A long overdue reunion between old friends and comedic geniuses Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate, star of the upcoming film Marcel The Shell With Shoes On.
Topics covered include: being cavity-prone, Joe Rogan’s effect on the podcast industry, the distinction between porn and pornos, turbo output, cheaper vanities, nostalgia for Netflix’s DVD subscription model, experiencing a viral hit in 2010, licensing a song from the most litigious band in history (The Eagles) for Marcel the Shell, levels of emergency, living true beauty, parenthood, aging, and the potential for a PubLIZity reboot where Liz G. has fillers.
Episode Transcript
Speaker: Hey, and welcome back to the A24 Podcast. If you're anything like us, Nick Kroll and Jenny Slate will be forever associated with their Kroll Show characters Liz and Liz, the two publicists behind PubLIZity. They've also been friends for almost 20 years, and with Jenny's upcoming movie, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, coming out in June, we jumped at the chance to stage a reunion on the pod. We hope you enjoy the episode. Here's Jenny and Nick.
Jenny Slate: Hi. I'm Jenny Slate.
Nick Kroll: And I'm Nick Kroll. And we are talking for the A24 Podcast.
Jenny: To each other.
Nick: Oh, we're supposed to talk to each other?
Jenny: Yeah, we're talking to each other. Don't just face the wall with the mic and talk to yourself.
Nick: Oh, I thought we were doing monologues. When was the last time we physically…?
Jenny: It's actually been years, and it makes me feel really even–
Nick: Crazy.
Jenny: Sad to say it. And I think I know when it was. I think, but I'm not sure.
Nick: Well, when do you think it was? I'm going to take off my glasses and basically see the same thing. So just like, you're like–
Jenny: Do you need your glasses–
Nick: A little–
Jenny: Because I remember when you got–
Nick: My glasses… I got LASIK.
Jenny: Years ago.
Nick: Yes. No, but then I got glasses because my vision is getting worse again.
Jenny: Ew.
Nick: But I kind of like it because I kind of missed wearing glasses, and I wasn't ready to be– Jenny: Yeah –
Nick: a person fake-wearing glasses.
Jenny: I just say "Ew," because it's just this feeling of, oh I guess old age, like Israel... that I'm like, I know it now. Now I see it. Not that I'm old, but because I need glasses now too, and I've always... been super 20/20. And proud of it, as if I did anything to do that.
Nick: Are you like, “I don't get cavities?” There are those people that-
Jenny: I don't get a lot of cavities either.
Nick: Right. There are people... I do. But people brag about that with their teeth, like, "I don't get cavities."
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And you've been like, "I have 20/20 vision, and I worked really hard on it."
Jenny: Ugh.
Nick: Oh.
Jenny: Honestly, I have such a thing about not having a lid. Ben brings a full mug in the car, and it kills me.
Nick: Stresses you out?
Jenny: Big time. And also that I'm like, "You're going to hurt yourself." He drinks black coffee in a ceramic mug. It's like–
Nick: Piping hot.
Jenny: "Do you just not–
Nick: Does it fit–
Jenny:... feel things that I feel?"
Nick: Does it fit into the cup holder?
Jenny: No, of course not. Because I love to buy artisanal… And because yeah, it's a mug. It has a handle. It doesn't fit into the holder for most people's sodas.
Nick: I don't know if we started rolling, but sometimes with podcasts they'll sneakily start rolling-
Jenny: Oh my God.
Nick: ... Just to get those... Yeah. You get to get those early, real moments.
Jenny: Oh my God. Like at the beginning of Krista Tippett's interviews. Do you ever listen to On Being?
Nick: On Being.
Jenny: Well, they ask people what they've had for breakfast, and it's always a monk who's like, "I abstained."
Nick: Yeah. "I haven't eaten breakfast." But it turns out, the monk is just on intermittent fasting.
Jenny: The monk's, "I'm a fucking fatty. I hate my body."
Nick: "I'm not eating, and then I binge at night."
Jenny: Or you know what it is, just to say?
Nick: What?
Jenny: And I'm pretty sure you know that I hate this. It's like a professor with dry mouth who's like, "I had yogurt."
[Laughter]
Nick: On Being is what I aspire to for this conversation–
Jenny: Me too.
Nick: ... just so we’re clear. Because what she's always talking about, and I don't listen to it that often, is really interesting. She's brilliant; incredibly beautiful-minded people.
Jenny: It's a lot of this.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: And that's funny. Well, it's funny. You know what they say? You should giggle.
Nick: Give me a little giggle.
Jenny: Give me a little– giggly. I mean, I'm offended that I'm... I want to be on that show.
Nick: Have you tried? Did you try to get on that?
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And this is where you landed? A24 Podcast with Nick Kroll.
Jenny: Yeah. I think it's nice. I mean, do you have a podcast? That's a bad thing to ask.
Nick: I don't.
Jenny: Okay, okay. Because I–
Nick: Do you?
Jenny: No.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: Well, I don’t know. I hate to pitch it to you right now, but maybe we should try.
Nick: This is it. Wait, does A24 get the rights to this then?
Jenny: Ugh.
Nick: Shit.
Jenny: Everyone's fucking me.
Nick: I don't have a podcast. Often, times, every twice a year, I'm like, "I should have a podcast because I want more money."
Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
Nick: But I don't know, I don’t think I could do this... Well, I could. I do it all the time. There were years where we would do podcasts, all the time, for people.
Jenny: Yeah. But I do honestly think it changed because now one person made a buttload of money, and everyone else is, "Oh wait, hold on."
Nick: Wait, your dear friend and former collaborator, Joe Rogan, right? You guys are not doing the podcast together anymore?
Jenny: Well, the weird thing is no one can tell us apart. Especially when you can't see us. It's like, "Wait, who's talking?"
Nick: "Who's who?"
Jenny: "In terms of how they think and what they like, is that Joe, or is that Lil Joe, aka Jenny?”
Nick: Lil’ Joe.
Jenny: Both brunettes.
Nick: Both brunettes. Lil Joe would be a great rapping name for you. If there was a divergent path, was there ever a minute where-
Jenny: Here we go.
Nick: Was there ever a minute where you... Did you always know it was going to be comedy, acting, writing?
Jenny: Yeah. But you know what? I think there was always a wish that I would just go to... who would it be? Like, Sarandon territory. And maybe you experienced this too. Do you remember you used to have that joke about how, if you could trade being funny for just being a male bikini model or whatever? It was this joke that I always felt so deeply that–
Nick: I still feel that way sometimes. I've moved through that largely. But there are times where, it's just funny, when you meet really beautiful performers or whatever, and I feel like they want to make me laugh. I'm like, oh, they want to be funny. And yet I'm like, "Can I just see that shot again?" Because I think I look like a fucking like a gremlin in that picture. You know what I mean?
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: But Sarandon; you wanted to go straight to sexy 45-year-old I-can-do-anything actor?
Jenny: I think so. I loved Gwyneth Paltrow in Sliding Doors and A Perfect Murder. It was always like yeah, you're just not going to be a 5’8 blonde woman. It's just not in the cards. But also, I really–
Nick: I don't like that thinking. You can't think that way, Jenny.
Jenny: Yeah. I have years to grow. You don't know.
Nick: Have you ever gone blonde blonde?
Jenny: You know what? It's so funny you asked. As you'll know, because you and I have known each other for a decade and a half now. Probably more–
Nick: At least, yeah.
Jenny: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There have been times I've gotten extreme hairdos when I've been restless or had big feelings that I just couldn't admit. And I feel restless right now because our house is too small. And I said, the other day, "I think I should go platinum." And everyone was like, "Just renovate. Just renovate your kitchen."
Nick: You're like, "The fallout of platinum hair is much more difficult than fully renovating your house."
Jenny: Yeah. Especially because... and you and I, we were just talking. I don't know if they were recording us. We were talking about how I don't get a lot of cavities. And for a while I didn't need glasses. Now I need them. Haven't gotten them yet. I have one gray hair that pops up, and I rip her out. Not that I'm not into it. I'm just like, either be a lot, don't just be one –
Nick: And is it the same spot?
Jenny: Yeah, same spot. So, I don't color my hair, but why would I go platinum right before it's about to happen? These are the last moments of my natural hair.
Nick: Right. So, once you go gray, then just platinum for the rest of your life.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: My beard, as you can see, is gray. To go back a step, and I feel like we should give people some context to us quickly–
Jenny: Okay.
Nick: ... Which is, we've been friends for, at least... I moved to New York; my New Year's resolution in 2002 was to do an open mic.
Jenny: Oh jeez. That's just so nice.
Nick: So, it's been 20 years that I've been doing some version of... or, started this. You were in college at Columbia.
Jenny: That's right.
Nick: And then, when did you start performing downtown or performing out in the world?
Jenny: Right. Gabe Liedman and I graduated from college in 2004. And I think, around 2005, he was like, "I think I'm going to try standup." And I was like, "Eh, I'm not" because I didn't think that it was very cool. And I didn't know about the alternative scene or whatever that was. Now it's not called that anymore. But I was like, "Eh." I just thought of Andrew Dice Clay. A guy in a leather jacket. And I just was like, "I don't get how I would fit in there." And then he brought me to the show called Invite Them Up, which is also where I met you, which was a show at a place called Rififi, which I believe is now a jeans store.
Nick: It's a Buffalo Exchange ... a secondhand. Oh, it might have even moved off of that. But go ahead.
Jenny: Yeah. It was a rundown bar. A bar with a black box theater in it. And then, I honestly believe behind that was a porno store. Right?
Nick: I don't know, but I just like that you called it "pornos."
Jenny: No, because that's what you have to call it now.
Nick: Not "porn?" Because porno-
Jenny: Porn's from the internet. Porno's VHS.
Nick: Okay, great. Yeah, I like that distinction. Yeah, I–
Jenny: Only I say that.
Nick: But I like it.
Jenny: Yeah. I would be–
Nick: It makes you think of VHSs.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: And actors in that medium, rather than things without a plot.
Nick: You want a plot, even in your–
Jenny: I don't just need to see someone's clit. I want to know that someone was delivering... anything. A pizza always. Right? That's what they say. I don't know.
Nick: Or a clit massager.
Jenny: "Hi, your clit massager's here. Mind if, oopsies, I fuck you or something?" That's what they used to be. But anyway, that's what that was. Wednesday night was the best show, called Invite Them Up, hosted by Bobby Tisdale and Eugene Mirman. We watched that show a lot, and I was, oh, wait, standup is completely different. And then I wanted to do it. And so, we started to... we did a 30 seconds of comedy spot.
Nick: You got that 30 seconds of comedy. That coveted 30 seconds of comedy spot.
Jenny: Yeah. And you were there. We would hang out all the time. And that's when I started to do standup, and I realized that standup could actually be just talking.
Nick: Yes. Takes a little while to figure that out.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: That's 17 years ago, probably, at least, that we met each other.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And then we immediately liked each other's comedy; became friends. And then, I think, probably started actually working together on Kroll Show. Did we work? Had we...?
Jenny: Yeah. You were on Best Week Ever.
Nick: Right.
Jenny: And Gabe and I really wanted... To be–
Nick: Wanted to be on Best Week–
Jenny: Yeah, we really wanted to be on it. And you were the star of it. We felt like you and Jessi Klein...
Nick: It's very nice for you to say.
Jenny: But well, you were. And I'm just going to put my coffee down. Sorry. This is it.
Nick: Spill it.
Jenny: This coffee is really, um. I just took a risk. But we really wanted to be on that. That's what I remember you being on. But then it seemed like you really started to get a lot of jobs. You were in a lot of commercials. You seemed really smooth at it. You were really good at it. Because I remember finally getting a Cascade commercial. I couldn't figure out how to use the pods–
Nick: Oh my God.
Jenny:... to put in the dishwasher. And they gave me extensions. And I was really uncomfortable. But anyway-
[Laughter]
Nick: Oh my God, that makes me itch, thinking about that.
Jenny: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was so hard. Commercials are so hard because you actually have to be normal.
Nick: You have to be normal. And also, I don't know. It's nice of you to say that because my first commercials were 30 second straight-to-camera monologues, and I couldn't memorize my lines. And I was freezing up and crews were waiting for me, furious.
Jenny: It's the worst. Yeah. It really takes your self-esteem down to, oh no, this is what I thought would happen if I failed. Yeah.. And I'm failing.
Nick: And you really believe, “Oh this is the end. I'll never work again.”
Jenny: Yeah. And you're on the line. It could be. You know what I mean?
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: It's now, looking back. But anyway, what I will say... It seems like a digression, but it's not. I knew that we were going to do this, and I have trouble watching my own work. You know, that, I just don't like it, and it can really hinder how I do the next thing I do. And I was like, it's weird that I've never really fully watched Liz and Liz and Kroll Show because so many people love it.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: And the other night, I just sat down and watched most of the PubLIZitys. And I was in tears.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: I was in tears not just because I just genuinely love it, but because... And it's almost hard to talk about it without getting emotional, but I had been fired by SNL, and you gave me a job. And oh God, I'm so like this right now, but-
Nick: Me too.
Jenny: Okay, good. And also, we're both parents. I don't know if your baby sleeps, but mine truly loves to party all night long.
[Laughter]
Jenny: I've tried to say this throughout the years, but I've never articulated it. And I almost wrote you a letter this morning. But then I'm like, that's so mean. That's so "Jenny wrote me a letter,” so I won't. But you gave me a job. I had been fired by SNL. Speaking of like, you think it's over.
Nick: Yeah. And that's legit. You get fired by SNL; that feels like–
Jenny: Yeah, you're so embarrassed.
Nick: ...Versus a Cascade commercial that doesn't go well.
Jenny: And you gave me this job. And I felt like I was damaged goods, although that's neither here nor there. Who knows if that was how I was perceived? But I was watching Liz and Liz, and I was like, all this stuff is so much funnier than anything they were doing on SNL or that I ever got to do. You gave me a gigantic chance. You completely let me run. You never hindered me. It was the coolest job. And I was watching it, and only I know that, every take, you and I are about to start laughing.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: And I can't even believe they edited that show together because we were always laughing. And it just was a huge gift.
Nick: Oh. Well–
Jenny: And I love that show. And it was so good.
Nick: I'd like to think–
Jenny: It was incredible.
Nick: I'd like to think so. But I don't feel that way, ironically, weirdly. I love it, and I love... So, thank you. To go back, I had the sketch show, Kroll Show. And the full story is that I was dating a woman who I was supposed to do publicity with.
Jenny: Right, right.
Nick: And she broke up with me. Well, not even.
[Laughter]
Nick: Oh my God. It's so crazy. But we were supposed to do that together. And then–
Jenny: Right. Of course.
Nick: And then, she wouldn't come back to shoot my pilot. And I was like, maybe this isn't the best sign about our relationship. So, then I was–
Jenny: Oh, so you hadn't broken up, and she was, "I don't want to..." You were still together.
Nick: She was like, “I can't come back to shoot your pilot." And I was, like, "Okay."
Jenny: You're going to want that effort.
Nick: And then I wrapped that pilot and went to visit her. And then she broke up with me.
Jenny: Oh foreshadowing, yeah.
Nick: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: But it was, in so many ways, such a blessing. And the biggest one was that we got to do that together. And I think being a parent... I always have been a crier, but being a parent just makes you–
Jenny: Cry all the time.
Nick: Cry all the time. But I think about doing that with you and doing... And by the way, your hair on the pilot of Kroll Show is kind of blonde.
Jenny: I know. Because I had been-
Nick: You'd gotten fired –
Jenny: Yeah. I'd just gotten fired –
Nick: Yeah. So, you were-
Jenny: And I was, "Um..."
Nick: "I'm going to..." You weren't platinum blonde though. It's like–
Jenny: No, it was disgusting.
Nick: It was cool –
Jenny: It was like sand.
Nick: It's actually cool. And it's still... Again, the first one is the pilot was Mitch Hurwitz plays a–
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: The creator of Arrested Development plays a guy who wants to– And it's a bunch of dogs in bikinis.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And cupcakes in bikinis.
Jenny: Cupcakes for Cancer.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: Canine-
Nick: Canine-
Jenny: Pirate Girl Rum presents.
Nick: Cupcakes for... Oh, I can't even... anyway. And then, we did three seasons of that, and you played a number of characters on the show. But PubLIZity; almost more than anything, I get reflections on PubLIZity, of how much people love it. And-
Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. The comedy is actually just so... I just felt, I don't think I actually have a ton of regrets, but I felt regret that I did not let myself feel how cool that was at the time, not like I stopped myself, but I was so ashamed of getting fired from SNL and I did have a little bit of that like "I want to be a movie star, I want to be a movie star," that I didn't really appreciate how renegade that show was and that now I understand that when you feel ease in the moment and your output is just turbo, there's just a massive amount of output and you're laughing and you can feel velocity in your performance, which I definitely feel in standup, but that means that it's a living treasure and now I get it and I can watch it and be like, "Oh, oh, this is really cool and we did actually I think lay groundwork for something."
Nick: I hope so. I think about it, I was just trying to think of what the analogy would be. And I'm not much of a tennis player at all, but imagine you and your friend could just hit the ball as hard as you want back and forth, and that's what it felt like doing that show, specifically with you and the other partnerships, there was like Mulaney or Chelsea Peretti or whoever, Jon Daly. There was just this feeling of total... And it was because of the format too, it was reality TV so there was a real looseness to how it was structured for us to be able to do whatever we wanted. And I mean, again, doing that with you and being able to perform with you and watching you perform is truly electric. Your performance is electric.
So we do that and we do a couple movies together. I think both at a time when both of us were like, it still was like, it's such an interesting thing and there are not many people who I feel... There are people who you share career trajectories with in some way or another, but also in Kroll Show, you're amazingly funny, so funny, electrically funny, but also a really good actor. And so there's this feeling, if you feel like you can act, I think a lot of comic actors and comedians go through this period where they're like, "I also want everyone to know that I can really act and that I'm a good actor, and that I can be in serious stuff as well."
Jenny: Yeah. I think that relates to the first thing you asked, which is “was it always comedy for you?” Because there is something about now I understand that being taken seriously just means understanding what I like to do and having the freedom and power to do it and the access to do it. But it used to be like hitting these odd standards that ended up themselves being brutal or kind of abusive towards myself. But there is that moment for a lot of comedians where it's like, "But I also can do like what Mary Tyler Moore did." You know?
Nick: Yeah. Yeah.
Jenny: And I don't think that instinct is wrong.
Nick: No, it's not a bad thing to want to be able to be like, "I want to do everything." You know what I mean? But I do think in the back of, at least in my head, it was always like, "Well, I do comedy because I love doing comedy and I always want to be funny and entertain," but I’m also like,"I want to win an Oscar for best actor."
Jenny: Right, right, right.
Nick: It's stuck in your head and that's part of it, which I think leads partly into the reason we're here, which is the movie that you have coming out through A24 called Marcel the Shell With Shoes On. Is that the full title?
Jenny: That is the full title.
Nick: Which to me is such a beautiful encapsulation of what you do and I'll talk about Dean and the whole larger picture of it all, but of what you do, which is to be super funny and specific in your humor, but then incredibly emotional, incredibly, just a super beautiful, resonant, vulnerable performance inside of it. And I think Marcel starts, what, 10 years, 12 years ago? When does it come out?
Jenny: Yeah. Yeah, we made it in August of 2010.
Nick: Wow. Okay. That comes out. Did you put it on YouTube or Vimeo?
Jenny: It was on Vimeo.
Nick: It was on Vimeo and everyone finds it and falls in love with it.
Jenny: Yeah, which was weird.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: At least for me, I think Dean's always been better at the internet in general, comfortable with it. I didn't understand that capacity in general. I didn't understand that could even happen at all. And I wasn't, I guess very interested in it. I don't know that I knew an example of a quote unquote “viral hit” at that time.
Nick: There was some version of that, but that was a viral hit.
Jenny: It was a viral hit, yeah. And we watched it happen throughout the day.
Nick: Wow.
Jenny: Yeah. Do you remember that apartment that I used to have in Brooklyn? Did you ever go to any parties there?
Nick: I never went to that.
Jenny: It was a tiny, but very beautiful apartment. And I remember kind of standing in there being like, "Whoa, we're at 800. That's crazy. We're at 800." And then a big leap, being at 38,000 by maybe the end of that day or the end of the next day. And then it going crazy-
Nick: Like millions.
Jenny: Yeah. Yeah.
Nick: Well, because there had been nothing like it. And I just tried to burp off mic. Could you tell?
[Laughter]
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And then I remember many…
[Laughter]
Jenny: It's just so, you know what it is? It's always so cousin-y.
Nick: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.
Jenny: Two cousins. It's cousin-y stuff, but yeah, you burped.
Nick: I burped.
Jenny: I saw you.
Nick: And I didn't even get it out. That was the bummer–
Jenny: You didn't? What happened?
Nick: It's caught up right around the Adam's Apple. It's bottlenecked.
Jenny: That's so painful. Yeah.
Nick: And then I remember, I don't know how many years ago this was that you guys had gotten a “we're going to make a movie of this,” but when did the actual beginning of... I mean, it's been–
Jenny: So long.
Nick: So long.
Jenny: Yeah. Dean and I moved out to LA in 2012 and we were taking meetings with studios. And also everything was different then. There was no Netflix making anything but DVDs to your physical mailbox.
Nick: Yes.
Jenny: Amazon was still for your toilet paper.
Nick: Still think it was a big mistake for them to get off of that and into streaming. Big mistake.
[Laughter]
Jenny: Yeah. I also, I think I still have a subscription for DVDs. I never changed it.
Nick: I still have an incredibly scratched copy of Being There somewhere in my house. And I've never returned it.
Jenny: Oh my God.
Nick: I think I'm still paying for the DVD subscription element of Netflix.
Jenny: Yeah, I think I am too. But none of those meetings made sense. They all really smacked of selling out. It was just like, "Yeah, Marcel's so great. What if you paired him with literally just a tall white guy," who probably wasn't even in discussion. They were throwing out names. They're just like, "How about Ryan Reynolds? How about Jason Segel?" We were like, "Did you ask them?" They're just tall and funny, but did you ask them? This feels there's backchanneling here and nobody talked to them about it –
Nick: "Hey, Ryan."
Jenny: "So there's the interest from... Have you heard of Jenny Slate?" He's like, "No."
Nick: "You know Marcel the Shell is interested in collaborating with you on something, Ryan. We kind of told him that you were interested in it as well."
Jenny: Yeah, and then the agents are like, "I fucking told you, what am I supposed to do now?" But anyway, so no, those didn't work for us. I don't know if any of that happened, actually. But we did take those meetings. We were like, "Marcel with this person." We were like, "But why not Marcel just like alone in the house?" And they were like, "That's not anything." And we were like, "Well, it's actually like the whole thing, actually." There was never a moment where we were like, we should change it.
Nick: It just was very clear.
Jenny: Yeah. I would rather this be on the internet as it was than it be ruined by somebody who never could have made it. You just have to try to keep working with people who at least understand how to hold up what was originally there I think. And so we waited a long time, then Liz Holm who produced Obvious Child and Landline and my special Stage Fright, I was like, "Liz, can you help us produce this and find someone who can give us money to not change it, but just expand it?" And she did. She found the people at Cinereach who are incredible, incredible collaborators and financed our film and gave us final cut and–
Nick: Wow.
Jenny: Yeah. All the stuff that you never get, they gave us that.
Nick: Which is kind of the only way that this movie could be what it is.
Jenny: Yeah. And sitting here doing an A24 podcast, I also would like to know more about how Everything Everywhere All At Once got made because that film also–
Nick: Yeah–
Jenny: It doesn't have a lot of boundaries or it takes every risk. And we were allowed to do that with Marcel too. So anyway, that happened around, I want to say 2013, maybe 2014.
Nick: Yeah. I remember you being like, "I think Liz helped us find something."
Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. And we took a big round of meetings. None of them worked. And then we finally found Cinereach and they really agreed to finance our film off of a treatment and let us improvise hours and hours and hours of audio, like a hundred hours of audio, I want to say. I might be wrong. Might be less. Yeah.
Nick: Sure. But that makes sense.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And then you start to put together the pieces. But I mean, I had obviously seen the shorts and the book that you guys did and I've known you and Dean forever. But the film is so much, it's exactly what anyone who's seen the shorts, and even if you haven't, doesn't matter if you've seen the shorts or not, it's exactly the heightening scope and emotional heightening that you would want from it. Because it's supposed to be really small, but when you make a film of something, it has to be a “bigger small”.
Jenny: It does have to be a bigger small as they always say.
Nick: And so you guys started to figure out the story and put it all together. And then who’s the stop motion house that you guys worked with?
Jenny: We worked with the Kyoto brothers who did the opening sequence to Pee Wee's Playhouse. They're really like old school animators. And then our animation director was Kirsten Lepore and she is incredible. She's incredible. Now I've seen Marcel in completion I think four times. And what I realized the last time is like, obviously because I am so fused with Marcel, sometimes I watch it and I forget that he's not improvising his body movements and that a person who's not him had to be like, here's how to make it look like he is literally having a physical form in a moment that's existing. And none of it is. None of it can happen unless somebody else does those tiny details. Kirsten's incredible.
Nick: Those eyelids. His eyelids and Nana Connie's eyelids, I mean, it's the eye. Having done animation - I can't say that I'm responsible for every moment in Big Mouth and all that stuff - but just seeing those expressive eyes. And it's this crazy thing, because I know you only have one eye and you've got a line of a mouth. There's so many things that lead to good acting in animation that you guys don't allow yourself to have in this. And then she's able to, the team's able to pull out these crazy emotional performances from this.
Jenny: Yeah. From very few elements and bodies that are stiff. And Marcel's physicality, his shell doesn't move. His shoes walk, but there's not like a little bungee cord or something there.
Nick: I wrote down notes and I'm not going to pull them out even though I want to, but like, so there's–
Jenny: You can if you want to, it's not cheating.
Nick: It's not cheating? So there's a moment, I mean it's throughout the film and I hope this doesn't ruin the plot for everybody. But Marcel–
Jenny: Where he gets implants, he gets huge cans.
Nick: He gets big fat tata's.
Jenny: Gozangaroonies, yeah, yeah. No, he doesn't.
Nick: Marcel is a tiny shell with shoes on. And to get around his house, sometimes he walks on walls and he steps in honey to do that. How does that stuff come to be? Where does that come from?
Jenny: Well, that one I think specifically came from Nick Paley, who is our third writer. Dean and I, there was a very complex process to making this movie generally. It's not just us sitting down and improvising, but many rounds of it. And then Nick and Dean going off together and being like, "Okay, the story's coming together." We had an idea, but it changed a lot. And within each round of improvising, they would get together and start to gather the improv into a script and then be like, "Okay, there are these moments, we need to sharpen it. We need Marcel to say this." And they would bring me back the line and then I’d kind of say something different or it just kept being open.
But in between it would be these other discussions of like, how does Marcel even live? How does he do his life? And there would just kind of be these long lists from people. We started in the original short being like, "Guess how I do this." And that was a game built into how you see him. But Nick Paley, I believe, came up with the honey.
Nick: There's so many great Swiss Family Robinson things throughout–
Jenny: Yeah, totally.
Nick: When you see the sets built out and you see how he gets oranges or all that stuff. It's so fun and it's, I want to say whimsical, but it's actually the opposite of whimsical.
Jenny: It's like utilitarian in a weird way. Yeah.
Nick: Because there's nothing whimsical about if you're a tiny shell, how do you get oranges out of the top of a tree?
Jenny: Yeah. Oh, they're Ginkgo berries.
Nick: Oh, they're Ginkgo berries.
Jenny: Yeah. They just look like oranges next to him because he's so small.
Nick: Yes. Oh, that's so funny.
Jenny: There was a discarded plot line where Marcel is trying to get his grandmother's memory to sharpen because he reads that Ginkgo Biloba–
Nick: Yeah, yes.
Jenny: Is that how you say it? Ginko “Bilalalaloba?”
Nick: Mm-hmm –
Jenny: Is good for your memory. Yeah, the film was like ... It just had so many different versions, some of which were like they're barely surviving.
Nick: Right.
Jenny: And we tried to figure out what level of emergency is interesting to us to show. And at the very start of the film, like Marcel says, “I'm not trying to just survive; I'm trying to have a good life on a daily basis.” He is on an adventure. You can totally say that. But also, it's real and there's real loss and it's cute but it's necessary.
Nick: Yeah, that's what you guys have done beautifully in it- is fused this idea of what every movie seems have to make, which is some sort of hero's journey.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: But it feels so grounded and, frankly, human inside of it; what that journey is and how he's going about it. I don't want to spoil anything but ...
Jenny: When he gets rid of the breast implants.
Nick: When he gets ...
Jenny: Because he's like, "This isn't me."
Nick: "This isn't me."
Jenny: "I hate these gonzagaroonies."
Nick: So crazy. It is. I found the stuff around him wanting to protect his grandmother really interesting.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: What does that come from?
Jenny: Well, for me ... And I can only say for me, because Nana Connie, that character ... Although my own grandmother, as you know, is named Nana Connie.
Nick: Yes.
Jenny: And there's a large element to this film that is what you would call auto-fiction. And Dean is named Dean.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: I think that when there's only one other person who remembers the beauty of your past because they were there and there's nobody left who remembers it and they're starting to go into old age and they're starting to see things differently and have different capabilities and lose their strength in mind and body, you can cloak it in, "I'm just caring for them," but there's also a desperation of, "Please don't leave me as the only person who remembers what happened."
Nick: Sure.
Jenny: "Because I don't know how to hold it and still be light on my feet. And I need to be light on my feet in order to be myself and live. But if I have to hold the truth of the way everything went down and I still don't have a way to put it to rest, I just don't know what will become of me." And what Marcel has to learn through his grandmother is he's hiding behind that care.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: And he's hiding within that act because he's afraid that what will come next will be less than what he already has right now, which is ... He already lives with loss.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: But yeah, he has to move through that. And that sounds really heavy but that's always been the weird thing about me and Marcel is that I like to be Marcel because I think he's more capable than I am. You know?
Nick: Yeah. He's got more ingenuity or he's stronger? What is it that you feel?
Jenny: I think if everything is to scale, he's a physically stronger individual than I am and he's more industrious. He's way more industrious and rugged than I am. But also, he has less interference from his own psyche and so he just goes direct. Oftentimes, he appears innocent to us because he's so unaware of how he comes off.
Nick: Right. But –
Jenny: And I'm a performer so I am aware of how I come off.
Nick: Yeah. But I found inside of this there are these much more ... Especially around caring for his grandmother or whatever, he weirdly gets a little hard.
Jenny: Yeah, he does.
Nick: He sort of is like, "No, we're not doing that." And in a way that's very sure and forthright about it, even though he's clearly struggling to figure out what he's supposed to do.
Jenny: Yeah. Marcel's attitude when he has attitude, that moment where he's like, "I don't have enough time in my day and now she has attitude and I don't even like that." That's just how I sound when I'm angry.
Nick: Sure. Yeah.
Jenny: I think Dean and I both use this film in the ways that sometimes you use your own art to allow parts of yourself that you don't love to be repurposed into something that feels better. And that's that for me, for sure. And I like that Marcel ... The cliché version of him would be like he does just hop into adventures and he's so small but he's down to do it. And actually, that's not his way.
Nick: No.
Jenny: He really sees a way in which his life could just be a lot worse and he's afraid and he's rigid in that.
Nick: When everybody here listening to this podcast sees the movie, you'll understand why.
Jenny: Right. I guess maybe this is boring for people.
Nick: No! To me, it's very interesting. It's just one of these things. It defies explanation. You really just have to see it. And it's very special.
Jenny: God, don't you just feel like a lot of the work you've made you got in just under the wire before people started to say, "We just don't get what ... We just can't figure out how this goes into the algorithm," or something? Now, with Marcel coming out, I'm so aware that there's so many ways that this movie never would have gotten made and it's completely untampered with. It's really, really what we wanted it to be and I just don't know that that would happen now.
Nick: I know. But the truth is, it did.
Jenny: It did. And so I'm really enjoying –
Nick: Going back to the beginning of this, of needing glasses, of being like, "We're not beginning ... We're not in the beginning of this thing of our careers or our lives at all."
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And so you begin to have a little more awareness and, hopefully inside of that, gratitude that you're like, "Oh, we get to do this. And we got it in under the wire."
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And there's another side of that, then, can be the panic of, "Wait, does that mean I won't be able to keep doing this stuff?"
Jenny: For sure. In a weird way ... I am not a morbid person nor do I almost ever think about death. Suffering, a lot. I'm like, "Oh God, I really don't want to break my ankle and have a cast and have my pants be hard to put on," and stuff like that. But I do feel this feeling now, especially since I have a daughter and I'm only going to have one baby so I'm like, "Oh my God." Every moment she gets older I'm like, "Oh no! She's getting bigger." I mean, I want her to but –
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: I also don't–
Nick: Of course–
Jenny: And wow, she's going to be big one day and all of this. I have a normal, I think, healthy feeling of like, "I don't know. I don't know when the next thing I'm going to make is. I don't know." I wish when Obvious Child came out that I had enjoyed it a little bit more. I definitely enjoyed it and we had a really fun press tour but I was also caught up in other stuff.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: Like cheaper vanities that really impeded me on a daily basis.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: And also, I don't know, I was like a much younger woman then.
Nick: Sure.
Jenny: But now I feel really free to enjoy myself mostly because I'm like, "I don't know when I'll ever ... If I'll ever make anything like this again or be Marcel in performance." I can be him ... I am him to myself a lot.
Nick: Of course. Yeah.
Jenny: I talk to the baby in that voice.
Nick: Oh, you do?
Jenny: Oh, yeah.
Nick: Aww.
Jenny: And she does love it.
Nick: Yeah, I bet.
Jenny: She loves Ave Maria in that voice, for example.
Nick: Really? Do you like singing in that voice?
Jenny: Love it.
Nick: Yeah. It's easier for me to sing in character than it is as myself.
Jenny: Me, too. Me, too.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: You sing a beautiful song. What is the song that Marcel sings in that?
Jenny: It's ‘Peaceful Easy Feeling’ by The Eagles.
Nick: Wait, you got the rights to an Eagles song?
Jenny: Yeah. And you know what? What if I just left?
Nick: All right. She's gone. I guess that's it –
Jenny: Like an off-mic door slam –
Nick: What a great podcast.
Jenny: And I think Dean would be fine with me telling this story. It was like 2AM and I couldn't sleep and I guess I do like The Eagles a lot. It's weirdly not exactly my style, classic rock, but I like story songs. Don't you call Steely Dan story songs?
Nick: No, Billy Joel. Billy Joel.
Jenny: Oh, story –
Nick: Yeah, he likes his story songs.
Jenny: Story songs. Right. And I like them, too. And I made a voice recording of that song at like two in the morning and sent it to Dean and was like, "Is this anything?" And at the time he and I were like ... We had decided to get divorced and we were both dating other people. There was peace over that but it was very confusing to us about how to have a friendship while ... You know?
Nick: And then also collaborate on a thing that you built together.
Jenny: Yeah. I don't know. We were still in touch a lot and just trying to push through that. Anyway, I sent it to him and he was like, "Oh my God, you're killing me. What is this for? This has to be something." And we were like, "It has to be something. I love hearing Marcel sing that song." We just recorded it one time. I think Dean has the footage of it. We recorded it outside in a backyard and we were like, "Hopefully The Eagles will let us have this song because it's kind of in the movie now."
Nick: Yeah. That's so fascinating to hear because getting a song in a movie or a show is really hard.
Jenny: Yeah. Really hard.
Nick: And there's publishing and then there's performance ... All that stuff. And it can be expensive. It's, to me, very funny that you went to, historically, the most litigious band in –
Jenny: I didn't know that, obviously.
Nick: They have sued each other –
Jenny: I didn't know that.
Nick: They have sued each other so many times that it's so funny. But it's a testament to the project, the film and your voice that they would sign off on that.
Jenny: It's really nice. Yeah, I didn't know that.
[Laughter]
Nick: Oh my God. I don't know if it's on their greatest hits but it's like the biggest selling album of all time, that album.
Jenny: Sometimes my view of myself from outside of myself is just like a fool skipping over lava pools without realizing the terrain in any way.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: I'm just like, "Put this song in the movie! Babadoobababeeboobop." And then everyone's like, "No!"
Nick: But that's the way things happen.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And you should go on The Floor is Lava. Have you watched that show?
Jenny: What's that?
Nick: There's a show on Netflix where the thing is like, "Floor is lava!"
Jenny: Not going to do that.
Nick: And it's like you have to jump from thing to thing or you get caught in lava.
Jenny: What's the lava, though?
Nick: It's lava.
Jenny: No, but it can't be, right?
Nick: I don't think it's really hot magma.
Jenny: Right.
Nick: But if you squirted some diarrhea in there, it might be fun to know –
[Laughter]
Jenny: If. No, I don't want to go on that. But I did hear that Ina Garten has a show now where she lets people come to her house in the Hamptons and cooks for them.
Nick: Would you like to do that?
Jenny: Yeah, I would. Just to say on a microphone literally that will go into outer space, could I? Because I love her.
Nick: Well, let's get that going. Let's get Jenny Slate on the Ina Garten show. Let's do that. We got to manifest. We got to put–.
Jenny: We've got to manifest.
Nick: So then –
Jenny: But I do love singing in that voice, just to say.
Nick: It's beautiful. And it makes perfect sense. I get it. I get it. So you've been making that movie forever and then –
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: You and I have not physically seen each other in a really long time.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And in that time you gave birth to a baby.
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And my ...
Jenny: And you became a father.
Nick: I became a father.
Jenny: Yeah. A month apart.
Nick: Our kids are like a month apart and, uh…And how are you doing?
[Laughter]
Jenny: I think I'm doing great. You know what's weird? As you know, I didn't think ... I didn't really know I would ever have kids. It wasn’t for me. I just didn't know how that would figure into my life.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: And certainly was never like ... Some people have that as their driving thing, like, "I will not be fully realized unless I enter parenthood." And I truly love having a baby. I'm really tired.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: I've never experienced this level of fatigue.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: But I've never been more happy or more secure or healthy in my life.
Nick: Yeah.
Jenny: And I'm glad I had a baby at 39 because I know that if I'd had a baby at 30 that I would have four babies.
Nick: Yeah, because ... I get now you'd get addicted to it.
Jenny: Yeah because ... And I don't know if you feel this way but it's like when you have a baby, you have to figure out what it actually means to healthily love someone. And not like be obsessed with them, or hope you get something from them or be codependent with them or whatever. All of the different iterations that I have thought were love before. But how do you truly nurture their wellbeing? That's the quote from a Bell Hooks book that I read two summers ago that I'm like, "Oh. Oh, okay. To love someone means to nurture their spiritual well being." So what is that? And what's the difference between controlling them and caring for them? And also that you're allowed to love a baby infinitely. It's never too much.
Nick: Sure, but as you're bringing it all up I'm like, "Huh," because I'm like, "I am kind of obsessed with him."
Jenny: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nick: Like you are ... This infinity love, which I understand. I'm like, "Oh, am I fucking him up by just constantly being like, 'You're so beautiful.'?"
Jenny: I don't know. I don't think so.
Nick: Yeah. I don't know.
Jenny: There are other things... I mean, do you feel like that? What's your big take?
Nick: This is sort of separate from what you're saying, but it's like ... It's very weird when you see an expression or something. To see something that you've only felt interior –
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: In an exterior form.
Jenny: Uh-huh.
Nick: Which is narcissistic. Ultimately, I know that I'm saying, "I see myself!" But it's this weird thing where you're like, "Oh, this is half me and half someone else," and then it's also its own entity entirely. And I think that's the great challenge of parenthood is you're like, "Oh, I see this thing about myself that I don't like or this thing that I like too much about myself or this thing that I see about my spouse that I like."
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And it's so wild. Honestly, I haven't even been able to fully formulate my thoughts on all of it because oftentimes when I'm inside of something I can't quite pull out to see what it is that's happening. And I feel like with him right now I'm like ... All I can feel is like, "Oh, I'm just watching a being take shape."
Jenny: Yeah.
Nick: And I have some control over that because I'm the parent ... one of the parents. But also, there is this thing of they come out with an essence.
Jenny: Yeah, they do. They really do.
Nick: And it's fucking wild. But I feel like a level of ... It's just this other love that I've never ... It sounds so cliché but it is. You're like, "Oh, there's just this love that I've never experienced before that opens this door to this whole other house that I've never been in."
Jenny: Yeah. A lot of stuff rolls off my back now, because there is a good love in my family between me and Ben and Ida, and I also think that's why standup feels different for me. I think I've always used what's happening in my life to make comedy, and that's also what Marcel is for sure, but that I was trying to do standup about what was happening right now. And I was like, "Ugh, but I missed two years. I missed two years, and I can't be up there without talking about what happened before." I was able to get a half an hour at our show at Largo a couple weeks ago, and I was like, "Oh, all I have to do is tell the truth,” in the way that I tell it, whatever. But like, "Oh, oh." I've always known that, and that's been my guarantee or whatever. When you're watching me, I'm trying to tell the truth, but now I'm like, "Oh. Literally, actually that is all there is." It feels like so much relief.
Nick: How are you doing figuring out what to share about your child, about your marriage? How are you navigating that?
Jenny: I'm not talking about Ida a lot, because I just don't feel like she can say yes or no to that. She literally cannot say yes or no. So I don't talk about that, but I'm talking about meeting Ben and that when we got married, I read to him from my journal that I was writing in on the weekend that we met. And I hadn't remembered this, but I looked back in it after we got engaged to see like, “what were my first impressions of him?” And that that weekend, I had written, "This is such a weird thing for me to write, and maybe I'm just being so weird about a stranger, but I actually feel that if I could marry him, I would have the type of life I would want to have."
Nick: Wow.
Jenny: And that, "I actually think he might be a person that I, in my own tastes, think is living true beauty." And I did feel that way. But then I'm saying in my standup, "We tried to get together and it didn't work out." It didn't work out at first, and we were both like, "It was bad timing." And so I'm talking about that, but from my perspective and wanting to be respectful of him. And so I always ask him. But it is interesting. And I can feel the weight of a lie or a cover up or whatever, if I just go on stage and say –
Nick: The funny thing.
Jenny: "I met my husband, and I knew he was going to be my husband right away," because actually, I wanted him to be, but he didn't want to.
Nick: Yeah, I've been touring forever. I started touring before the pandemic and I had my hour ready to go, and then obviously the pandemic happened, and then now I'm still wrapping it up to get ready to shoot it as a special. And it is interesting now, because I've been talking about the last couple years. The tour is called middle-aged boy, so, "Am I a man or am I a boy?" And then I got married and had a child.
Jenny: And you're like, "Oh, I'm a man."
Nick: I'm a boy–
Jenny: Oh you're not? –
Nick: I'm a “boyman”
Jenny: “Boyman.”
Nick: No, I'm a man [laughs]. But it is this thing of, in talking as you were talking about it being like, "Oh, I'm going to tell this story, but it involves Lily." And it is like, "Hey, can I talk about this?" And birth and stuff like that, and she was like, "You can talk about it if you don't make some bullshit trivializing joke about it."
Jenny: That's for sure.
Nick: And that forced me to find some more interesting truths to it, so I'm super glad. Beyond the fact that it's, I think, decent to do with your partner to be like, "Hey, I do this thing where I talk about our lives, so that's not entirely fair to you, so you get to weigh in on that."
Jenny: Yeah, I really, really get in a pissy mood about people who think that their art doesn't touch their life. Maybe some people, it doesn't, if you're a super method actor and you just do that and everyone else has to deal with it or something, that seems really hard. And the same for comedians, I think I was never very aggressive about this, but I used to feel like if I want to talk about it, I should be able to talk about it because I'm not a mean person and I'm not going to dress anyone down, and now I really don't feel that way. I feel like whatever I'm going to talk about on stage, I have to understand that whatever power I get, from people laughing because I'm being funny or whatever, that can't be at the price of my partner's experience or self respect or the size of the person that they are.
Nick: Totally.
Jenny: In terms of joking about birth, some of my new standup is actually about how annoying those jokes are. And those jokes are so weird. The trivializing ones, or the 'my vagina got destroyed' or whatever. Some of my new standup is, I feel like I want to just talk about why we even do that. Why even do that? It's been really fun to find what's actually underneath the cliche.
Nick: I think that's the goal, is trying to find whatever, as you're saying, find whatever is underneath the cliche. Because I think that in going back to PubLIZity, that was what was so fun about doing it with you was you're like, "Okay, here's what these shows are, but in a weird way, here's what's underneath that in these two people." I think we should wrap this up.
Jenny: I don't have an eye on the clock.
Nick: I know we're supposed to be in conversation, but to me, this conversation should be in service of your movie.
Jenny: That's nice of you to say.
Nick: Because you guys have worked incredibly hard on it for a really, really long time, and it's a really beautiful thing.
Jenny: Thanks.
Nick: I think the world is really going to love it the way you intend for it to be loved.
Jenny: Gosh, I hope so. And now that I really don't go on my social media very much, I post and then I delete it from my phone, so I don't know if I'll know. And I don't read reviews, although sometimes Dean sends them to me when he really loves them. Because he's like, "No, please."
Nick: “Read this one. It's really nice.”
Jenny: Yeah, "Share this with me," is how he feels, and I think that's right. All I can say is it's exactly what we meant to do and that I do offer it up as an example of both myself. And I hope that it can be a gift to everyone and that I feel satisfied in it all for sure.
Nick: Great. Well, you guys made something really, really beautiful.
Jenny: Thank you, darling.
Nick: All right. So we'll do the PubLIZity reboot for SeeSo coming up.
Jenny: What's SeeSo?
Nick: SeeSo was one of those failed, like in the Quibi –
Jenny: Oh, Quibi. [Laughs] Honestly, you are amazing though at this podcast.
Nick: Shut up, stop it, just stop saying that.
Jenny: Honestly, I couldn't tell if we were like working or having fun,
Nick: But for me, working is fun.
[Laughter]
Jenny: Oh man. I miss those idiots so much.
Nick: I know. We'll get them back up, up and running somewhere along the way. Oh my God.
Jenny: Is that when I finally tamper with my face and get Botox? Never?
Nick: What if you show up on set and my Liz is like ... I'm like, "It's a character thing," –
Jenny: It's you as Nick, you have Botox.
Nick: But clearly I just have tons of fillers.
[Laughter]
Jenny: That was the one hard thing about watching. I know we have to wrap this up, but watching Kroll Show was, I was like, "Oh, I was younger." I feel like I look fine. I love how I look, in fact. But I'm like, "Oh, it's different." I only want to use my creams. If I get a facial, maybe put that weird light on me or something. But I only want to use my creams. I just can't get anything put in my face. I'm going to let my life cycle play out. But sometimes ...
Nick: You're like, "Squirt squirt."
Jenny: Like, "Oopsies, I saw that I was younger and it did hurt my feelings that actually once I was younger."
Nick: Oh my God.
Jenny: But let it come. Your skin looks great, I've got to say.
Nick: My skin's a di-fucking-saster.
Jenny: No, Nick, I'm looking at your skin. It looks good.
Nick: I can't even tell you how fucked up, truly fucked up my skin has been for the last three ...
Jenny: Well, you have really sensitive skin from what I remember.
Nick: It's crazy. It's been crazy.
Jenny: Oh no. I'm sorry.
Nick: Thank you. But it's getting better, but it's been truly, I talk about it in my show a little bit, but it's just insane. It's insane.
Jenny: If it makes you feel any better, when I look at myself now I see a flash of just Eli Wallock. I feel like I look exactly like Eli Wallock.
[Laughter]
Nick: How did you settle there?
Jenny: Cause I saw a picture of him one time and he was just like a really, really old Jewish person.
Nick: And that's what you felt like.
Jenny: I was like, "Is there a difference between me and that?"
Nick: There's a few differences, yeah.
Jenny: He's not alive, right? Is he dead?
Nick: If he's not?
Jenny: Oh, no. Oh, no. If he's not, just please make a note to cut this out if he's not dead. But I think he did. Just cut it out please.
Nick: Eli Wallock happily listening to this podcast being like, "This is great. This is a great podcast."
Jenny: He's got his buds in.
Nick: And then just at the end. I think he'd be thrilled to hear that you guys look alike.
Jenny: I mean, I love him. I love him. I love him in Keeping the Faith.
Nick: He's wonderful.
Jenny: I fucking love that movie. No one ever talks about it. It's weird that you're not in that movie as the male lead.
Nick: It's Ben Stiller, right? And Ed Norton?
Jenny: Yeah. Yeah.
Nick: That's the thing.
Jenny: Well, you were too young then, but you could be that –
Nick: Talk about how the business has changed, that movie just does not get made anymore.
Jenny: Absolutely not, but that movie rules and in fact, the way they shot the sex scenes, I always loved that.
Nick: I don't remember. I've seen that movie maybe once.
Jenny: It's a lot of hand up the thigh under the sheets, classy. But it is horny, and I remember being like, "That's what lovemaking is, that Ben Stiller is doing to Jenna Elfman. They're making love."
Nick: Yeah, a hand up the thigh. Good for them. I got to go back. I'll go back and watch it.
Jenny: I like it.
Nick: Well, that's a good way to end it. If you guys, if you have time, go see Marcel the Shell with Shoes On but if not, go see Keeping the Faith.
Jenny: Get a DVD delivered to your house by Netflix.
Nick: Netflix will deliver a DVD to your house of that film, unless it's not in the Netflix library, but I bet you can stream it somewhere.
Jenny: For sure.
Nick: Right. Is your movie coming out?
Jenny: In the theaters.
Nick: Great. When?
Jenny: It comes out June 24th.
Nick: Great.
Jenny: Yeah, I'm so excited.
Nick: I can't believe I have to wait. I have to wait three months for people to see it.
Jenny: Yeah, I guess I've been waiting like eight years or whatever.
Nick: So it's a little more.
Jenny: It doesn't even feel like it's real anymore, that it'll happen, and I'm really, really excited, and I'm also, just to say, really excited for Dean because he's a genius –
Nick: Truly.
Jenny: And this is his first giant thing. My prediction is I'll never see him again. I'm begging for work from him after this, but he's just a brilliant genius and his work is gorgeous.
Nick: He really is. I agree. I totally agree. I've known him forever, but watching this, you're like, "This is a really unbelievably talented filmmaker” –
Jenny: Yeah, through and through.
Nick: “Who should and will get a lot of accolades and work out of this.” Because I think it's just a beautiful sample of what he can do. So, good to see you.
Jenny: Really good outfit. No one can see it, but you look great.
Nick: You have a great outfit, too.
Jenny: Thank you.
Nick: And we got to get our babies together to fight.
Jenny: My baby's really kissy. Watch out. [Laughs]
Nick: My baby's slightly withholding. Watch out. [Laughs] They've met briefly, but we should get them out on the playground.
Jenny: Get it on the books.
Nick: All right. Bye, Jenny.
Jenny: Bye-bye. Thank you.
Speaker: Thanks for listening. The A24 Podcast is produced by us, A24. Special thanks to our editor Thom Wyatt and Robot Repair, who composed our theme.