Danny McBride Thinks Men Learned All the Wrong Lessons From Movies

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From The New York Times, this is the interview, I'm David Marquezie. Danny McBride's great HBO shows. I'm talking about Eastbound and Down, Vice-Principles and the righteous gemstones, all of which he co-starred in and helped to create, weren't just satirically sharp, hilariously profane and sneakily heart tugging. They also worked as almost anthropologically detailed studies of a certain type of modern American

manhood. McBride's anti-heroes in all of those shows were arrogant, insecure, unapologetic, vulgar, status-obsessed, and nursed all kinds of petty grievances. They're also widely beloved. Now he's applying his gift for satire and character studies to short stories.

With his first book, the forthcoming collection, thrilling tales of modern men.

Some of the stories fit pretty neatly into the McBride canon of wounded men who lash out. A canon that also includes his work co-writing the rebooted Halloween horror films. Other stories tip toward a quieter emotional depth.

“How be it a depth still laced with obscenity and the occasional violent outburst?”

But they're all undeniably the work of storyteller interested in entertaining, while also poking at what makes men tick and then go boom. Here's my conversation with Danny McBride. [Music] Danny, thank you for taking the time to speak with me today. I appreciate it.

Oh, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. You know, reading the stories in the book, thrilling tales of modern men. To me, they feel like they are very much Danny McBride's stories. They only could have come from you. There's the specific use of language, obviously the sense of humor, even sort of like the explosions of violence here and there.

You know what I'm talking about? Yeah, but the overarching themes of the book,

“they speak to my mind very clearly to one of the great themes of this moment, right?”

Which is what people call like a crisis of masculinity. Do you have a sense of why that feels like a particularly acute problem now? I mean, maybe it's because everyone says that there's something wrong with men now. But, you know, I don't know. I think it's probably, you know, maybe it's even that where this generation that's like grown up so heavily on media.

You know, I mean like being a kid and growing up in the 80s, it's like you are 100% being sold, machismo, action, kill 'em all, let God sort of mount like that was sort of pounded into anyone's brains that came up on cable television or, you know, watching movies. And I think it took me a little while to realize when I got older, like oh shit, the movies are just that's not really real life, that's not really how things work. And maybe there is just this

kind of slow awakening of like, yeah, I guess everything I've been told is it necessarily how it's supposed to be or how it goes. And then it's kind of that awkwardness of you sort of then finding out what is important to you or how what your values are, what your morals are, what kind of person you want to be. There's one story called the Institute of Men, which is about a guy who goes to like sort of a creepy hair growth clinic.

And he has to take this intake survey that has some pretty, for what he thought was a medical procedure, some sort of strangely, emotionally direct questions. I want to ask you a couple of those questions. Okay. So, wow, how clever of you. Here we go. One of the questions was when was the last time you were in a physical altercation? It was, it was a long time ago. It was in, I feel like it might have been 2000. I got into a scuffle with the next girlfriend's boyfriend who was being

abusive. And I went to go pick her up and I got into a fight in the middle of burp. How did the fight go? You know, it was, it was, it was actually very exciting. What ended up happening was,

this is crazy. So, this girl broke my heart. I was a young man. This was like my first real

serious girlfriend all through college. She moved out to LA together. She got mixed up with another guy. She wanted to end it with that other guy. And he wasn't happy about that. She called me up and said, hey, can you come pick me up? I'm at this guy's place and he's given me a hard time. So, you know,

Nobody hears the scrapper. We're not trained for this. So, I'm like, you know, when I'm, my heart's broken and I have to, I'm like, we gotta go get her. You know, like, come on, let's go and, you know, we're just like, look around like, do we have weapons, you know, it's like, I take like a, you know, we let it's like a golf club here, you know, so we, we drive in my Hyundai Alantra to Burbank to where this is where she's going to be. And she's waiting outside and the guys with

her and the dude is like 65. He's like massive. And my first instinct was like, damn,

they did strong. Like, she went for a really strong guy after me. I, you know, we just kind of standing there and so that I finally get out of the car. My buddies who I thought were going to get my back just stayed in the car. And I'm like, hey, all right, let's, let's get her, come on, get to the car, leave her alone. And I looked back to my buddies and my one buddy just like rolls the window down and just like hands the golf club out the window. I wasn't even asking for the golf

club. But then I just, so I just took it because I wasn't sure what to do. And then that escalate things because the guys like, what are you going to do with that golf club? And I was kind of like, well, I'm not really sure what the plan was on the golf club. I guess, hit you with it. I don't know, what's, I don't know what's happening right now. And he came at me. And so I did. I was like,

to the golf club and it's swung and, and hit it, I aimed for his knees. And I hit him with the

shaft and that it just easily broke across his knees. It didn't slow him down at all. And I'm just

“holding the handle for the golf club. And he just looks at me. It's just like, what the hell?”

It's that he socks me. We were on the ground. We're tussling. Wow. And then the girlfriend comes in. She pulls him off by his hair. You know, we all get back in the car and take off. My nose is bleeding. We rescue her. And go. But that was the last physical fight I was in. That was a good story. Also, I hate to implicitly endorse physical violence as a means to solving any sort of problem. But then you were like the good guy in that story. We had to. Someone

had to stand up for what was right. And then another one of the questions in the story that the character has asked is when was the last time you cried? Do you have an answer to that one? Oh, God. When was the last time I cried? You know, it probably wasn't honestly too long ago. Like, it doesn't take much these days. Like, this is like my son just graduated from eighth grade. And there was like, you know, which isn't even that big of a deal. But there was a ceremony.

And they put together this little slide show. That is just like the, you know, just the kids and science lab and stuff. And I definitely found myself there. Like, oh damn, I hope the lights don't come up right now. I got, I'm well enough. I'm leaking here. But just to connect to this a little bit to some of the themes in the book. You know, I feel like a lot of the characters in the stories,

you know, they're basically struggling to find purpose in their life or they're like looking

for meaning, you know, maybe because they feel amassulated or because they feel anxiety about their

“status or, you know, whatever the reason might be, where do people find meaning and purpose?”

Do you think? You know, when I was a kid, I grew up going to church. You know, we went to church all the time. I, you know, I've talked about this before. Like, my mom was like a puppet minister. Like, my parents were really involved. And, you know, after my parents got divorced and I was a sixth grade, we really just stopped going to church, you know. And so now I have kids and, you know, churches at really a part of our life either. And I started thinking, like, man, there's all these

basic things I learned from going to church. Just basic morals and values that are like, oh, I'm like taking that for granted that my kids are just going to pick all that stuff up just from the world around them. But, you know, they're really, they're not. You know, you do have to think about that. And, you know, I think it's a dangerous time, honestly, with how much influence, you know, these phones and what people can be getting exposed to without really realizing it and how even just

the algorithm can be tainting what you think is right and wrong or, you know, all the stuff that everybody's afraid of. Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit more about your mom's puppet ministry? I mean, maybe I'm betraying my own ignorance here. But I wasn't really aware that that was a thing until I, you seem like you'd be really into puppet ministry. I actually like puppet ministry, but it's puppets of the band to ministry. It's a kind of

“thing. Yeah, exactly. That's it. They're on 30 different. So what, yeah, tell me about that. What was that?”

Well, you know, when I was a kid, I went we went to this little Baptist church in Spots of Amy and Virginia. And both of my parents were pretty involved with the church and my mom bought these puppets. And then she would write these plays. And she would like do the children's sermon's during church. And so, you know, on Sunday mornings, we would load the stage up and the puppets into the car and go to church early to help her get it set up. And then, you know, before

the big sermon would happen, my mom would go in there with like a few other people that were voicing these other puppets. And they would do these little morality tales, you know, about why you shouldn't steal or, you know, or covet what your, what your neighbors have. Just the most

a typewriter. And I used to watch her. I was pretty young. I suppose this is probably a third or fourth grade, but I'd watch her, like in the kitchen, that typewriter typing up these scripts for these puppet ministries. There'd be two or three pages long, simple stories. But that had a massive influence on me when I was a kid. I just, I thought it was cool that she was creating something in our, you know, kitchens, place where we all hang out and just watch TV. And she's creating

something. And then two days later, I'm in the middle of church, like watching people react to

something that she created. I, it always had an impact on me. And you think that's part of why

“you got into storytelling? I think it was. I mean, I wasn't participating in those stories,”

but even just participating in the sense that I would help set the stage up. And there was this anticipation of like, oh, I wonder what they'll think about this one this week. I just, I don't know. I, if there was something about that, I just found fun to know that there was something can cocked it for the benefit of other people. And then wondering how they would react to it. I kept those puppets for a long time. They were, I didn't know what to do with them. They're kind

of creepy. So they were like in Tupperware. In my, in my house in Virginia, and then finally, after years and years, I gave him to my sister because she had been asking for him. I don't know what she does with them. I'm not sure if she's doing her own puppet shows for, for the jointment of herself, but the house or what? I don't know. It's kind of a weird thing to get rid of thought. I mean, like, you have these puppets that your mom had when you were a kid. You can't just

the idea of them just sitting in a dumpster somewhere is heartbreaking. So yeah, then they just become, you know, some massive part of your, of your closet that you're like, why can't we put anything here? And you're like, well, that's where all the puppets are buried. We can't put anything else there. Um, just because it's been rattling around in my head since you said it. When I said, I didn't know about puppet ministries. And you said something like, you don't seem like somebody

who would know much about that. Was I supposed to be insulted, but I don't know. No, no, not at all.

“I don't know what type of person should know about puppet ministries. You. I guess me, right?”

Do I fit the profile? 100%. Then you said you, you stopped going to church. Why did your family stop going? You know, was really interesting. They, uh, you know, we, they're, you know, this was back in the 80s. And, you know, divorce wasn't as like accepted as it was now, especially not in the church. And,

you know, it was, uh, my first taste of sort of the hypocrisy sometimes of the people that

can go to church. And, you know, here, it was like our family was so involved with the church. And my parents get a divorce and my dad's in Florida, my mom's raised in me and my sister by herself. And, you know, we're going to church. And they're all just like whispering behind her back. And so I think it became an uncomfortable place for her. And so she stopped going and would drop me and my sister off, uh, each Sunday. And then I think after a few weeks of that, we are sort of like,

I think we're good with church. I think we, I think we've got it. We, we will take care of ourselves

“down. Yeah. Do that mean you stopped being a believer or you just stopped going to church?”

No, I don't think it, but I don't think it made me stop going to church. I mean, it's different when you're a kid and you're taking to church. You're not really thinking whether you believe or not. You're just kind of going because your parents are making you go, you know. And I think that I took a lot of those beliefs for granted. And then I think as I've gotten older, I definitely think about spirituality a lot. I think about I wonder where we're from and where we're going. If we're going anywhere,

I don't feel like I have the answers. And so I'm just very open to what other people's answers could potentially be. It's funny. You said when you're a kid and you would go to church. You're not really thinking about like whether you believe or not, but I, I had the opposite experience. My mom was Jewish. My dad was converted to Judaism, but he's a talent Roman Catholic. And so sometimes I would end up at mass and sometimes I would be at temple. And I really remember thinking,

"Is any of this true like they're saying this one thing over here?" And in the other place I'm going, they're saying I totally different things. They're not both right. Yeah, I spent most of my time in church like drawing pictures over the minister's face in the programs. Like I wasn't really I don't think I was giddy. I wasn't soaking the whole message in. I don't think. Yeah, I know you said your folks divorced, but are there ways in which your dad was an influence on the kind of work

that you ended up doing or even the kind of person you became? Maybe just because he was a piece of shit. Maybe he's inspired a lot of these jackasses I played. You're not kidding. Now, I mean, he wasn't much of a storyteller except for maybe the stories he would tell mom and my sister about what he was up to. Wait, what kind of stories was your dad telling you?

Nothing, nothing, nothing, good. And I just want to go back to the church influence for a second.

How much was righteous gemstones kind of an outgrowth of that? You know, it was, it was. You know, I left Los Angeles in 2017, like my son was about to go into kindergarten.

kids there. Like, you know, we lived up off of mall and behind walls. And you know, I remember my son was asking me, you know, I want to learn how to write a bike. And my thought was like, why? Like, you're

never going to write a bike ever down mall hall. Like, that's silly. But it got me thinking about like,

well, do I want to try to give them something similar to what I had? Do I want to like see what it would be like for them to live in a smaller town, live somewhere where they can write a bike

“down the road. And so my wife and I, you know, that's what brought us to Charleston. And I just”

started kind of looking around and seeing all the churches that were in Charleston. I mean, there were so many, uh, and obviously in Los Angeles, you don't see them quite as much. You know, and every other radio station here is like a religious radio station. It seems like and it had just been a long time since I had, you know, been back and lived back in the south. And it just got me thinking about when I was a kid and going to church. And I just got curious of like how church had changed,

like how it was different from when I was a kid. And I started doing kind of research. And that's when I started finding out the like mega churches that were around here locally. And uh, I just became fascinating to sort of dive in and and see how different everything was now. You know, it's easy. I think to, um, you know, point at things to do with the church and say, like, well, this is, this is hypocrisy or this is really just about money. But did you find that

when you were doing the research you just described or there any sort of, um, more positive realizations you had or did you connect with anything in the research? Oh, I, I connect with a lot of it. I mean, I, yeah, tell me about that. As we were as we were writing, you know, I just started, you know, I was reading the pile up is like looking for everything of like, uh, of just immersing myself in this world. And you start kind of looking at the Bible that way. You're like, wow,

this thing at the end of the day, it's a bunch of stories that are passed down for generations and

“generations and generations that are sort of like, this is what people think you need to be able to do”

to have a good life, you know, to survive. I love it. I love looking at it that way and thinking about it like that. You know, I don't think there's inherently anything wrong. Obviously going to church. It's like, you know, the times I've been here with my kids, it's like there's a sense of community. It's awesome. You know, it's like, it's nice that people are positive. I think like everything, it's just all depends on the people that, you know, that you happen to be around when you go. Like,

I mean, you know, you could go, you could have the greatest church in the world. And if the people in charge or assholes, then, you know, it's not going to be the same as going to another church where maybe they're not. What was the most interesting feedback you got about righteous gemstones from a church color? You know, we surprisingly had a lot of people that went to church that watched the show and I think I bet. Yeah. Part of it was like, you know, one of my like rules in the writer's room was that

I never wanted a religion to be the butt of any jokes. Like, I didn't want belief to be what we're

making fun of. Like that felt too easy. It felt cheap. You know, I actually went around before I did the show. I went and I interviewed like a bunch of different mega church pastors. I didn't tell them when I was working on, but I just kind of like, you know, and everybody was always gracious. People opened up their doors to me. And I was asking questions about religion. I was asking questions about the business of it. Like, when it's time to expand or when it's time to do another one,

or when to shut one down, it's interesting. It is like, you know, they were, you would think that, all right, well, they would decide to put a church somewhere because, you know, there's no churches in that town. They, they were like, no, it's the exact opposite. You put a church where there's already a bunch of people going to church because you know, you have the audience there. And so even thinking about planting churches in such a business way, I don't know, that was sort of

that felt rich in that felt like what I wanted to make the show about. But in doing that, you know,

I met all these different pastors and talked to people. And I always wondered when it was over with,

like, if they put two and two together or what they thought of it. And there was one time where I was out, and I ran into one of the pastors I talked to. And he just came up to me and like, wistered on my ear and said, I can't tell anyone I watched it, but you nailed it. And I was just like, oh, great. Okay, so it's a feel good or bad about it. It's like awesome. Got it. You were a briefly a substitute teacher. I was, yeah, if there was a brief moment where

all was lost in Los Angeles. And I moved back to my parents house. And I was a substitute teaching by day and bartending by night. And yeah, that was where I got the idea for eastbound was just, you know, I'm sitting here in these local high schools in Spotsibania, Virginia, trying to kind of like convince these kids that I'm not like the rest of the teachers that I'm trying to do something.

“My life that I'm trying to be famous in Hollywood. The kids don't care. Were you a good teacher?”

You know, I thought I was good. You know, I probably not great. Probably not what they're looking for. All the kids cared about then was just like, what kind of car you drove? That was it. They all

respect. So when you were in LA, you, it was after, you know, foot fistway, kind of, you know,

“you got yourself in the door. And then you started to make your name really with some of the”

R-rated comedies, right? Like, you know, pineapple Express, or this is the end. And people talk about how Hollywood doesn't really want to make those kinds of comedies now. It's basically R-rated comedies. But you seem to be able to do the work that you want to do and and write the stuff that you want to write. Do you have any sense of being inhibited in any way or do you ever feel like someone's sort of looking over your shoulder or giving you notes about that kind of stuff? You know,

my experience has never, I've never gotten a note to sort of like, don't make this R-rated,

don't make this R-rated comedy, don't have this point of view. I mean, I think for comedy, there was definitely an awakening as I think with all things. It's like, you know, different generations come up and different things are important to different generations. I think that's what it's all about. You know, when with movies, especially, it's like, you know, there was a time in the 50s where it was only just Westerns. And then there was only just musicals. And, you know,

in the 80s, something it's only like teen movies and action movies. It's like, movies always go through that. And I just think that I think that that younger generation, that kind of came up like, you know, after this height of these R-rated movies, it just wasn't

“what I think that they were interested in or maybe that's what Hollywood thought. I don't know.”

Do you have a sense of what your son, for example, is interested in when he wants to see something in laugh? He, uh, it's YouTube. I mean, like, you know, I have a hard time getting him to watch movies. He just doesn't want to, we'll go, I'll try to drag him to the theater. But if it's in the house, and it's an hour and a half, like, good luck. It's like, you know, it's constantly like, me, police again, like, don't know, get back here, get back and finish this. You have to finish this

part. Uh, I just think that they, there's so much stuff that's competing for their attention. When we were kids, it was movies. There was like 12 channels on the TV. You kind of, you, you know, you got what you got and now everything is so customized. And in YouTube is pretty amazing. I mean, every time my son or my daughter get a new interest, like boom, there's a million things that they can watch of people who have that same interest or are explaining how to get into that thing.

And, uh, I, I don't know, I find it kind of fascinating. Do you find the prospect of raising a boy or a girl like more? I have two girls. But, uh, does it feel more difficult to raise a boy or raise a girl? You know what, none, they, they haven't felt more difficult. They're just totally different, you know, they, they really are. Uh, my, my son is more like my wife and my daughter is more like me. Uh, my daughter's 11. My son is, um, he's 14. And, uh, it's been so much fun. And I'm sort of a

sap, you know, I'll ready right now. I'm already counting down like, oh, I only got four more summers

until he's in college. And so I'm always just trying to be a part of their life as much as I can.

I know how fast all of this is going by. And, you know, I didn't have both parents around the whole time I grew up. And, uh, you know, I just want to make sure that, you know, both of my kids get out of childhood and feel like there were people there rooting for them and supporting them, you know, the entire time. Yeah. You know, I was talking to somebody at a party, not that long ago, and he has a, maybe a 13 year old son. I'm just very curious about it, because like I said, I only

have, uh, girls. And I was asking him about phone stuff. And, you know, he was explaining how just a constant, you know, negotiating phone time and stuff like that, it's just a constant battle they're waging and how draining and irritating it is. And I said, well, what about the pornography

“aspect of it? Like, did you have to talk to him? And he sort of paused for a second. And they said,”

I just think he's not interested. Yeah. You have the one teenage boy in America who's not curious. We don't, you know, I've kept my kids both of them off of phones. Oh, really? They, they both

have Apple watches and they, they think they're the nerdyest things ever. So they never wear them. So,

I've kept them off of it. And now we have computers in the house that they'll use, but I have the computer like right downstairs. So I can see what the hell's going on. But, you know, my son plays video games. I'm sure that, uh, you know, I mean, his friends have phones. He has access to all the stuff, but I just want to make sure that they weren't coming up thinking that this is something you have to have glued to you. You know, I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't think it's something that everybody

needs to carry around with them all the time. I mean, it's nice to be able to get in touch with them if they're at a friend's house or know where they're up to, but not at the expense of like them all just sitting around a friend's house all staring at their phones and not hanging out, you know, not that making memories, not getting out in the world. After the break, Danny and I talk about how you can get away with anything when it comes to violence

It's, you're just allowed to.

“I think it's fair to say that a lot of your work broadly falls under the category of satire”

and something that I've seen people talk about, you know, since 2016 is, you know, the ways in which satire has maybe become more difficult in the Trump years because like, it seems hard to outdo the world when you're trying to think of something that seems over the top or unbelievable or outlandish, is that something that you find yourself coming up against like how to calibrate what the satire is, you know, world that can seem so insane.

You know, I mean, the world is always going to probably seem insane because it's, you know,

no matter what time period you're in, I'm sure, you know, I'm sure that after the Civil War, people were like, damn, this isn't sane right now, I'm like, I bet you that it always feels like that to an extent. I feel like the way that you go around it is, I think sometimes, if your satire is just about the anxieties of what's happening two day, then you might not be hitting upon a truth that's like universal, you know, to me, I like going after character human

flaws as opposed to just the flaws of just this moment. So the idea of sort of like, you know,

“guilt, shame, you know, feeling inadequate, like these things I think are timeless.”

Do you just generally think we're fooling ourselves into thinking we're dealing with new problems and actually it's just that we're dealing with them for the first time and the problems themselves are not new? I would agree with that. I mean, obviously every, you know, every time period has their unique problems and, you know, those problems sometimes evolved from things that have been around for a long time, but I do think, I mean, this is, look, we're all the age we are right now for the very first time

dealing with the world, the way it is now for the very first time for us, you know, and I think that that's a lot of that is that. I think even just the idea, you know, as like my generation is getting

older and even the generation below mine, you know, it's like there's never been, like I was

thinking the other day about, you know, you too, there was like a single that showed up on my wife's iPhone and it was like, I guess, a new song and I was like, you too has been around since the 80s. It's like that is like a bit, you know, it's like 26, that's like, you know, some 46 years. That would have been like when we were kids, like, you know, listening to a band that was around in the 1940s, the scope of the time, like we have access to so much that we didn't have access to when we were

kids and we're just that all the culture has been preserved. I don't think that other generations have had easy access to stuff that was made so long ago. I think there can be a concern to that easy access. Actually, can mean the culture feels more static, too, because that can sort of like crowd out space for newer, younger stuff to come through. I totally agree. I think that, you know, it does feel like the culture is a little flat. Like you're not seeing the decades like BS distinct

is they used to be, you know, and I think that that probably does have something to do with the fact that we're just that we have so much stuff that it becomes hard for newer people to be able to, like, find that space. I mean, I look at it even with, like, TV. It's you make this thing. You put

all this energy into it. You never even experience it with the audience. You don't ever get that

final, like, oh, did it work, did it not work? And then as soon as your last episode airs, there's 20 new shows that are on. You know, and then those will go through and then there's 20 more. It's just constantly nothing has its moment in the sun. And I think that that's probably just because of the world we live in. There's just so much stuff out there, old and new. I just think if you're lamenting the fact that the stuff doesn't get a moment in the sun,

“wait till your book comes out. That's what I've been hearing. Also, it's, you know, it's”

I don't mean this as a as a dig, but just on the idea of, like, culture recycling or sticking around. It's like you rebooted the Halloween movies totally. Well, you know, that we, you know, David Green came to me with that and look, I'm a, I'm, I'm a die hard. I'll, I have my opinions, but as, as David came to me, it was like, they want me to reboot Halloween. My first thing was like, don't do it. Don't, no way. Don't do it. And he's like, well, I think I'm going to. Then it was like,

okay, then I have to do it with you to make sure we don't mess it up. So, you know, and a certain

at least put some integrity into it. You know what I was curious about? In the same way that I asked

“whether or not you ever ever got notes about, like, you know, the comedy. Do you ever get notes”

when you're making a horror film about something being over the line? I had maybe it's the second Halloween movie you did, but there's one scene where my come out is like cuts off a guy's tongue

and I was like, I'm out. I can't. That is too much for me. You know, I always thought that is,

you know, look, I love horror movies. I love them. That's always when I would rent at the video store. I would just go through that r-rated section of all the, from chopping mall, the fan tasm, like, I love horror, but it is funny writing comedy and then writing horror where people can get offended from jokes. Obviously, I mean, it happens all the time. So, sometimes when you look at things that way of like, oh, well, this be offensive, well, this not be offensive, but for some reason with horror,

there's none of that. You're just like, we're just coming up with cool ways to kill people, and I like, nobody's upset about it. You're just allowed to. But you know what, you want to say the wrong joke, and you might get in trouble. Yeah, but you know, Walton Goggins called you,

I saw somewhere that he called you the funniest person he's ever met. Oh, that's very nice

for him. Who's the funniest person you've ever met? Oh, that's tough. I mean, you know, look at I'm biased. I'm going to say my daughter, peanut. She really is one of the genuinely funniest people I've ever met before. She is like, there's no filter on her. She's 11 years old. She says whatever she wants. She doesn't listen to anything that her parents say, and she is just legitimately funny. She came to the set of gemstones when we were shooting the civil war episode,

and she saw the dead bodies in the blood there. And she was like, what is this? You know, I'm like, this is fake blood. It's like when we have people die on sets, we're not killing them for real. This is like, obviously someone pretending. And she was like, putting the pieces, you're like, oh, okay, well, can I get some of that blood? Can I take some of that home? And so our prop master, Tim, he made this big, this big bottle of peanut's blood and gave it to her. And then like,

the next day, me and my wife are downstairs. And we hear like, hey, guys, come upstairs. Come upstairs. And we come in and she's like, staged a death scene in the shower. There's like blood everywhere.

“And she's like, playing there. He's like, at this point, I think she's like, she was like, nine.”

You're like, what, what is going on in your brain that this is what you're what you're doing? And in, since then, that blood has gotten a lot of use. Do you ever wonder where some of your stories come from? And I don't mean so much. Something like righteous gemstones where it seems like there's, it would be easy to make like a one-to-one correlation. Like, you know, you learn some things about the church and it ended up manifesting in this story. But I'm thinking of something

like a story in the book. Like, is it called Mr. Liptrap Sword, which is basically about an evil sword

that kind of possesses people? Where do you think something like that arises from? You know, the first time I even was kind of messing around with even this format was when I was writing vice principles, you know, we wrote both of those seasons at the same time. You know, no matter how much you love the characters of the story, after 14 months of it, you're sort of like dying to just write about anything else. So to keep myself saying when I was doing that,

I just took loose leaf paper and every morning I would just get up and I would just like write three to five pages handwritten about anything I wanted, not for anyone to see or to do anything with, but just to give my brain a chance to kind of like exercise and feel like I had written something else so I wouldn't get stale. So I did that for that whole entire year. I filled up all these books full of all these kind of beginnings of stories or just a scene from something and,

you know, with with nothing, no emphasis put on at all. And most of it was pretty shitty. Most of it wasn't worth anything. But there were several of that, that I were, they're like,

“oh, this is a cool idea. I'd like to do more of this. And so I think with this stuff,”

it really was that. I was that indulgent with it where I would just have short starts and write things. And if the next day I wanted to keep writing on it, I would and if I didn't, I wouldn't. You know, something else that stands out in the book for me is the way in which character share across the stories, you know, a sense of envy. They're comparing themselves too much to other people in their lives. And it's like, they don't, they don't know what they really want.

They just kind of know that they want what other people seem to have. How do you think in life people do figure out what they want? Is it all just copycating someone who seems more successful? You know, it's a good question. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it is. I mean, a character that's jealous to me just inherently feels juicy. I mean, that's one of those flaws that it says so much about someone because it shows what's important to them and how they look at themselves and feel like they're

start because you're getting a lot of their character out by just what it is that they feel like they should have. It says so much about who they are. Well, how do you figure out what you want to

do in your life? I'm lucky because this is just always what I wanted to do with my life. I mean,

ever since I was a kid, I just really like telling stories. You know, I have like notebooks from when I was a kind of fifth and sixth grade of me, like writing stories and, you know, the spiralling

“notebooks. Like they were all garbage was all ripping off other stuff. Like I wrote a, I think”

it was sixth grade. I wrote something called K9 that was basically just Kujo. I just like,

forget, it's like made my own version of it. But I always just wanted to do this. I made movies

in my backyard when I was like in middle school and high school with just neighborhood friends. And even when I went to college, I went to the North Carolina school, the arts to learn filmmaking there. And I feel grateful for that because I didn't waste any time trying to figure it out. I've just

“spent all my time just trying to execute. Yeah. Well, I think it's a real gift to have that sort of”

clarity about what you want to do. But, you know, the even greater gift is that you were then able

to do it. Do you have any sense at all of what you might be doing if, you know, just your career hadn't worked out the way it has? Puppet ministry, maybe. I could have, I could have been a neppo, maybe, and just rolled into that probably. I kept the, I kept those puppets. Danny, thank you for taking all the time to talk with me today. I really appreciate it. Oh, I really appreciate it. Thanks for reading the book. I appreciate it so much.

That's Danny McBride. His new short story collection, thrilling tales of modern men, is on sale June 23rd. This conversation was produced by Wyatt Orm. It was edited by Allison Benedict, mixing by Sophia Landman, original music by Diane Wong and Mary and Luzano. Photography by Philip Montgomery. The rest of the team is Prea Matthew, Seb Kelly, Pauline Newdorf, Jobile Munoz, Leland James, Mark Zemel, Kathleen O'Brien, and Brooke Mentors. Our executive producer

is Allison Benedict. Next week, Luzoo talks with comedian Robbie Hoffman about how growing up poor as one of 10 children in an ultra-orthodox acidic family has informed her comedy.

“I don't think being offended is the worst thing. I think being poor is.”

Offended, some people expect to go through a life of not being offended, I guess? Not me. I was born offended. I'm David Marquezie, and this is the interview from The New York Times. This week, on the book review podcast, we look back at the culture wars of the '80s and '90s but author Isaac Butler. Culture wars are going to flare up all the time because the arts are how we decide who we are. That's the terrain in which the soul of a nation is really explored and

develop. Listen to the book review wherever you get your podcasts.