-Our first guests tonight
are one of Hollywood's funniest couples
who you know from their films like, "Thunder Force,"
"Superintelligence," "The Boss," and "Tammy."
They produced the documentary,
"Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed,"
which begins streaming on Netflix tomorrow.
Let's take a look.
-Bob liked the thrill
of watching a new student smile
with a fresh, new, beautiful painting.
♪♪
Bob would just make them so happy, it's -- it's unreal.
♪♪
It's like, "Man, did I do this?
I couldn't have."
"Yes, you did."
-There's a lot going on besides painting.
And I think people are aware of that, and they enjoy that.
-Please welcome to the show
Melissa McCarthy and Ben Falcone.
It's lovely to see you both.
-Hi, how are you? -Hi! Good to see you.
-So -- First of all, like I said, it's great to see you.
Melissa, you've been on the show before.
Ben, it is your first time.
I am so happy to have you guys here together.
And together is where you spent most of, I guess, the last year
in Australia. How did it treat you?
[ Both sigh ] -Very nicely.
I have to say, we kind of really --
We got in there at an amazing time.
And at first, when they were like, you know,
"Would you consider going to Australia to work?"
I was like, "No. Like, we -- We can't go down to the street.
I can't move a family across the world. That's insane."
-Yeah, we can't go to Australia if we can't go to Trader Joe's.
-"This is nuts. We can't go to Trader Joe's, we can't go to --"
And then our 14-year-old's like, "We should leave tonight.
Get me out of Zoom classes. We should leave tonight."
We were like... "Wait, let me call somebody."
And it was kind of great, you know? It's a friendly --
It's a chatty, friendly --
-Very Midwestern kind of time.
-Yeah, we're both Midwestern.
Like, you know, you go down a grocery aisle,
and you're going to have like three full conversations
just about random stuff. -Yeah, about bananas.
"You like those bananas?" -See, this is great.
I was going to ask if you guys can do the accent now.
That was really good, Ben.
Melissa, I heard you can't do it.
-[ Gasps ] I think --
I think I can do a few things.
But then any Australian's like, "That's awful."
I like, "Noyr."
'Cause they put an O-Y-R at the end of the "Noyr."
And then I-I -- You shave with "rayzor blaydes."
-Oh, that's --
-Razor blades really fast is,
"Ah, I've got some razor blades."
-"Razor blades." Max said, "Don't move your mouth."
-This is very, very helpful.
Hey, I want to ask this. When you guys travel across the world
or whenever you travel together, because, Ben,
you famously played an air marshal in "Bridesmaids" --
for my money, one of the funniest movie scenes
that ever took place on an airplane.
When you guys travel together,
is it jarring for other people on the flight?
[ Both laugh ]
-I think they're always a little bit like, "Ha, ha!"
Or they're like, "Oh, my God.
You guys got married after that?"
And I was like, "Well, we were married."
They're like, "Right."
-One time, a drunk guy did say,
"Hey, you going to keep us safe?"
And I was like, "Yeah, you know, I'll try to."
And he goes, "Seriously.
Are you are going to keep us safe?"
I was like -- What do you say to that?
I was like, "It was a movie."
[ Laughter ]
-You mentioned you were both Midwesterners.
And -- And I was aware that you guys met
working together at the Groundlings in L.A.
But then, you actually hadn't met then.
You had met back when you were growing up in -- in Illinois.
-We had had an encounter. I think I can call it that,
which was -- I've never called it that.
-Ooh. So mysterious. -Ooh!
We're breaking news here.
-It's getting very nighttime.
We -- I went to college at SIU Carbondale,
Southern Illinois, which is where Ben grew up.
He's three years younger than me.
So I was a freshman when he was still in high school.
And when we became friends in L.A.,
like a week into it, he was like, "Oh, my God.
I know who you were."
And I was like, "No, you don't.
You would never recognize me. No, you --"
And he's like, "No, I did." I-I think I know who you were."
And he goes, "No, I was afraid of you."
And I was like, "Oh, my God. That was me."
-Yeah. Once -- Once I mentioned
that she struck terror in certain people,
she was like, "Yep, that was me."
'Cause she was very, very goth, very --
And all my, you know, friends who were of that age
went, "Oh, my God. I wish my mom would let me dress like her."
-And really, all I was doing is I was so hot
because in Southern Illinois in, like, August,
to commit to a full-length cape and, like, opaque tights,
you're digging in in a way that nobody should.
-So, Ben, the first time you laid eyes on your wife,
she was caped.
Is this what we're hearing?
-Yeah. It was probably the dead of summer,
and she had a very heavy cape
and kind of a nice -- a nice shade of blue hair.
-That's a -- you know?
-And his eyes just went to hearts.
[ Laughter ]
-So, you guys started --
I think a lot of us had to find ways to entertain ourselves
over the past 18 months.
You started a movie club with some of your friends,
a thematic movie club.
And you were, like, very much at the beginning of it,
because you've really charged through a lot of films.
-It started with, we were just like, "We're not --
I'm just scrubbing fruit all day with Clorox wipes,"
which, by the way, don't do that.
But in the beginning, I think we were all like, "I don't know.
How do you -- How -- How clean is clean?"
And we were realizing, like, we weren't having any connection
to anybody when we were all so, I mean, as we all did.
And so we're like, "Let's Zoom,
and we'll have, like, Friday night drinks
with a couple people."
And then, literally, they're like, "Oh, well, we all know --
Let's add a couple people, add a couple people."
And Ben said --
He's like, "My brain's going to mush.
I need to do something.
I'm going to start and watch every single Best Picture winner
from the Academy Awards."
-Yeah, from -- We decided in 1960.
And it's that sort of thing. You know, when the pandemic started,
we were all going to take piano lessons
and learn a bunch of languages. And I'm gonna --
"Oh, trig? You got it. Trigonometry? I got it."
-I'm gonna get my master's!
Although I never got past freshman year
in regular college, but whatever.
-But, so -- But it actually is because --
Because it turned into this really fun thing, we've --
I think we've watched, you know,
definitely over 50 Best Picture winners.
-No, I think we're into -- We're in -- We're past 55.
-Yeah, yeah. It started at --
-Is there one that -- Is there one you can say,
"Hey, you probably haven't seen this one.
It's better than you heard. You should definitely watch it"?
-Ooh, there's -- There's a lot of great ones.
-I think just remembering how, like, rewatching
things that you've seen so many times but you didn't --
And, like, we watch it during the week on our own,
and then we meet. There's a -- There's a Q&A.
-Great. -There are costumes,
and there are prizes. -Trivia components.
-Very stupid prizes given.
But I think, like, watching "Terms of Endearment" again --
-Yeah.
-...watching "Kramer vs. Kramer."
-"In the Heat of the Night." Sidney Poitier.
-Oh, my God. -Oh, my gosh.
-All three of those are -- Those are all Marvel movies.
People don't remember. -Yes, exactly.
And then to sit there and actually having fun
but also, people being like -- watching a movie,
talking about it with a bunch of different filmmakers
and actors and producers and writers, like, you don't --
You know, you don't really get to do that since college.
And, like, it's just been -- It's been so fun.
-So it's a lot of laughs.
And you sort of by accident learn a lot of stuff, too.
-And then there's a few that you're like, "Aah.
Sorry, but --" -We won't name names,
but there are some turds in there.
-"Patton"?
-There are some turd Best Pictures.
-Oh, she named the name. -Sorry, but "Patton"?
-He said we weren't gonna name names.
-It starts -- He's got toothpaste on his eyebrows.
-[ Laughing ] No, he doesn't.
-Oh! My God.
All respect, but you start out a movie
with toothpaste on -- on somebody's close-up,
and I'm like, "I'm out.
-It was not too great.
-Hey, so you guys have been writing partners
for a long time.
I don't know. Is this the first -- Is the Bob Ross doc
the first time you guys have produced a documentary together?
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-And so, what brought it about?
-Well, you know, I'm super interested in Bob Ross
and have loved him for a long time.
And I actually wanted to write a biopic about him,
half because I'm interested
and half because she's always wanted me to have a perm.
-[ Sighs ] I really do.
-So I was -- And I did your basic, you know, cursory,
how -- What do you find --
You know, we no longer go to the microfiche.
You know, you go just and look on Google
and like, "Alright, Bob Ross news" or whatever.
And there's nothing there.
So it was really interesting to find, in this day and age,
you can find -- I'm sure if we google you,
there's zillions of pages of stuff.
You'll be like, "I don't even know what some of this is."
But there was nothing.
-Yeah, which was just so --
We were like, "Wait, how --
How can anybody that -- that well-known,
you know, for this many years,"
there's only like three small bites of information.
So it just made us really kind of start to wonder
what is the story there?
And then we met these, you know, great documentary filmmakers.
And they were like,
you know, "Are you guys thinking of doing anything?"
And they -- They had just done "Lorena," and --
And then, you know, we said, "What -- What about Bob Ross?"
He's kind of -- Like, we're currently down,
like, this wormhole of, like, what is the story?"
And they just -- They loved it. And they went --
It's such a different process. They went right into, kind of,
this, like, investigative research.
We're going. It's feet on the ground, knocking on doors.
It was like -- It was exciting.
-And there's a certain poetry to it,
because the way that our filmmakers,
Joshua and Steven, you know, described it to us,
they said, you know, sort of something akin to,
"You know, the movie reveals itself to you."
And I was like, "Well, we should do that."
-And I was like, "That's what I was going to say."
-It really does, though.
And it's -- It is fascinating, like, what you say,
I think we all just assume we know everything about him.
And then you realize you don't actually know a single detail
other than his hair or that he paints,
and it's really a wonderful documentary
because of how much we find out. -Oh, thanks.
-Oh, good. Glad you like it, Seth.
-You guys, it is so lovely to see you, as always.
I wish you the best,
and hopefully next time I can see you in person.
-Absolutely. -I hope the same thing.
-Your hair looks fantastic.
-Still great hair!
[ Laughs ]
-"Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed"
begins streaming on Netflix tomorrow,
and "Nine Perfect Strangers" is streaming now on Hulu.