My next guest is also in this book.
This is gonna be the thread through the whole thing, okay.
I thought you were reading this book.
Please welcome Jay Larson.
Jay how are you?
[Jay] I'm great.
I didn't know if Austin was done dropping any more credits,
you know what I mean?
He's gonna pop up as a picture in picture,
like when they play, you know, the less important game,
that's a blowout
and he's gonna be just dropping credits in there.
'Cause he's booking things as we speak.
He just booked right now.
Are you working?
Are you staying busy? Oh yeah look at this.
[Jay] I saw you asked Austin if he's done any commercials,
I directed a commercial during this whole thing.
Yeah, and then just for future reference,
if you could take all
of your questions based off of Austin credits,
it's gonna help us do a great thread for the show.
[Jay] That's you know what I mean?
I like unity and concise.
Yeah, okay.
So you directed a commercial pandemic wise,
which is it's already difficult enough to do a commercial
cause it's a hodgepodge crew.
People that have not worked together.
[Jay] Yeah.
Are we, are you doing this remotely
Or are you onset?
No, we did on set, we did two days.
One day on set in a church
and then another day out at a golf course.
Are you getting rapid tested before
or are they just winging it?
Got tested day before we had someone on set.
You got your temp checked three times throughout the day.
Everyone's in masks, social distance,
masks off for shooting.
But you're in a mask the whole time?
Yeah.
How does that work, cause you like to,
when you direct you like to scream an actor's faces.
[Jay] I get in people's faces big time, bro.
You have a breakfast so you're, you're on your game.
Don't eat my raisins.
[Jay] Get away from craft, sir.
Kevin Nealan was our lead.
And so like, I have such respect for Kevin Nealon,
like trying to give direction, I'd be like,
Hey Kevin, what if we, and he's like,
Oh yeah, you're gonna love this.
You're going to love what I do here.
And then everyone would just be laughing,
you're like, yeah, yeah, let's let's move on.
Don't got to do anything.
Yeah it was great.
Are you going to do more of those or was it such a weird
experience or was just like,
let's just wait or you like work?
[Jay] I had no problem with it.
I'm on a, I write on a show
and I wrote and directed five sketches for
the show during the pandemic as well.
I think if everyone is just cautious and you're smart
and you're safe.
I mean, you're seeing commercials with people in masks,
so clearly they're making content or shooting commercials
during Covid, you know what I mean?
Unless Jeep grand Cherokee knew about this and they
released the virus.
Are they behind it?
Is this something Lee Iacocca, you know,
was ahead of the game on,
I know that might be an old school reference for you and
maybe some of the audience,
but I'm educated and I'm informed,
you know what I mean?
Yeah, you're informed.
It is, it does change the relationship onset a little bit.
It's a little less collaborative and that everyone's afraid
of each other.
And also the writing room can be weird.
I've been in some writing rooms now where you don't know if
your joke that pitch bombed
or it's zoom bombed and it just crashed.
[Jay] Yeah, or there was just a delay.
What if it, it crushed?
But the delay was so long, you missed the tire response.
Yeah, and then you already back out,
like if someone pitches a joke, it's like, oh yeah,
so then he fills up the back of the truck with a bunch of
toasters and then that falls.
But yeah, I don't think we have the budget for that.
So we'll just, yeah, we'll move on.
[Jay] Yeah, well we can, we can rip on the guys maybe,
maybe later.
Yeah, I'm in a writer's room,
I have been the entire pandemic and it's like crazy.
We have some people in Florida and some people in LA.
So we were, you know,
like working out times and just making it work.
You just get so comfortable on zoom,
just being like, well,
let's just make it work.
I think moving forward,
industry-wise writer's room and even
some sets will be a little bit more remote because we've
proved that it can be done.
[Jay] I hope not. I hope that listen,
I'm all about being safe and we've been like completely safe
with our kids and like groceries.
I haven't eaten out anywhere,
but I also believe that like when we get control-
I say DJ Khalid, yeah.
You know what I mean?
Once we get control of this,
that we should,
writer's room you need to be next to people,
with people, riffing,
like getting a sense for them seeing them, like that's like,
there's such a,
it's such a part of the creative process that I think like,
I hope maybe there will be some rooms that will,
I think we should use it as like an advantage to be able to
be remote if someone needs to be.
But otherwise I think being in a room together,
like really benefits the writing.
Yeah, absolutely.
Because it is an energy thing where you need to throw out a
bunch of bad ideas to get to the good one.
And you can only really feel safe
doing that when everyone's doing that,
and you're all in the same room and you can pick up on
certain social cues,
like you'll read comments with this,
I could live habits like, Oh, this podcast boring.
And it's like, well,
it's just different than being on stage having to
deal with this delay.
I also think when you're in a zoom room,
you're constantly like the clock is constantly ticking.
Like when is this ending?
Whereas when you're in the writer's room,
so you might just like accept joke because you're like,
well, this thing has got to end some point.
Let's just get that joke done.
Whereas in a writer's room you could like be like,
all right, let's just wait on that.
Let's go work on this. And like, oh dude! You know?
How are you handling it with kids?
Are you homeschooling?
You're supervising homeschooling.
I'm not a big,
I don't want my six and a half year old on three hours of
zoom call.
So we de-enrolled them from school
and set up our home as a homeschool,
and then we hired a teacher,
that we like went through the COVID process with.
So now she like every day nine to two is with my kids,
and like they do project based learning activities,
learning.
They do field trips, you know,
it's a lot more organic and a higher engagement level
than zoom.
So you hired, so your essentially a principal.
Yeah, I'm VP, my wife got the principal.
I mean, it's not a big deal.
It's not a huge deal.
Seem really upset about it.
[Jay] It hasn't been a thing, dude.
It hasn't come up. It hasn't been an issue.
I'm not saying I have better credentials or whatever,
You know what I mean?
Do you have the same power as your,
your wife as the principal.
[Jay] Don't, you know, the structure of the principal,
vice principal?
I'm the fun guy.
Vice-principal kind of seems like, lunch is over,
you know, kind of serve at the lunch room
and then you're back in.
[Jay] Yeah, that sounds right.
That's kind of, that's pretty accurate.
You move everyone's cars when the car needs to back out.
[Jay] You gotta move cars, you know.
Hopefully you'll get a promotion,
So it's also on you to kind of keep the kids busy.
I saw you're building stuff,
You built a whole science experiment table outside.
I just love being interactive with my kids,
and so we built a science table.
I built them a Lego table.
I like doing adventures with them.
Like when the whole thing started,
my job was like the first two weeks of COVID,
they were like, let's just be loose.
And the kids were out of school,
so like, I would take them on hikes
and then find a picnic table,
and we'd like collect leaves and turn them into projects.
I just liked that idea, of like constantly making learning
a fun experience, you know?
Yeah, it's a great time to be picking up leaves
and anything you find on the street right now.
You know, like, what is that bacteria?
What better way to learn about COVID?
Getting COVID.
I think your kids are gonna find the vaccine,
on one of your leaf trips,
which is actually them just cleaning the yard.
Listen, when you say leaf trip,
it almost sounds like you're de-valuing it.
No, it sounds like I actually want to go on it.
It sounds like you're a great dad and talking to you,
makes me wish I had a great dad,
because it sounds, it sounds fun.
It is fun. Yeah.
It is very fun. They're fun.
They're wild kids. So they, they, they take to it.
What else have you been doing to keep them busy?
You've been showing them movies?
No.
Not at all.
[Jay] You know, what I did is I've been doing, like,
we did this field trip to the beach.
We went to the beach with like my buddy and his kids,
but we've been watching Goonies.
Are you a Goonies fan?
I wasn't allowed to watch a lot of movies growing up.
Like I thought Star Wars was the most boring movie,
Cause my parents had edited all the violent parts out.
So it's just a movie,
a bunch of people talking
and then a brown bathrobe falls on the ground.
Totally sucks.
No, I have, I've seen clips of it,
but I haven't seen the entirety of the movie.
[Jay] Yeah, well Goonies, Goonies is, you know,
it's Spielberg dude.
You're like, dude, this is Steven Spielberg.
And we showed it to the kids and they fell in love with it.
And you know,
there's a treasure hunt and there's a map they follow.
So after we watch it, I took the kids to El Matador beach,
which has got like rocks and caves.
And I made the night before, a treasure map and made it look
old and like, you know,
put old writing on it and put like the rocks.
I drew the rocks and put X marks the spots
so we got to the beach,
buried it in the sand by our mat.
And then when my buddy got there,
I went and took like a stick that was charred and put Xs on
the rocks where I had written them on the map.
And then at lunch, I was just like,
have my hand in the sand and I was like, Oh, what's this?
And I hand it to my son and he was just like,
(gasping) Dad!
And like the kids lost their minds.
And then we went on the treasure hunt.
We found the Xs,
I bottled coins or brought them and then hid them
and the kids found them.
And then it just turned into like,
their whole world was like,
we got to find more treasure dad,
we've got to find it.
We got to dig.
And I was like, I looked at my buddy.
I'm like, should we tell them like that this isn't real?
And he's like, no, dude, let them go.
I'm like, all right.
So now they just like,
they believe that One-Eyed Willy from Goonies lived.
So now they're just going to believe that every scenario
is, is possible.
You're going to be in your regular day life.
They get on a bus and they're like,
this is the bus from speed, don't let this bus stop.
They think this is baby Yoda for real dude.
Dad has the hookup with a very homemade version of Yoda.
What if someone else found the coins on the beach?
What if, what if you accidentally blew someone else's mind?
[Jay] I had the coins on me,
and then when we get to the X,
when they wouldn't look,
I would just go (whistling)
and I just drop it down and be like,
hey, what's that? And then they'd be like, you know.
Dads a genius.
[Jay] So Burr, you know,
Burr is a friend and Burrs in the Mandalorian,
and the kids made a video and we sent it to burr like,
hey, you were so great in the Mandalorian.
And then he sent them a message back and they were just
like, now, like, you'll see my son, like talking to kids,
like on the playground or in the pool and he'll be like,
Hey, have you seen the, have you seen the Mandalorian?
And the kid would be like, yeah.
And he's like, do you know, episode four, the guy,
the bounty hunter.
And I'm like, Hey, just chill out, dude.
You know what I mean? Like-
He's already dropping names.
So your son is and that's been a challenging experience.
That's really cool that you have that, that,
that hookup and that you can do they, so they say like,
dad's cool.
Dad is the guy.
They think I'm pretty cool.
You cook for your kids.
Do you go all out ? Like it's Mac and cheese and-
Pasta. I do real plates,
real glasses,
forks.
There's no separation anymore. No plastic plates.
Little Vino, come on, loosen it up.
You won't get drunk. It just pairs well.
It opens their pallette man.
You want them to try new stuff?
Give them a little whiskey.
It's for their palette, it needs to be more distinguished.
I put rum on my daughters gums when she was teething,
when she was real young.
Yeah.
I'll never forget it. Like just holding her here,
dip it in and just be like rubbing it on her gums.
And she was just like, oh yeah, this is pretty tight.
I'm like, Oh nice.
And then like, she went to bed and like,
we had been having a problem,
getting her to go to bed and I just crushed it with this,
Captain Morgan is what I gave her.
And then I hear her crying like a half hour later.
And she had thrown up everywhere in the room.
Yikes.
[Jay] Lightweight dude.
Yikes, so this concludes our child services interview.
We'll be following up with some forms.
[Jay] W-what do you mean?
You're a great dad. We want you to write a book.
I love it.
But anything else that I skipped over?
Talk sports, anything you want to plug?
What you got coming up?
What's the, what's this podcast we wanna check this out,
cause you tell really great stories.
It sounds like a dig.
I don't know, I stopped podcasting during this as well,
But there's a bunch of episodes somewhere.
I had one called The Through Line, that's out there,
you can check out the commercial.
I just shot for Callaway with Kevin Nealon,
it's actually a short film.
It's like an eight minute short film,
which you can check out Callaway's posting,
if that's of interest to people,
if you're into branded content,
That's our whole audience,
and then Through Line is the, is the podcast,
which is, you tell great stories on that.
Yeah.
Very nice.
Just put some whiskey on your finger,
put it in your mouth, Listen to this podcast.
Jay, thank you so much for helping us out
and doing the show.
You got it, man.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, this is fun.
All right, later Moses.
[Moses] Later!