Speaker 1: Hey, Arrow, how are you absolutely fantastic? Before we even
get started, I got to ask you this question, knowing
what you know and what you have personally experienced with creativity,
would you do it all over again?
Speaker 2: There's no doubt I would do it.
Speaker 3: You know, the idea of changing anything seems like you know,
you would lose so much.
Speaker 2: Yes, I fact same.
Speaker 1: See. That's what I love about this book is that
you're coming out there and I mean you're you're giving
us everything and you're saying, okay, so thank you for celebrating.
But now let me tell you what really what it
was like to walk in my shoes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, there's a lot of pain and a lot
of struggle, and a lot of stress and a lot
of challenges, and those things are part of the equation
of success.
Speaker 1: How did you deal with that in putting it in
the book? Because I too, am a writer and there
are many I mean, we go through a lot of
emotions when we're writing.
Speaker 3: I tried to be as honest as I could, and
that was the biggest challenge probably was just to be
as uncensored and unfiltered as I could be, because I
wanted people to really feel what I was going through
and these very famous things were happening.
Speaker 1: And one of those famous things was actually writing with
Bob Dylan. Oh my god, dude, Yeah, that was an
amazing experience.
Speaker 2: I mean it was like sitting with the Guru who
would sit there full.
Speaker 3: In this boxing gym and he was chain smoking twelve
hours a day and we would write together, and I
every day I was like, Wow, I'm writing with Bob Dylan.
Speaker 2: I mean it was always every day was like a
revelation to be with him.
Speaker 1: So is it like the theory that my wife has
always told me, because her firs assessment was he was
a record producer that worked with Michael Jackson as well
as Madonna. She said they put on their clothes the
same way you do. They're just people.
Speaker 3: Well that's true, but I mean there is something about
Bob Dilan that is different than anybody I had ever met.
I mean, he's a savants. He's got some kind of
like inner wisdom. He taught me to trust my instincts
no matter what, even if they're wrong. That's all you
have are your instincts. And everything that he said to
me wound up being a pearl of wisdom that I
was able to carry.
Speaker 1: Speaking of being a teacher, how in a book like this,
this is all about teaching people. And we are living
in an internet visionary kind of lifestyle nowadays, where everybody
thinks they're a star before even jumping on board.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well what they find out is, as Andy Warhol said,
you'll have your fifteen minutes of fame, the hard part
having more than that. And look at Bob Dylan. He's
been doing it for what sixty years already.
Speaker 2: Think about how hard that is to sustaining that for
that long. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: That's so funny that you said that, because one of
the things I've been doing lately, especially since this last
biopic about him, is I go onto Alexa and I
have her play Bob Dylan music and I keep thinking, wow,
I totally forgot he sang that song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, he's like Picasso. He has different phases. Yeah,
you know this early folk fase.
Speaker 2: There's the electric phase.
Speaker 3: There's a Christian phase, there's the Jewish phase, there's the
blues man phase, there's the current phase. There's a lot
of aspects to Bob Dylan. He's got a tremendous body
of work that you can explore for the rest of
your life.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Larry Charles coming
up next the name of the book comedy Samurai forty
years of Blood, guts and Laughter. Larry Charles, We're back.
So what did you do in your life when it
came to setting free your creativity? So many people are
I call them hiters. They sit in their houses and
they create beautiful things, but they won't let it go
for others to enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I think that that is a hard thing, especially if
you're a writer.
Speaker 3: And I kind of forced myself out there and I
learned to deal with rejection and I had I developed
resilience because rejection and failure is.
Speaker 2: Part of the equation.
Speaker 3: And I got rejected and I failed many many times,
but in a way, it spurred me on and it
propelled me to succeed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but when you face that rejection, are you like me?
Did you just kind of laugh it off? It's like
whatever your loss.
Speaker 3: Well, it took me a while to get to the
place where I could laugh it off. But I took
it very hard for a while. But I realized that
nobody cares, so I was going to move on. I
had to keep going, and I finally figured that out.
I figured that out.
Speaker 1: Speaking of figuring things out, now, when you were writing
this book, did you come across anything that you were
writing that just shocked you, Because I mean when you
start uncovering the layers, it's like, oh, I forgot about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were things that I've forgotten that kind of
came back into my memory and that I was able
to write about. And again, I had to kind of
excavate my own soul to write a good version of
this book, you know, to be honest and not just
having to be a recounting of all these great, you know, projects,
but to sort of tell a kind of deeper story
about life during the projects.
Speaker 2: And that was my goal.
Speaker 1: See, I've always believed that writers are profits in a way.
And in other words, we experienced the good, the bad,
the ugly, the twist, the spins, and all of a sudden,
now we have to go teach a lesson.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I didn't set out to teach a lesson.
I mean, on Seinfeld, we used to say no hugging,
no learning. I wasn't interested in a false morality. I
wanted to be unvarnished and true, even if I didn't
come off looking good in the process.
Speaker 1: What is it like for you to see your words
and thinking patterns come out of someone else's mouth. Was
that easy to accomplish?
Speaker 3: I had dreamed about that before it happened. I was
really I was very pleased to hear that it was
a great experience.
Speaker 1: I was shocked when I learned that. You say that
a lot of comedians don't make it big on television
for many different projects and reasons. I mean, but stepping back,
it's like he's speaking the truth.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, some comedians are very good at sort of condensing
their act and sort of making it very TV friendly.
Speaker 2: Other comedians really.
Speaker 3: Need the spontaneity of a nightclub where they're dealing and
they're interacting with the live audience, and that's what makes
it special.
Speaker 2: It's just like music in a way. I mean, if
you go see The Grateful Dead, they're going to be.
Speaker 3: Every show would be different, you know, Whereas some musicians
want to play exactly what's on the record, and that's
the difference in comedy as well.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: So many of those comedians, they it takes them years
to craft their jokes. But for you, as a writer,
how did you trust that. Yep, they're gonna laugh at
this one.
Speaker 2: I had no idea. I hide that.
Speaker 3: One of the great uh typerrope walking feats of comedy
writing is you really don't know it's funny. You never
know it's funny, and you will find out the hard way.
Speaker 1: Please come back to this show anytime in the future.
The door is always going to be open for you.
Speaker 2: Okay, man, thank you so much. That's very nice of
you to said great to meet you.
Speaker 1: You'd be brilliant today.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna try you too.