I mean, so how do you, when somebody comes up to you like that and they want your opinion on getting into the business, how do you frame it to be supportive but not blow sunshine up their ass about how it's just going to be so great and such an easy path without riding that fine line of discouraging them?

I do, you know, I mean, you kind of said it already in the question.

Like I will often say to people, always try it, you know, take a chance.

If you want to take a chance, you should.

Because I remember being, I remember talking to my girlfriend in high school when we were doing theater together and she was like, always pick arts if it's on your list.

If you're thinking about it, do it.

Do it now.

Best time to start is today.

Now, when you were doing this movie, what's this one about?

The new movie is, um, it's about a woman named Gail Daughtry, played by Zoey Deutch, who is a Midwestern woman who, uh, has a celebrity pass agreement with her, uh, fiance.

Um, and he somehow meets his celebrity, has sex with her, and so she's distraught and she goes to LA, and a psychic on Hollywood Boulevard tells her, "I- if you wanna even the scales and save your upcoming marriage, you have to go find your celebrity pass, Jon Hamm, and have sex with him."

Really?

...

this particular movie, it's so interesting.

This Gail Dautry and the celebrity sex past was so, was perceived as so out there and so inside and so weird and, like, or what- uh, just, like, people are like, "You, you know, love you, David, love your work, but this one is, no," you know?

Mm-hmm

... and then sort of our larger group of friends, A.D.

Miles and, and so on, and Zach Orth.

And then we had big, bigger name people that we asked to be part of it that we kind of had some connection to or just asked, went to their reps, like David Hyde Pierce and Janeane Garofalo, and then we-

Yeah

...

I, I'd say it to his face.

Um, Wet Hot American Summer opens in theaters yet again for the first time, uh, for a week, starting on this Friday.

What is the, like the best screening moment that you've had? It could be in replaying a film, it could be in launching a film, but like what do you remember like as that moment as a director that you get to have this, you know, uh, what is it? The Jay Kelly moment, you know, of your own work.

Honestly, I think maybe the best one...

I mean, there's been some really memorable ones, but I think one, one of the best certainly was the January of this year, Gale Dautry at Sundance, because I was coming back to Sundance after having been there, uh, uh, many times, but for the first time 25 years before with Wet Hot American Summer.

And it was a different audience in that there was some familiarity with what they were getting before they saw Gale Dautry in terms of a filmmaker, and it was a big giant, you know, primetime Eccles screening, and it was the, the response, having not seen the movie with any real audience before, was just ex- so exciting and so thunderous and so unified and validating that I really just...

It was really quite emotional.

Oh, right

... during the, during the process of writing Wanderlust, my life changed and I became...

I got married and I was, like, things...

very silly.

Yes.

And it was not a successful pitch.

I mean, we basically sent it sort of around to our reps and to... places that we felt like might have interest and, you know, at the time when we wrote it and they all said no pretty definitively.

And so it would get to that point where the reps that you have are like, you know, let's put a pin in this for now.

And, you know, we'll get back to this, you know, circle back on this one, you know, all that euphemism for this is dead.

And yeah, I've done this also with They Came Together and with Wet Hot American Summer.

Often... to the extent that there are indie silly comedies or whatever, they're going to premiere at South by Southwest

Sure, I mean, uh, can you imagine that people lived in the previous century?

I, uh, true story, last night my son was doing homework, and he was talking to his friend on the phone at the same time, and I said, "How can you have a conversation and do homework at the same time?" And, and I said, "You have to get off the phone." And he goes, "Forget, ignore my dad.

He doesn't understand.

He's from the '70s." [laughs]

[laughs]

My cousin, who lives in Pittsburgh, has a thing he does where if he's not dating someone at the moment, he'll do a sex thing where he closes his eyes, pretends he's having sex with someone, but he's actually, uh, doing it to himself with his hand.

And everyone found out about it when I had to get a plastic bag from our troop leader for my pee pants.

That's a great story, but I would say also a classic.

That's not a leave camp story.

No, you got to stay.

I think that's right.

You know, I just remembered I went to a place called the Country School with Craig Wedren when I was 10 or something.

And it was a farm Amish camp.

Why? Come on! Let's spin it again.

Now, I wanted to ask, do you guys have any internal rules when it comes to writing a comedy that's absurd as this? Because it's meant to exist in a certain kind of reality, but you have times where you think of jokes that are funny, but they may threaten to, like, break the universe it takes place in or the story you're trying to tell.

All the time.

I th- I think, like, w- w- the A lot of times from the outside, people are like, "Oh, you just do anything.

It's c- whatever." You know, and for us there's definitely a, a serious latticework of like this, this makes sense for us here and this doesn't, and we debate those things all the time.

And we have jokes that we've thought were funny that we'll cut out just because it doesn't feel quite right for the particular piece.

How hard was it to get that footage near the Chinese Theatre, especially when Joe Lo Truglio was recognized for Brooklyn Nine-Nine? [laughs]

A lot of that stuff on Hollywood Boulevard we shot, uh, just from across the street, um, and no one knew we were shooting.

Um, or we would shoot, we'd walk around our, um, one of our great camera ops, uh, Frank Barrera, who's a great DP, um, would, uh, just have an iPhone, and that's how we shot inside the 7-11 or at the Starbucks and stuff like that.

And how did you, how did you make the leap from like college group to?

I was like an intern and like had like menial jobs at MTV as we were getting towards graduation or around that time.

And that show, there was that show called You Wrote It, You Watch It.

And they were looking for directors to make little skits based on things that people would write in.

And I went back to the group and explained that and we decided to, instead of just pitching me as a director, that we would take the proactive move of making our own sketches by interviewing people on the street and then intercutting it with funny reenactments and so i showed up like the next day with three completed pieces and this was in a time when that wasn't there was no iphones or it was it was not as easy to do that um and uh they were the mtv group was impressed and they were like oh then they ended up hiring the whole group

Let's

talk about it.

So it's called Gayle Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass.

Sure, sure, sure.

And then, and then so she's distraught, and she finds herself in Los Angeles, and a psychic tells her, "Well, to even the score, you need to find your celebrity sex pass, Jon Hamm-

Yeah

... and let go of, and change, and move, and it's, it's wild how m- how much that affects things.

And we added, you know, so many things.

We, we, we ...

One of the things we did is we didn't have a proper pickup day.

Uh, how do you make that ask?

I mean, I think a lot of celebrities, and certainly the ones that we know, are, relish that chance to make fun of themselves and, and not take themselves too seriously and have fun with their persona a little bit, you know? Um, John Slattery, for example, plays a version of himself that has not worked in the last 10 years, even though he's one of the busiest actors in, in Hollywood.

Um, and so I think knowing that these are obviously all very fictionalized c- comedy versions of, of their characters in different ways, I think everyone was really, um, had fun and it wa- and it was a, it was a fun sidebar or a different novelty from what they normally get to do.

in your life.

Yeah, I mean, as pandemic was waning and we got to be able to get back together, I j- we just had yearning for community, and, um, me and Ken Marino and a bunch of other very old friends from college just started playing in the garage, as dads like to do, playing songs from the '60s, '70s, '80s, and just, you know.

We're, I, I've, like, played around on the drums during my life, but I was never really serious about it.

Um, and then somehow, it, we started putting out little clips on Instagram, and then we played in friend's driveway, and next thing you know, we're playing at a comedy festival.

Then we're touring, and we're playing clubs and theaters, and it became a whole thing.

Where did it come from?

It came from France.

We bought it off the black market of screenplays that nobody wanted.

and then just changed the title.

It was a French title.

I'm just kidding.

Where did it come from? We just, Ken Marino and I really, it's just as silly, the truth is just as silly, which is that we just sat down one day and locked ourselves in a room for a week to try to come up with an idea for something.

So I was wondering, how did you come to be involved, and especially in this role?

Mm-hmm

... and fully focused on all the things that any movie should focus on is the story, and that each scene turns it, and that you're, that you're, e- e- every, everything has a reason and there's conflict.

Like, yeah, I feel like we're it, just the same as any other.

It's just...

And then once in a while when it does grind to a halt on purpose or go to a left turn that has n- means nothing, it, that is its- itself purposeful.

But yeah, I think we're, we are super...

And we were all the way back to Wet Hot, like really looking at it from a structural point of view, even if it doesn't...

Well, how did, how did this one then come together?

It's not bad.

That's a great idea.

You know what we're doing, actually, is I think this is public information.

If not, you'll have to cut out.

But The Dogfish Head Brewery, where we were starting our tour in July, we're having a big show there and they're introducing middle-aged dad beer.

Wow.

And it's a special beer that has like drawings of us on the thing.

clothespin over her nose.

M-I-L-L-I-E.

Hold out your hand.

M-I-L-L-I, right? Mm-hmm.

And the next card, hopefully, no, M-A-L-L-I-E, and then the next card, what did you say, Jack?

You guys are playing Mad Bad, Dan Jam Band is playing in East

Coast.

And then we have a big Wet Hot American Summer... 25th anniversary thing in L.A. in Griffith Park.

What does that mean? Like it's going to be a screening.

Okay, serious answer.

I think we write for each other, and we write to make each other laugh, and then we hope that other people kind of join us for the ride, but that's always been sort of our approach.

If we think it's funny, then it makes it into the script, and if we like the story, it becomes the script.

Which is one

of my favorite things.

After you get turned away by Terrence and you walk down the thing, you say something.

Help

You know, I have-

Yeah, wh- when we did the, the Netflix follow-up of Wet Hot American Summer, that giant cast was irreplaceable 'cause we were coming, we, we couldn't recast 'cause we were working with the same group of actors, and they all had become big stars.

And it was, we had this thing, like, what do we do? And I learned through that practice to drop any fear of shooting scenes where the actors are all there on different days.

[laughs] And, uh, I find it, I did, I have to admit, I did get a little sort of sporting fun out of how, how much could we cheat this and still make it make sense because, I mean, and that's the, the director's job is to make it all, make anything cohesive, whether they're, whether you're shooting in real time or not.

And I always do remember fondly there's a, there's an ending sequence at the end of, uh, I think it's the second Wet Hot, 10 Years Later, where, um, everyone, there's like 30 people in the scene all outside on a field at night, and w- we shot it for about half an hour a night for the entire 30-day shoot.

Um, and then whoever was around, I would just say, "Stand here." I had a map, and I had a diagram, and I'd say, "Look up there, pretend there's..." And most of the actors, I can tell you, had no idea even what the scene was about 'cause it, it just was too many things happening at once.

But I just said, "Trust me.

Do you think what you're doing is going to get harder as we lose the monoculture and as we lose those references, and in a decade no one will even understand what the riff is about?

Um, it, this is a bit of a commercial challenge, I guess, in a sense of, of saying, "We're going to buck the trend and we're going to be a just a, you know, broad, funny film that's going out into movie theaters."

Yeah.

Well, it wasn't something that, uh, was easy to get going or to, or quick, but I've always, you know, as part of the, uh, smorgasbord of what I do, I, I always try to make movies and this is something that Ken Marino and I wrote as a movie, and it wasn't very ...

Most people who read it over many years actually said, "Uh, love ya, but not this." You know [laughs] um, too weird, whatever, you know, too kooky, too light.

I don't know.

And, uh, uh, I always really believed in it and felt like it was really funny and, and like we're saying, it's a comedy and it's not trying to be anything else.

And I feel like it also is very joyful and a- at the same ...

[laughs]

figured.

But also, I mean, there were two of us that were directors more, me and Michael Patrick Jan.

And so we ended up being the directors on the TV show we did.

But what's cool about the group over the many 35 years we've been doing different ways together is different people take on different posts at different points.

And there was never any specific factions.

It was just always reconfiguring in different ways.

And so this movie came out, when did you guys shoot it? We shot it a year ago and we put it, yeah, it's just like a classic, very, you know, fairly low budget independent shot here in LA on location.

Can I speak from experience?

Hire the right pro today.

[upbeat music] Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang, Comedy Bang Bang.

Without consequence to the relationship.

That's, uh, that is what it is.

But in this story, he, uh, uh, in, in a surprise, m- actually meets his celebrity, has sex with his celebrity, and then she is in distraught straits and ends up in LA.

And a psychic tells her, "You know what? In order to save your relationship, you have to even the scales and find your celebrity pass, Jon Hamm, and have sex with him, and then everything will be evened out."

riffing on the day and and not once in this movie Joe the Trulio's and I know.

There's a freedom.

I mean, a lot of times people think that we, you know, a lot of our stuff is improvised.

But we take a lot of pride in writing lines that we think are funny and so we want people to, you know, do them.

And then, you know, if they want to rip after that, that's great.

But this movie is an example of that.

Like, you know, we wrote the script and we thought it was funny and people...

And so

Is what do you feel like? Do you feel like industry notes have gotten better? I

I think it just depends on who it is giving the note.

Really? Yes.

It really does.

We've worked with really great producers who only just plus up what we're doing.

And then I've worked with bad producers who are just trying to do their job or trying to serve their ego or whatever and make it and muck it up.

But I feel like I personally respond to movies and shows and anything that feels like it's coming from a singular vision of some kind where it's like somebody's giving a personal cohesive look at something and comedies where you feel like it's done by committee and the marketing department, obviously just you can feel it immediately.

so then what was so it started with a celebrity pass

Curious if you can share anything about the growth of the audience of The State.

I mean, it's another one of those things that's, like, b- both luck and also hard to quantify, but, you know, we were a college sketch troupe, and I had some ins with MTV through an old friend from Cleveland and, you know, we got in the door at just the moment when they were looking for a certain type of thing, and we worked on a TV show there as a group, and then they were like, "Oh, do you wanna make a pilot?" And suddenly we have our own series on this MT...

You know, we were the first show there that had...

You know, we would, like, shoot narrative material that w- th- that wasn't just, like, interviews and stuff, you know? And so w- it was just perfect timing, and at the time their network was run by people in their 20s and, you know, it was...

And then we were running around like the rebels.

You know, we were, we, we thought of ourselves as, like, rock and roll, like, "Fuck you, everyone," kind of thing, and it, and it served us.

We were very cocky is what I'm saying, and it, it kind of served us 'cause people were scared to question us, and we kinda made the show we wanted to make and, and it was really wonderful and lucky.

This is probably my last question before we get into, like, the, the, the final six, but, like, in 2026, like, what do you think is-

Oh, yeah.

Which means that, you know, he can have sex with a particular celebrity if he happens to have the chance.

As it turns out, he does have the chance, and he takes it literally, and he does it, and it puts this woman, Gail Daughtry, played by Zoey Deutch, into a little bit of a situation.

So she ends up in Los Angeles, where a psychic convinces her that she needs to even the score by finding her celebrity pass, Jon Hamm.

Crazy

...

I was, I was shooting a pilot that all the characters in it were older people.

It was, like, about old people.

It makes me wish that I had any skill of any kind in any area.

This makes me feel I'm inspired to do this.

My father's old train set.

So this is now from probably the 30s.

I'm going to give it away to the listener that pledges the highest pledge anywhere over $5,000 or over.

Okay.

And I will give – if that money comes in, I will give – 3% of it to charity.

Well, at some point you started making... highly polished videos of your performances.