Speaker 1: Hi, guys, this is Joel. Hopefully you know me if
Speaker 1: you're here. If not, Hi, executive produced this show. I
Speaker 1: am so excited for what we have in store for
Speaker 1: you today. Donald has a show, as we've talked about
Speaker 1: quite a lot Alabama Jackson. It's out right the heck.
Speaker 1: Now you can go listen to it. It's actually a
Speaker 1: TV show so you can watch it, which is great,
Speaker 1: and we're so excited. He brought so many of his
Speaker 1: good friends here and we are elated to have an
Speaker 1: opportunity to bring you, guys a sense of comedy and
Speaker 1: laughter and of course to uplift our friend Donald. Like guys,
Speaker 1: if he worked so hard, put everything everything else on
Speaker 1: the back burner to deliver a show that is full
Speaker 1: of his passion, full of his drive. It really pushed
Speaker 1: him as an artist, you know, and it's I think
Speaker 1: he's bearing a lot of his soul in it. It's
Speaker 1: an incredible like the laughs per second are through the roof.
Speaker 1: You're gonna love it. I digress. We're to talk about
Speaker 1: all of that in the show, but before we get
Speaker 1: to that, I want to take a little bit of
Speaker 1: time to explain why our other best friend, Zach isn't here.
Speaker 1: If you follow him on Instagram, then you're aware that
Speaker 1: he recently lost a friend to suicide. It's devastating if
Speaker 1: you've ever had to go through it, it's a lot
Speaker 1: to mentally process, it's a lot to try to examine,
Speaker 1: and so he's taking time to grieve and to do that.
Speaker 1: It's been a really hard couple of years. Suicide rates
Speaker 1: are and all time high, and we just wanted to acknowledge,
Speaker 1: first love of that friendship, and second to encourage you
Speaker 1: if you're having suicidal thoughts, if you know somebody who's
Speaker 1: having suicidal thoughts, to please, please, please, please reach out
Speaker 1: for help. You are so worth the time and the
Speaker 1: effort to feel better, to have a full and happy life,
Speaker 1: and hopefully help isn't too far out of reach. If
Speaker 1: you're in America, you can call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Speaker 1: That number is one eight hundred two seven three eight
Speaker 1: two five five. Again it's eight hundred two seven three
Speaker 1: eight two five five. So our thoughts and love are
Speaker 1: with Zach as he's working through this difficult time, and
Speaker 1: of course to anybody else you know trying to grieve
Speaker 1: a loved one or struggling to lift themselves up. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of work. We see you, We love that
Speaker 1: you're trying, and we're with you. Okay, now we're going
Speaker 1: to do some laughs. You're going to hear a lot
Speaker 1: of love between a lot of people who've worked really
Speaker 1: hard to bring something special into this world. And I
Speaker 1: love that we can share that with you guys. So,
Speaker 1: without further ado, please enjoy a very special episode of
Speaker 1: Fake Doctor's Real Friends The Alabama Jackson Story. Here's some
Speaker 1: stories about show we made about a bunch of doctor nurses, said,
Speaker 1: he's the stories. So yeadoo around you. Here, a yadoo
Speaker 1: around you. Here a few show m. Well, well well
Speaker 1: look at this, look at this, Look at what we
Speaker 1: have here, Daniel Joel, I like to introduce you to
Speaker 1: Chris and Harbor teen. Pleasure to meet you. This is
Speaker 1: These are the stupid buddy guys right here. Harve is
Speaker 1: is the is the one of the head hot jest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's like that. We got we got one of the
Speaker 1: owners up on this piece right now. Oh shit, it's
Speaker 1: a pleasure to have you both, truly, well, uh it is.
Speaker 1: I'm such a huge fan of what you guys do
Speaker 1: on the podcasts. And uh yeah, so this is so
Speaker 1: cool that that I'm even like, uh um a small
Speaker 1: part of this and Donald, you kicked us in that
Speaker 1: commercial and how great was it that played? And then
Speaker 1: you're played right after right after? That's crazy And I
Speaker 1: didn't even know. I didn't know you were in a commercial,
Speaker 1: did you? You You didn't tell us, did you? I didn't
Speaker 1: tell anyone. Okay, if the first you guys were what
Speaker 1: were you guys talking about before we record? What were
Speaker 1: you guys talking about? Is that what? Yeah? We were,
Speaker 1: so we talked about that as our big news and
Speaker 1: the thing that you that you beaked out, okay, because
Speaker 1: I was like, damn, I thought maybe uh my mind
Speaker 1: went right to doctor Acula. I was like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: oh my god, Yo, you're speaking the language. Man, everybody
Speaker 1: would go crazy if that's what it. I think doctor
Speaker 1: Acculus should be. I think you guys should do a
Speaker 1: Doctor Acculus special of the part. But if we did
Speaker 1: a Doctor Acculus stop motion animated special, dude, that's what
Speaker 1: we get puppets that look like me and Zach and
Speaker 1: we freaking make a Doctor Accular movie. I told my
Speaker 1: my fifteen year old about this podcast, and she was
Speaker 1: she's a huge fan because of Hulu. She watches Scrubs
Speaker 1: and she called you guys kings, you and you and
Speaker 1: Zach Kings and she like, my dream is for her
Speaker 1: to call me a king because she any anyway cool.
Speaker 1: So that's like, so I know that you guys thought
Speaker 1: it was it was it was more. It was more
Speaker 1: because it was his friend's son or whatever. But all
Speaker 1: the kids, all the kids in high school are watching Scrubs.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's a retro cool, I hope. So, because
Speaker 1: it really feels like friends in the office are leading
Speaker 1: the way when it comes to what the kids are
Speaker 1: watching nowadays. Let me introduce you guys, guys to Harbor
Speaker 1: Team and Chris Waters. Uh. These guys both work at
Speaker 1: Stupid Buddy Studios. Harbor Team is an owner of Stupid
Speaker 1: Buddy Studios. And Chris, what would you say your role
Speaker 1: is because you have a bunch of hats in this situation,
Speaker 1: Like you and I sat down and we did the
Speaker 1: development together and then you jumped on as a writer
Speaker 1: after that In Alabama, Jackson, what would I'm just Joel,
Speaker 1: I'm all over the place. We should really start by saying,
Speaker 1: welcome to fake Doctor's Real Friends special episode of Alabama Jackson,
Speaker 1: the new fast paced, stop motion animated comedy series on
Speaker 1: Adult Swim's YouTube platform, which premieres today. Wait, thunderous applause,
Speaker 1: dential thunderous applause for this tomorrow today is tomorrow. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like, wait, yeah, yeah, And on the show
Speaker 1: we have with us, Harve, who is the king of uh?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call you king? How about that? Who is
Speaker 1: the king? You like that it's a little much the
Speaker 1: prince of animation? Well, I'm gonna say king because in
Speaker 1: this situation, you are the two people that I were
Speaker 1: my go to guys, and then Seth when he gets
Speaker 1: on here. Also, you guys are champions of the Alabama
Speaker 1: Jackson cause. And so you know, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of people could have jumped on, but Harve the fact
Speaker 1: that you volunteered to step up and be a part
Speaker 1: of this, and Chris the fact that you volunteered to
Speaker 1: step up. And then, ladies and gentlemen, let's give a
Speaker 1: round of applause. Thunderous round of applause for Seth Green
Speaker 1: y'all the applause the period Now thunderous applause, Dan thunderous,
Speaker 1: A motherfucking motherfucking we got him on the podcast. Who
Speaker 1: else is on this? I see Chris, I see Harve,
Speaker 1: I see Joel. Let me introduce you guys. Daniel. That's Daniel,
Speaker 1: we call it, we call him Daniel. Daniel. How'd you
Speaker 1: get saddled with that long story from a fifth grade start?
Speaker 1: Tell us nobody knows, don't worry about it? Shows at
Speaker 1: you today? Do you want to talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about how Alabama Jackson like came into being and how
Speaker 1: these guys got involved. Yeah, okay, so that's a that's
Speaker 1: a that's actually a great segue. H Alabama Jackson started.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm a huge fan of Raiders at a
Speaker 1: Lost Art. Everybody knows that I love Harrison Ford. He's
Speaker 1: one of my favorite actors of all time. When I
Speaker 1: first started as an actor, I Eddie Murphy, Denzel Washington
Speaker 1: and Harrison Ford or three people who I tried to
Speaker 1: mimic a lot, you know, in my comedy, in my
Speaker 1: physical uh movements, and in you know I and then
Speaker 1: and then the seriousness of Dential I just wanted to
Speaker 1: those were the three that I tried to always be like.
Speaker 1: And Indiana Jones just seemed like one of those movies
Speaker 1: where I was like, man, there's so much black history
Speaker 1: out there, and this dude's chasing after it, like he
Speaker 1: chased after the Ark of the Covenant that started. That's
Speaker 1: an eat apparently according to myth Now that's in Ethiopia,
Speaker 1: according to I don't know if you guys know this, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the art is in Africa. Yeah, but that's I love.
Speaker 1: I love the archaeological shit where they where they dig
Speaker 1: up the bones and my most the thing I'm the
Speaker 1: most passionate about his old civilizations and like instances of
Speaker 1: humans on all other parts of the planet and how
Speaker 1: the culture seemed to evolve even though there was oceans
Speaker 1: between them, which is why there's that whole Pangaea argument
Speaker 1: that they weren't moving, that they were all just sort
Speaker 1: of in the same region before natural geological phenomenon separated
Speaker 1: to the connant. Right, But the like the fact that
Speaker 1: a thousand years ago, three thousand years ago, a million
Speaker 1: million years ago, another human being was in this spot
Speaker 1: to win some shit and now you're standing there. That
Speaker 1: blows my mind. It's one of my favorite things. So
Speaker 1: I love to travel. Yeah, I love Indiana Jones for
Speaker 1: the fantasy, not necessarily the history of it though, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? And I always thought it was
Speaker 1: you talk about in the fantasy a punch of Nazis
Speaker 1: in the Facebook. Yeah, man, this one dude, this one
Speaker 1: dude taking on a freaking whole army by himself with
Speaker 1: a bull whip and six bullets. And when a dude
Speaker 1: but also gets his ask, which was when made him
Speaker 1: lovable right right, because he was stumbling and bumbling his
Speaker 1: way through it all. Yeah, And I was like, wouldn't
Speaker 1: it be great if we if we created a black
Speaker 1: version of this. Here's exactly how it happened. We're all
Speaker 1: on this panel and they're like, hey, what are you
Speaker 1: guys up to you? What are you doing next? We're
Speaker 1: all like, we're doing this. This is the season of
Speaker 1: Robot Chicken, and Donald loves stop motion and this that
Speaker 1: another thing. And they were like, well, Donald, what would
Speaker 1: you do with you? What are you gonna do? And
Speaker 1: he goes, you know what I really want to do
Speaker 1: is a black Indiana Jones called Alabama Jackson. And then
Speaker 1: everybody exploded in laughter, and then we went on to
Speaker 1: whatever the next question was. I saw sten Riich's face
Speaker 1: on the panel and go like this and then and
Speaker 1: he said, hey, do you think that's a show. And
Speaker 1: I said, fuck yes, I think that's a show. And
Speaker 1: he said, let's call Donald when the second this is over.
Speaker 1: So that's what we did. We we called Donald. We're like, hey, dude,
Speaker 1: a black Indiana Jones called Alabama Jackson is something. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about what you really mean? What do you really mean?
Speaker 1: And Donald started talking about how because we were all
Speaker 1: in that place of like, I don't know enough about
Speaker 1: my own history. You were in fighting about nuance of
Speaker 1: like cultures. And what Donald said was I want to
Speaker 1: tell the story of a modern black man who has
Speaker 1: all of these preconceptions and assumptions and is living the
Speaker 1: life of a modern black man, and he gets forced
Speaker 1: into a position where he has to learn and appreciate
Speaker 1: Black history, like from somebody like Harriet Tubman. And he said,
Speaker 1: it's like I wanted to be like Quantum Leap, right,
Speaker 1: He's got to go back and learn some shit and
Speaker 1: solve some shit. And I was like, have you ever
Speaker 1: watched Timeless on NBC because it's a show about right,
Speaker 1: but it was an organization of supposed evildoers traveling back
Speaker 1: in time to fuck up history. And then the people
Speaker 1: that they had stolen the time travel tech from had
Speaker 1: their beta model to chase them through time. The rules
Speaker 1: of the time travel were very specifically laid out. He
Speaker 1: can never return to the same point twice. You can't
Speaker 1: like recorrect something that's already been shifted in a timeline.
Speaker 1: So it's constantly chasing these these anarchists through time. And
Speaker 1: I was like, that's your fucking move, Like you've got
Speaker 1: you've got somebody actively trying to destroy Black history. And
Speaker 1: Donald looked it up and he's like, well, the worst
Speaker 1: motherfucker was Woodrow Wilson. Yeah, but we were like, well,
Speaker 1: that's a great villain. That's a great villain. But then
Speaker 1: I don't remember who came up with the cap that's
Speaker 1: that Ashley Ray will be on the show later on.
Speaker 1: She's the one that came up with the Cake caball
Speaker 1: and then and then the idea of the Black Cabinet
Speaker 1: is an actual historic concept us make it's a there's
Speaker 1: a lot of plausible reality in this that an organization
Speaker 1: called the Black Cabinet that has time travel is chasing
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson, who also has time travel and the Cake
Speaker 1: Cake caball through time trying to save black history while
Speaker 1: it is actively being trying to be destroyed. I'm like,
Speaker 1: this is a fucking great show, right, so nobody, but
Speaker 1: you're right, nobody wants to give you money, right, very
Speaker 1: very exciting. It's very hard to convince somebody on a
Speaker 1: pitch that something is good. So our whole thing is, yes,
Speaker 1: is always let's make something. Let's make it and show
Speaker 1: you exactly what it is, because otherwise it's it's up
Speaker 1: to your imagination, your context, and whatever experience you've had
Speaker 1: up until that moment. So we talked to adults. Women
Speaker 1: were like, hey, how does this get Listen? I know
Speaker 1: you won't give us a pilot. I know we're not
Speaker 1: going to get a pilot script written. We want to
Speaker 1: make a proof of concept that has value to the company.
Speaker 1: How do we do that? Then we started talking to
Speaker 1: mechanics of it. So it literally came down to us
Speaker 1: negotiating for about twenty minutes of content that we could
Speaker 1: break up anyway we want it. And we're like, we
Speaker 1: do these in shorts, and that way it's not a
Speaker 1: single episode. You can show several instances gain minor character
Speaker 1: development even in a one to three minute episode that's
Speaker 1: going to prove the show. So that's what we've done.
Speaker 1: We've got seven episodes. There is a meaningful arc for
Speaker 1: each of the characters. Plus you see how it would
Speaker 1: work in series. Our goal is a half hour. But
Speaker 1: more than anything, I'm so proud of this motherfucker, not
Speaker 1: just because he's such a hard worker, not just because
Speaker 1: he's so talented, but because he had this idea, he's
Speaker 1: been so passionate about it and he's really worked his
Speaker 1: ass out. This is hard work, guys, and half his
Speaker 1: family which is which is also I gotta give it back.
Speaker 1: I gotta give it back though, you know what I
Speaker 1: mean Like that, this was one of those things where
Speaker 1: it was like, look, you gotta show up every day,
Speaker 1: and when you show up, you got to bring something
Speaker 1: to the table. I'm not that dude. I'm not the
Speaker 1: dude that even shows up. I'm the dude that's like,
Speaker 1: what are we doing? Yeah, this is one of those
Speaker 1: moments where it was it was a come to moment
Speaker 1: where it was like, dude, you gotta be better than
Speaker 1: you've ever been. And even though this is a small medium,
Speaker 1: like you know what we're doing, We're hoping a lot
Speaker 1: of people view it we'll see how it plays out
Speaker 1: and stuff. Yeah, the huge idea, I know, But the
Speaker 1: window is so small. The window is so small though,
Speaker 1: I feel like I do. I do because this is
Speaker 1: a moment when people are interested in something like this,
Speaker 1: and what we've been able to achieve is something that
Speaker 1: is not academically preachy. It's fun. You like this character.
Speaker 1: You're getting a very relatable POV from a modern human
Speaker 1: being who is you know, we all over the last
Speaker 1: couple of years have dealt with a tremendous amount of
Speaker 1: forced shame for what we have an experienced, for the
Speaker 1: mistakes that we've made, for what we don't already know.
Speaker 1: And there used to be a lot more basic forgiveness.
Speaker 1: You take one position or another, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: way that we get to present this, a way that
Speaker 1: we get to make it. And the hack is to
Speaker 1: just do it to figure because you try and get
Speaker 1: through all these multi layers of the corporation, to all
Speaker 1: the different companies, especially as they're getting gobbled by each other,
Speaker 1: you have four hundred levels of people who have to
Speaker 1: both see it, read it, and sign off on it.
Speaker 1: I hate that ship. I can't can't waste time like that.
Speaker 1: So like, if you think about how short the turnaround
Speaker 1: is from us on that panel tomorrow when this show
Speaker 1: is released today, today, today, today, today, today, Daniel, can
Speaker 1: you edit that time is a perfect eight. That's why
Speaker 1: alamman period can travel. So for the listeners out there,
Speaker 1: the three gentlemen that we have on the show today,
Speaker 1: I've known for a bit. So I did a movie
Speaker 1: called Clueless a while back with Brecken Meyer, who Seth
Speaker 1: Green is best friends with, and uh, one night, Uh
Speaker 1: this is this is sincerely how it happened. Uh, Seth goes.
Speaker 1: Seth says you should go out on a date with
Speaker 1: my sister, and I was like, okay, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I have no clue. You're a good dude. Man. My
Speaker 1: sister was always bringing home like the worst right, But
Speaker 1: I had only met you once at this point, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like I bought, but we did vide,
Speaker 1: but we did vibe, no doubt. Breckon was like, hey,
Speaker 1: you're gonna love this kid, And the second I saw you,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh yeah right, And so he invites
Speaker 1: me on. He invites me on a date with his sister.
Speaker 1: We go on the date and after the date, she's
Speaker 1: like let's go back to Seth's house and to Seth's apartment.
Speaker 1: And this is when the first time we ever, Like
Speaker 1: we kicked it a little bit before, but this was
Speaker 1: like the time that we really kicked and I got
Speaker 1: to tell my jokes. I got to be We're like
Speaker 1: twenty I'm not even twenty one yet. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: uh so we hang out and you know, Seth and
Speaker 1: I have a we have like a there's a thing
Speaker 1: that's happening where we kind of get each other's jokes
Speaker 1: and it's like we have the same sense of humor.
Speaker 1: We exchange numbers. I go back to New York. I'm
Speaker 1: calling Seth Green on the phone like once or twice
Speaker 1: a week, you know what I mean. I'm calling Breckin
Speaker 1: on the phone once or twice a week, Like, guys, man,
Speaker 1: I miss you all. Like, you know, Seth comes to
Speaker 1: New York, fucking comes to New York. We're kicking it
Speaker 1: in New York. You come someone when I got to
Speaker 1: go to your like I was at your mom's on Thanksgiving.
Speaker 1: Yeah it was you know, it was a new it
Speaker 1: was it was New Year's it was New Year's Eve,
Speaker 1: and you can't So that's like nineties seven. Dude, I
Speaker 1: don't clueless nineties eight. I think it's the same year
Speaker 1: Clueless came out, So I'm not exactly sure it was
Speaker 1: that ninety nine even I don't. I don't even know, dude,
Speaker 1: I can so I was right. So that New Year's
Speaker 1: is probably like ninety six, yeah, because I was here
Speaker 1: with Ryan. Yeah. So you come through and my best
Speaker 1: friend growing up, this girl Jessica Macardo and Seth hug
Speaker 1: And I'm like, how the fuck do you know each other? Guys?
Speaker 1: And She's like from auditions back in the day. I
Speaker 1: was like, Seth that lives in La Seth goes, I
Speaker 1: grew up in Philly. I'm like, oh shit, right, So
Speaker 1: the connection was the connection was always there, right, And
Speaker 1: so time goes forward, time goes forward, Seth starts doing
Speaker 1: this thing called Sweet Jay with Mat and Breckin and
Speaker 1: just a little bit of context in In ninety nine,
Speaker 1: Sony Digital was trying to develop a linear content precursor
Speaker 1: to YouTube. They were convinced that the Internet was a
Speaker 1: place where people would be viewing stuff, and everybody was investing,
Speaker 1: you know, negligible amounts of money to see what you
Speaker 1: could really do. It was still dial up, but we
Speaker 1: talked Sony Digital into giving us about forty six thousand
Speaker 1: dollars to produce the equivalent of thirty nine minutes of
Speaker 1: content and the same thing, like, you can break it
Speaker 1: up however you want, like one episode, twenty episodes. So
Speaker 1: what we wound up doing was making God, how many
Speaker 1: shorts do you remember? It all predates anybody. Matt would
Speaker 1: be the only one that knows those stumps. The point
Speaker 1: is we made what would become the proof of concept
Speaker 1: for Robot Chicken. I made a deal with Sony Digital
Speaker 1: lawyers to be able to sell our thing anywhere else,
Speaker 1: and then we tried to sell it to SNL, Matt TV,
Speaker 1: MTV Comedy. We had a deal with Comedy, and then
Speaker 1: September eleventh happened. They were like, hey, we're just not
Speaker 1: gonna do this, so all rights reverted. We sat on it.
Speaker 1: Matt and I had like three or four years, and
Speaker 1: then it was Seth McFarlane making the deal after Family
Speaker 1: Guy had been canceled the first time. Seth mcfarlande made
Speaker 1: a deal with Mike Lazo, the head of the Adult Swim,
Speaker 1: to air the aired and unaired episodes of Family Guy
Speaker 1: on Adult Swim. It blew up so big. How it
Speaker 1: was even before that Maverick called me. Seth McFarlane calls
Speaker 1: me and says, hey, do you know these Adult Swim guys?
Speaker 1: And I said, I don't know why I'm doing this,
Speaker 1: I said, I said, yeah, we already brought because because
Speaker 1: Maverick had done a voice on Sweet j like he
Speaker 1: was in our shorts. Because it was just like us
Speaker 1: gang banging this independent production together. He called me and said,
Speaker 1: YouTube pitch to Adult Swim. I said, we already pitched
Speaker 1: the cartoon network. We got passed on and no, no, no no,
Speaker 1: there's a whole new thing. They're buying the old episodes.
Speaker 1: A family guy go pitch to them. So Matt and
Speaker 1: I go pitch to Keith Crawford and Mike Lazo, and
Speaker 1: in an unprecedented move, they contracted us to make twenty
Speaker 1: quarter hours of what would become the first season of
Speaker 1: Robot Chicken. That's the story. That's fucking crazy, dude, because
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the same thing in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. You guys would jump through a way more
Speaker 1: hoops than I had to. But you are to do this, buddy,
Speaker 1: You've had it so fucking easy. None of this shit's
Speaker 1: supposed to happen. That's the crazy thing. None of this
Speaker 1: shit happens this way. It's a terrible standard for ourselves
Speaker 1: by being able to achieve this on this budget. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like with the case we're gonna have to make to
Speaker 1: anybody for our half hours, We've almost we've almost made
Speaker 1: too beautiful of a show. I love that. I love
Speaker 1: that we have almost done that, and it's can't wait
Speaker 1: for you guys to watch it. You've added very easy though,
Speaker 1: And you know what, Donald, that's the only way I wanted.
Speaker 1: I want to protect you from all of this. Thank
Speaker 1: you for that, and I thank you for that. I
Speaker 1: thank you for that. So Harve I met at Shadow Machine, right,
Speaker 1: That's where we met, and he was animating on robot Chicken,
Speaker 1: Am I correct? And Towner right and Eric and uh
Speaker 1: and so you know, as time went on, I really
Speaker 1: dot dove into the stop motion animation game, like I
Speaker 1: really am trying to become a better stop motion animated.
Speaker 1: Like my goal is to be able to animate my
Speaker 1: own stuff, you know what I mean, Even though it
Speaker 1: takes forever, but like when if Alabama Jackson goes to series,
Speaker 1: I'd like to animate it, on it, animate on it,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. That's just how I should right,
Speaker 1: That's like, that's like Lucille Ball saying no, no, I've
Speaker 1: got to be the one to build his dress. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, there are some there are some artists that
Speaker 1: I get it, and that I get it and stuff.
Speaker 1: Why won't you just let me make a joke? I'm
Speaker 1: not I know, I get it. I let you make
Speaker 1: a joke. I got it. You got the joke out,
Speaker 1: You got the joke out. Passionate artists clearly and so hard.
Speaker 1: When I stepped away from Shadow Machine and uh, you
Speaker 1: know when Robot Chicken left Shadow Machine. Yeah, you guys,
Speaker 1: happen just to consolidate that we had one hundred episode
Speaker 1: or rather Shadow had one hundred episode production contract with
Speaker 1: Adult Swim, so at the end of five seasons, at
Speaker 1: the end of one hundred episodes, Matt and I had
Speaker 1: to decide whether we were going to produce a sixth
Speaker 1: season at all, and if so, were we going to
Speaker 1: do it at Shadow And you know, Matt I had
Speaker 1: sort of realized how little actual governance we had over
Speaker 1: the mood and the sentiment, and because we were becoming
Speaker 1: so close with all these artists, we noticed that there
Speaker 1: was a manner in which things were untracted or organized
Speaker 1: or built at a core level that we just had
Speaker 1: a different philosophy about It's it's it's not a this
Speaker 1: way or that way, it's it's just the way you
Speaker 1: want to do business, right. So we um decided. We
Speaker 1: realized because Harvan Towner had broken off themselves, both successful animators,
Speaker 1: very talented artists, had broken off and made a little
Speaker 1: boutique production shop like a mini studio with a full
Speaker 1: development capability but also the ability to shoot stages and
Speaker 1: experiment with shit. And they were doing such like cool
Speaker 1: experimental stuff and they were like, I don't know, let's
Speaker 1: just try to see if this worked on Oh, let's
Speaker 1: just do this. And we were so excited by that.
Speaker 1: This was the idea that Matt and I came to
Speaker 1: harvardtown Or were like, this is a big risk, guys,
Speaker 1: but if the four of us as artists create a
Speaker 1: collective that is dedicated to just making these projects as
Speaker 1: best we can, creating this ip, developing these concepts, working
Speaker 1: with our friends, and most of all, governing the mood,
Speaker 1: the manner, the spirit, the culture of the place, that's
Speaker 1: what we wanted. So that's where we broke off and
Speaker 1: formed SPS, and then we've produced the last six seasons
Speaker 1: of Robot There and everything else, Crossing Swords, Buddy, Thunderstruck, everything,
Speaker 1: everything's been done here like it's opened up. You guys
Speaker 1: are freaking animating for the Mandalorian now, like you guys
Speaker 1: are freaking doing your thing. Dude, But Harve, can you
Speaker 1: tell us about how you guys started, because it's really
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting story. You know, the studio has
Speaker 1: a camper as a as a Winnebago as it's one
Speaker 1: of its logos and stuff like that. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us where that came from? Well, it started with me
Speaker 1: and Tanner, who were Buddy System Studios, and we formed
Speaker 1: that because in animation and stop motion you can't just
Speaker 1: it's hard to do something yourself. You gotta team up
Speaker 1: with someone. So we really believed if we team up together,
Speaker 1: we get our friends together, like a Buddy System, that
Speaker 1: we can do projects. And Matt and Seth were Stupid Monkey,
Speaker 1: so when we teamed up together, it's Buddy System meets
Speaker 1: Stupid Monkey, so we became Stupid Buddy Studios. That's kind
Speaker 1: of where the name came from, and when we all
Speaker 1: came together, we'd love the idea of camping and togetherness
Speaker 1: and like having an adventure. So the Bago, the Winnebago
Speaker 1: became kind of our spirit animal, kind of the true
Speaker 1: North and where we're going. It's the it's the real
Speaker 1: ride that we're all taken together. So the Winnebago was
Speaker 1: kind of like our jam. So that's where I'm sitting
Speaker 1: right now, is in in our original Winnebago that me
Speaker 1: and toowner had when we were teaming up doing projects
Speaker 1: just together on really scrappy budgets. It kind of became
Speaker 1: the symbol for the studio, which and that's that's inside
Speaker 1: the building that we animated Alamaba Jackson in, right, But
Speaker 1: how did you get that inside the How did you
Speaker 1: get it inside the door? First of all, well, back
Speaker 1: then the doors were big and there was no enclosure,
Speaker 1: so we drove it in and then we parked it
Speaker 1: over here right next to the window, so I can
Speaker 1: see outside of a beautiful burbank. But then we sealed
Speaker 1: it up. We sealed up the doors so we can
Speaker 1: have a shop and puppet department all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: So and then we also had to take out the engine,
Speaker 1: so this thing is not operational. It's stuck in here.
Speaker 1: So whenever we leave this building, we might have to
Speaker 1: just to light a match or just walk away. I
Speaker 1: don't really know because out of here, well, yeah, we
Speaker 1: drank it out. And then so so when you guys
Speaker 1: formed the company, Chris, were you there already or did
Speaker 1: you come much late? Like how recent? I can't I was.
Speaker 1: I joined up in twenty fifteen, and it was actually
Speaker 1: originally it was just to help with one project. It
Speaker 1: was this insane short that Town and Harvard made a
Speaker 1: buddy systems called Micromahan, which is incredible. People just look
Speaker 1: that up on Vima. But yeah, so I joined up
Speaker 1: to help develop that, and then I love the ethos
Speaker 1: of the place. I you know, I had worked a
Speaker 1: lot in animation and CG animation and just seeing a
Speaker 1: place where you had people like building stuff, you know,
Speaker 1: carpenters and grips and like it felt like a little
Speaker 1: live action, like a miniature of live action studio, and
Speaker 1: I was, I was just fascinated by that. So we
Speaker 1: and we hit it off, and slowly but surely I
Speaker 1: sort of started taking on more and more projects and
Speaker 1: then for the last three years, I've been head of development,
Speaker 1: so I had I helped develop all the TV shows
Speaker 1: and features and all the fun stuff that we're working
Speaker 1: on at the studio because let's go, I teamed up
Speaker 1: with these guys because when we might undersell himself, undersell himself.
Speaker 1: But Chris is one of the most special people that
Speaker 1: I have ever gotten the privilege of working with. And
Speaker 1: he's so good at this job and every aspect. It's
Speaker 1: a very difficult job to do development because you have
Speaker 1: to be both curious and have boundless energy and have
Speaker 1: a very patient temperament and be a good You have
Speaker 1: to be nice. You have to be nice because you're
Speaker 1: convincing people to do shit they don't want to do
Speaker 1: all the time. And then you really have to be
Speaker 1: able to lead with your heart and get emotionally invested
Speaker 1: in something which is scary to do as a person,
Speaker 1: especially on behalf of a fucking TV show. So Chris like,
Speaker 1: it's it's been a godsend. We feel like we are
Speaker 1: making the kind of stuff that we want to make,
Speaker 1: that we are putting the right kind of time and
Speaker 1: effort in the right place. So and I used to
Speaker 1: I used to get jealous when I found out Chris
Speaker 1: was working on other projects, no bullshit, because it felt
Speaker 1: like it felt like it was just me. When I
Speaker 1: was with Chris, you know what I mean. He makes
Speaker 1: you feel good. He makes it feel like, dude, it's
Speaker 1: just you and me, baby, it's you and me baby.
Speaker 1: And then he goes behind my back and he's working
Speaker 1: with other people like I I was with. I was
Speaker 1: talking about Sorry Donald, I just got off the phone
Speaker 1: with Disney. Plus, I was like, wait to say, it's
Speaker 1: Donald Donald. It's called polyamory and it's perfectly acceptable. Dude.
Speaker 1: He didn't inform me that we were in a polly
Speaker 1: relationship over that happen. If I would have known that,
Speaker 1: I would have been like, all, I bet it's made.
Speaker 1: He made it seem like that it was just me,
Speaker 1: And when I found out that it wasn't run Rue,
Speaker 1: I wanted him more. Yeah, obviously. Two. This is the
Speaker 1: this is the crazy part. It made me realize, Oh,
Speaker 1: this motherfucker works harder than I do. This dude works hard.
Speaker 1: This is one of the hardest motherfucking workers that I
Speaker 1: know right now. And because he would be able to
Speaker 1: be so invested in my thing, and then jump on
Speaker 1: a call with somebody else and be so invested in
Speaker 1: their thing, and then jump on another call with somebody
Speaker 1: else and be so invested in their thing, and then
Speaker 1: jump on another call. Like the list is endless. I
Speaker 1: was like, how many shows do you have about right now?
Speaker 1: He's like, I got quite a few in uh that
Speaker 1: I'm juggling right now, and Alabama was one of them.
Speaker 1: And I just I'll say it is I'll say this, Donald,
Speaker 1: you made it easy. Like the only thing we do
Speaker 1: at super Body is stuff that we really believe in,
Speaker 1: and you were You're so passionate about animation. This is
Speaker 1: such a clear idea, Like we always want to get
Speaker 1: behind an idea that's just really clear, and it's funny
Speaker 1: as how. I think it's perfect for the energy you
Speaker 1: bring to every you know, whether you're buying coffee and
Speaker 1: donuts for the whole crew or buying lunch for the
Speaker 1: whole crew. Like you dove into this and it was
Speaker 1: super easy to support you in making this crazy ass show.
Speaker 1: So it's been a blast. And yeah, we want to
Speaker 1: make more of an adult swim listening adult swim. We're
Speaker 1: gonna get started, We're gonna take a break and we'll
Speaker 1: be right back. Yo, we're back. We should probably talk
Speaker 1: about the show at some point, right, yeah, Hey, how
Speaker 1: soon are we allowed to start posting the opening? Right?
Speaker 1: Isn't that a thing we're gonna do? Like preview? We
Speaker 1: have to we gotta have to talk to adults from
Speaker 1: about that. Yeah, you could? You could play theme song?
Speaker 1: You can play the theme song, right can? I can
Speaker 1: we for people to listen to the Yeah? Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: Danil play three song right now? Play theme song right now?
Speaker 1: The Jack sign. He's a time trampling man doing a
Speaker 1: biss that he came woodbrue Wison hates blacks Harry has
Speaker 1: got his back oma sat in black. His story, Alabama
Speaker 1: Jackson jets. That's what I'm talking about, y'all. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm motherfucking talking about. That's good. Yea facta put up,
Speaker 1: put up. I don't think they heard it. Dannel play
Speaker 1: one more time? He baba Jack sign. He's a time
Speaker 1: trampling man doing a biss that he came woodbrue Wison
Speaker 1: hates blacks Harry has got his back oma sat in black.
Speaker 1: His story. He Lobamba Jackson, Lama jets. That's one of
Speaker 1: the things Donald is like the as this started coming together,
Speaker 1: as it really started coming together, like when we got Wanda,
Speaker 1: when when I heard the music for the first time,
Speaker 1: when I saw the way we're gonna get to use
Speaker 1: the monitors and the sliders, and I saw the puppets,
Speaker 1: I was like, God, this is really gonna fucking work.
Speaker 1: And as we've been putting the footage together, you've been
Speaker 1: the exact amount of both patient and hard working. You're
Speaker 1: a really good producer. And I know this is an
Speaker 1: easy dude, Like I warned you, but you have not
Speaker 1: shied away at all from responsibility. I truly followed your
Speaker 1: lead man, no doubt, and I think that, Oh I
Speaker 1: love you, know I love you. You know I love
Speaker 1: you too. What you do. Don't get mushy, don't get mushy,
Speaker 1: don't get mushy. Don't you get mushy. Guys, he actually
Speaker 1: said it. I say it all the time. Fuck you.
Speaker 1: I say it all the time. Every time we hang up,
Speaker 1: I say it, every time I see you. I say it.
Speaker 1: Don't even because all of so many of our friends
Speaker 1: have died that I never missed a chance to tell
Speaker 1: you how much I love you. That just got really dark, dude,
Speaker 1: did it. Yeah, it kind of did it kind of
Speaker 1: did kind of did it kind of did well? You
Speaker 1: never with me? Fine, Well you'll always know that, dude.
Speaker 1: That's a double negative. What does that mean You'll never
Speaker 1: not know never not. Yeah, you'll always never not. I
Speaker 1: mean you'll always know, got it? Yeah? Never times it's
Speaker 1: appropriate to make a double negative to emphasize you get
Speaker 1: it to j D Joel Daniel. Yes, before we have
Speaker 1: a very I know, we haven't just edit all this out.
Speaker 1: Is there anything is there anything we didn't Is there
Speaker 1: anything we didn't cover that we're supposed to cover on
Speaker 1: this uh, this first port um, well, you know, I
Speaker 1: think you guys you spoke a lot about why you
Speaker 1: guys came together and why you you know, like this
Speaker 1: initial idea. I think we could probably end on what
Speaker 1: you guys are hoping to see from fan reactions, you know,
Speaker 1: and and maybe you know, Donald, if there's like maybe
Speaker 1: maybe we can get more into that with your mom.
Speaker 1: But like what lessons you're hoping people takeaway since you're
Speaker 1: dealing with actual history right on. H To be honest
Speaker 1: with you, for the for the fans out there, what's
Speaker 1: important for me is that you guys just check it out.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it'll absorb into your into your into your brains,
Speaker 1: and you will. And I really do believe you'll come
Speaker 1: back for the next episode, and then the next episode,
Speaker 1: and then the next episode. But getting you to watch
Speaker 1: the first episode is my goal. That's my true goal.
Speaker 1: And then we'll see how it all plays out, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. I think we've got a really
Speaker 1: dope show that has a lot of you know, it's
Speaker 1: fast paced, it's got it's got action, and then it's
Speaker 1: got a little bit of a history lesson in there
Speaker 1: for everybody. But it's, as Seth said, it's not preachy.
Speaker 1: We're not in your face talking about it, you know.
Speaker 1: And so mind you got Donald, plus you got Donald
Speaker 1: the want of Pikes, and well then there's Donald and
Speaker 1: Seth Green, Right, that's a dynamite cast already, that is it.
Speaker 1: And we've also been bringing on a really cool guest cast. Um,
Speaker 1: it's I'm so back and proud of this man. I'm
Speaker 1: so proud of this, like because it's we we both
Speaker 1: grew up on a lot of these shows. The eighties
Speaker 1: was a very different time where entertainment programming was focused
Speaker 1: on a bit of education, mixed in a little bit
Speaker 1: of like basic guidance for how to be a person,
Speaker 1: how to be kind, how to not put too much
Speaker 1: sauce on your food, or how to even acknowledge when
Speaker 1: you've made a mistake and move forward, and because knowing
Speaker 1: is half the battle. The more the more you know,
Speaker 1: you know. It's somewhat along the two thousands that, like
Speaker 1: programming became more about catching eyes from the news to
Speaker 1: the tabloids, like it became all about sensationalization, and so
Speaker 1: the the the opportunity to give little bits of real history,
Speaker 1: like basic history too, in a way that doesn't feel educational,
Speaker 1: in a way that feels like you've got an emotional
Speaker 1: investment than it, like you need to know more, like
Speaker 1: you're learning along with this character from a series of
Speaker 1: experts that was a really it's just Ocdonald. It's come
Speaker 1: together very well and I can't wait for I'm so
Speaker 1: excited for people. I am and with that. And we
Speaker 1: did we did take liberties, we did take liberties. So
Speaker 1: so I think it's like the great and then it's
Speaker 1: an occasionally true story I want everyone to know because
Speaker 1: because tell the true first, we're talking about here dogs, right,
Speaker 1: I feel like, I feel like we're overpaizing educational components
Speaker 1: of this and that. Well, no, that I'm not. There's just,
Speaker 1: like I said, there's just a little bit of history
Speaker 1: in there that people might not have known or they
Speaker 1: did know. You know, a lot a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't know that Woodrow Wilson was a very racist president.
Speaker 1: He just so happened to be like, yeah, like the racist.
Speaker 1: What did the lawyers, what did the lawyers saying that?
Speaker 1: When we were trying to get this cleared, the lawyers
Speaker 1: were like, well he's here's a notorious racist. So this
Speaker 1: is fine. So we're not well documented. Yeah, we're not
Speaker 1: well document that he was very racist. So because in
Speaker 1: the theme song, if you guys listen, there's a line
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson hates blacks, and it's true. That's all that's
Speaker 1: all needs the same. Yeah, okay, So I love the
Speaker 1: most about the theme song. Is it as just the facts? Man? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: doing the best blacks, Harry's got his back history. Come on, yeah,
Speaker 1: Alabama Jackson. With that, let's bring in the theme song writer,
Speaker 1: uh Bert and my mom. We'll be joining us right now,
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, This zoom and podcast is getting so crowded.
Speaker 1: But that's how we do here on Fake Doctors Real Friends.
Speaker 1: This is a very special episode of Fake Doctor's Real Friends.
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Shirley Faison and
Speaker 1: Bert Price. Oh, thunders, applause, thunders, applause. Ma, you see
Speaker 1: he's on. Are you with me? Yes? Christ see Chris Seth.
Speaker 1: When's the last time you saw Seth? We were on
Speaker 1: that one zoom early on in real life it's been
Speaker 1: quite star Yeah, yeah, yes, Mom, Tell everybody where you're
Speaker 1: at right now. I'm in my office. Well, what's what's
Speaker 1: this office? That? Okay? Okay, So during the pandemic, I
Speaker 1: decided to open my own talent agency thunderous applause dental.
Speaker 1: So I'm Seth after a pretty fland child. So, if
Speaker 1: you're out there and you need an agent, and you
Speaker 1: might be in the metropolitan area or in the Tri
Speaker 1: state area, Shirley Phason, what's the name of your agency? Oh,
Speaker 1: A Dooty Rose Talent Agency, A Dooney Rose Talent Agency.
Speaker 1: Do you want to give them? Is there something a
Speaker 1: website or something? Yes, it's called a Dooty Rose Talent
Speaker 1: dot com A d U M M I r O
Speaker 1: S E. Talent t A l e nt dot com.
Speaker 1: Thunderous applause, then thunderous applause for my mom. Okay, and
Speaker 1: then we got Bert Price in the house. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be honest with Joe. I've known Bert for how
Speaker 1: many years now, thirty years now almost maybe twenty seven, Yes,
Speaker 1: and he took my younger brother Olamida under his wing
Speaker 1: and taught him the ins and outs of the music industry.
Speaker 1: And for people who have listened to fake doctor's real friends,
Speaker 1: you've heard some of Olamid's music guests who helped elaminate
Speaker 1: with that Bert Price. So when it came time to
Speaker 1: freaking make a soundtrack for Alabama Jackson and a theme
Speaker 1: for Alabama Jackson, it was only right to go to
Speaker 1: the one man that has been doing right by my
Speaker 1: family since he met us. But you forgot about forgot
Speaker 1: about the records that we did together. Well we made well,
Speaker 1: the records we made together, that's we don't don't nobody
Speaker 1: want to listen to it anyway. So Bert, my mom
Speaker 1: wrote on this with me, and then Bert I somehow
Speaker 1: convinced him to probably do more than we paid him
Speaker 1: for to make some music for us. And when you
Speaker 1: guys watch the show and you listen to the soundtrack
Speaker 1: that accompanied the soundtrack that accompanies the show, you're gonna
Speaker 1: be very impressed. And I want to thank you both
Speaker 1: for being on here with us. Wow, thank you. Shoot
Speaker 1: you deserve all the praise. Bert, you deserve all the praise.
Speaker 1: Surely this I mean, like I've been saying, how proud
Speaker 1: I am MacDonald. I know everyone's exploding with pride. But
Speaker 1: also both of your contributions to this invaluable. So thank you,
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, no doubt. So let's get into this. Mom,
Speaker 1: had you ever written before? When you've done this? When
Speaker 1: when I called you up and I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I got one extra slot or a writer, do you
Speaker 1: want any Okay? So, so I had never written like
Speaker 1: a script for film or television, but I did write
Speaker 1: a m a book called If Walls Could Talk, which
Speaker 1: was basically um about the Brownstone in Harlem and all
Speaker 1: the people who lived in it. So what is your
Speaker 1: Your background is pretty much a historian type of like okay, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: you went to college for black history. Yeah, I got
Speaker 1: a degree in African American studies. And so we when
Speaker 1: when I called you up and I was like, I
Speaker 1: need you to write with me personally. It was before
Speaker 1: you all the knowledge that you had obtained in college
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and so I was trying to
Speaker 1: pick your brain. And so you were actually the one
Speaker 1: who came up with the idea of Woodrow Wilson being
Speaker 1: the bad I also I was trying to find a
Speaker 1: bad guy to be Alabama Jackson's nemesis. And you were like, well,
Speaker 1: what about Woodrow Wilson? And I was like, well, what's up?
Speaker 1: I had no clue about any of this. This is
Speaker 1: what Seth was talking about earlier. Like, for real, as
Speaker 1: a young African American male growing up in New York City,
Speaker 1: the amount of my own history that I know is
Speaker 1: very little, and that's a problem. And I the guilt
Speaker 1: that I had when freaking thinking about that is really
Speaker 1: also what went into Alabama Jackson. It was like, I
Speaker 1: can't be this person anymore. I have to know a
Speaker 1: lot more than I know now. And my mom had
Speaker 1: all of this knowledge, and I, you know, I used
Speaker 1: to laugh that shit off like she could. I remember
Speaker 1: one year my mom came at me with the gift
Speaker 1: was it was for Christmas, and she literally figured out
Speaker 1: the book was like the size of an encyclopedia, and
Speaker 1: it was my family's history, my entire family's history. She
Speaker 1: got it all the way back to Nigeria to Africa,
Speaker 1: like my family's history. And I looked at it like,
Speaker 1: oh wow, that's cool, and that was it. But I
Speaker 1: had all of this knowledge in front of me, and
Speaker 1: I was taking it for granted, and so I wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure I didn't do that again. And that's
Speaker 1: how that's why I freaking got you. Boy, Mama, Are
Speaker 1: you mad at me? Can I look at that book
Speaker 1: at some point that it's your mom's house, it's my house.
Speaker 1: Can I come by and check that out? Mom? Are
Speaker 1: you mad at me for admitting that? Just now? I
Speaker 1: mad at you? But when you but I saw, I
Speaker 1: gave it to you just laid it down and that
Speaker 1: was a lot of hard work. But yeah, but uh,
Speaker 1: are you mad? No? I'm not mad? Okay cool? And
Speaker 1: then Donald, your mother is the type of person that
Speaker 1: understands that human beings will make mistakes and that it's
Speaker 1: possible to correct those mistakes simply by learning new information
Speaker 1: and making an effort, and boom, there it is. And
Speaker 1: I was very happy to have her on board as
Speaker 1: a writer. Yeah, are you madma? So of course, okay,
Speaker 1: just check it, just check it. But surely do you
Speaker 1: do you love me just a little bit more than
Speaker 1: shoot a little don't answer that, dow that. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you're actually the person that came up with the idea
Speaker 1: that Woodrow Wilson was this. I mean, you told me
Speaker 1: about it. Can we dig a little bit into that
Speaker 1: real quick? Wilson was an interesting person in that UM.
Speaker 1: Prior to becoming a president, he was actually president of
Speaker 1: a college UM and that elected UH with the black vote,
Speaker 1: and he made all these promises and what he did
Speaker 1: was basically we and all the promises that he made
Speaker 1: UM and there's a transcript of um Uh it was fortune.
Speaker 1: UM went to the White House and Woodrow Wilson. They argued,
Speaker 1: and then Woodrow Wilson threw him out of the White
Speaker 1: House because he didn't live up to his promises. And
Speaker 1: one of the things that he did was he was
Speaker 1: the president that kind of put the the nail in
Speaker 1: the coffin the black history and the contributions that black
Speaker 1: people made in this country all the way from like
Speaker 1: from what I understand, like that his inauguration, had clansmen there,
Speaker 1: and he was you know, Birth of a Nation came out,
Speaker 1: gave you Birth of the Nation of the White House,
Speaker 1: and if you remember, Birth of the Nation was depicted
Speaker 1: black people as yeah, depicted black people as thugs and
Speaker 1: rapists and and uh, you know, killers. And after this
Speaker 1: movie came out, Yeah, he debuted at the White House
Speaker 1: and said it's American treasure. It's a classic. And people
Speaker 1: went and saw the movie and then started lynching people
Speaker 1: in the street, black people in the street after they
Speaker 1: saw this movie. Ah, this is the t this is Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was a movie, a kind of a how to
Speaker 1: to be the most effectively murderous racist possible. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it and this is where we have a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of the systemic racism that we're dealing with
Speaker 1: now in America comes from comes from that. So he
Speaker 1: was the perfect bad guy and Seth you played him wonderfully,
Speaker 1: thanks man. No doubt. He's kind of a dick, which
Speaker 1: is always funny to play, right, we should we should.
Speaker 1: We should also say that this show is a comedy, right,
Speaker 1: This show is so powered for pound funny that you're
Speaker 1: not gonna really think that you're learning anything right, You're
Speaker 1: gonna have so much fun watching this show that by
Speaker 1: the end of it, when you find yourself out with
Speaker 1: your friends and you just randomly recall some incredibly important
Speaker 1: African American history facts, people would be like, Damn'd you
Speaker 1: go to school for that? You're like, nah, I watched
Speaker 1: Alabama Jackson. I can't wait. Man, I'm sorry, I can't
Speaker 1: wait either. Okay, so that's how you got involved. Mom,
Speaker 1: you were the historian. So when we started writing all
Speaker 1: of this, did you ever feel like you were out
Speaker 1: of your league? Well? You know what was really interesting?
Speaker 1: What's that when I agreed to it, I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that we were going to be assumed for eight hours
Speaker 1: of the day. So after the first day, I said, okay,
Speaker 1: so I'm on the learning curve here, and I bought
Speaker 1: this program so that I could actually type in the
Speaker 1: script the way that you guys were doing it, and
Speaker 1: and I just I just okay, I'm here to learn
Speaker 1: and maybe just try to make a contribution. We made
Speaker 1: a great contribution. Actually, some of the one of my
Speaker 1: favorite episodes is the Nelson Mandela one. I'm getting a
Speaker 1: lot of I got. I had to talk with adult
Speaker 1: swim today and they were like, Yo, there's a possibility
Speaker 1: that people are gonna come at you because of the
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela episode. Is that I know that there's a
Speaker 1: lot that we can't talk about because all the SMP
Speaker 1: is actually really it's a it's a different level of NBA.
Speaker 1: But what are they only scared because it's Mandela? What
Speaker 1: are they? What's that? Because honestly, that episode for me
Speaker 1: is so it's like, I don't want to spoil this.
Speaker 1: But Harriet in that episode because Wanda, again, we recorded
Speaker 1: all our episodes at once, so we were kind of
Speaker 1: finding it as we went, and we asked her to
Speaker 1: just like add live a bunch of stuff and then
Speaker 1: we we did in episodes in places, and we inadvertently
Speaker 1: gave Harriet her own catchphrase and it reveals in that
Speaker 1: episode I can't wait um. And then also I'm at
Speaker 1: best plays Mandela and it's brilliant. It's brilliant. So are
Speaker 1: they just scared? Like we should? I feel like we
Speaker 1: should say that. I feel like we should. We should
Speaker 1: say the structure, like how we structure these really short
Speaker 1: episodes because there's a there's like a thread from episode.
Speaker 1: How we do that? Yeah? Yeah, So the format is, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's only we only have like three minutes to
Speaker 1: tell these relatively complex stories. So the format is we
Speaker 1: always drop Alabama and Harriet Tubman, Donald and Wanda Sykes
Speaker 1: into the middle of whatever is going on, and the
Speaker 1: audience just kind of has to catch up. And in
Speaker 1: every instance, Woodrow Wilson has done something to try to
Speaker 1: subvert Black history, so he's tried to stop it from happening.
Speaker 1: And which is you know, which is a metaphor for
Speaker 1: like it's happened when we erase black history, right when
Speaker 1: Woodrow Wilson said, Okay, we're not gonna we're not gonna
Speaker 1: teach anybody about anything that's that's happened with black histories.
Speaker 1: So they get dropped into this and then they've got
Speaker 1: to figure out a way to stop Woodrow and his
Speaker 1: henchmen from subverting Black history. And and so it all
Speaker 1: happens really quickly, and there's we feature a major historical
Speaker 1: figure in every episode. And like I said, we take liberties.
Speaker 1: We've taken some liberties with Nelson Mandela, but the idea
Speaker 1: is that we're highlighting these people. We've taken a lot
Speaker 1: of Yeah, we've taken a little seat we'll see, but
Speaker 1: our point, our point is very clear that Mandela's freedom,
Speaker 1: his very his own agency over his own thoughts were
Speaker 1: stolen from him for years, and things happened to people
Speaker 1: that are imprisoned. I mean, that's why I don't don't
Speaker 1: even get me started on that. That's not go any further.
Speaker 1: Let's go. But the idea that a man like Mandela
Speaker 1: was so specifically intentionally targetedly persecuted gives us a lot
Speaker 1: of leeway to demonstrate what that might look like before
Speaker 1: he's able to become him really his real self again,
Speaker 1: Like we we need our show to kind of show
Speaker 1: him at what our imaginable worst would be to give
Speaker 1: him room to be saved. He had to show how
Speaker 1: much the KK cabal had compromised Mandela for him to
Speaker 1: be out of the picture, for aj and Um and
Speaker 1: Harriet to have a task right give him back from that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'll give an analogy that doesn't ruin an episode
Speaker 1: because we didn't use it, but it's a it's an example.
Speaker 1: Like everyone talks about Muhammad Ali and like his bike
Speaker 1: got stolen, and if his bike hadn't got stolen, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have gone and talked to the cop who ended
Speaker 1: up teaching him to be a boxer, right, And so
Speaker 1: the idea would be that Woodrow being a time traveling
Speaker 1: guy knowing that that's a seminal moment in Muhammad Ali's
Speaker 1: life or Cassius Clay at the time, would prevent that
Speaker 1: moment from happening. And then there's no Muhammad Muhammad Ali.
Speaker 1: There's there's no athlete activists, there's all So that's the
Speaker 1: premise of the show is there's these like seminal moments,
Speaker 1: some of them actual and some of them that we've
Speaker 1: just imagined in all these historical figures lives, and Alabama
Speaker 1: and Harriet have to make sure those seminal moments happen
Speaker 1: or Black history will change and American history will change
Speaker 1: and the global history will change. So that's like there's
Speaker 1: super high stakes. But then you also have a character
Speaker 1: in Donald playing Alabama Jackson who is not fully committed
Speaker 1: to the assignment yet, and then you have Harriet who
Speaker 1: is like fully because and that's where that's where the
Speaker 1: conflict between the two of them comes in, is she's
Speaker 1: trying to be like, look, I sacrificed my entire life
Speaker 1: for the cause. You need to get with the program,
Speaker 1: and that's that's where their growth, and that's where their
Speaker 1: journey goes, and that's what's you know, the chemistry between
Speaker 1: the two of them is so fun. Don't give away
Speaker 1: to show, Chris, I'm not, but I just I just
Speaker 1: realized in this moment it's a little bit like Terminator
Speaker 1: too and Harriet Sarah Connor and aj is baby John Connor. Yes, yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's a moment where she's like, don't you realize
Speaker 1: how serious this is? And he's like, I guess I
Speaker 1: like that analogy. Wait, Donald, can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about what it's like working with your mom. It's
Speaker 1: a joy working with my mom. I know, I'm safe
Speaker 1: with my mom. I know if I say some dumb
Speaker 1: shit should be like that was some dumb shit. Please please,
Speaker 1: please forgive my son for saying some dumb shita. My
Speaker 1: mom has the sweetest voice ever in the history. And
Speaker 1: she's also I mean, she's protecting me pretty much my
Speaker 1: whole life. So having her in a writer's room with
Speaker 1: a bunch of seasoned writers, and you know, this is
Speaker 1: the first thing I've ever written in my life, you know,
Speaker 1: and this is the first thing that my mom. This
Speaker 1: is the first type of uh. This is the first
Speaker 1: scripted format that is that right? Is that the right
Speaker 1: way to say? It is the first scripted format that
Speaker 1: my mom has ever had to be a part of
Speaker 1: in writing, and so we were very new to it.
Speaker 1: But thanks to Ashley and Lee, we we got through good.
Speaker 1: But I said some dumb shit in the writer's room
Speaker 1: and my mom was very good. Yeah, it's a safe
Speaker 1: My mom was very good to be like, you know,
Speaker 1: you know, she protected me and so it was very
Speaker 1: good to work with my mom. And also I was
Speaker 1: very nervous because I put my mom in this situation
Speaker 1: and I didn't necessarily set her up for success. I
Speaker 1: put her. I just threw her to the wolves and
Speaker 1: threw her to the sharks, and she was able to
Speaker 1: swim easily with them. And I am so I gotta
Speaker 1: be honest with you, Mom, I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of of the fact that that that
Speaker 1: this wasn't something that you were necessarily eager to do,
Speaker 1: but you knew I needed you, and you stepped up
Speaker 1: because you're my mom and came through like a champ.
Speaker 1: And so I'm so proud of you. Thank you. I
Speaker 1: thank you. I thank you tremendously, and we'll see how
Speaker 1: this all plays out now Bert, But wait, wait, Donald,
Speaker 1: can I just say one thing, Because you mentioned your
Speaker 1: mother's voice, how important your mother's voices. I would just
Speaker 1: like to say that in all the years that I've
Speaker 1: known Shirley, I've never heard her raise her voice. She's never,
Speaker 1: in my presence or in my experience, needed to raise
Speaker 1: her voice. She has a confident, quiet strength that is
Speaker 1: both gentle and formidable. So the value of her voice
Speaker 1: in the room, like I said earlier, is priceless. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'll give you flowers all day. I love you all.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited this is happening. I can't wait for
Speaker 1: the people to see it. Ladies and gentlemen, say goodbye
Speaker 1: to Seth Green, Chris Waters, John Hart, thank me show
Speaker 1: you guys are great. And when when Donald told us
Speaker 1: Shirley was coming on, I unlike said, I didn't know
Speaker 1: his beautiful mother, but I had heard her on the podcast,
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, she could definitely be in
Speaker 1: the room. So big Dog's real friend. In all honesty,
Speaker 1: the room was closed. We had our two writers, it
Speaker 1: was Lee and Ashley and you. Because we made this
Speaker 1: thing with like two dimes rubbed together, and Chris, you
Speaker 1: said to me, You literally said to me, do you
Speaker 1: want to get your mom in there? We should get
Speaker 1: your mom in there. And I was like, Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: put my mom in there. And that's wait. I think
Speaker 1: it's also important to say, Donald, so many people try
Speaker 1: and put their family over and the whole thing falls apart,
Speaker 1: like not everybody's not everybody's the waynes like, not everybody
Speaker 1: can do that. So I'm glad that the people you
Speaker 1: brought in all your family that they that they're like
Speaker 1: experts at the job, or this would not have worked.
Speaker 1: Wait till they wait till they hear you rapped, Wait
Speaker 1: till we hear that, like your family came through. You
Speaker 1: should play play the guide track. I feel like we
Speaker 1: should play it. No, we can't play it. We can't
Speaker 1: play it. We can't. Love y'all, love you guy. So
Speaker 1: speaking of the rap, Bert, yes, speaking of bringing my family,
Speaker 1: and Bert is my family. You are my family member. Uh,
Speaker 1: you are actually in the living room that I grew
Speaker 1: up in right now, hanging out. Yeah. Bert is a
Speaker 1: musical genius. A lot of people don't know this about him,
Speaker 1: and those who do know this about him. Those who
Speaker 1: do know this about him run to him for music
Speaker 1: and help when they need it. And that's who I
Speaker 1: ran to when the show needed music. Like if you
Speaker 1: watched the show without sound, without music, it's a completely
Speaker 1: different show. And Bert stepped in and and and crushed it.
Speaker 1: I would really like to I would Bert you crushed it,
Speaker 1: Like thank you crushed it. I would really like to
Speaker 1: get into how you how how you got into music,
Speaker 1: what and then what your idea was when you started
Speaker 1: thinking about Alabama Jackson. Wow, Okay, long story short. I
Speaker 1: started pretty much like you did. Well, like you inspired
Speaker 1: your brothers to do. You came from a family that
Speaker 1: sang and performed the same thing with me. I came
Speaker 1: My brothers were musicians and I wanted to do it,
Speaker 1: and I would always get thrown out of their band practice,
Speaker 1: you know, all that kind of stuff, until finally I
Speaker 1: just got my own stuff and got better than them,
Speaker 1: and now they begged me to play with them. But now,
Speaker 1: Alabama Jackson, man, when you gave me the idea? First
Speaker 1: of all, I have very I mean I have a
Speaker 1: background and post production, but justin like doing commercial jingles
Speaker 1: and stuff like that. Actually, that's one of the ways
Speaker 1: we kind of connected to that. John Silberman Music. I
Speaker 1: used to work at It's a Jingle House in New York,
Speaker 1: and you were your group is over there, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we were over there. Yeah yeah, yes, right. So I
Speaker 1: worked on the Coca Cola Olympic spot there for ninety
Speaker 1: six Olympics and stuff, a lot of things. So I
Speaker 1: did that kind of stuff, but never for a TV show.
Speaker 1: Always wanted to do some kind of scoring, some kind
Speaker 1: of a you know, a movie television project. So when
Speaker 1: you said yes you heard me, we were like, You're like,
Speaker 1: all right, didn't payment. I was like, yes, I'm telling you. Yes.
Speaker 1: You're like, yeah, I'm telling you. It doesn't like yeah,
Speaker 1: and so the inspirational honestly, you sound like Alabama Jackson.
Speaker 1: First of all, that's why y'all heard so many banjos.
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I just like you said Alabama,
Speaker 1: and I grabbed a banjo hanging over there and talk
Speaker 1: and that's how it started. And then you sent the
Speaker 1: demo of the the theme song, and then I just
Speaker 1: we listened to the lyrics. I came up with one
Speaker 1: idea kind of so so kind of well we were
Speaker 1: we were like we were like we kind of wanted
Speaker 1: country and you're like, okay, and then you said to us,
Speaker 1: you were like, I gotta be honest with you. Shoot
Speaker 1: this don't that's that, dude, We gotta Then I just
Speaker 1: thought about black exploitation, bro, I love like you know,
Speaker 1: like which way is up? Let's do it again. All
Speaker 1: of those you know, movies from the seventies, the music
Speaker 1: was killing. They had Curtis Mayfield, they had James Brown
Speaker 1: doing it. So like the whole idea was like, you know,
Speaker 1: I did want to keep it period because you're driving
Speaker 1: through time. He went to the sixties at one point,
Speaker 1: so I got to give it sixties vibe, but eighties vibe,
Speaker 1: seventies vibe, whatever. But I still wanted to have that
Speaker 1: that seventies black exploitation kind of energy to it. And
Speaker 1: then you guys also sent the Chips reference like the
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of the hokyness of the eighties
Speaker 1: a little bit. So a lot of it is tongue
Speaker 1: in cheek, but we tried to really do a good
Speaker 1: job and make it funky. Your little brothers on guitar
Speaker 1: playing all the wild wah stuff, God is on conas
Speaker 1: playing off the custom stuff if you really wanted to
Speaker 1: sound like something straight out of a exploit blaxploitation movie.
Speaker 1: So and then we hired and then we hired my
Speaker 1: Zelle to write the rap for Alabama Jackson. And you know,
Speaker 1: it became a true family affair at that point. Like
Speaker 1: it's like I got I got literally my brothers, my
Speaker 1: mother don't. I don't even know what to I guess
Speaker 1: my my my brother, Bert, you are my brother, you know,
Speaker 1: even though you date my mother, you are my brother.
Speaker 1: I'm just so happy that it all worked out. You know,
Speaker 1: it was a pleasure. And you your rap skills point
Speaker 1: the shit. Yeah, I'm about to say Alabama's rap skills
Speaker 1: are on point. So we're gonna take another break, and
Speaker 1: then when we come back, we're gonna bring in Ashley
Speaker 1: Ray and Lee House and we are back. Ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: give it up for Ashley Ray and Lee how stunderous
Speaker 1: applaud every time. Great, you haven't seen anything yet either,
Speaker 1: Huh Nope, I can't wait. I'm have adult swim sending
Speaker 1: you guys this stuff. This is a pretty fast turnaround.
Speaker 1: I was surprised. Yeah, I was like, okay, I was
Speaker 1: like I thought they were still making puppets. Probably no,
Speaker 1: we we finished the whole thing. I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you guys about it though, too. Like you know,
Speaker 1: I've known Lee for a really long time, since I
Speaker 1: first moved out to Los Angeles and Ashley and I
Speaker 1: had a conversation together. I knew right away when meeting
Speaker 1: Ashley that she had to be a part of the project.
Speaker 1: I knew right away. Chris Waters introduced us and then Lee.
Speaker 1: Chris was like, I got a guy named Lee House,
Speaker 1: And I was like, wait a second, Lee, how Lee House?
Speaker 1: Does he go by house? He goes? No, he goes
Speaker 1: by Lee But you know, I was like, he doesn't
Speaker 1: go I was like, wait, hold on. Lee and I
Speaker 1: used to go play paintball together. We used to to smoke,
Speaker 1: we together. We used to do a lot of things
Speaker 1: back in the day that when we were very young.
Speaker 1: And then you went on to be like a sag
Speaker 1: rep at one point, and you were a writer and
Speaker 1: a Why don't you tell us about how you came
Speaker 1: into the industry. It's crazy. My first job out here
Speaker 1: was actually working with ice Cube, but a Lynch Mob records.
Speaker 1: He and I got close over time, and I actually
Speaker 1: went on tour with him. So six months of being
Speaker 1: in La I'm on tour with Q you know, rolling
Speaker 1: with the Lynch Mob. I wasn't necessarily cut out for
Speaker 1: West Coast gangster rap, so I became a PA. I
Speaker 1: did that for a few years, and then I got
Speaker 1: a job with the Screen Actors Guild, where I was
Speaker 1: an outside field rep and I would go to any
Speaker 1: set that the SAG actors were on. I actually went
Speaker 1: to the scrubs pilot, I remember, I do remember that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: After that, I started writing jokes for Flex. He got
Speaker 1: one on one. He put me on one on one,
Speaker 1: and you know, I've been in this crazy business of
Speaker 1: writing ever since. That's nuts. And now, Ashley, you're a
Speaker 1: stand up comic. You're a fire stand up comic too,
Speaker 1: by the way, no doubt, no doubt. But uh, what
Speaker 1: brought you to the business? How did you? How did
Speaker 1: you find yourself here? I lived in Chicago, That's where
Speaker 1: I started doing stand up. I started working for the
Speaker 1: Onion back in twenty sixteen, and I loved comedy writing.
Speaker 1: I had worked in advertising for a long time, got
Speaker 1: kind of sick of it, realized I just wanted to
Speaker 1: make people laugh. So I made that that switch realized.
Speaker 1: I liked being on stage two. I think there's this
Speaker 1: expectation that when you're a black woman who performs, you
Speaker 1: do like spoken word or like storytelling or something. And
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I just want to tell like,
Speaker 1: you know, like jokes about butts and stuff. Let's just
Speaker 1: focus on the funny stuff. And that's kind of where
Speaker 1: I found my lane. I came out to LA and
Speaker 1: got to work with Maria Bamford. She'd been she was
Speaker 1: working on an audiobook and I helped edit it, and
Speaker 1: obviously she is amazing with an animation and voice work,
Speaker 1: and that got me really into the idea of like
Speaker 1: writing an animated pilot, getting more into you know, doing
Speaker 1: stuff for adult Swim, and kind of realizing, you know what,
Speaker 1: I think a black woman could make these kind of
Speaker 1: jokes and like make a show that captures this voice.
Speaker 1: And that's what I wanted to do, is like make
Speaker 1: that kind of black woman, stoner comedy that I saw
Speaker 1: in shows like Laser Wolf and stuff. So I was
Speaker 1: really excited when this opportunity came up. And I was also,
Speaker 1: I want to say, very excited to work with Lee
Speaker 1: because I knew his work. You worked with Trevor Moore
Speaker 1: from The Whitest Kids, you know, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, this is amazing, like just icons, working
Speaker 1: with icons that inspire me. So yeah, it's always great
Speaker 1: when you get to work with people that you love,
Speaker 1: that you love to listen to or watch men, and
Speaker 1: so that's how I felt about the two of you.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, I was so proud to
Speaker 1: work with somebody that I know, that I knew from
Speaker 1: back in the day, who had pushed his way all
Speaker 1: the way up and is now freaking working on And
Speaker 1: then actually, you just come with such with this aura.
Speaker 1: You know, there's just something so magnetic and amazing about you.
Speaker 1: You know, it's true, you could you could shut it up,
Speaker 1: you can laugh it off. I'm excited to work with you,
Speaker 1: are you? I know, but there's something really special and
Speaker 1: magical about you. Like I said to Chris, I was like, look,
Speaker 1: if anything, I have to have Ashley ray on this
Speaker 1: bad boy. He's like, all right, all right, we'll see
Speaker 1: if we can work it out. And then Mom, of
Speaker 1: course you're an icon forever to me. You'll always be
Speaker 1: an icon to me, no matter what. You know. I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so I didn't even realize you were. I thought
Speaker 1: they said that you were even on the call. Hello.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to see you again. Oh my,
Speaker 1: like seeing that you were in there, that was when
Speaker 1: I was. I just was so excited because for me,
Speaker 1: it was like the first time I'd been in a
Speaker 1: room with like all black writers and it just was this.
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, yeah, this is it. Like everyone
Speaker 1: just had these different perspectives that were so interesting. I
Speaker 1: was so excited from the moment we started. Okay, so
Speaker 1: let's get into how we did this. Man. Like, our
Speaker 1: first day in the writer's room was a bunch of
Speaker 1: story breaking and trying to really you know, I think
Speaker 1: our first week was that when did we write our
Speaker 1: first script? Do you think when was the first script
Speaker 1: finally written? Oh? It right? It took a wow, right,
Speaker 1: like yeah, you know, we feel like we had hit
Speaker 1: out kind of all the beats or different stories we wanted,
Speaker 1: and then it was like, oh, we gotta we gotta
Speaker 1: get this like scripted out because I had already left
Speaker 1: for tour by the time. Yeah, you were on tour
Speaker 1: by the time we started writing already, and I was
Speaker 1: like in my car, like my friends driving me and
Speaker 1: I'm like on my laptop like joining in over zoom
Speaker 1: in the car. Uh. And so I feel like it
Speaker 1: was probably like into the second or third week we
Speaker 1: started getting we finally started to get the scripts. That's
Speaker 1: not usual, I guess. Yeah. I would also say that Donald,
Speaker 1: like you as an actor brought so much to the
Speaker 1: room because you would act out so much of it
Speaker 1: as we were like throwing out ideas that I think
Speaker 1: we could all see the scenes like we immediately just
Speaker 1: started doing voices and bound off each other and being like, yes,
Speaker 1: this is a scene, this is building into it. So
Speaker 1: that was a huge help man, because you you know,
Speaker 1: you would embody Alabama so well, we knew what to
Speaker 1: write next, you know, and and how to play off
Speaker 1: of you, which is different than most writers room where
Speaker 1: you don't have the actor in there. Right. No, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I'm gonna be honest with you, guys. I
Speaker 1: felt like a fish out of water because and I
Speaker 1: was like, how can I make a contribution to this
Speaker 1: because you know, first of all, the two of you
Speaker 1: are very seasoned, and you know, like I'm gonna tell
Speaker 1: you something right now, Both of your scripts didn't get
Speaker 1: touched when you see them you'll be like, oh shit,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what I wrote. Not it's crazy, dude, first
Speaker 1: time ever it's crazy. There might be like a word
Speaker 1: here or a word there, but for the most part
Speaker 1: that shit stayed intact, like you know, both of you
Speaker 1: so uh, it's it's it's just it's just you know,
Speaker 1: you could tell who the season's season ones were and
Speaker 1: who wasn't. And I had to find a way to
Speaker 1: fit in, and I was so I was so nervous
Speaker 1: for my mom. I was like, how's my mom going
Speaker 1: to find a way to fit in? And then she
Speaker 1: found her way into and it was just like we
Speaker 1: got a really good thing going right here. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: let's keep it going. Yo. To me, that was one
Speaker 1: of the best rooms I've ever been in. I mean,
Speaker 1: everybody got along, everybody was cool, nobody was extra sensitive.
Speaker 1: You know, it's it can get crazy in some rooms. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys have been in rooms before, so you know. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think there's like the expectation kind of like oh,
Speaker 1: adult swim humor and this kind of thing. But I
Speaker 1: thought we all just like brought the weirdest ideas, the
Speaker 1: funniest that like no one was afraid to really to
Speaker 1: really get into, you know, the weirdest stuff that came
Speaker 1: to us. It was really a room where I think
Speaker 1: we were all just really comfortable. Yeah. Yeah, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you, guys, man, I'm so excited for you to
Speaker 1: see this show. We got seven episodes. We didn't do
Speaker 1: eight episodes. It went from ten to eight to seven.
Speaker 1: But they're all very well fleshed out, and the arc
Speaker 1: for this is amazing. I would love to I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get on a text right now and send them, send you, guys,
Speaker 1: all of the all of the all of the shows
Speaker 1: so you can watch him. Bert got to see everything
Speaker 1: from storyboard. Bert was there from storyboard all the way
Speaker 1: to uh mix pretty much because yeah, because he was
Speaker 1: doing the music on it. So he's got he's gotten
Speaker 1: to see he's gotten to see every version of each
Speaker 1: one of these scripts. Yeah, I'm so excited. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: finding out that Wanda Sykes was able to voice Hair,
Speaker 1: that to me was like wow, okay, okay, this is
Speaker 1: gonna be amazing. I just being in this room it
Speaker 1: was so special because I felt like we each had
Speaker 1: our own kind of generational connections to different parts of blackness,
Speaker 1: and it all like would come together in these interesting ways,
Speaker 1: Like when we wanted to do the this episode about
Speaker 1: like Aliyah, that was like really complicated, yeah, but then
Speaker 1: like you told a story about like how you like
Speaker 1: she used to prank call you and stuff, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, oh my gosh, like to me as
Speaker 1: like someone younger. I was like, I can't even imagine that.
Speaker 1: And just I think Ashley's calling us old and good.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm here smiling like yeah, man, that's right, don't
Speaker 1: I mean? But there were just so many of these
Speaker 1: moments where I was like, oh, this, you know, I
Speaker 1: think it can feel so distant, like black culture and
Speaker 1: black history, and it's like this was a room where
Speaker 1: it was really alive, where it was like, no, this
Speaker 1: isn't like something that can just be boiled down to
Speaker 1: like braids or these things people appropriate. But it was like, no,
Speaker 1: we really got to work with the ideas that we
Speaker 1: wanted to bring to life. Yeah, and it felt good.
Speaker 1: It felt real good. I want to see I can't
Speaker 1: wait to see how this plays out, you know, I
Speaker 1: really can't wait to see how that's new. That's my
Speaker 1: new slogan. Let's see how it plays out, Like I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's perfect, and why is that given given? Um?
Speaker 1: How in Texas and other places they're trying to ban books.
Speaker 1: They are banding banning, They're not, they're not they're not
Speaker 1: trying to they're doing it. Yeah, right, they're banning books
Speaker 1: that deal with black culture, that deal with Jewish culture. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's it's appropriate to come out right now. Okay,
Speaker 1: I will say this. The great thing about our show.
Speaker 1: We talked about it a little bit earlier. The great
Speaker 1: thing about our show is that we don't push it
Speaker 1: on you though. You know what I mean. You're gonna
Speaker 1: get this history through laughter and comedy, and you can't
Speaker 1: beat that with a baseball bat. If school was like that,
Speaker 1: I would have learned way more because way more invested. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would have been amazing if that's how school was
Speaker 1: for me back in a day, you know what I mean? Like,
Speaker 1: first of all, they didn't teach black history in school
Speaker 1: back then either. I remember making a stink about it,
Speaker 1: like how come black people only have one page and
Speaker 1: this whole fucking textbook, Dude, this whole textbook on one
Speaker 1: page that's the black history segment. Yeah. I like, when
Speaker 1: when I was growing up, I feel like it was
Speaker 1: always okay, February, that's your month, Like you know, somebody
Speaker 1: get up and read like a dry biography of Harriet Tubman,
Speaker 1: like you know, Madam CJ. Walker. It was always the
Speaker 1: same people. And we treat I think, black history obviously
Speaker 1: with a lot of reverence, and that I think makes
Speaker 1: it hard for people to want to make jokes and
Speaker 1: to like turn this into stuff that is relatable and funny,
Speaker 1: because a lot of times people are like, oh, you
Speaker 1: can't know, like these these black women, there are heroes
Speaker 1: and stuff. You can't make jokes and like, you know,
Speaker 1: let them in on the joke and stuff, and it's like, no,
Speaker 1: you can't. This is another way of teaching this history
Speaker 1: and showing people how important they are. Yeah, Man and Donald,
Speaker 1: You're right. Using humor is the best way I think
Speaker 1: to make the lesson stick. So if somebody doesn't get
Speaker 1: bored like I used to, and you know, you can
Speaker 1: laugh while you learn, laugh while you learn. Joel, is
Speaker 1: there anything we missed out on? Um? The only thing
Speaker 1: I wanted to guys to answer is if you guys
Speaker 1: have like a favorite I thought it'd be fun if
Speaker 1: you guys each commented on something that somebody else wrote
Speaker 1: that you really liked. If you guys, that's easy for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: so they haven't seen the show yet, but I've seen
Speaker 1: the show and I'm a huge The Techaba episode is freaking.
Speaker 1: It comes off amazing. I don't think anybody, Joel, did
Speaker 1: you get to see the Techabo episode. I only got
Speaker 1: the pilot. Okay, the Techaba episode is like fire. Deborah
Speaker 1: Wilson plays Techaba slaves dude, like she's slays. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I don't know if any of you out there know
Speaker 1: who Deborah Wilson is. If you do, she was on
Speaker 1: Mad TV. She's a I know who's Debra Wilson is. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy to me. Wow. Yeah she's hearing of this
Speaker 1: and I I'm just I'm grinning so much. Wow. That's
Speaker 1: almost perfect casting though. Yeah, amazing comedy. I love. And
Speaker 1: she came in with so much energy and and and
Speaker 1: you know, she because we were gonna hire her. We
Speaker 1: had a whole Oprah Winfrey, Uh of course, and we
Speaker 1: were like, get Deborah. Let's see if we can get
Speaker 1: Deba to do Oprah. But then in doing it, we
Speaker 1: were like, we're not gonna do the Oprah thing. Let's
Speaker 1: just get let's just get half her playtecha. But and
Speaker 1: when I tell you she slays, she slays it anyway.
Speaker 1: I can't wait for you to see it. That's that's
Speaker 1: that favorite. One of my favorites is Alabama Jackson says
Speaker 1: rap Yeah, I think for me my favorite, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't even know if it made it, but the
Speaker 1: Alabama Jackson and the diner sit in that's that's the
Speaker 1: second episode. Yeah, yeah, that one to me, just we
Speaker 1: all like threw in little bits that just were like, oh,
Speaker 1: this punch up here would be really good. The overall,
Speaker 1: like arching thing was like, yes, this is like what
Speaker 1: the show should be about. Like that one I loved
Speaker 1: and I love Like whenever we would read that one
Speaker 1: out loud, there were just so many little like things
Speaker 1: we would throw out that were so funny. I think
Speaker 1: the thing with the acronyms was one of my favorite jokes.
Speaker 1: Right and made it. It made it, made wow, it
Speaker 1: made it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I love grape in
Speaker 1: the Frederick Douglas one that was killing yeah grape vine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he was funny, so we got we got ed
Speaker 1: for him to do several roles in this uh eds
Speaker 1: an actor. He's been on television, but he's also a rapper.
Speaker 1: He was in a what's the name of his band
Speaker 1: as group Friends of Culture. I produced a song on it.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think they were the first act
Speaker 1: on Motown rap act on Motown. Ye Steve mckiva yep.
Speaker 1: So we got him on this. We got my nephew.
Speaker 1: He wrote a rap for this. He's my zel Faison.
Speaker 1: He's out there right now. Isaiah Poet. He killed it.
Speaker 1: Not trying to sound too sappy. I didn't have a
Speaker 1: favorite moment. My favorite moment was the process. Man, you know,
Speaker 1: looking up each day and once again it was such
Speaker 1: a fun room. I mean it was something that I
Speaker 1: think each of us look forward to. And then when
Speaker 1: we were done, it's like, damn, this has got to
Speaker 1: become a series. Yeah that we'll see how Like I said,
Speaker 1: my new favorite term, we'll see how it plays out.
Speaker 1: We've developed, We've put out a proof of concept that
Speaker 1: is like no other. I mean, we turned this little
Speaker 1: tiny budget and you know, I called in a couple
Speaker 1: of favors. Seth called in a couple of favors, and
Speaker 1: we really put like, I don't think adult Swim is
Speaker 1: ready I don't think Adult Swim is ready for you know,
Speaker 1: like if this is the if if they come back
Speaker 1: at us and they say, we need you to do
Speaker 1: it again for the same money, It's impossible. Let's put
Speaker 1: it that way, you know what I mean, It's impossible.
Speaker 1: I called in all my favorites. I got Burt on here.
Speaker 1: I called. That's how I got the music I called.
Speaker 1: I called the dude that freaking it's dating my mom. Now, yo,
Speaker 1: you got some it's some heavy hitters on here. Man. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the music is gonna be awesome. You know you're on there.
Speaker 1: Want to site, I'm gonna come on man. Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: It's really just like a family affair. I'm so excited
Speaker 1: for it to be in the world. All right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's out right now for all of you listening.
Speaker 1: Once you finished listening to the podcast, please it'll be
Speaker 1: in the description below, but go to YouTube the Adult
Speaker 1: Swim page. It's Alabama Jackson Week Enjoy. Yes, yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: I want to thank Ashley Ray. I want to thank
Speaker 1: Lee House. I want to thank Shirleyase. I don't want
Speaker 1: to thank Bert Price. I want to thank John Harveteen.
Speaker 1: I want to thank Chris Waters, and I want to
Speaker 1: thank Seth Green for all being a part of the
Speaker 1: podcast today. More importantly, I want to thank Joel Monique
Speaker 1: and Daniel Goodman for putting together this special version of
Speaker 1: Fake Doctor's Real Friends. And on that note, we will
Speaker 1: go out with the Alabama Jackson theme song one last
Speaker 1: Time five six seven eight Alabama Jackson. He's a time
Speaker 1: trampling man doing a bist Eddy Tames with Bru Wilson
Speaker 1: as Blackson.