida and the, it's like the insurance companies are really the death.That's the red flag.
That's the canary in the coal mine.When the insurance companies take off, it's, it's, it's, it's the end.
It's every, every man and woman for themselves and only the rich will prevail with protection.
Yeah. It's not but but so did you get that coverage through an MSNBC ultimately did but it was much higher premium and much But the network didn't take the hit.Well, hopefully knock wood.
There's no hit No, but I mean, but did they did they put the money for it's in the budget?It's budgeted for but it's just like the the struggle to even obtain it well and then the price at which we ultimately did is a It's a red flag, dude
And I hear you.It's good information to know.Scary, but it's good.But so when Rachel got involved, you showed her a full cut.No, we showed her a sizzle and a deck.
We did not have a full cut.And how much power did she have in the making of it? She has a busy year like this.This is the cycle is been busy for her.So she was as involved as she wanted to be.She watched cuts.She gave notes.
I would say she was she was our partner in journalism and she was our bodyguard in internally.Yeah, not that there was a lot of issues.We had a really good experience.But when you come in for the first, you know, we've done.
four or five projects with ESPN, a bunch with Netflix, we've done five with Magnolia, with Mark Cuban's company, and so we have a lot of experience working with some people, and this was the first time we were ever working with MSNBC Films, so we didn't know what to expect.
With a news operation.Yeah, and we didn't know what to, a legacy news operation at that, so we didn't know how it was going to go.It went very well, but if all else failed, Rachel was our bodyguard. There was a kindred spirit.
We had kindred spirits there, like because her sense of humor comes through.I think her, you know, with with her journalism.And that's what we so she was like, oh, it's a comedy.It's called From Russia with Lev.Yeah.Oh, this is how this needs to.
She was like down for the cause.And we sat shoulder to shoulder in a conference room at 30 Rock across from her bosses pitching this this movie together in like January.
Issue of this year and and then it was like let's do it And I didn't even have Svetlana's interview in the can because she hadn't even agreed to do an interview yet And then I was like well We're doing this with Rachel and Rachel was a big deal in their household because she was considered public enemy number one Because Trump hated her and so lev banned MSNBC in their house They can only walk on all the TVs was Fox News and so when he had an op when he said I'm gonna go public and tell my story for the first time to a one-on-one interview and
He had an offer from Anderson Cooper and he had an offer from Rachel and he called he said he was in no headspace to make a decision He called Svetlana's wife and she goes this isn't a decision She goes that you have to do it with Rachel because like you made our lives a living hell over this MSNBC ban and so and that's why I said to Svetlana and when I realized we were only gonna have 89 minutes to do this movie on MSNBC with you I was like, okay
I need a this is like a that's why I said like like Screenwriting was my best class in editing or directing or anything I said I need a shorthand here, so I'm gonna start the movie you spoiled the end I'll spoil the beginning um I need a shorthand here where I think Lev Parnas is not going to be in this documentary for like the first three ish minutes Yeah, and we're just gonna hear about their meet cute with Svetlana because she is smart and funny and beautiful and People are gonna think when they meet this guy well
Whether I see it or not, there must be something to this guy, because this woman sees something in him or loves something about him.So it's almost a shorthand for like, okay, let's at least hear him out, you know?
And you can decide later whether you believe him or not, or trust him or love him or hate him, but at least I need you on board for the start of it. Right.So so she was really the shorthand for that as a character.
Well, it's a it's a great piece of work, buddy And and I think what we learn is that after all is said and done Lev Parnas survives He is a survivor.
Aren't we all he he he moves on to the next thing Yeah, and the next thing as Hunter Biden says and the next you know, one one day at a time Yeah on our how is love is do you text him?He texts me and and we you know, he has a book on
And so like shadow diplomacy.And so he's hawking the book and, you know, he's out there, I think, trying to make things right.And his relationship with Hunter Biden is, to me, fascinating.They should do like a show together.
Well, they'll tour together.I think that would be, I'd watch that.
They'll do like, you know, several states, you know, multi-state tour.
You know, when I woke up that morning in L.A.and Hunter Biden had texted me, I'd never spoke to him before.And he's like, please call me.And I thought, oh, well, Like, this is going to be canceled.
I'm sitting here in a hotel room and it's going to be canceled.I never thought it was going to happen because they committed to doing it.And then Hunter got convicted.Yeah.And then his dad had the debate.Yeah.Like June 27th.Sure.
And I'm like, OK, history is intervening here.This meeting is never going to happen, you know, because I was like, oh, I want to meet this guy and apologize to him.I'm like, sure, Lev, whatever.Yeah.Whatever you say.Yeah.
And Hunter Biden, we talked that morning, Sunday morning, July 7th.And we just started talking about like logistics.And then we started talking about addiction.And I was like, this is a really interesting and complicated guy.
He was the guy from your podcast I listened to three years ago.And so I'm like, and I, my understanding with him was cause I'm like, why the fuck is this guy?Cause he's in jeopardy too.He got convicted.
He's got, he had the tax case still coming up at that point.Yeah.He was convicted on the gun case.Tax case was upcoming.He hadn't, it's ironic that he gets convicted for what one gun.
for something that nobody else has ever been really convicted for, standalone.The two-tier justice system is not always what people think.It doesn't always work in the lopsided way people think that it did.
I learned that from Ben Brothman on the Limelight Project.
He the way hunter like kind of expressed it to me and the best I can I'm paraphrasing But he should speak for himself, but he just was like I Have had to go to my family and friends and loved ones and ask forgiveness for the worst Things that I did or put them put them through yeah, and he's like who am I to?
Deprive this guy of his opportunity to make amends like he was he wasn't just working a program He was trying to live it yeah, and I thought I was just like I was like This is this is a really interesting guy in Iraq cuz I didn't know I said he's like What do I do like when I see him do I'm like dude?
shake his hand, hug him, punch him in the face.Like, I have no idea what you want to do to this guy.I'm like, I want to fucking kill him.You know, have the secret service pounce on him and tear him apart.I don't know.
Like, you know, do you, you know?And, and it was, it was like just the, the empathy.And, and honestly, it's his dad.
He not only looks like his dad, but like he, you can see there's like lessons there from father to son that are like really profound and really powerful.Thank you.Good job. Nice talking to you.Great talking to you.Thank you for having me.
There you go.Billy Corbin.You can watch from Russia with Lev at doc plus.com or on the free documentary plus app.Hang out for a minute, will you folks?
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Hey gang, there's more of me and Tom Sharpling posted for Full Marin listeners.We just put up the Mark and Tom Show number two this week, which is another talk between me and Tom that we recorded back in 2012.
So you're going through this and they have all the different outfits he wore on stage and then you see this TV and it has this plaque on it, it says, for Elvis Presley from RCA for 50 million units sold.
So RCA, this corporation, this guy sells 50 million records.Imagine that.Probably at that time it was still more than $150 million.
So what do they send over as a thank you?They send over a TV that they make. Like an RCA TV, like that, like that.Yeah.That's show business.Like right there.It's like, even if you become Elvis.
you kind of like, they'll just be like, eh, what do we got laying around here?Call Joe up in sales.
What's the hottest TV we got on the line right now?
It's TV that costs them $37.
And I think a sadder thing is, is that he was so proud of it as an award.He didn't even stick it in the wall to make a fourth TV.
It wasn't even that good a television.No, this was like the commemorative television for 50 million records sold.What a horrendous thing.
To get bonus episodes twice a week and every episode of WTF ad free, sign up for the full Marin.Just go to the link in the episode description or go to wtfpod.com and click on WTF plus.And a reminder before we go, this podcast is hosted by ACAST.
I'll get back to not looping stuff, but I'm still playing with the looper and I know my leads are, you know, simple, but yeah, I enjoy it. Boomer lives!Monkey and LaFawnda!Cat angels everywhere!
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