Who are you and how did we get here?

Well, I'm Bruce Cohen, and the two parts of my identity resonated for me very much, um, as Anjali just mentioned.

Um, because I consider myself a producer and an activist.

I feel like I have two full-time jobs, but I love how they dovetail with each other.

On the producing side, I've gotten to produce a lot of films that also have activist content in them, which I'm very proud of, such as Milk and Rustin to name two.

And then on the activist side, a lot of my work has been within the entertainment community, harnessing, marshaling, begging, forcing, pleading with celebrities and others with a mouthpiece to get involved and to, uh, take part in a variety of different events, live and virtual, et cetera, that I've produced over the years.

And so when Jane Fonda refounded the Committee for the First Amendment in October, I was like, "Oh, this could be a holy grail for me," because no one combines entertainment and activism better over the past decades than the legendary and iconic Jane Fonda.

So tell us a bit more about what it took to get here, and then a little bit about last night.

Mm-hmm

... how'd that happen? And who gave them the flag?" And- That because, of course, we believe and know deeply in our hearts they're actually less patriotic than we are because they're against all of the foundations of democracy, and we are for all of the foundations of democracy.

So we decided that we would hang a huge flag on the side of our barn, and Gabe found a u- a, an American-made flag because that is also one of the- Wow ... smaller but important issues of American flags is almost every American flag that you try and buy is made in China.

Yep.

So when you're gonna get your American flag, make sure it's a Y- American-made flag.

Like, 20 by 30 feet and hung it on our huge barn, but we, we knew, we're like, "Okay, but if we just hang the American flag, everyone will just assume that we're MAGA" and as annoying as that is and how much that should be corrected, what point are we making if we're just another MAGA flag? So we decided, this was in the run-up to the 2024 election.

We decided we'll put a Harris-Walz sign small, the flag's huge, and this little tiny Harris-Walz sign at the bottom so people know we're making the point.

I just like, I think it's possible to criticize your country while loving it so deeply, and I feel like I'm in the middle of that.

In the interest of saving a little time for everybody out there in listener land, we're going to go ahead and jump right in and ask you, Bruce, who is going to be the man chiseled in and spot number one for you?

Spot number one is probably not going back as far as some other guys in the group here, but I'm going to start with Bruno.

Kind of hard to argue anyone who was champion for almost 3,000 days or seven and a half years the first time, and then he got another five year run after Vinny Sr. asked him back again to take the belt again.

He had a really long career.

He disappeared for a while and then they made up.

He also had a great feud with a bunch of people and especially Larry Zbysko, his old student who turned on him in 1980.

Then they had a blow off in Shea Stadium in 1980.

Go ahead and hit us with your final pick.

So, you know, when we talk about how did you manifest it, take us through from eight years old.

There was there's a people have said that Dan Jenks, my producing partner, who is actually even a year or two younger than me, that we were two of the youngest producers ever to win Best Picture, if not the youngest.

We've never actually checked the statistic, but statistics.

But we definitely were on the younger side.

Well, funnily enough, from the age of eight to the age of about.

20, I didn't even realize that I wanted to have a career in motion pictures.

I knew I wanted to win an Oscar, but I hadn't yet really connected it to what that would actually mean.

What's your experience with that? Where does that come in?

Bruce, any of those ring true for you?

I'm trying to remember if the one I remember was just Saturday or if it was Monday through Friday, but I was on it several times because I had a first cousin who, for whatever reason, chose to have his birthday on the show pretty much every year for a couple years, two or three years in a row.

Popeye's Playhouse later became, uh, Skipper Chuck, which was a local media personality by the name of Chuck Zink, who'd been around for quite a while.

If you ever heard the phrase "peace, love, and happiness," it may or may not have started down in Miami with him.

We had another guy named Banjo Billy, who was a show I was also on when I was that age.

But the most of what I remember about when coming home from school were shows like Ultraman, which I really, really liked.

So it was those kind of shows, and I don't believe those had a host off the top of my head.

Getting to grow up and just watch iconic players like Walter Payton, Michael Jordan, Ryan Sandberg, Andre Dawson, Frank Thomas, it's been pretty cool to be a Chicago sports fan.