Eric Bischoff - SAS CLASSIC

Transcript

Pushing play here we go. You should push record. See, I just said I'm going to push play and that's Elvis said you should push record because he misses nothing. Hey, but see, record is already depressed and then you hit play and then, Hey, this is the moment. I'm Brian Koppelman. Thanks for listening. In those old days, and we would record on like the cassettes, wouldn't you? You would press down record, right and then play. Would you call that record and then you were recording clay was the engine that moved the if you had like old school, a tape recorder that only had one motor drive. Yeah, right, exactly. So that's I think why we think now in a press play, because record, you know how it works record is already like beeping, you know, visually beeping and then you hit a second time and in my head, I think, Oh, that's like pressing play because we were kids recording off the radio, which basically no one listening can remember the radio recording listening. What are you talking about? I've been recording on a separate on an auxiliary device from the radio, but you and I both I mean, I there are a lot of people when you just go to Spotify. Why wouldn't you just like, what are you doing? Why couldn't you just play when you wanted to play it? Why records something off the radio? Hey, sorry, everybody. Elvis Mitchell is one of my favorite people to talk to. I am really, really excited about this. Elvis is, I would say, even though you don't really write for print anymore. Although your movie, the the film that is available now on Netflix is that black enough for you is written very clearly written by you. It's a documentary. It's written by you. But to me, you're the premier film critic of my time doing this stuff. You are a polymath. You're one of really thought there would be no math, right? Well, that's you know what? And unfortunately, you like word games, which let's just end this. We end this now. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. This is Gary Barry. But Elvis is Elvis is a writer director. He has also conducted the interviews for a documentary that technically he didn't direct. He has hosted and produced television shows. I mean, this is the problem when you've known someone this long, you know, sort of a lot of stuff, but I will say this is really important, Elvis, as you know. As I told you many times at the beginning of doing this podcast, which I started in 2013. You are one of the two biggest influences in the way I think about conducting conversations. I have always found your style of preparation and inquiry to be incredibly inspiring. You are a north star for me in the way I wanted to do this. And right when we started, I asked you to do the podcast and you were like, Get it going for a while first. And the other day we were talking and I was like, You're finally ready and you said, I've been waiting. Yes, so thank you for being here. Elvis, I have a lot of gratitude for a lot of different reasons for you, but I don't think I'd I don't think I do the podcast. I'll sell you. I can tell you it in terms of the interviewing is Howard Stern and then the fact of it, I'd say the third person was Maron because of just the way his podcast was in the beginning, but not as a style, right? OK, Elvis. Elvis a show. The treatment on Case Your W is is where you can hear that interview style. And it's released as a podcast, and the podcast has changed over the years, but it is still a podcast I listen to every week, and I really want to send you to that podcast. I've mentioned it many times on here, but I want to send everybody to it. Elvis, thank you for being here and doing this. As I mentioned to you, I've been waiting for this and you know, I have some hard questions to ask you about doing this. This show, I mean, it's it's, you know, I just still think about the interview with Bob Mould, who then I see you smile. I guess it's I mention that, but I still think about that because I feel the show hit the stride pretty fast. But the interviews like that? Or were you talking to Rick Rubin or you have Sammy on? It's like when you're surprised by people I can hear. I know you well enough to hear that as you sit up when they gasp. Well, that has to do with the way you listen and participate and also something I'm going to start with here, which is and you know, you're going to have to get used to being the person on the other side of this because you are so generous of spirit and always inquiring. And there's this line in your movie and your movie is incredibly it's. I've heard other people talk about heard Maron. Talk to you about it. So is that black enough for you, which is available on Netflix and I heard Mark almost say that reach for the word survey course and then you almost provided it and decided not to because it's both a survey and a seminar and a sermon as well. I think about a lot of things, but there's a line in it that really caught me. You're talking about a film of a female protagonist in a movie. Pam Grier and you say, but often. And finally alone, still moving on, hopefully toward community. And I heard that line, and I felt like you were talking about Pam Greer, but you were also talking about your place in the world of film and talking about film and this striving toward community from a posture of being an outsider. And I wonder if that resonates for you a little bit. It's great that you picked up on that because honestly, that's Toni Morrison talking about Bambi. And there's certainly the reason that clicked for me hearing her say that because I think if you're a person of color trying to make your fire a trophy or make your way through the world of art, then you certainly feel like that. You do want this sense of community and you do want to feel that you're speaking to people who have an understanding of what it is that you're saying, but also you feel like there are as many people doing it as should be doing it. So it's a peculiar kind of. I guess loner status, but this narrative that you picked up on that, why is it that quick that one click for you, right? Well, a few different reason that I would also say, even if Toni Morrison said it, you know, the thing is that in making a documentary like that, which is a documentary, but it's a very personal movie, you're talking throughout the whole thing you wrote. You wrote an enormous amount of voice over it's narrative, really. It's your book, you know, it's this book that you'd been walking around with for a long time made manifest with these incredible images and style. And so you chose that out of all the quotes about Pam Grier, you know your close friends with Clinton, you didn't pick 12 Clinton quotes. So I felt like it was. And there weren't. And the the film is not festooned with quotes from people like that. So commentary, right? And so I was drawn to it. But the reason is I've been working on a unified theory of Elvis Mitchell and I have, and this is the definition of Google of too much free time on your hands. Please proceed. Well, so okay, to me, the string theory at the center seems to be that you have this boundless generosity toward those doing the work in the community for the community and to entertain, enlighten and inspire the whole. And that you also care about the individual members of that community, maybe mostly those in the fringes who are desperate to be insiders in the center of it. And you're smiling because to me, there's this invitation to do the work necessary to understand the nature of the work and to suggest that like the rewards of that work by themselves are worthy of dedicating a life to no matter the long odds. And to me, it just seems like that's the subtext to kind of unify a lot of what you do. And since you do this to all your guests, I thought it's fair to do it to you. So how does that hit you? If I could blush, I would as the first thing I would say to that. So much of this, gosh, I think I've been waiting for this and dreading this course because as you know, I really can't talk about myself enough and I think I'm saying, Oh, I hate when I do that. Listen, it's hard because as you know, when you're doing this work, you tend to not give the consideration to it. So much of it is just getting up and, you know, going out and practicing your free throws. And if you get good enough, then you're not thinking about it. You know where you're standing. You know where you can hit just from, when you pick the ball, before you can pull it up. You know, if you're going to hit or not before you throw it. And I think a lot of this. In the West, that question to be because the British have asked me that kind of thing before is just trying to have some. Command of the mechanics of doing this, and I can say I never set out to do this. It's just that. I would watch interviews or read them with one of the big things for me was just. With the Playboy interview seemed to be and and and I've gotten to meet Larry Global and talk to him about that Brando interview, which to me is still kind of the name PLU. I'll try this thing with conversation, which challenge where you can see it. Even though the questions get edited, I haven't gone through that cycle myself. You can see how much of Larry Global there was in that conversation. I just thought, How do you do this? How do you get somebody to look at you when you're talking to them? In effect, that's what you want, and and I know, you know this too, that a good part of this is just treating it as if it's a professional and it's not as if a professional endeavor. Your job is not to be friends with somebody, it's just to get that person to recognize that you're talking to them as you're talking to them. Yes. And from a technique standpoint, that's all true. But I guess the thing is that when when, like you said, challenge, which is a great word, Elvis, because you said challenge, not gotcha. And when I think about all of the ways in which you interact with. Filmed media, television, music, the way in which you challenge, I think, is toward bringing out a greater understanding of the resonances behind this artwork and I and and that's a choice because you have people in spots where you could definitely do the other thing. And so I kind of am interested in that choice, that choice to use this to foster. A greater whole. Just, you know, and I know that's something you're aware of, even if you, as you say, you start out not aware. If I look at the body of your work. Let me ask you because you do this now. How aware of you are going into it because this is the thing I know that you do. And I can hear it because I know you well enough as you are prone to leave the conversation, go where it's going to go. And that's something I actually learned by being interviewed like years ago. I remember sitting with some of mine was presumably a friend who I knew, and it was actually in New York zero w and he was. He asked me to come in as a crane when I was just getting started. It was writing and doing stuff for NPR, and he had a list of 20 questions in front of him and he would ask a question. And it was sort of two into a conversation to go. That's great. Oh yeah, and go right back to the list. Well, I've always been fascinated by the fact that you don't even have the questions down because you've just done the work and you're letting. I like to have them and then feel free not to get at them. But I also will say that this curiosity that you have. Well, I just would like you to speak a little bit just for one more time because your whole movie, look, you know, one watches this movie and this movie rewards a lot of thinking about because. Right from the beginning, you know, you do this great thing of talking about what a certain direction it's great you you, first of all, show us the way these directors actors, everyone involved in black cinema at this certain time. The way they had to present themselves, the presentational aspect of the way they had to dress, the way they had to talk, the way they had to walk it, sometimes you don't comment on it a few times you whisper things that are very crucial because you're letting us do it, you're letting us understand it. But where the movie goes isn't a place of you going, and you see the white movies that came later stole this s**t. You very clearly show how Saturday Night Fever embraced ideas, filmic film, grammar ideas and tone and style, but toward an understanding. I think of this unity that would be possible if we could get outside of ourselves. And I think that's what I'm curious about Elvis, because you could approach this from so many different standpoints. Why do you think you're drawn toward an idea of this coming together a synthesis as opposed to a kind of detaching and a kind of a drawing harsh distinctions? Gosh, boy, I feel like you should be asking these questions of yourself because these are the kinds of things that you do and you really come to do on this show because. Part of it is just pulling these things apart, and I made a joke about Eminem during the Saturday Night Fever thing because there's not that big a distance between for me. John Badham and Eminem and Rick Rubin being arrested, the John Badham of music in that way and seeing that you can bring these things together rather than separating them. And I would even say that. In this case, it's also to talk about here, because part of the reason I wanted to make this movie and this something, you know, because we talked about it is this stuff has never been said before is the the complete ignoring of the impact that black culture had on the mainstream. And we it only gets noticed when it's subsumed and by the practitioner of the person who subsumed it, rather than the immediate the immediate impact you have. And the practitioner, it's important to say to the audience, the practitioner, not the end user, not the viewer. The practitioner, right? That's important, that's really your by John Batam, not by me sitting at 13 in the theater watching that movie, right? Yeah, yeah. But you saw it. And it's this thing where when I saw Saturday Night Fever and I saw a crack that jokes like everybody in the audience kind of. Yeah, of course it is. Of course it's a shaft, and you don't see that any single like nobody mentions this. And part of the reason I wanted to do what I do is I just felt like, why is nobody saying this? This movie came out of a conversation a lot of ways that I had with the Hughes brothers when they were still working together. When I met them at Sundance in '99 and I, we were just talking at this event and I said the tough start talking about the president and how much I love that trailer because it uses Walker and by by Isaac Hayes. And I said I always thought that thing, that piece of music was stolen. And Albert says, we said in unison for Ennio Morricone, his piece. And Once Upon a Time in the West, and I remember reading in the Rolling Stone book reviews, somebody making fun of the luxurious walk on by. You know, that's how do you miss this? How do you not get this? That thinking through doing it tooling is exactly the same. How do you not even hear that? And so because it is not just talking about how the impact of jazz, because that's when something people often turn to or the impact that hip hop, which now there's 50 years old, is finally being acknowledged. But to talk about Isaac Hayes hearing that and I got to ask him this, unfortunately not on my show, but he passed away. I said, Did you do that? He goes, Oh my God, we were 30. He said, I like to think that we were eight never shy of being actionable. And he said that he told me that he and David Porter go with the air conditioning, will go out of Stax and they go across the street and watch us all the time in the West. And so it sank in. And so of course, they're going to do that. His first record, it feels like they do. You do something bigger. And but, you know, I mean, there's so much stuff that get cut out of the movie. I'd say you go from that to the Brothers Johnson version of Come Together, which is clearly also influenced by Morricone, is the same guitar to me. It's a it's an overture before it even starts and even said, going to Quentin, I said, Why don't you put come together by the brothers, Johnson and Django? He goes, That becomes the whole of the conversation about this thing with the Beatles and where everybody goes on. And I played it for him, and when the car, he goes, Oh. Oh, so and so those moments of those, those moments of a dawning realization when you're able to communicate to somebody something that they hadn't put together before. You still get a huge. And it like it wakes them up, right? And it's a sure thing. What? You still love your face. It wakes you up to. It's in the writing. It's in those characters. It's billions, people trading information and a light and somebody I was somebody has a piece of information that somebody else doesn't have. It's the same that you do. It's it's the narration and rounders. We got it right now of these characters that you guys do all the biggest treasure they have, and the most important thing they have is that ability to suss out information nobody else has. And how at first. I mean that four acts that's as much occurrences as actual currency is. But again, not to do that, Elvis Mitchell, thanks to you, but again. But you use the I believe you use that information, OK, this something I wrote down. And I think it's true and I have never heard anyone say it to you. But I think like because I've thought a lot about this interview, this thing that you do, which is you come up with a thesis, you don't even come up with it, you're walking around with it. I know you're it's not like you're trying to come up with a thesis. You just have this thesis. You articulate it to your guest. You do this in the movie to your, you know, the way you show something and pointed out you do it on your interview show as well. You know, when you the television show that you had on TCM. But to me, like I was thinking about this James Cameron thing and I was thinking about, like if Cameron's right and I think he is right, humans have this need to be seen for who they really are and that communicating that to somebody that you see them is really important. And it seems to me that you put huge effort. Into finding a way to truly see what artists are trying to show you, but this is the real thing that you do. It seems like you try and look through the creator's eyes like so that they have the rare chance to actually see themselves and that you're giving them this gift of letting them see themselves finally, as they're seen by, let's say, the collective audience, but through this prism you've worked to develop. And I know that part's intentional Elvis. You've done it for too long and too directly. You like this moment of actually giving this gift to people of. Let me tell you who you are and that you're seen and let them for a moment a blink see themselves as they're seen by a great viewer. And so I have to ask you how and how you came to that message. So I would say that's a very elegant way of putting it, and I couldn't. I can't thank you enough for giving it this much consideration, but I hope and you actually make me think of something where I had I did a Q&A with Cameron. Once part of it is for me, it's to let people know that I've given this thought because, you know, there's so many people. I mean, I've been one of the reasons I don't like being interviewed is I don't want to have somebody talk to you clearly hasn't done the work. Yes. One point is being interviewed by somebody who was asking me about the interview magazine piece I dealt with back in Phoenix. We got himself in trouble because people intentionally misquoted. What are you saying about the Oscars? He wasn't saying about the Oscars. He's talking about the process of having the campaign for it. And this guy, brother Corey goes, Well, you know, he actually said something really interesting. We're talking about a movie that he turned down because it was clearly a racist movie. And do you want to talk about that? The guy goes, What are you talking about? He says that the interview magazine piece The Guy goes, Well, I didn't read the piece, and I go, It's not a twenty thousand word New Yorker piece on potato farming. It's a 2000 word interview magazine Q. It's not that hard to do. I'm not asking you to suss out my entire career, but you can. If you're going to talk about that piece, you can have read the piece. So as often as not what I want people to understand is I take them seriously. I mean, I'd be serious in the way that I conduct interviews that I want. It's important to get people to laugh, I think, or make you feel as conversation as possible. But I want you to know that I've given this thought that this is not going to be some kind of glad handing over something I want, you know, that thought about this before I walked into this room? Yes. When I first sat down with Cameron, I said to him, because the thing about being seen, I said, everything you done is about somebody trying to get home. He just went right. But that's do you want people to understand that you've given this some thought and you know how that works, because as soon as you offer to consider it, the fact that you've given us some consideration and you may be wrong, I've certainly been wrong so often is not, but that you've given it some thought. I think people respond to you because again, you're not you're not trying to be pals with the people. You just want them to know that for the half hour, 35 minutes, they're sitting with you, that you've thought about this before you walk in and you know, the fun of it is doing it without having notes. Because if you have notes, people would look at trying to look at the notes to see what's on the notes. And and also, I wanted to make eye contact, and I'm glad we're doing this. Being able to see each other because it's the last three years, 60 percent of the stuff I've done is been by Zoom. And because we're public radio, we don't want to interfere with the audio integrity by having a visual of it because there are enough things that can go wrong as it is. So I don't get to see people as much anymore. And before the pandemic, I can name the five interviews I did. The people were in the room for that 20 years. There were five of them because it's important to me to be in the room. Yes. One was with me, but it was OK because we had we were friends. We'd spent so much time together in our lives. In fact, they're all with people I knew I would never do before, that I would never do a zoom or a satellite interview back in those days with somebody I didn't know. Me neither until the me neither until the pandemic. I and then Rick. Just so this is a great Rick Rubin thing. You know, Rick was the one, so I was doing it, the terry gross thing where I thought, OK, well, VIDEO. So I was just doing it listening, and I spoke to him on the phone about doing the pod, and he was a big time listener. He's always listen to a moment very great about it to me. And he said, let me ask you a question. Do you think it's better or worse? And if you hear if we see each other and I was like, I think probably he goes, because don't you think part of what you do? And I and I realize he was producing. He was doing the recruitment thing and then he made that was it. I'm like, from then on, I only will do it with the visual too, because I'm not Terry Gross. It works better for me if I can look at the person, and that's a different matter. I have been at NPR and I've seen how that works, and that's that's an entirely different process for her and she is going to be in a room with people. But there's also people giving her notes that kind of stuff. And I just I want to be able to see the people. Did you want to create? But I think, OK, so hearing what you just said, though, about wanting this is really insightful. And again, it comes back to this influence you had on me as an interviewer, Elvis, which is that everybody, people who hate my podcast know that I do the work. And that is because, you know, you did. It was so clear to me that what made this was your brain, but then that you would fill your brain by doing the work. But I wonder if part of it is we've talked about this a lot and this is in your this comes up in your creative work, which is you've a time suffered from people. Miss apprehending these things about you, the whether it's outsider status because and you're smiling now because it's true and we've had many conversations about it. And so I wonder if part of this gift you give people and part of this preparation is because you want to show up and say, I'm doing my best to actually understand you, ma'am or sir, because I've had people show up so many times, not just with microphones, but in more damning ways and not do the work to understand me, but make suppositions based upon my hair that I'm a black man where I'm from. So is that accurate? You're smiling and nodding, so I imagine it is. Well, there's certainly something so texture to that, but there's also something substantial to what you want to be. Listen, I mean, if you're a person of color, there are still perceptions that people have about you. And I had this conversation with Toni Morrison when I was being dammed in the press for not having seen the movie when people had. And Thompson and Nikki Finke, I'll say this here made up stories about me that they got from the director who was unhappy about a review of his movie, I wrote. And and as you know, because you called me and said, Listen, I know that you are the 99 percent, the time that I would have been in trouble because most of the time you go see movies to review by yourself. I just happened to be Bill Hader, and you knew that. And he called you and even ask you, why didn't didn't say something? And I thought, Hey, it wasn't his fight. And B, if you read those, you get a subtext. There's clearly so much anger and animosity towards me and those pieces, because the only example they could come up with of me not having done the work was that one. I'm not going to argue with that, but I don't. I don't. I didn't know Nicki at all. I certainly can't say that. And whether that Anne Thompson is, you know, I've I haven't interacted with her in that way. She's only been very nice to me and sort of reasonable. But that said. That said, no. The way that I would interpret. So what happened was, and you've never talked about this before, and I'm glad that we bring your brought it up because I think it's really worth discussing. The way I would look at that is you watch the movie and then to do your work thoroughly actually went and read the script because you do more work and anyone who's ever listened to you or watched you knows you are nothing, if not thorough. You are a professor. But before you were even a professor, you were a professor. And so they damn you for picking a detail out from the script as though reading a script easier than watching a f**king movie. And which, of course, it's not so. Yeah, why didn't? And then, you know, you didn't speak out, really. And I I had my own sort of understanding of why that might be, but I wasn't. I like to hear that understanding. So through airing this out. What was that? You weren't going to dignify it like that, actually. Absolutely. I clearly was it. That was exactly what I was going to do. So I even had a couple of lawyer friends or one, a pretty high powered lawyer friend of Detroit said, You know, you can sue. This is obviously animosity here. None of this is based on fact. He makes all the things we're talking about, he said to me. These pieces note there's no other example, except for this of your lifelong career being a liar. So there's clearly some personal animosity and thought, Well, there's actually something Tony actually said to me, Toni Morrison, which actually made me because it's weird when I met her, she said, Well, why don't you call me when you quit the times? I said, Because I didn't think you knew who I was. She said It's the New York. As it told me, there are filmmakers who read The New York Times who don't know I'm there. Why would I presume that you did? And as this is all you said, it's it's the unfortunate effect of Jayson Blair. It now becomes that much easier to blame a black person into it. And she said it's something that she had dealt with her entire career that you always looked upon as being in some way or another. You understand there are assumptions that are made about you. And we talked about here, we're going to have similar articles. Well, I know you do this for the reason I do it because you're not trying to hide who you are. Right? It's in plain sight. And she said people should imagine if you could do that kind of stuff, and this is really sweet of her. You could like write a review of a movie like that that you hadn't seen. I imagine you could do the kind of interviews you do without doing the research. I mean, they would really be threatened by you if you actually could pull this kind of thing off. Well, yeah, of course. And but I want you to explain why you didn't. Really go in a really direct, loud way, like I say, I interpret it as far as this as like, look, I have this body of work. I am nothing if not a worker. I am nothing, if not someone who thinks about cinema deeply and who has shown my respect for cinema because the reason you were my favorite film writer back then. And you know. You and I met on an airplane because I ask somebody to introduce us and then you invite me to sit next to you because I made a I I had if you came back from first class and sit with me, I did well. They were, they were. They were flying. They were flying us in first cla*s. It was a film thing. But but I asked Doug McGrath late and really one of the great guys who died last year and just a beautiful man, Doug McGrath, I loved. It was a beautiful man, and I said, That's Elvis Mitchell. Would you introduce me to him? And he said, I will. And he brought me back to you and I was wearing Shinola. Watch that you noticed, I think, or something like that and that which is not as expensive. It was a Frank Muller. It was not. But it wasn't. No, it wasn't. If I believe that you're whatever you say. And I only wear. I'm not a watch person. So you are. And then I remember making some kind of joke and you were like, Oh, OK, cool, now you can sit and you invited me to sit next to you. And we ended up talking for, like, the whole flight. But and the thing I always said about you as a, as a, as a critic. Was that? Even when you were critical of someone's work, I felt you always endeavored first to understand what the filmmaker was trying to do, what they thought they were doing, that you started from that place and from there you could either you could make a choice to deconstruct it, to say that they didn't reach it, to point out that strength. But it's a separator to me, this ability and then this not just ability to do it, but this determination. OK, I'm going to apprehend the artist's intent, what they and actually what they think they did. Then I'm going to talk about it, and I always felt that was a very generous way to do this. And I wonder if that's something that you learned or that's something you just when you start in college writing about movies you just did. I think about so much, so many people. I read Kenneth Tynan or Pauline Kael or Ralph Ellison's essays on jazz, which I've always thought were so beautiful that you had to read them several times because the language was so gorgeous that you couldn't. It took that much time to understand what it was he wanted to do. And I just. You've been very kind using the word generosity. I think I've always wanted to try to offer them understand how much work it takes to do something, and this is something I knew in the abstract before I started to do it that nobody sets out to make something bad. And the fact is people were pretty hard and always wanted to try to communicate. They understood the effort and I to say this funny because for some reason, Michael Mann thought I didn't like him because this Miami vice piece I wrote when I was trying to sit for Rolling Stone, you know, back in the day. So they really didn't understand black people as compared to now. Four. And he changed his mind about me when he read my Ali review, which, you know, I thought was kind of a movie that has problems. I understood where he was coming from. And in fact. And I thought it was a really fascinating thing that start of a movie about Muhammad Ali without him speaking. And to use that Sam Cooke song and the performance from like the Harlem club, which was not the Sam Cooke that everybody knew, but the Sam Cooke the black audiences knew is sort of true. And I think there's an understanding there that came from an abiding respect for black culture. And in fact, he was somebody I wanted to try to get from my movie because I'm sure he's seen Sweetback, and that has informed his sensibility in some foundational way. And I think that he has this clearly abiding admiration for black culture that you can hear right in that version of Turning Point that in thief. That's not the original, but the cover by mighty Joe Young. That's much harder and blue is here, and there are choices like that that really have always made you want to talk to him about black culture. Well, you know, you think about, you know, the movies don't inform how I make my movies. Elvis hits the hard streets. I grew up on. I don't. Yes. What kind of s**t is that? I don't watch. It's not from the movies, but I have a good I'll tell you as soon as I have one thing I can't say on the air that you'll love told me a few of these. I wonder there's some. This is one that's not my story. This is a someone else told me this the other day, and you'll love it. But wait, I have two things to say about this one. Yes, I remember that getting that Sam Cooke album when I was 13 years old because my dad loved Sam Cooke, but he loved studio Sam Cooke and somehow is in a record store when that thing came out and there was that. I don't know if it was a liner note or it was about that whole thing, about the circuit and about where Sam was singing and about which audiences liked which version of Sam. And I read it over and over and over again. And I listen to that album endlessly. And it was a very important album for me as a kid. I'm so glad you brought that record up because people don't understand to this day what Sam Cooke really had the capacity to do. And it reminds me of the Belafonte thing, which is but Sam made this other choice. Meaning Sam made the choice that Belafonte didn't make. He made more of the Poitier choice from your from. I think it's a little more complex than that, just because I'm sure it is how he could actually go out and play a club. It didn't need beneath the mechanics of a studio so he could go and play a black club because it's funny if you listen to this is a place to do that record came out. If I knew somebody puts them, I don't want to expose the Sam Cooke. I would give them a copy of Live at the Copa and live at the Harlem club. Oh, to hear the different Harry could go and do the kind of thing in music just because it wasn't the same kind of experience. And you'd have to go through the thing of a having a studio finance. You'd be having a studio, give him notes and then see having exhibitors tell him because the the real and this is something and then being cut out of the movie, but would have been in the book if hadn't been turned down by every english-speaking publisher in North America. I was just that the real power in movie studios has always been the people who run the exhibition and distribution. They're the ones who would tell production people, I can't have a black man kissing a white woman in the movie because it's not going to play. This is not the 50s, so you just cut that thing that the plot. I can't show it. I can't get people to pick it up, whether it was true or not. These people who ran distribution in the studio still would say that. And so studios, I mean, I've talked to any number of black actors who talked about choices they've made or things that were taken out of movies with things that are taken out of scripts or in any number of really successful black actors who will talk about that kind of thing. And so because Harry, you make this incredible choice to not do those movies, and I don't think we can say the world is a better place if those movies didn't exist because we need to see that kind of choice being made by a black actor who by virtue of being a star by himself in these movies and something else Harris talks about, I couldn't be the only white person in the movie unless it was the end of the world. And then he talks about movies that have he of the producer that all the sexual stuff was taken out of. I mean, there's so much to get into with this because Ingrid Inger Stevens ended up committing suicide because she was afraid her marriage to a black man might get out. And that guy worked with Harry, and Harry also knew Bill Gunn, who basically had to deal with his sexuality and trying to keep that closeted and the kind of pain that caused them. And Harry just said, I'm not going to hide any part about myself. I've seen too many good people I know suffer by having to keep themselves away from the public. So rather than make these movies or only my disdain, which for the characters, I'm not going to do it. And again, Harry will tell you that first and foremost, he was an actor. He trained as an actor. If you hear those songs, he's ever seen them on stage. There's an actor's deportment. There's an actor's understanding. You ever see him enter? Well, if you have ever seen him enter a room, which if you've ever seen that when you saw that guy, enter a bunch of rooms, if you see what it does it dark, isn't it? That We are the world documentary that when he walks in the room, all those stars turn to him. And suddenly this is a real thing because Harry is in the room, they start clapping. I think I think they all applaud when he walks in the room. I'm pretty sure that that's in the moment. I didn't go back. I'm taking this on based on the recent documentary, but I know I've been in rooms. I was at the age of my lifetime achievement award that Sidney Poitier. I work on that. And when Harry walked in the room, every head turned. I'll show it to him. I'm almost sure they all start singing. I'm I'm almost positive that they all then start singing. I'll go, look for it now. And if I'll leave this in the podcast, if I'm wrong, but I'll I'll, I'll send it to you after a couple of things. I don't want to jump off the other thing because important. And what I was saying about Sam was though Sam, as opposed to certain people who make the choice that they're only they're not going to compromise the sort of the working from the most alive part of themselves. Sam did also have a commercial. He did make the choice the more Sidney Poitier choice, perhaps to not give up doing that work. But he also was willing to do the work that was the commercial work he did both right and well. He got to be both Sidney and Harry. He got to do the more acting version of him. He presented a more anodyne version of himself in the in the music, musically anodyne, I'm saying, than the other version, right? But there are performers who saw him, and you can see that Otis Redding saw Sam Cooke on stage with a black audience. Yes, and as using both of those versions and in basically the crash in those two together. So I've noticed that you bring up very often. I do, too, actually, but you bring up Ellison a lot, you know, to me and it's weird because the book, it's one of these things that when a piece of art still in, it's time we're still in, it's time becomes a trope. It's sometimes it's hard for people to approach it in a fresh way. And that's, I think, why that book I. But to me, and I wanted to say, I'm so glad you brought up because Invisible Man, there's this passage in it that I try to tell every writer I ever meet every young writer if they want to understand how to write about. People are stuck with the way that Dave and I write about food and stuff. But. The way that he writes about the yams in the cards, it is one of the single greatest pieces of writing I've ever read in my life, and it is right and it is. It is. As a young person reading it, I remember just thinking, Well, this is as good as writing can be. He's I smell what he's smelling. I understand the desire of it. I understand it is through a discussion about this yam. You understand everything going on in the world, in New York, in that character's heart, in that moment. And and it's a magnificent. But he did codify this idea of invisibility. And I wonder if one of the reasons you talk about him a lot because he in a way it's become invisible because the book became a trope. He only wrote the one other thing. And then, yes, criticism that criticism. But isn't that story about. You being in that movie and then people. Not seeing all this other work to sort of make them at least call you and ask you the question or do a little bit of research, isn't that a form of invisibility? Hmm. Absolutely. It's completely that, and it's because first of all, you mentioned that I'm so thrilled that you brought that up, because when I saw that book as a kid, I'd never read a writer. With that kind of power. Yeah. Referring to something I knew. It was something that was my life, I knew it, yeah, I was there, I knew when he wrote about that friend that that was. I mean, certainly that was so profoundly affecting to me to have read that and I can't has a mind. But this was just the feeling of almost a few impairment, Allen told Anatol Prioridad in Paris, reading Chester Himes and the Oh, I'm not alone. Even though he was again, this guy also made himself invisible because he couldn't. He couldn't be who he was, who's afraid of being where he was, the New York Times. That was certainly, I mean, I have to tell, you know, something I mentioned to you before, if you remember. But Gerald Boyd, who was assistant managing editor, was the highest. That point rate black person at the Times was coming in, and he was the first people to talk to me said, Listen, this is going to be our job for you because your high flying black man and you can live one way before you come into this place. When you come here, you're going to be judged in a very different way and you should be ready for that. And he was the only person who warned me about that. And it was important to have that perspective. And he said, you're going to trust me. This is going to be hard. It's going to be much harder than you think because there's nobody who's had a job like this, who's a person of color before. And trust me, you're going to get people who are going to you to start getting letters. And I would I wish I kept some of the letters I used to get. But this is something I actually learned from Pauline Kael, who responded to every single one. And almost every time I think almost 90 percent of cases of this kind of apology, or I'm back to your point about what Cameron is saying about wanting to be seen and heard. It was once you respond to that, because it's this thing you learn if you're a newspaper, people pick it up and read it irresponsible to the reader. So I respond to the readers. But I do think that there is absolutely. This is just interesting to talk about just because it's not something I get asked. And and but it's something certainly in the way I lead my life to be unapologetic about who and what I am and and and but also to understand if. The people are going to judge me. Friends would send me these responses to those pieces about my those pieces that were made up about me not having seen the movie and they'd be stuff in there like comeuppance or yeah, like what was that getting comeuppance for? What did I do to deserve a comeuppance and or this person who was ethically challenged is like, well, to your point. I'm sorry, I can't not do the research if I'm going to announce, and I've heard this with you. Is this shocking how people are surprised and they should also show up? You've read the book. They're always surprised. Amy went on, Amy went on a very famous book podcast on NPR when her first novel came out. My wife and you meet your wife, the director. Yes, my wife, the writer, director, novelist. But when? Who was on your show? Of course, but I'm saying, I know, you know, but for the audience. But I would say she was so excited because with a book, you know, with like a novel like, nobody wants to talk to you with a novel. And she was going on the book show that mattered so much to her as a listener. And she sat across and it was so clear that he hadn't read the book and it was crushing. And so when I got into this, I decided like, I will never have somebody on, haven't read the book, I will delay it. I will punt, I will tell them, I can't do it. I will not do it. Man, you can't. It's not OK now, luckily or unfortunately you can. You don't. I wouldn't. And the fun of it is when somebody's going to go, you read the book. I never forget when I was on the first TV, the things I did was 30 years ago. There's a show CBS Nightwatch. They got to fill in after the host left and the author of a clear and present danger. Yes, Mr. Clancy, yes, came on and we started talking years. Just. I just came from Larry Larry King. You can hear the crack of the spine of the book being open for the first time. Well, Larry King never claimed to read a book, but and I still have the book. The more he wrote the frontispiece, the entire front two pages were him writing about how thrilling was somebody he'd done at that point. During that week, 30 interviews and nobody had read the book. But isn't your isn't your movie and isn't a lot of what you do about? I think it ties right into the thing from the beginning, and you brought up Alisyn, this was not something I'd prepared to talk about it like, first of all, a few things they won. So this is amazing, right? You're growing up where you're growing up and how you're growing up and with eight siblings and I'm growing up the way I'm growing up and like the f**king north shore Long Island, right? And we both interact with this passage. And for you, it's something you knew in your bones and it made you feel seen and not invisible. And for me, it made me know how people feel about this thing that I don't know anything about a certain way that I recognize that feeling. I recognize the need I recognize on the comfort of the what the comfort that a smell from home can give you. And if you know there's a reason you and I became friends when we did and why, it's because of all this is what happens, right? Meaning we find these things. And if we use these things the right way there ladders and these ladders go to the same place on some level, I think. And so, yeah, we're both in such different situations, listening to live at the Harlem Square club and reading Ellison and both, you know, listening to the greatest musical artist ever, Bob Dylan. I mean, we're we're listening to it together. I will just actually thought of you a song about something when I was listening with this a few months ago, when you were talking to Sorkin and you brought the pet hobby stories and I end up being a Fitzgeralds short stories a lot too, because in fact, I interviewed Tony Bourdain about the pet hobby stories. That's great. Collected his collection of short fiction, and because I loved the weekend, I mean, I cannot imagine that. Your purview where you grew up, and having read that and that sense of being outside and about being judged by for appearance and the heartbreak of being judged by appearance, but also not having the equipment or not wanting to dignify that, that belittling or that vituperation or that anger and being able to identify with that. Yes, so right. Well, Pat Hobby had a swallow so much and also was swallowing. Yeah, it was. I mean, there are so many layers, right? The guys that dropped me, there's so many layers, the guy writing, it's a drunk, all that stuff. And but he also has to swallow these indignities and these businesses. Anything intended to show business is filled with indignities all the time, and I think more so the more sort of outsider things you have until you get all the way in. I mean, you can read been hacked if you want to really understand. One can read Ben Hecht and one should read Ben Hecht really understand that it's perpetuated. And guess I'm going to write this down, please, do you should know that guy's name? Yeah. But you know the the the audience. But there's the thing, man. Don't you think that this thing of wrestling with this invisibility of not being seen of actually being missin is part of why we're just doing. We respond to a lot of the same people and we we both of you know him, but I don't. We both have Bomani Jones on. And part of the fun of that is him sort of playing all those aspects of being seen versus not being seen and being a public person in plain view and not how people perceive things about you that the black audience gets. And to be have to be the person who is the decoder and the translator and the communicator, all those things simultaneously, which is what if you're a person of color media as often as not you end up doing? But yeah, Bomani being younger than us by a lot, he has the ability or he and I, we've talked about this a lot. He has the ability very consciously decide on his vernacular and to use the vernacular on mike of various different circumstances. As I think a way to say you can't define me and I'm not going to be invisible for anyone else. I'm going to be this also. But having grown up with hip hop, where that kind of vernacular is, is part of the common currency now. It doesn't terrify people anyway. It's the lingua franca. It's that that's the lingua franca. As Eminem would say, yes, it's the way. That's what I'm saying. That's exactly what he gets on the miles of getting away. This is what I want to ask, is that do you think that part of why you do this thing we talked about, which is try to find what's at the center of what these people do and deliver it back to them to show them their scene is in part, a reaction to you grappling with this idea of not being seen. Well, I mean, it's. There is a part of that that's in that, but it's also this thing that I realize I have that I'm insanely lucky and I don't usually believe in luck is an abstract. But you know, as I did a piece for the Times about my dad worked two full time physical labor jobs and and you know, what I do for a living is what he considered to be something that a child would do, entertain himself. And so that I'm lucky enough to get to do this, that I have gone so far beyond what anybody I knew growing up, growing up would do. I'm still thrilled that I get to do this. And there is. I think I want to communicate what I do that I derive so much pleasure from it. Yes, and I want to try to find a way to communicate to these people. The amount of pleasure they've given me and where it comes from and why. And and and and that excitement, just watching your body language changes and when I'm not boring, you is like, Oh yeah, that becomes part of it. Do. Oh, it's awesome. Well, and I wonder if it's also because you know you open your TV series under the influence by saying that movies are the most important cultural signifier of the last century. And I wonder if the fact that you recognize that early on, and I'm sure I imagine you are, I wonder if you consider things like Mad Men and and NYPD Blue as part of that conversation or separate. But do you think that that that that that idea that that they are the most important cultural signifier in that your set of gifts and the work you've done allows you to communicate about? It is part of why you treat it is so almost almost with this kind of religious, you know, fervor. Well, gosh, it's so much to sort of unpack and take your time, take your time because. For me, I mean, movies are so many things, and it would be something like seeing when those a beach making movies and seeing Stevie Wonder, seeing the end credits and hearing it in that kind of sound or that wasn't car stereo sound. Well, you know, Stevie Wonder is not someone who has anything to say, just to go back to what you said, just to go back to what you said about Rolling Stone. Obviously, he's got nothing. He's got no perch from which to go. You recognize that, too. There's not just Jann Wenner who felt like that, and there are stories I could tell you by my time there. But I guess explains to why they hired Peter Travers, not me. Because clearly there's anyway. But go ahead. Sorry. Sorry. I couldn't resist Stevie and sorry, John. So good. But because movies gave us a chance to do all these kinds of things, those selfish moves. And this is it's weird that I'm the only person who seems to do this, but I recognize that the way people dress sort of told us something about them in the movies, and it's always been shocking to me. I mean, I just was asked recently I did the thing with Tom Power Doc NYC, and he would download programs movies for to Toronto, which did take my movie, but it's in the conversation. But he said, Well, you know, do you seem to know a lot of directors, your friends, a lot of directors? Went well. I was the only black guy in a suit at a screening, and it's pretty easy to spot. So they would come up and talk to me, and I'm not rude by nature so that but sometimes things would come out of that and it became a friendship. It's fine. But you know, you know, a story about when I met First Person, a parent for the first five years, and if I run to Quentin Tarantino somewhere, it becomes a huge argument. And Eli Roth aggressive killer said, No, it's fast because you guys are just two alpha dogs who basically were reclaiming, claiming conversational territory in these and then these skirmishes. But it was like I was always. Tony, I have to be friends with these people just if you do what I do. You look the way I look. You are impossible to miss. And but that's from watching movies and seeing, you know. Well, what does it mean to wear a double breasted peac**k health suit versus a a nice lapel suit? And it's seeing that somebody like the designer Thom Browne, was influenced by seeing the movies, but also the point where Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis and the president of the United States all wore the same suit that I mean, then those are all that. Those kinds of situations come from movies, the way music is used in movies and also feeling going back to sing even about Sam Cooke, about how the kind of music that I knew from when I was wasn't in new movies for a long time and the thrill of seeing something like Shaft. And then to take this a step further and further digress. Oh, when I got to talk to Willie two big hall at the Memphis Indy Memphis last year, I met him a lot before 10 years ago, but I'd always wanted to. I want to see a documentary to hear what Isaac Hayes drummer thought of seeing this connection between Shaft and then Saturday Night Fever. He goes, Oh my God, it's the same key. He said, I've probably seen it today and I feel like everybody else and never occurred to me, but that's what they were doing until I saw this. And it I mean, I get it at some version. This is some version of the thing we recognize. When we read Pat Harvey, we read the yam scene in Invisible Man, which is these thoughts and feelings I've had. I think they're right. I think that these are connections I'm making. I think and that's so much a part of our identity, your identity, your self-identity that by sharing these insights and having them hit off of the person and having them, it in a way makes us feel connected. Seen commuting back to that quote at the beginning of, you know, the Toni Morrison quote you chose for your movie right alone, but moving toward community and perhaps these record this stuff moves us toward community right on some level. Is this that thing to that recognizing for me that it's not just that I feel this way about movies, but it's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar feels this way about movies and Toni Morrison. When I told I was going to, I wanted to do the book. She offered to write an introduction. We were did, and she just started talking and just started grabbing napkins to write things down. So I didn't forget any of this stuff. And nobody wanted them to book because clearly, aided by research, the movie on black culture in the film world can be. I couldn't write it. So when those being Typekit possible, you don't even you don't even sit through movies you're supposed to review. How are you going to write a whole book? You waste time. It's so much easier to do that now. But OK, lastly, I mean, there's so much more I want to talk about, and I'm and I think that this is really the stuff that you explained about allowing because you it really doesn't matter. You could have. I'll say this like the thing is. A lot of film critics can dress white film critics who are in this sort of post Geek World can wear f**king Bowie, RIP, Bowie T-shirt and whatever, and their status is still accorded them. And I noticed in the documentary the the the way in which style. If you want to present, you have to, you have to. You have to kind of demand to not be just swept like by people's eyes go past. They have to notice, they have to be able to control you. But something actually deeper than that. I mean, yes, I'm sure it is shallow. I mean, this is a how do you go to see them? How do you go to movies and I love them and not take that away from them? How do you how do you do that? How do you see that? And it's also to one of the biggest influences on me, in addition to the people I mentioned was the old black sports magazine and Bryant Gumbel. That example? And to see if that guy could go from that magazine to doing the Today Show, the government that NBC was to the Today Show and dress like that completely be in command. And and you know, to me, it's that sort of thing too in the media about how a black person is treated versus the white person. I mean, the anyway show more contempt on a regular basis towards the world in his TV persona than David Letterman. And Bryant Gumbel is basically treated as being a black man who does so well but even go right to go right to sports. Then you could just say, come on, then Howard Cosell did and right in sports or Jim Gray. I mean, there are so many of these guys who who are like, Yeah, I'm I'm taking. Two were contemporaneous figures from the same network, one of whom is running a show live two hours a day generates a lot more money, and you would think that the understanding of his impact has got to be greater than the impact of Letterman's later conversation qualitatively about my feelings about Letterman. But there's stuff there, too, but that Letterman was accorded all this status, and Bryant Gumbel, who was working harder than anybody should work, was still being looked down upon and people were making fun of him. And I thought, well. It just goes to show you if you you're a black man with some sense of confidence and a stylish black person, and I've had this conversation with so many other people of color who felt the same way. The why was it the David Letterman's been put up on this pedestal and Bryant Gumbel, who was in this guest with this thing of invisibility on this program that was the biggest profit center for NBC during that time and was constantly basically being derided or looked down upon. And I know of people who were in network news, who were horrible human beings who treated people bad, who had the and were given a pass by the media who must have known about this. So that too is and that's, you know, is even seeing photos of Jack Derrida and seeing him in a suit. I mean, it's just you could. Or seeing. This is why Elvis is so great. There is why Elvis is so great. Because if you listen to this and you don't know, I said the word deconstruction 25 minutes ago and and so Elvis throws Derrida at us for the six people who are paying attention to that s**t to understand the conversation we're having about, you know, understand in the comedy world, you call that a callback, don't you? Yeah, you do. But well, sort of. And perfectly perfectly also put in a conversation about semiotics, which is this right? The way that things take? There's a lot of semiotics going on in this conversation because I had never thought of this until right now. Obviously, we've talked about I've thought about the way in which Bryant Gumbel was talked about, but I hadn't thought about till this second, the fact that nobody ever really said they just took for granted or kind of just wrote off. The intellectual toolkit that Bryant Gumbel brought to bear the nuanced level of thinking, the nimbleness of his mind. Instead, it was just like, What a dick. And whereas for sure, people would have been celebrating the fact that this person was intellect. I lastly, Elvis, I have to and I've I know you've talked about this some, but I haven't directly asked you this once. Only we talked about it once. But so you're in college and you're writing about movies. There's only the most famous film critic of all time. You could say Roger Ebert or Siskel, but the truth is the most important single critic because of what you create in the world is Pauline Kael. And I have to know because for someone who has wrestled with these questions of invisibility, as you say, and of not being seen. To have Pauline, see you. And interact with you and encourage you, I have to understand what the f**k that was like for you and what that did to your soul. Well, it's really interesting just because it gets to this question of being recognized and know there's certain kinds of people voice, it seemed a very hard time with me. And there was a film critic in Detroit when I was growing up named Susan Stark, who when I went to try to get a job as a second stringer that a friend recommended me for. When I have a way to tell me how unqualified I was in the way I had no business doing this. Now this comes a few months after I met Pauline, who had written these lovely listeners trying to go to grad school. You're in a fire, whatever you want me to do. After one conversation, Paulie said, Whatever I can. I mean, when I met her, it was. And this is about making us better, my would bet on myself. She was in the days and they sent offers after a book tour, so this will be like the 20th century. She was this I want to go as well. She's been sent on a book tour for a collection of reviews that had been published in The New Yorker. Can you imagine such a thing happening nowadays? I mean, I have the books, I have all the books on. I have the five. I have all the books. I can show you the books here. I know the sign copies of the books, but she was doing a local. She's doing an appearance on this. How far back this is a live radio show that had an audience, and I just happened to know the producer, so I thought, I'll go over there just so I can say I met Pauline Kael, and I guess they're a half hour early and she's sitting by herself in the lobby. I thought, Well, I just got to sit down, started talking to her, so I did, and we just kind of hit it up. We just talking and they come to take her word for the interview she granted by the arm. I'm not on the show, she goes. I know you're not on the show, it just comes in. So she's sitting there with the host and I'm sitting next to her. I'm sure he's thinking Weisser driver sitting with there and ha ha. And this is, by way, just the conversation we're having before the interview. It wasn't like I was doing anything, and this is all sort of been so long ago that the Oscars are on a Monday. And she was in Detroit of the US. Do you want to like go to my hotel and have your friends come by and watch the Oscars now? I knew I couldn't bring my then girlfriend there because anyway, so I said, no, but you know my I love the interview because I'm at this point doing volunteer reviews for the public radio station. And she goes, Sure, come by tomorrow morning. Wow. And we just sort of hit it off, and I don't. Immediately having this kind of connection, and I assume this because she was and she was a pretty generous person, but she would also let you know what she thought in no uncertain terms. As soon as she thought it. So I later learned what this meant that she that we managed to connect in this way. That is still at the point where I was trying to get work as a film critic and in the 80s was, you have to be a young white guy who was a no tourists. And I know her as a young fogey and I couldn't catch a break. So it's one of the reasons I started to write about television is that nobody's writing my TV in that way. When I first got started writing in The Voice, I thought, Well, I can do this and try to bring to bear some same kind of judgment you bring to writing about film. It was an interesting period. Miami Vice See Bruce Willis on Moonlighting seeing Denzel Washington on St. elsewhere. Yes, a pretty interesting relative to write about in those days, you know. And and so. Still having her like, read this stuff, we just sent her stuff occasionally I wasn't sitting there, people would send her stuff all the time. I just thought, I need to do that. And the people that tell her about hearing me on the radio and I think for a long time that she thought that I was. I should be I should have a TV or radio job and no disrespect or anything. But she didn't read my writing and then when she started seeing me in the times, the conversation changes suddenly and we talked all the time, but she was suddenly talking to a peer. And I have to tell you that I'm the one who told you that said, when I called her till I got the job, she, Oh, honey, you have been somebody else. As you mentioned the person, I just started laughing and said, You going to say that to me was probably going to be the most important day of my career. She goes, Oh honey, you're right. And then when she called me when that piece about I wrote the piece about my dad for the Times Sunday magazine, she called to say, You got and it was a call. I remember this is six a.m. and it was in styles that at times I was the events in the Sunday magazine section. I thought she would never read a can. I came to realize a with the Times and B that she was reading me on a regular basis. And she can't say, you've got to make them submit this for the Pulitzer. This is the best piece of ever read in the New York Times. But Adams didn't like me, so it wasn't submitted. And I said, Well, Pauline, if you remember quite a few months ago you said I wasn't the person for the job, she said, No, I was wrong. And yeah, I mean, she but she she saw you. Eventually she saw you. She saw you different ways. She saw you as a person. And then she she always saw me. And you know, you talked to her about music or theater or boxing. I mean, it was it was incredible. And I realized one of the things that probably links all of us is going this kind of voracious curiosity, not appetite, but voracious curiosity about why people do things the way they do them. And and when people say stuff to me, like, don't you despair for the state of movie? I said, no, there are more people making different kinds of movies than ever before. It's it's it's too many to see now. It's hard to keep up, and it's hard to watch TV now and read and go to theater, which I get to do nearly as much because I'm not there as much as I like to be. But you could talk to Pauline about all of these things and that you that you got past the point of feel like you're being seen to feel like. You were talking to somebody who was like you. I mean, it goes from being seen to feeling like what you brought up before being part of a community. Yeah, that we're a community and that is the best thing and it's a great place to live on because, you know, man, I'm so glad that I asked Doug to introduce us and me too. I so value and treasure you, and I know that I wouldn't do the show. I wouldn't have done this show if it weren't for the way you did yours. And it's very kind of you to say, I know it's not true, but it's incredibly simple. But like these things, you know, I said, it's you at the beginning. I'm, you know, I did say that to you when I started, so it's not like something I'm saying now. I said it all. I'm not agreeing with the level of your delusion. I'm just thinking, that's why I'm being so kind about it. That's fine. And and I just say before we go, before we go any further. The last episode of Billions and the conversation we had about our show was edited. I mean, it's funny because going back to that first episode, it's you. You went, Oh, that's so beautifully right down to that. That is the the moment of humanity and acts that made that were misleading about who, what was, but that there was. I think that the show was about fundamentally that even the worst of us could find people to connect with. And he was able to do that with the guy who gave him his favorite pizza. We see in that film that pilot. And finally with with Taylor and with Wendy. And it goes from being. And three, the heartbreak that shows that finally, he's still surrounded by a bunch of white guys wearing Patagonia, I mean, that was fine. Intense tragedy chicken with only tuck. Yeah, with just Ben came and talked many people of color, but it's all men. I'm so glad you caught that. Everything in that I'll say is Dave, and I really worked as hard as we could possibly work. OK, of course here. But I'm just saying, I'm not saying thank you. Let me give you flowers. We work. Let me say to you that I'm here now because there's so much of this plant and I just told you even when I saw it, but it was such a fully formed piece of writing and that you were talking about the impact of movies as the impact of movies on television where a great movie is. As soon as my walks in, you know where they are based on what they're wearing, based on how they walk into their home, based on where they sit, based on the first two lines that they say in the way people regard. That's all film stuff. And to bring that level of achievement to that show season after season, and it really is your show about solipsism and shifting a lot of is based on who you think can help you. Well, you know you're right and you're right about the fact that even if it makes someone feel viscerally good when they go and think about it, they should really think about who actually is at that moment, what he's saying and who he's surrounded by. But Elvis, your determination to not make the mistake that other people have made with you and to actually not misread, but to do the work, to correctly read what is intended is a real gift that you give. Next time we do this, we're going to talk about all those things I've always wanted to ask you, but it's easier with a microphone. Your memory is insane. Your ability to synthesize and process information. I've always wanted to ask about that. And I actually want to do a whole hour some day on do the right thing because I think that it's I don't want to put a group together because to me, it is. And it's I. I understood what your movie was about, but in a way, when I watch your movie, where I land is in the same way that these things were marginalized, only to be subsumed or to be joined. I was on someone's podcast the other day coming out to Tyler Cowan, who was brilliant. Brilliant, brilliant man. Great, brilliant. And we did. But but I said I thought the great movie The Last Century, the most miss, the most underrated film is do the right thing. And we've had this kind of we've had this conversation before. I know that we have, and this gets us so many things because, you know, the reason I made that movie, my movie 68 to 70, yes, is that, you know, Spike is, you know, the single black figure. I mean, there got to be two in the movies in the 80s. Spike Lee and Eddie Murphy. And you know, I've had this conversation so many people with Quentin. So the fact is that the movie business is so institutionally opposed to anybody other than white men. Do you think this Spike Lee's the only black talent in the movie business? What's interesting? But what's interesting, though, of course, on and then Singleton, you know, had the moment of making, you know, obviously staggeringly great film that you point out what its antecedents were. Well, fish does in your movie. Fishburne points it out, but you showcase it. But. That's true. That, of course, he's not, but it's also true that if there were many more black filmmakers who were able to make movies, people wouldn't look at Spike as merely the black filmmaker. And they would understand because I sometimes say to people, Elvis, when they ask my biggest influences and I talk about Spike's dialogue, it's like, honestly as big an influence. It's the five influences, and Spike's dialogue is one of them. And people always go really spike. And it's like, Do you not watch and listen to those movies? That is the watch. How do you not watch? She's got to have it, and those guys talk and not hear rounders, right? It's the biggest. It is one of the biggest in. It's Mamet is. Yes, David Mamet. But Spike Lee, for f**k's sake and I, it's undoubted. It's like there's just no doubt about it. And yet people can't see it. And for me, watching your movie helped explain why what willfully is going on, even though it's not about Spike Lee. It explains why, although yes, Spike is wealthier than any of Spike is as successful as someone needs to be, and yet underrated, undervalued people don't understand the work. And so watch Elvis's film everybody, it is magnificent. Is that black enough for you? Also, there are episodes of under the influence that are available. You can find them. They're worth it. Great filmmakers. Yeah, you can find them like, you know, a TCM talked about hiring a black person recently, they said the first black person to work regularly at TCM. I had friends who wrote to me said weren't depressed about the show. They made of yours. And then the treatment and whatever movie or book you do next. Elvis Mitchell, Thanks for being here, folks. You can find Elvis in all those places, and he does live appearances sometimes where he interviews people and other things, and he's a professor also. First of all, thank you for for being such a great friend and for allowing me to come on and talk. I mean, I was very nervous about doing this because I listen to the show and it's I was afraid we wouldn't have that moment where the moment where I hear all the gears engaged for you. And so that's thrilling to go. You got it. All the gears were engaged. Elvis Mitchell. Thanks a lot, everybody. You can find me at the moment the gmail.com and we will see you next time.