Bob Odenkirk Would Like To Remind You That Life Is A Meaningless Farce

TITLE: Bob Odenkirk Would Like to Remind You That Life Is a Meaningless Farce | The Interview CHANNEL: The Interview DATE: 2026-04-25 ---TRANSCRIPT--- I really uh went down on the set of Better Call Saul. I don’t have any memories till a week later. Bob Odenkirk has had an improbable career.

I’ll do anything with you that you want that is legally allowed. Listen to what this guy has to say. Somebody’s going to prison. It’s just a matter of who. Are you talking to my client without his lawyer present? And you are Saul Goodman. After decades as a cult hero in the comedy world, culminating in his 9090s HBO series Mr. Show with Bob and David. Damn it. WHERE DID YOU GET THOSE CHOCOLATES? HOW COULD YOU hide it? Odenkirk made a hard turn to dramatic acting and surprise found mainstream success. I’m not super handsome, young, muscled up, any of that. We talked about his latest career swerve into, of all things, becoming an action hero, like in his new movie, Normal. So, what do you think of our little town? It’s um charming and what he learned from a real near-death experience on the set of Better Call Saul. People want to hear that you saw a white light, then they would love to hear that you watched your whole life pass before you on a film reel. Here’s my conversation with Bob Odenkirk. Are we good to go? We’re good to go. This is a big production. As I said to you when we were just sitting down, it just it just feels very um important in a way that uh scares the [ __ ] out of me. But onwards. All right. I don’t want you to be scared. There’s nothing to be scared of. It’s all in your head. There’s nothing bad that’s going to happen. Oh, there’s a lot in my head. Yeah. All the bad stuff. But thank you again for being here. And um just before I was told that we got the green light to start, you were telling me about a novel you just read. Yeah. And how it relates to or how it affected your thinking maybe about something important that happened to you. So yeah. So pick up where you left off. Yeah. Uh almost four years ago, I had this heart incident. Uh, one of the tributaries to my widowmaker artery was shut down completely by a plaque um, plaque buildup and um, I was really uh, out and I went to the hospital. I got two stances. I I really uh, went down on the set of Better Call Saul and it was really scary especially for everyone around me, not for me because I don’t have any memory of it. But I’ve talked about it many times and people have asked me many times how did that affect you? And I think first people want to hear that you saw a white light. Then they would love to hear that you watched your whole life pass before you on a film reel. And and I kind of wish that happened to me. That would have been cool. But that didn’t happen to me. It was a blank for me for a week. I I came to essentially a week later. I came to the next day, but I don’t have any memories till a week later. So I’ve tried to answer this question to people. What how did it impact you? and I’ve had a hard time doing it because I’ve always felt I don’t do justice to the uh feeling of it, the experience of it. Okay. So then I’m reading this new this book that novel that’s called on the calculation of volume and I’m reading this book and the character in this book is having a very unique experience of time and she’s relating her experience of reliving the same day over and over and I come to these passages and I’m like that’s how I felt. That’s exactly how I felt for weeks after having this heart attack. And I I I could there’s like a couple passages um in here that I marked because I I’m like I’ve never been able to express this to people. Yeah. Can you read one? Yeah. I I’ll I’ll read you a section to show you what I mean. Um she says uh that in this unfathomable vastness these infantisible elements are still able to hold themselves together. She’s talking about the world around us and and ourselves that we manage to stay afloat that we exist at all. That each of us has come into being as only one of untold possibilities. She goes on like that and I mark that whole passage but then later and I’ll just read this one section. I had a day to go and I went with it. There was no plan. There was an outline, one which I could follow, floating gently. There was no goal, no prey to be caught. I was not a circling raptor, a vulture, a shark, a big cat poised to spring. I was not on my guard. This was something else. I was on a journey on my way home. I thought I was traveling on an open ticket with no itinerary. I journeyed through the minutia of the streets in a universe replete with minor incidents, a host of objects and occurrences and sensations all crowded together in my memory. Well, there’s a few more passages, but gosh, to to hit upon that and think this that’s what I should tell people if I could memorize it, which maybe I can. I just couldn’t believe how much these couple passages expressed this thing that this this way of living that had something to do with experiencing time. Obviously, this term being present, but it it took no effort and how amazing it was. It was really a beautiful way to live in the world. And I knew it would go away, too. this is going to go away a little at a time as I go forward and I have to try to remember it. I have to try to live this way. I just the degree of uh freshness to the world around me and the amazement of that and the beauty of it was uh something I I got to be in. And uh so I thought that might come up that question and since I just happened upon this these passages I I wanted to share them. So yeah it was going to come up but something else I was interested in about that experience is related to what you just described the the awareness that that sort of feeling of being present was going to fade. Yeah. How effectively can you get that back? I was going to finish your sentence. Without ketamine, uh, or some mindaltering drug. Um, I think you can. I really do. Honestly, just reading those passages made me go, “Oh, right, right, right, right, right. That’s what’s going on here. That’s how you can I can be how I can be in the moment and live in the world. I I’ve ex it’s it’s still close enough to my sense of uh I can get there. Uh I think I should challenge myself to do it u more. Um but uh even the burden of saying I should challenge myself immediately starts to ruin it with guilt and responsibility and uh you know as she says in the book no um I’m not a raptor. I’m not a I’m not ready to spring. I’m not a jungle cat ready to spring. I’m not. We live in a world that is about achievement. You don’t want to live without purpose, but all we’re about is getting and uh you know, it seems to me the only way to feel of value is um becoming a millionaire. So, you want to be a millionaire. What’s that? Yeah. Who wants to be a millionaire? Who wants to be a millionaire? Well, I guess everybody. But who who wants to be happy? How about that for a TV show? Well, in a weird way, it’s possible that the path to being a millionaire is clearer than the path to being happy. It surely is. It surely is. Yeah. And of course, most people think being a millionaire is what makes you happy. But just just go talk to a millionaire. Well, you’re a millionaire, I would guess. Sure. Did that make you happier? There’s no question that the security that you feel from not being afraid of a health issue or um what housing whatever you know is a great comfort and helps you to be more uh at peace with life. There’s no question it should help you. It It’s just not as much help as you think it should be. I mean, yes, you can eat steak every night, I guess, but then you get sick of steak. You know, there there was a clip of it of you from an interview that I saw earlier this year that’s been kicking around my head since I saw it. and it’s uh you were being interviewed by Mike Burbiglia and he asks you if there’s anyone you’re jealous of or something like that. And the way you answer the question was by saying you’re jealous of anyone who has young kids at home because when you had young kids at home, you had no questions about what your purpose was. You know, it’s like your job was to Yeah. take care of the kids and do dad stuff. Um Yeah. Is is it the case that you understood that in the moment? I did. Or you only understood that in retrospect? No. No, I understood it in the moment. I absolutely knew this was the best time I’ll I’ll ever have in my life. No question. I uh also I’ve got to add it’s not just a sense of uh feeling valued and feeling purposeful. Um it’s entertainment. I mean, there’s nothing more entertaining than a a little kid. So, I knew like that this could be the best uh thing you could do. And I still think that way. I wish, you know, it’s funny. I left that interview with Mike Burbiglia and uh I remember thinking u oh I I I didn’t think about that specific quote but I did talk think about that section of the interview and I thought I think they’ll cut that out because isn’t that kind of depressing that this guy who has had so much achievement in his career that really should be the most rewarding thing and is uh is missing a chapter of his life that is gone now that cannot come back. I mean you can be a grandparent and sure that’s great but uh he’s obviously saying the best thing the best chapter of my life is behind me and I know that that’s kind of sad to say and I always feel bad when I see people who are doing well well enough to be interviewed and talked to and they seem kind of uh depressed. I’m always like, “Oh, come on. Can’t can’t you be happy?” You know, but um what can I say? I was just being honest. That’s how I feel. I feel like that’s uh that that’s definitely the best to There’s nothing I can do. I can’t sit down to try to write a great movie or learn a wonderful script or direct something or I don’t there’s nothing. Climb a mountain. There’s not a freaking thing I can do that is gonna match the uh value that I felt um for life uh of being a parent uh of kids between zero and you know uh usually around 14 15 they’re like they’re done with you. I think it would have been more depressing if you said the the thing that brought you the most value and purpose in your life was being in Better Call Saul. Imagine your imagine your kids hearing that answer. You know, it’s funny. I have so many people uh obviously there’s this is the biggest thing I did was Better Call Saul so far. And I can’t imagine doing anything bigger than that either. But uh I just forget that I was in this show completely. I mean I lived so much of my life before that and I lived it and I achieved things that I cared about a great deal almost to a strange extent. When I was writing my memoir, I wrote so much about sketch comedy and I called it comedy comedy comedy drama because I was worried that people would go, “Oh, this is the Better Call Saul guy. I’m going to read about his journey to being on that show.” And it’s like, “No, I’m going to talk about, you know, 45 50 years of caring about and writing sketch comedy. I’m barely going to talk about the thing that you know me from because that was such a small part of my life. And uh and and still when I was writing the book, I was thinking there’s something wrong with this guy. It’s an interesting thing to you should write anybody should write their memoir when they get around 50. And you may see what I saw. We’re like this guy’s like a and we all are, but this guy’s like a broken toy. He’s got something wrong with him and he keeps going in this one direction. Like I’m writing about me and I’m like, will you give it up already? You know, you’ve already been on Saturday Night Live as a writer. Give it up. Stop. Even after Mr. Show, I’m I’m still doing, you know, trying to help Tim and Eric are being a part of all this sketch type comedy and I just think, well, there’s nothing to say, but there’s something wrong with me, and I don’t know what it is. And it makes me go in this one direction, you know, the idea that you were sort of like a a broken toy that kept pursuing sketch comedy. Yeah. Um I’m glad you did because I’ve really uh gotten a lot out of your comedy over the years and to sort of to such an extent that still when I watch a movie like Normal or the Nobody films, uh I’ll have moments where I think it’s weird that Bob Odenkirk is like blowing people away in these movies. It’s very weird. What sort of cultural itch do you think these kinds of action movies that are about sort of like a an unassuming middle-aged man Yeah. whose sort of inner hero comes out? Um what what itch are they scratching? Why are they proving to be so successful right now? Um well, I thought about this a lot. I’m not sure I I’ll do my best. It’s It’s wish fulfillment. It’s wish for, let’s say, first of all, an evil that is so clear and obvious that it’s worthy of our anger. Um, which these movies do, especially the Nobody movies. There’s a point in both movies where you trip over into uh James Bond land and a real guy who’s been established and and who has tensions and sensitivities and struggles that feel very real and that’s partly because of uh it’s me playing them and I’m not um magically delicious. I’m not super handsome, young, muscled up, any any of that. You can relate to all these things. They’re very grounded at moments. And then there comes this point in the movie where that guy, you are living in a movie and you can do things that you can only do in a movie. The same thing happens in normal. True. But a it’s normal is a little elevated from the get-go. I would say it’s a little like inside of a snow globe world right from the start. Uh whereas the nobody films make make a real attempt to to be living in the in the world, you know. And so I think I think we have these we live we go through life. There are frustrations everywhere. There are big ones and small ones. There are ones that have to do with our inner lives that we simply can’t sort out easily. And you can’t act on those frustrations in a physical way. You can’t do that. We can’t live in that world. We have to be decent to each other. Um, in a movie, you can do it. So, you did Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. And there was sort of a an indisputable popular success to to that stretch of work. And prior to that, when people would talk about Bob Odenkirk, it was often attached to a term like, you know, cult success or cult favorite, which of course is a backhanded compliment for like not really successful at all. Um, but prior to sort of this big career like double bump you had sort of relatively late, did you have moments where you thought like I don’t know if I’m going to get the success I want or I don’t know if the career is really working? I did have uh doubts and concerns, but they weren’t about that. I did I didn’t My bigger problem was once I was finished with Mr. show, which was so much of what I wanted to try to achieve in sketch comedy. Um, like what now? Um, I got a chance to do it. I got a chance to do it really well. I got total freedom to do it. Incredible support. David Cross and I couldn’t be better partners for what we did. Um, now what? Now what do you want to do that’s going to drive you through the next 20 years of a career? And I was lost because I had already achieved um in sketch comedy and with the cult success that I had, I had achieved everything that I was aiming at. That’s what I was aiming for. Wait, but what gives your life purpose now? Uh uh trying to find uh the next thing um to do that will give it purpose trying to find the next thing uh that will feel uh rewarding and impactful and of value. But you have had the opportunity to work with like people that I would consider comedic geniuses like people like Janine Goff or Chris Elliot who had success but kind of never went gang busters. And then you’ve also worked with people like uh Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, Jack Black who got as big as someone in comedy could reasonably expect to get. Do you have any understanding of like why that person and not that person? Like what is there something sort of innate that leads to massive success? I think that um some of the people I’ve known who have great talent and and and haven’t achieved what you might call a massive success that might be on the level of their talent. My experience of those people is that they don’t really want it. Yeah. There comes a level, a point in their journey where they see this thing and they go, “Oh, yeah. I don’t want that much pressure. I don’t want that many people looking at me. I want this many people. I want, you know, 15 million people, not 800 million people.” Like, I do think there’s like everybody has a sense of this threshold. Look, when when my kids were about eight and 10 years old, we were on a vacation and I remember we were in a um a supermarket and we were getting lunch and somebody came over to talk to me because they knew me from Mr. show and uh this was before Breaking Bad and I thought this is the perfect level of success because I can go out in the world and be myself and if there’s a person in the room who knows who I am, I can tell you who they are. They will have a tattoo from one of my shows that they will love me a lot and then everyone else in the room will not know me at all and I can just be myself. Um, and then with Breaking Bad, then you get into a level of now I’m in an elevator at the mall and everyone in this elevator knows who I am. But the difference between how they know me is wildly varied. You know, one of those people knows how I look at the world. The person who’s watched Mr. Show, they know how I see the world. The person who knows Better Call Saul, that that’s just not not even close. they don’t know me. They they know this character I played that is not me at all. And uh and and yet I appreciate that they like that work and that they know me and I I’m thankful and yeah. So uh I think when you ask about that the question part of the question is is there a choice? Do you get to see this thing coming your way? And do you get to choose I’m going to become I’m going to go ahead and be more famous and then I’m going to live in a world where there’s a little bit of discordancy between who I am and how I’m known. I get I get why people go, “No, thank you. I’m going to stay in my littleer world where when you know me, I know how you know me and I and that means something to me.” uh that I’m okay with. I I I don’t know if this whole chapter of our interview is um weird. I think weird is good. I think weird is good, but something I’ve seen you uh mention a few times is this idea that sketch comedy, you know, tends to be like a younger person’s game a little bit. Uh, do you find that at you’re what 63 now? Yeah. Is your relation to sketch sketch comedy different than it used to be? Well, it is simply because I’ve spent the last 15 years doing drama and action and I’ve and I’ve had to think a lot about those things. So, for instance, my friend David Cross and I are working on a project right now and it’s a play. I did Glen Gary Glenn Ross. Yeah. And while I was doing that play, I was thinking a lot about the mechanics of a play because that play is perfect. That play is a machine. It’s a machine of drama. It’s a machine of laughter. It’s unbelievable. It’s tight as can be. And so just being a part of it, thinking about it, I started to see, you know, some of the, you could say the mechanics of it and think about how great they were and how maybe I could try to steal some of those, you know, and make something too in that world that might have some value and might work. Um, it’s similar to when I was at Saturday Night Live for four years and I didn’t help all that much. I pitched some jokes that Robert Smiggle would use. Occasionally I had a sketch that would get on, but basically I sat around listening to El Franken and Jim Downey and Robert Smiggle and Conan O’Brien and Jack Handy and Bonnie and Terry Turner and I watched these people write great sketches and my brain went, “Oh, I see what they did. Oh, I see what you did.” and it kind of deconstructed it and then I used it to make Mr. Show. So David and I are writing a play and we’ll see if we get there. But you know our our great desire to make it is make it it’s kind of got sketch comedy in it. But it’s not a sketch. It’s it’s something more hopefully. And but we want to we want to make it a sketch because it’s too fun and sketches are over in five minutes and they’re done and you get to move on to the next idea. Um so I still I I I still have an instinct for it, but I I now I do feel what I’ve said is true that doing sketch comedy when you get older is a little strange. It’s a little like it’s like a young person’s energy is right for it. it fits. And when you get older, it’s like what are you doing? What are you doing being so silly? And what are you doing being so it becomes um I don’t it loses something. So what’s comedy that speaks to you now where you are in your life? Oh boy. Um the honestly the comedy that speaks to me most right now is a thing called On Cinema. Um it’s a pretend um movie review show that is on uh the internet um by my friend Tim Haidker and it’s again you know for me sketch comedy and this is kind of a sketch comic thing but it’s drawn out and slowed down and I think sketch comedy I’m sorry to say It is the most profound expression of human uh existence there is really I don’t think any Kubric movie or Freudian analysis or Shakespeare or Shakespeare says as much about how humans operate and what is the ultimate uh problem with us as a species than sketch comedy. And I wish it was not true. I wish the drama, grand drama, I wish that we were worthy of being taken apart and and and are and and observed in in subtle and complex ways. But I don’t think so. I think that ultimately there is nothing more profound uh about people than you can say in a sketch. They’re [ __ ] idiots. People are sadly limited. so limited that you can you can define them and you can share uh the everything that’s important about them in four minutes. Wait, maybe this is related. Maybe this is related. Um right near the end of your memoir, you write that uh you know show business is not curing cancer and that it’s a it’s a distraction. Yeah. And and the way you put it is which is inarguably key to life on Earth. Yeah. Because life on Earth is so bleak and painful. Yeah. And the only and best response to that is to look away. Yeah. Um you want me to repudiate that statement? I wondered if you were being sarcastic when you wrote that because it struck me as bleak. Pretty bleak. Too sad. I don’t know what to say, man. Pretty much do think that’s true. But I do think that obviously I think there’s joy and reward in uh being alive and and and and in uh in the ways in which we look away in whatever way in which you find to transform that that um horror. The horror the horror In whatever way you find to transform that into something good, entertaining, beautiful, uh comforting to another person, helpful. That is that’s beautiful. And that’s uh the joy of of life is turning [ __ ] into gold. comedy gold. Well, whatever gold you can make it into, whatever kind of alchemy you can do is I guess to me that’s that’s the good part. Now, little kids and if we want to go back to where you started. Yes, that’s what I was going to do. Yeah. They do that by kids do that by being alive by by watching them be alive. you I think you feel that that magic that when you come to fully grasp life um and uh it can be taken away from you uh bit by bit until it’s all gone but you can reconnect with it and uh yeah I I don’t know I mean one of the challenges of this interview was I have no unified field theory of myself. Um I’m a bit of um as you can see from my career, I kind of go in a lot of directions and I don’t have a very um solid justification for uh the uh the um the whole thing. I can’t characterize the whole thing and my and the only thing I I could say is there’s a risk that there’s a great risk that I am willing to take I think because I don’t think much of myself. Um in other words, let’s say I made a huge ass of myself in trying to do action films. Well, so what? So what? I mean, I can still do comedy and claw my way back. I guess we should end on that note. Yeah. But I I hope I didn’t make an ass of myself. I I think that the bigger question for me is what do I do now? Because um well, I guess I have I just do what I’ve always done. look for the next thing uh that that seems uh curious, worthwhile, surprising. I’ll I’ll find a hard time beating uh action movies. I can tell you that I will have a hard time finding anything I can pursue that is as far away from where I started as as that genre of film. erotic art house, I guess. Does that still exist? I don’t know. I don’t think that exists anymore. On the interview, we talked to our guest twice. So, two weeks later, I caught up with Bob Odenkirk again. We got into what he calls Manosphere comedy, and he apologized for, in his words, being a bummer. Bob, thank you for talking to me again. I appreciate Happy to do it, David. Thanks for the interest. I appreciate it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, something I I was was curious about is, you know, we we talked a a little about um sort of the the beginnings of of your career in the ‘9s with kind of what people called the alternative comedy scene. And and back then, I think it was pretty clear to people what alt comedy was alternative to. Yeah, it was it was alternative to a kind of like slick showbizzy style of comedy that was uh sort of the dominant form of comedy at the time. And I wonder do you think there as far as you can tell I is there any sort of alternative comedy now? Like what what is the comedy that that someone would be rebelling against right now? Um the well this is going to sound weird. Uh, but probably what do they call it? The bro the like manosphere stuff. Manosphere comedy was was cuz I think we’re starting to put it in the past already, which is great, but I think the manosphere comedy was the reactionary comedy movement of the last five years. And um, I don’t think it has a lot of depth to it. So, it’s kind of running past pretty quickly. It’s it’s uh dissipating. Um but, uh it was a powerful movement, it seems to me, of the last 5 years. Uh what’s next, I don’t know. But you’re not wrong. the what I call the alternative comedy scene and what I came up in after working at Saturday Night Live and you know in this world of Janine GOP, Margaret Cho, Kathy Griffin, Pat Oswald, Greg Barren, uh David Cross, uh you know um and then that became and then Mark Maron and that kind of infiltrated comedy slowly over about five years and and then it it kept proliferating and then it became podcasts, but then it just became all of comedy and I think the format of podcast um really lent itself to a lot of what we were doing which was more uh impromptu uh genuine personal uh sharing and uh and then now it’s everywhere. Why do you not find the what we’re going to call manosphere comedy to be particularly interesting or funny? Oh, well, um, it’s definitely about lowhanging fruit big time. It’s like literally on the ground. It’s fruit that’s on the ground rotting. Pick that [ __ ] up and eat it. Throw it at people. I I don’t have a lot of opinions on those guys. It’s more of a um it’s a movement that I I’m happy to see transforming into something else and disappearing or dissipating, you could say. Why do you think it’s dissipating? That’s that’s not necessarily the sense I get. Yeah. Cuz there’s a It’s cuz it’s a dead end. It’s just going to be boring after a while. It’s like what? Let’s Let’s use the stage to be as crude as we can be and as clumsy and offish as we can be. And that’s kind of funny always. That’s funny to hear that voice. I think it’s funny to hear that voice, but not from everybody. I think anything you do on a stage is a performance. That sounds obvious, but in other words, if you want to say something honest, then you should get off a comedy stage. If you know a lot of com comedians get credited for being honest or uh or they get lambbasted for the things they say in their act and and are asked to explain that or justify it or pillaried for it. And the bottom line to me is if you’re on that comedy stage that’s a show. You are not you. You are pretending to be a person named you. Everything you say is of of construct. Everything. If you don’t like that and you want to tell an audience something genuine, earnest and honest, then get off that stage cuz that stage is only a show. It is not real and it is not genuine and it is not direct no matter how much you act like it is. And so I just I just think we h we have to I I wish everyone saw it that way. Then if you if you know that if you know that when you watch anyone do a play or um any kind of performance then you then you can safely watch almost anything and talk about it afterwards and let it um whatever that does for you. Whether it’s uh cathartic and lets that voice out of your head or whether you can point to that voice now and argue about it. whatever that is, it can offer it can have a lot of benefits. But the problem we got into there was comedians uh and maybe the alt comedy scene led us to it with a degree of, you know, self-revelation that was being done. A sense that whatever said on that stage is incredibly genuine and uh a direct uh look thing is the internet has hurt us. I’m going to ramble here for a second. Yeah, keep keep going. One of the reasons the internet has hurt is you can tape somebody at 2 a.m. in a comedy club and put them on TV and you’re watching them at 10:00 a.m. at your breakfast table. Yeah, that’s not right. Cuz that thing was said at 2 a.m. in the, you know, in New York with a bunch of drunk, rowdy people after you talked for 45 minutes already. So, whatever. Did I help you clarify anything? But I think the um the distinction you’re making uh about sort of if if a comedian or performer is saying something in in sort of a performance context that should change how we uh receive the thing they’re saying. Presumably that applies to uh podcasts also, right? So like a a Joe Rogan or or an Andrew Schultz. But but see I’m I’m not sure it applies to that but why not like those are those are performance podcast at some point you have to give people a place to speak honestly and directly like you and I are doing right here you know this is not uh me doing a character and I I don’t I I think it I don’t know I I I don’t know how to delineate the line, but there has to be a line. This is something I feel strongly about and um I’m never going to get everyone to agree. Yeah. Know, it’s I I’m even trying to understand exactly like how those distinctions make a difference. like you know I I don’t know what say I’m just going to pick a comedian who I think uh thinks of of what he does as expressing honesty and truth is you know if you talk to someone like a if you were to ask someone like a Dave Chappelle are are you talking honestly to your audience I think he would say well yeah that that’s what I do and that’s what comedians do not you don’t think he would I don’t no I think he’d say I’m performing I really do I mean we should ask him but you know my friend Dave David Cross gets on stage and he says crazy stuff and he doesn’t believe everything he says. He just knows it’s a point of view that is funny to express and that to some extent people need to hear or be surprised by to get some perspective on their own point of view. And uh yeah, so I I just I I I’m just thinking everybody has to understand what that line is. it got blurred uh in a way that I think was very damaging to what we can do as artists. We we need to be able to do and say crazy [ __ ] Well, but it’s also interesting because I I think you’re saying that sort of the flip side or sort of one of the negative repercussions of the legacy of the alternative comedy was that its emphasis on authenticity or seeming authenticity led people to almost give too much credence to what comedians were saying in a way that led to this line blurring and and led to some uh sort of like sensoriousness in a way It’s damaging to comedy. That’s interesting. But and I’m also saying that it goes two ways. It’s the audience has to chill out and and watch it as a performance, but the performer, if they really have something to say, should not be doing it there or should not. It’s not that they shouldn’t do it there. It’s that if they really want people to understand it directly, they should get off that comedy stage and and say it somewhere else where it’s me talking genuinely me and not for laughs, not for the sake of laughs, you know. Can I I there’s there’s sort of like a holistic observation uh I want to make about the conversation so far. And it’s one that kind of before uh the camera started uh rolling or before we hit record, you yourself actually kind of alluded to. I think you said, you know, sorry if I was being negative or something in earlier, but um you know, if I sort of thinking back to what we talked about previously, you know, you talked about how uh you know, sort of the the best times uh in your life were when your kids were little. Yeah. You know, those times are over. The the uh you know, the the the art form you love the most, sketch comedy, that’s a young man’s game. That’s over. uh um you know the the uh I I asked you sort of like a life philosophy question and you you sort of like ah you know it’s all kind of a farce uh and now you know it’s I know maybe middle age is a is a time of sort of uh a certain degree of like resignation or or uh acceptance. Yeah. But are is there anything that you’re you know that that in in your life or work now that you think like uniquely well this this is great or or or uh you know I’m looking forward to this thing that might come or is it kind of just like a managed decline. Uh god I’m sorry to be a bummer. I I feel like it’s real. Yeah. Um um h I have a I have a new avenue opened up in front of me with a dramatic acting. Um, this was something that I moved into slowly, starting with uh barely doing some of it in Breaking Bad and then numerous other projects and then Better Call Saul was like this big, you know, jump off a cliff and then um you could argue that action film making is um conceptualizing that dramatic intensity uh sometimes to a pretty humorous this extent like but I and then Glen Gary Glenn Ross was a really exciting uh discovery and challenge and I feel like I’ve found a new avenue here to work in that I’m excited by that is something that um at least attempts to uh address life in a more sensitive and way with some deeper resonance than sketch comedy can do. But yeah, I if if you want to hear something positive, here’s my positive. If we got to keep trying in the face of what I consider the limitations of being a person, which are strict and and seem immutable and uh there’s no way around. Uh so what? We got to keep trying. Um, I don’t know what the future is if we don’t hope to try to be uh better than we are right now. And so, yeah. So, I I do have um I do have some I do have some wind beneath my wings. All right. Good. Good. A little bit. Just a draft. There’s a breeze beneath my wings. Um, you know, but you you just uh uh alluded to uh with Glen Gary, Glenn Ross, and maybe with some other work uh doing doing stuff that has some more uh resonance than the silly stuff. But, you know, when we spoke before, you said you you thought that like sketch comedy was the most the the the best v vessel for I know, David, and I and and I’ve I’ve thought about what I’ve said a lot and I think it’s true. And I’m sorry to say that. I still think it’s true. But within that, we got to keep trying. I I’m not giving up. Is all I’m saying is I’m not giving up. But I’m afraid to say uh you know look my hope lies in um some kind of uh I’m evolutionary growth for the human creature. Uh but without that or until that happens and I don’t know how that happens, we all have to um take some we we all need more vaccines to change our DNA. Well, who thinks that’s a bad thing? Have you met a human being? Whatever it takes to change our DNA or RNA or whatever, any NA, let’s start changing it cuz it doesn’t work the way it is. That’s a good thing. Everybody get more vaccines. If that’s what they do, if they change our DNA or our RNA or however those two are associated, let’s take lots of them and make this creature a better creature because uh where we’re at, I I do stand by what I said. I think a comedy in the end, all the philosophy in the world, all the theories in the world, all the hope in the world, all the grand uh pronounce, the greatest poets to ever live, all the great poetry, existential, you know, thinking, Franklin’s voice. Yeah. all of Abraham Lincoln’s speeches and uh it all boils down to uh uh uh Shakespeare’s uh uh sound and fury, you know, uh signifying nothing. And you might as well laugh at it. I mean, I do think in the end that’s what we’re going to have to do until until we change. Wait, Bob, if if what you’re saying is true and sketch comedy is best able to encapsulate the human condition. Yeah. What is what is the most profound sketch you’ve ever seen? Talk show at sea. It’s a it’s a Jerry Springer show. We did it on Mr. Show and they’re on a lifeboat and they’re dying. They have no food or water and they’re still arguing about who is in love with who and who got who pregnant and um that’s it. That that to me that that sketch that’s humanity. You’re dying. You are going to die. You we have no fresh water. We have no food. And they’re uh going he cheated with her. I love him and it’s really really awesome and it it to me I I don’t know what else to say. That’s that’s the world that I see. You know, I really enjoyed speaking with you and I I appreciate you taking all the time and and I hope that the uh sort of pitiful little fart-like draft beneath your wings is able to carry you far into the future. It will. Don’t forget I also have, you know, my kids are so wonderful and so, you know, there’s lots to look forward to. I I uh Yeah, there’s lots to look forward to. I’m Lula Garcia Navaro and I’m David Maresy and we’re the hosts of the interview, an audio and video podcast from the New York Times. Every week we interview fascinating and influential people from all walks of life. Subscribe to our YouTube channel so you’ll never miss an episode.