Episode
Episode 350: You Have Ten Seconds to Comply
Description
Dan shares his feelings about the loss of a friend and coworker, then brings on Ed Neumeier – writer of genre defining movies like RoboCop and Starship Troopers to dive deep into their history and trivia. Featuring Dan Harmon, Jeff Bryan Davis, Rob Schrab and Ed Neumeier.
Transcript
hello I don’t know
production typewriter near downtown Los Angeles
just thinking tonight at losing a Spencer’s he never think of it as a genie gay robbed robbed everybody
we are sounds Kristen tonight but tribe is up more than up to the task tonight we going to have a strawberry plant
get it gets DVD
all right jack it off knock it off. Quit screwing around start the show Friends in the green room when we don’t want to send the wrong going totally free right now I didn’t bring my iPad I’m just going off the phone with guy that I never behave I want to walk out of here with a high opinion of me is like I’m nervous. Who I guess was and I thought that you two are going to be here with that guess I got excited just to watch you guys talk to this dress together
yeah are you nervous I’m looking to do it we were all kicking it back stage and then like we should I said we should have brought the audience back into the Green Room just to hear that conversation but anyways so it’s tragic news that just makes no sense at all line producer producer on Rick and Morty Mike Mendel it was the the the nervous system it’s too easy to say heart I mean he he was held the show together is still holding the show together I do he he’s gone he died it’s I don’t think I’ve ever experienced this kind of this particular flavor of grief it it it
I like it it’s still I don’t know no matter how aggressive we get no matter how sensitive and gentle we become underneath it all the all of the men and women are I think we pride ourselves in and almost militaristic mindset like oh we’re doing something so important here that requires so much discipline and hierarchy and collaboration and intuitiveness and that ate it simultaneously dehumanizes the people you work with while making the most important people in the world that’s like I suppose it’s some kind of like
just the case it’s j a i just I don’t know if it’s just my narcissism or if this is a common thing that people experience with with grief but like I just you hear that someone is gone and then I I’m immediately parsing it is what is wrong with me what’s what’s wrong with me what have I done like what why why am I like this because
why do I not understand that every single human being on earth like the ones you know the ones you don’t know but especially the ones that you rely on it every day the people that you just in the truest sense of the phrase take for granted like white why don’t why don’t we why don’t we go to a two-day understanding that it’s very unlikely but perfectly possible that that someone will be gone tomorrow and why can’t we treat everybody you know and ourselves I don’t just being like I was mean to this guy I just I wasn’t what I was was completely just
I just didn’t regard him as anything other than a load-bearing pillar of what we were doing that there would one day be some silly vacation to celebrate retirement or something some opportunity maybe even the funeral of a person that that was supposed to go on some schedule that I apparently think death Works eyewear where we would finally sit down and interact as human beings and it’s just that that that’s that’s my narcissism parsing another person’s death II it’s all about me I guess but I just feel like I see I see I feel like I’m made of straw tonight like I feel like if I move too quickly my handle fly off I just feel like everything is so delicate and
and how long have you known him for what he’s been there since the beginning I mean since the moment that it became not a little pilot a little idea to get off the moment that it needed to start pulling up its big boy pants and being on the air he was there
and and he was the he was unmistakably the reason why were able to create you to take something so childish where there’s people having me sign a corporate like manufactured thing where the name of the characters Mr poopybutthole the reason why you can be that stupid and childish and yet be so lucrative compatible with mainstream Society is because the guy is making the trains run on time you know it’s coming to us from The Simpsons in the world is like getting the job done like if everybody was like me and Justin we’d be watching two episodes of Rick and Morty every 8 years
and it was out of the blue I don’t think I never met him but he said he was with him yesterday and there’s no game so he was the upside is that he got to it he was surrounded by co-workers and they were all having a great time and had a great time we went home and his wife and he just put a daughter in college and I just think it’s it’s it’s a rollercoaster ride all of these things I guess that’s the go to the bargaining phase of great for your kind of like well doesn’t have a kid that’s like six of them in my car are you kidding me any is a young adults have to spend the phrase it like they’re crossing the threshold into the rest of their life and like you get this it’s the it has a little hatch here I die I do two things I go numb and I get mad and I think that comes from upbringing in like there’s a hatch here
where if I were to open it which I won’t do because it’s bad podcasting but it’s it does have to do with thinking about his his his wife who robbed and I was one of the first people that we worked with she was the casting director and keep visiting Jack and and I and I’m just I don’t know who the lovely people they were just like great wonderful people it’s it’s it’s the top because then that connects to the idea of my God like what what if something happens Cody what if something happened to me and I would lick lick lick it it’s it’s just that I can’t go there my my deepest sympathies and condolences to his family and yeah I guess I guess that’s what you know I felt like saying that this happened but at the same time like we would
I could have said nothing I don’t I don’t consider it our job to stop the world and that doesn’t do anybody any favors and it just very confused I think it was one more thing that I would say about it
which is like the continual frustration throughout the day of like
wanting someone to say something that finally makes it makes sense which I finally atoned with by around 3 p.m. today where I suddenly realized that wait a minute you know
I hope I don’t I hate my big pet peeve with with the deaths that we encounter is people making too much sense of them I talked about daddy here before I was a telling Dino today like you know Dino and I no matter what we do until the day we finally died if and no matter how we die if do you know where I
like walk under a piano and it falls on us people are going to make sense of that debt they’re going to go well he had a problematic life and he was probably in the wrong place at the wrong time. His name on it you know the way at the choices he made that’s my big pet peeve is like this the way we getting it in spite of the fact that as we all know Dave Foley drinks 50 cups of coffee a day like like okay so where there’s an instinct in us that no matter what happens to Dave if he lives do a hundred and ten great if Dave something terrible happens tomorrow there’s that we wanted to make sense because we are afraid of death so we want to let go of this happened because of that okay I got that figured out and I think the subtext of that is this really really arrogant idea that were all of us left the longest some club that made the right decisions and that is it really offensive and so I at least I got you to because it was so it was like I was getting angry about both the the
nonsense of it I this is a healthy man he played hockey he was he was he was he was ripped man he was like visceral and he and and and and I’m like what someone tell me something and then and then I finally came around to know nobody tell me anything and please dear God give me a senseless death give me a confusing one let me go quickly and let me let let people be puzzled by it I think that may be the equivalent of leaving a little pencil Splash in the pool and Olympic. I feel you know just like no turbulence to the point where people are like how’d that work
so godspeed you money can a
what did you just make it about me one more time I I just I can’t believe that guy left this world
the world where his story ends with Trump being president and me still working on a fucking draft of a of a of a I hope it was not I hope it’s the last like moments weren’t fucking have a good deal with my horrible bottleneck effect on production when I like working on this fucking draft and he’s the guy that has two
he’s he’s he’s got to be the hero he’s got a he’s got to just get it with just water bottle that energy and no I just
I just I just
I hate myself for not for not turning that thing ends that I bet it’s this stupid cuz it getting to go to a baseball game is more important than he wasn’t going to get joy out of me finishing a draft but some all right so I talked enough about that I had one item on my list but it was kind of like I think maybe maybe Spencer that’s probably for a Spencer night but I I don’t want to I don’t want you to feel left out I don’t see a Spencer
I just think it’s a lie like you get it you get a drive like a little thing that Leo this reads these kind of cards or these these distant it’s hot swappable and the implication there is a no so I can like poke a stick into my computer I can write some stuff on it I can pop it out throw it in the other thing that I wanted thing in the computer won’t go hey what are you doing
it does do that no matter what there is no such thing as a hot swappable drive thank you how I really feel all be all dispenser for you during this is just so you know I think I was just going to do what you really want to do is get yourself a network card oh man oh man you got real blazing speed is there real blazing speeds where is he looking at these down here
Ranch maybe Spencer’s hot swappable who he’s just he’s just wait at a different podcast.
That’s where you poop on somebody’s chest by the concept is just the idea of being able to
that’s an option when Spencer took the night off
weird poor beleaguered salt mine worker robbed robbed for a guy that’s an option what do you Fred Flintstone I missed your slates I got the author of The RoboCop screenplay those awkward way to introduce I guess
Coronavirus
Dan don’t screw this up this is really important to me tonight
I’m sorry about those awful chairs yet picture to give him the you know the introduction of his stature deserves to be one of my like rambling things were Jeff would cut me off and say please welcome at do my hair in the middle of me trying introduce you cuz it be like look we’ve had some Legends up here I get I get nervous they say I’m a bad interview or a bite but there’s a there’s a difference here where it’s just like genuinely you are a hero to me your your your your person that exemplifies like Natalie the the to me that’s what we’ll talk about whether you think this is true but demonstrates the highest kind of like Coda of of of of of The Craft of writing movies and and also like demonstrates that bat pays off that you let you pick your shoe
lots and whatever but let’s let’s let’s let’s get to know you a little bit cuz we kind of a bad interviewer but I think that you feel like you are you a California and the way you were born here I was actually born in Vienna Austria by by chance and I grew up in the Marin County in San Francisco Bay Area Martin County San Anselmo and you were a journalism major at my parents were both journalists and so I should have it was that that followed me through high school I was I was the editor of my high school newspaper and Jax are but I always want to do movies for it being from Wisconsin I couldn’t possibly
make the leap to I’m going to major in writing I’m going to I’m going to be your writer I’m going to be creative for a living I had to find a Midwestern compatible version of being a person that sits at a typewriter that’s also felt enough like welding to it was there anything to that but it was the first time I ever had a little thing where you could do something and I immediately started turning it into a place to do I used to do violence at tires of like my friend who was the school President we shot him in the in the Wii shop in front of the school sort of we did Zapruder films and things like that from my RoboCop Starship Troopers like both really interesting thing to talk about him but both of them have The Shakespearean Harold’s that are the media
so I imagine like I think I was always interested in that stuff and I was literally all my a lot of my some of my friends now where might you know people who were in like Woodward and Bernstein were big guys and so I like know the guys who knew them and stuff like that and a lot of people a lot of journalists in that kind of thing in those that was an exciting idea you could do a lot of things without spending any money you have and everything like that guy the world is a character Detroit is a character in Robocop it’s so important to understand the relationship between people and media what’s going on in the world that even though the whole story takes place in a really greedy local part of this new Earth your it’s so it’s so effective to have a to be able to zoom in
I’m a Global Perspective right into other little parts of that world and imply a bigger world and and that was always there and it was something that I think they’re hoping and I had a big fight about that at one point because I always wanted to be completely separate from the story that it was different he he would say it one time he said well we should maybe we’ll be in a TV studio and you’ll see the news and you and I and I was like I don’t know why I was just way I was 27 years old I know you can’t do that with a huge fight about it he came around and then we see an idea I don’t think he said Wrecking but that’s what it is about you and idea that your first screen credit it’s your first project I came to the business and my girlfriend broke up with me and I couldn’t finish UCLA Film School
I got a job on taxi and they paid me $175 a month or something to be a runner and I did that for a little while and intersection between you and Sam Simon and the answer is no but no no but I did I did I used I was a guy who used to sit outside the door in and wait for the script pages and I had to drive them to a place called Barbara’s place and they type them up and then I had to pick them up at 6 in the morning to type it is that a copy place it was like they were just type of money do they would literally there were a bunch of people who stand up mostly women who set up all night Andre types of scripts and then they were delivered cuz I’d like to live like a notes on them and stuff like that and a clean copy of that process thing so it’s a writer’s assistant
in like how they’re so there were so many roadblocks back then you know Ed and people still got stuff done today it’s like I can’t connect with the wife I’m just back at you. It’s like we were talking today about you know as well as people tend to in the loss of a colleague we’re having drinks and we’re suddenly going through our whole lives spend yeah we were we were we were briefly marveling at how we had a radio show in Milwaukee and how we would I would get up at 5 a.m. drink two pots of coffee right V scripts get in a car drive them down icy roads to a Kinkos because they had a printer and pay them the money that they wanted to to print up the scripts and then drive is like a never yeah I would never do that these days anyways but you are a job it says I’m got your Wikipedia page like his so joyfully Spartan
get you you go you or your proofreader at Paramount know I was a a script reader I was a reader in the story analyst Guild and they pay people you probably in coverage to do coverage for executives and you read everything that comes in and you do a report on it yeah they call it a proofreader I don’t know I did I remember reading my red war games and I said you should make this movie and they said nobody wants to see a movie about nuclear war and then and then I can get you Dabney Coleman
and then and then I read a script which I really I made my reputation at Columbia pictures on the I rather risky business I wrote a coverage for him it was 18 pages long which is not working or not what you want when you an executive at the morning meeting I said this is the greatest movie in the world you have to make it and there was a memo came around and said from Frankfurt at the chairman said that they would no longer be any coverage longer than two pages and and then they then when the movie came out they were interested in me suddenly and when the movie came out I bet somebody a hundred bucks the vice president that it was going to be a hit and it was and then suddenly they offered me a job and I for a moment I was an executive who had his finger on the pulse of use and that lasted for about a year at Universal and I wasn’t really suited for it I read that you were offered to be the vice president at Universal
call them see he’s now there wasn’t where I was a junior Executive Inn and that’s sort of how I learned all the business stuff but if you will and I was I was under a VP and yes if I had stayed there I would have been a VP which I later was it another production company Martin ransohoff I was a VP of development and and stuff like that where I start to worship you the story of your past because in the Underworld where the werewolves of suits in the vampires of writers like are in constant War like you can root for one or the other and there’s all kinds of hybrids that are exciting and heroic but
there’s a warrant on the license that there is like something really romantic about a guy that does what you did which you could just imagine the biopic like T up of this moment where you have this easier when you do your on this path and then for whatever reason you decide now I’d like to go behind door number to I’m going to I’m going to abandon this career of being liked being on the side that calls the shots makes the money at because I’m really passionate about this idea I had called RoboCop it’s true during this guy I don’t want to have I wasn’t returning a hundred phone calls a day and there were people who were who I really admire who really good at that some of them are good
Waldron shout out to him who he was he was kind of an add new Meyer at starburns my my my little studio is it where it was like you you hire young people and you you make them do the stuff you’re too busy to do some of it is reading other people’s stop taking it you know some of it is like he is very handsome like kid from Georgia and like people like talking to him and he doesn’t like talking on the phone and I remember him saying to me you know just just so you remember like I did come out here to be a writer and I’m like I was like too bad you’re a daywalker like I had more plans for you but I will return the favor to you if you do this shity neurotypical stuff so I will help you as much as I can and it amazes me that some people are just good at both that there are Charming people who networking ability
what was that I was never I never felt cool enough for the job and when I meet Executives overtime they all seem much cooler than I ever was he thinking you buy into the the dichotomy of the introvert is recharging their batteries while there alone while they’re operating individually and they don’t they don’t mind interacting with other people but that’s a discharge and then there are some people who are actually receiving a energy charge from of all things interacting with other people and then get them through having to play Minecraft which blows my fucking my like they’re just like sitting there wait till I hope the phone ring that you
when she when you’re sitting at home you’re like God damn it I get I get answer my pants I got to go out and be around the people V night between the sticks calling you and having you come out to her concert
my teacher was sticks and deaf replaced Tommy shot now I don’t know I think it’s like it’s if it’s both ways like I need to be alone but I also need to be around people and then in both of those are
recharge and discharging him in a way you don’t have to choose one I’ve always wanted when I was when I can play many years ago when I wrote RoboCop in that when it was successful there were times that I would entertain myself thinking while I did this and I did that I did that I did that and then now more and more I think well know I did that because Paul was there and we talked about this and we did this because John Davidson said why you can have $0.25 and they were a lot of people involved in that process that made it what it was eight sweetens the recognition of of the permit is in October like you said you did you start to like open up to so Vera Lynn and I get together we’ve been getting together for 35 years and we often and we’ve done most of our work over breakfast and we get together now still we just did recently
wasn’t we got to go to all we did was talk about what a great producer John Davidson was and how the movie never would have happened without John Davis I mean a million different ways now they couldn’t even talk to each other in the room I was the the middle child who would try to get the parents to come in and back and then they would run out after cursing at each other in but now they realize that it was when you wrote it was good you always while you’re writing this cuz this is going to be in this is going to be called RoboCop I did actually there I was I was working as a reader at then Columbia Pictures was out not in Culver City but it was in in Burbank on a lot called TBS then which is now known as the Warner Brothers lot and I have an office right next to the one of those was a trailer office and it was right next to one of the big back lots and suddenly they were making this giant picture this giant science fiction picture which had no one would tell you what it was and I would get out of my
leave my office and I would go out onto the set when I really want to do in those days was make a movie and there were so many people on this movie that they didn’t know who was working on it who wasn’t there were shooting all night and so I would go and work on the art department and stay there till about 3 or 4 in the morning and I I said so what’s the first night I what’s this movie about and it’s about a robot and they pointed a girl with a in a tutu and said that’s a robot and Blade Runner