Now really.
Really no, really, Hi, I'm Jason Alexander.
I'm here with my palent, Peter Tilden, and this is our little podcast called.
Really No, Really, where we.
Explore things that make us say really no, really really yes exactly all right?
So if I made this sound, what would you think? Oh? What would you think? You make that sound all the time? You need to hear some next, you make that all the time? What do you make if you make that sound every day? Are here.
And you take out the sound the soundtrack of every zombie movie?
Is that sucking question mark? That the dentist? You know what else? I heard too? That's you just brought my grandfather back.
So today we're gonna be talking about in essence, horror and zombies and a very popular show.
But I really know, really of the day is I am?
It was and continue to be a big fan of the Last of Us, the wonderful sci fi show on HBO. And in the show, the world or much of the world is suffering from a fictional brain infection that experts say is inspired by a very real set of fungi that can hijack their hosts and turn them into zombies. The infection is inspired by this reality cortyceps thing that exists, right, and particularly the story that I've heard and they talk about in the first episode of the Last of Us.
It infects It's a parasitic thing that infects ants, and it sort of takes over their minds, It controls their bodies, and eventually it drives them to the top of trees where they cling on and it spores out of their head, which, by the way, disgusting, and the spores go everywhere and they are zombieans. And then in the Last of Us, the people who are infect by these spores become in essence zombified and made into crazy. And for reasons I don't understand, since this is all spore based.
If they bite you, you get it. I don't know how to right, we'll find it makes no sense.
Ard.
We're going to find out how it makes when we found out the real thing, real thing, realation.
And I need more stuff to worry about, right, so we go right.
Now, I gotta worry that in my salad, I'm meeting a mushroom that's going to grow out of my head.
And make me do things. Yeah, and by the way, we with in thousands spores every time you take a breath. You know it's correct a wrong sport gets in there. I know if a wrong sport gets in there, you're season two of Last of Us. Special guest. I heard season two is a soup. Somebody has a suit.
By the way, I'm going to find out why Nick Offerman and not Jason Alexander. I'm going to find out because our guest today is none other than the show r Under the producer and director. Truly a remarkable man, mister Craig Mason, who, among other things, is is a writer, a producer, a director. Uh Chernobyl? Did you see Chernobyl the HBO series?
A minute?
Then I ran out and read the book and you know what, same ending. He's the he's co creating, his co writing, executive producing the Last of Us, this big, wonderful hit on HBO. He's won two prime Time Emmy Awards, but they're primetime, but they're the real Emmy Awards.
Got the daytime. They separated the daytime show from like a virus, so I was in prime time. I didn't win an Emmy for that. They keep the daytime and nighttime separate so that they don't instruct each other.
That's you might also know him for such comedy films A Scary Movie, three, Scary Movie, for Scary momentes seven, nine, twelve, and eleven, hang Over Part two, Hangover Part three.
He's never the first guy. He's always in after you know what. We're not even two or three, So don't knock the guy.
You know an identity theft most importantly went to Freehold High School, which is I almost if I had lived another couple.
Of blocks, I might have gone to Freehold High School and fascinating.
We would have been best fascinating thanks for bonded, and I might have been nick Offerman instead of nickoff.
Oh, we already started. We're already starting with the hello to Craig Mason. Ladies and gentlemen, how are you, sir?
I'm just bowled over by the introduction. It was the most.
Beautiful you never hear one like that again.
The prime numbered versions of Scary Movie. I got very excited.
You've done amazing things. And and by the way, getting to the topic at hand, let's start with fun. Guy. You were such a huge fan of the game that you you went to them, and so I mean they were they were into you. Because of how into it you were, and but writing something to come from comedy to something serious and drama, it's based on this. I'm sure you had a ton of research, and I think I read that you had a fungus expert on staff at the show.
Well, not on staff, but I certainly had quite a few discussions with more than more than a few micologists, right, So that's there, that's their.
Own look at himnologists. That's what they don't know the terms.
Just to make you, guys feel even dumber than you already felt.
Oh you can you can't do.
Yeah, let's see, I'm gonna try.
Yeah, yeah, but it is the funky are kind of amazing and and uh it's a it's a silly word and it makes us laugh. And yet also they're remarkable. And the more I talked with these folks, the more startled I was by the what they can achieve. I mean, of course, every single my collegist I spoke with also said, by the way, you know that this whole thing is not that's not real, like what happens in the last.
Ones, I I cannot have.
Well, it can't happen like that. That is not to say that fungi can't infect us and cause a lot of serious problems. So can they take us over completely and start growing out of our heads? It's unlikely. Can they infect us and cause both serious disease and death, no question? Can they infect us and also mess with our brains? Absolutely, And we knew that already because we have a lot of very famous drugs that are derived from fungi, including things like LSD and psilocybin and so forth.
But Creig make you make a compelling scene and therefore point right at the beginning of the show where somebody says, why can't this I'm maybe paraphrasing, why can't this infect humans? And they said, because it can't exist at the temperature of over I think in ninety four degrees and our bodies are basically ninety eight point six. And somebody says, well, what if a climate event happened and these fung guy
were able to adapt to warmer temperatures. And the guy gets very serious and says, that would be very bad for us.
Yeah.
Basically yeah, he says, we lose. And the truth is that that is happening already.
It's happening.
Fungi are adapting, They are getting better at surviving higher temperatures, and we are seeing an increase in fungal infections, and fungal infections are very serious. And the theory of this show the science fiction proposition and says, Okay, if this happens, then bungie will take our brain's over and turn us into zombies. But the thing that's worse than that would
be just death. And that is real, that's real. If fungi get much much better at infecting human beings, then yes they can cause death, and that I dare say it would be the worst outcome of them all.
Well, I can only tell you from the one that's been on my big toe for two years.
And I'm using everything.
I'm using everything, the tea tree, the eucalypt is, the jubilea, the whole everything, And can I tell you.
It sounds you're using everything that doesn't work. Basically, that's a great list of stuff that doesn't work.
Doesn't work.
Have you been to a medical doctor, I have good question.
They turned me on to most of this stuff and they said, no. The only thing I haven't.
Done seriously is apparently there's a pill.
You can say, but the pill is not benign.
So you know, I'm a little aware and what we will do.
To you, Well, if you have you know, it affects your liver, it can affect it.
You know, it's.
With fighting fungi. Yeah, the medicines that we have are I'm not going to say they like chemotherapy, but they're kind of in that same world of, Hey, this thing is so hard to kill. In order to kill it, we're gonna have to kill also a bunch of you. Yeah, and that's why some fungal infections are almost impossible to treat.
I'm curious with the show, even though it's a drama and it's based on something that we know can't happen, although the adjacent stuff can happen that we're talking about. It's always interesting what mail, what emails, what stuff have you gotten from people who were attached the show in a way you never anticipated because of that, maybe because of the funds that you went, wow, this came out of nowhere. I didn't realize that this affected people that way.
Well we do.
I mean, certainly people were impacted by the emotional storylines and the characters more than anything else, I think, But when it came to the science I did get quite a few emails from scientists who are just grateful that we depicted scientists in a way that wasn't I guess the role that they often fulfill is the jerk who thinks they know everything and is wrong until Bruce Willis comes and explains how it really works. And you know, we treat scientists, at least over here in my little world,
with a lot of respect. And my feeling is that when scientists are scared, that's the scariest thing of it of all. I showed that insurable, and I showed it again in the Last of Us, not more than once, because I do believe that there are people who spend their lives studying these things and have no vested interest other than being honest. They don't get paid a lot, they're not trying to sell you anything. They're just telling
you the truth. Yeah, and we like to do and we have this anti intellectual strain in our society that wants to question every scientists say and do because they're eggheads and they don't know they do they.
Know being the people who know.
Because Last of Us is a game based franchise in a very successful game.
You know, I always hear the guys who are.
Doing the Marvel films, there's a whole bunch of cooks in the kitchen going, well, you can't do that. That plays with the legacy of this and the mythology of that. How much of what you were able to do with the show was, Dick, Did you have those those you know, the sort of guardrails from the game company, or were you able to create out a whole cloth or you know?
I was very free. I mean the nice thing is that the company so there is it's a big company. It's called Naughty Dog. They're the company that makes the game. Naughty Dog themselves are owned by Sony, which is a small Japanese business concern. And yet I had enormous freedom because I was working with Neil Druckman, who is the man at Naughty Dog who create the story for the Last of Us and runs the show over there and
also made the Last of Us Part two. So when I came to Neil, I said, look this, I love this game, I love this story. My interest is not to change stuff just because I feel like changing things. The things that we need to change are really more about adaptation because we're moving from one medium to another, so we have opportunities. Like a simple example is in a video game, you are nailed to one person's perspective.
That's the person you're playing. In the Last of Us, for the great majority of it, it's the character of Joel that means we can't just leave and go meet other characters who are separate from Joel and have and hear them talk. That obviously is a huge part of how narrative would function in television. So there are all
these opportunities to do different things. But also, you know, there were times where I said, I'm going to want to do it almost exactly the way it was in the game, because there are these wonderfully cinematic moments, and Neil was the best possible partner. It was like working with a novelist who was excit I did about changing things. Yeah, sometimes I was the one who had to say, but I really actually just want to do it the way
you did it before. And we had a great relationship in that regard, and I think, you know, the reaction from the fans was great by and large, and then all the people that saw it that hadn't played the game, I assume you guys would qualify. They were also pretty pleased, so I think we did a good job.
They had no idea about the game.
I think I heard you say somewhere that one of the challenges was when you're playing the game. Certainly, my son Noah knows the game very very well, and he liked the show very very much and echoed something that I think you said, which was, when you play the game the zombies, fighting the zombies is ninety percent of the thing you're doing, but in the show it is actually a very small percentage of what's going on. And was that a conscious decision to do that to yes, Yeah, yes.
It was well because gameplay is the first time you encounter these infected people running around. It's very scary and it's very intense. But when you die, you get sent back to the beginning of that section, right, That's not how it works in TV. When you die. You did so right off the bat. The way we treated violence
and the permanence of injury. Even the fact that Joel punches a man in episode one and we see his knuckles battered and bruised in episode two in and of itself, is slightly revolutionary, but we treated we wanted to really deal with violence as something that was far more permanent and far more impactful. And we also knew that because of the nature of gameplay, because you can go back
and start that section over again if you fail. The infected, the zombies, the bad guys become more of a puzzle to solve than a visceral experience that is about that is reflecting relation and character. So we wanted all of our action moments to reflect relationship and character. We wanted those action moments to change the way the relationships between the characters functioned and have lasting impact. So there were far fewer of them in the show than in the game.
That's not to say that we might not ramp it up for season two, because we also learned some interesting things about how to better deliver that experience. It's a tricky thing when you're doing anything for the first time. I mean, the first season of any show is fascinating to watch. It's you can see everybody slowly moving towards what that very comfortable shape and experience will eventually be. I think we got there kind of quickly, but yeah,
we learned some interesting lessons. That's not to say that we're going to drown people in action for season two either. But yeah, it was pretty intentional.
So you're doing a thing about an epidemic during an epidemic.
Yeah, that was weird.
That must have been really bizarre. You're wearing masks, you're spreading illnesses, people are testing positive every day. Why you're doing a show strange about people who have an infection.
And are doing well, Because ultimately, it wasn't a show about having an infection and die, you know, that's the thing it was. It was a show that had infections in it, and it had dying in it. But you know, I remember saying to Neil, the thing is, even if COVID had never happened, we would all still be getting infections, and regardless of that, also dying. So death and taxes
and the story ultimately is about love. And my feeling was as long as we acknowledged in the beginning of the series that we were aware as filmmakers that COVID occurred in our sneaky way, then I think we would be okay. And so in the very first scene of the series, it takes place in the late nineteen sixties or early seventies, I can't remember the exact year, and it's basically a Dick Cavit show, and there's a scientist saying,
oh no, no viruses. I mean, yeah, they kill people and they're bad, but there's actually something worse, which is our way of saying, we know we're coming, we're doing We're not drafting off of COVID, we're not exploiting COVID to make you feel scared. We're here to tell you there's something worse than that. And from there things took off.
Can you confront this? I looked this at this, and I saw it and I said, is this really right? That? The show, first of all, was the largest television doctor in Canadian history and generated about two hundred million in revenue for Alberta, but sources suggest the budget was between ten million and fifteen million, and bigger than the budget exceeded the first five seasons of Game Thrones. As far as budget, I thought, WHOA.
Yeah, yeah, well things have gotten more expensive. I mean, it's true, people, it's funny. People forget the first few seasons of Game of Thrones. It wasn't yet Game of Thrones, right, and so in I think it's the very first season they're supposed to be this massive battle and instead Peter Dinklic gets bunked on the head and falls, goes unconscious and wakes up and they're like, it happened, It was crazy. Oh my god, you should have been there. Anyway, we won.
So all this stuff happens off screen because they didn't have money for it, and the budget eventually got up and up and up. Things have changed, obviously in the way we make television, and a lot of it is kind of in this weird feedback loop that's caused some of the problems in our business and it's why there strikes. But it was a huge bet, a huge financial bet by HBO.
It was a bet on me. It was a bet on the material, and I was aware of that every day.
And it's a very strange thing to on the one hand think, oh my god, I cannot believe they're trusting me with all this money, and then one minute later go, why won't they give me more money? I need more money, and you because of the scale of what we're trying to deliver it ultimately they supported us completely. I mean, they just went all in on this, and I was very, very grateful that it paid off.
Well I'm sure they are too, because it's it's it's a brilliant show. You you made your bones in comedy, and I think you said to me when we when we met that you know your aspirations were all about being a comedy writer. And you know, arguably some of your biggest projects have I mean, between this and Chernobyl, they're they're devastating. Promise, Why the Switch? How the switch? Do you enjoy the switch? Do you miss working on the funny stuff?
How did it all well?
This? I think?
Well, first of all, I'm sure there are quite a few critics who are like, finally, he's no longer trying. But I I always I loved comedy. I loved the difficulty factor, especially in movies.
It's really difficult. In movies.
You're going to gather a bunch of people in a room, there is no laugh track, they can't go anywhere, and they're all together and they have to laugh out loud a lot. It's really hard to do. And when it works there it's the closest you can get to feeling like a rock star in our business as a writer, because it's there's this thing happening in a crowd. It's remarkable. So I got really addicted to that, and I loved it.
But as I got older, I started to feel a little bit like I was kind of just being asked to replicate a process and to do the same thing over and over, because it's a very outcome oriented gig
get laughs. And also I was getting older, and I think it's natural to start to disconnect from the churning center of culture, you know, because I remember being in my twenties and you know, working with David Zucker and and thinking, you know, I would occasionally like to say, David, I'm sure that was once funny in the Lyndon Johnson administration, Wow it is not now, and here is why, and and and then David in his like, oh yes, yes,
of course, yes, of course. And now I'm the age that he was when I met him, and I don't want to be I never want to be the person going I don't understand why are they Why wouldn't they see this as funny anymore? And I wanted to try new things. I was always interested in these other aspects. I just I always said, like writing feature comedy is like being a left handed pitcher in the major leagues. You might want to be something else, but they don't care.
They need you to pitch out of the bullpen to face the left if they just don't have enough of you to let you do anything else. So it was it was a I guess, a big swing on my part to try and see if I could do it, and I by dori it.
I just love working like that.
And I still you know, there's still bits of comedy and moments, but there's no Yeah. I mean, look, you guys know the brutal pressure of not only not flopping but actually getting that like kind of roll series of laughs is is.
The hardest thing to do in our business. And I just maintained.
That every award should only be won by a comedy.
Comedies.
It gets no it gets no respect. So was your next level? Is your next level combining comedy in a chernobyl like they did life that they did Life of Stalin, where they took that which is a serious thing and made it completely So I figured you would.
I mean that movie is called the Death of Stuff. The Life of Style would just be too lovely.
You can keep it in right, I've got a lot on my mind.
Okay, I hear you get it, By the way, I don't I don't know what you have in your you got time, I can give it to you.
But that's hard to do. That must be even harder to do, right.
Well, I mean so.
Mister Ryan Ucci is sort of like amazing at that walking that weird tonal line. There are people who just invent their own tones, and like Larry David's one of them where you're like, who does that? And I'm sure you know the first time. I actually I feel like I know this. The first time that he was like, this is what I want to do, people were like, no, nobody does.
That's not a thing anyone does. We don't do that.
And then he defined this space that he does. I think I'm probably a little too conventional to define my own weird comedy drama hybrid.
I'm at this point now, I'm just it's funny.
It's also television, like the ability to spread out narratively is such a joy, like when you're writing a movie. I mean, on page three, I'm already wedding that I'm running out of space. Television, we did a good job telling the story and it's so funny. I forgot first episode watching him with my life and that punch that you said and the hand being damaged. I said to my wife, I think this is the first show you watched, Stevens. All these guys get hit with a computer. You hit
me with a computer. I'm in the hospital for seven months. Nobody in these shows, realistically, they get knocked down.
They got you knocked me down. First of all, I'm not getting up for a while. Second of all, I'm shocked that you knocked me down. And third of all, have you ever punched the guy? I have? I punched the guy once. It hurts and my hand had glass. It was the worst I remember. That stood out, not that the rest of the series didn't stand out, but I said, these guys are taking a little bit of time to look at stuff and take moments because that's repercussion.
That's reality. That's it's not heightened reality. They're doing kind of a different reality. So what else is going to fault in that area where they're can respond in a much more naturalistic way and what happens? Yeah, it was really really you're talking about reality.
Can we talk for a minute, because you're going to be our resident expert about the whole zombie thing, because Peter and I have we have questions we have not necessarily your zombies, but zombies zombie in general. And I started to talk to Kirkman about this when I did Talking Dead. So there's a horde of zombies, a horde, a thousand of them, and they descend on one guy. Only six of them are eating anything because the others can't get right.
And then they move on.
But the ones that ate don't seem any better off than the ones that didn't. They're still disintegrating, they're still rotting their arms. Just a wait, eat, don't eat, doesn't seem to matter point.
But it's almost like they're mindless zombies.
Yes, yes, yes.
They yes, zombies tend to be highly irrational, even more irrational than we are. It's whatever drives them. I mean, in our case, we're implying that they are trying to spread an infection, but even in the spread of infection, they're not they're not experts at it. Sometimes they go too far and they just end up killing the person because it's a very blunt tool. I mean, fungi or smart, but they're not that smart. And I have no idea
what's going on with supernatural zombies. I'm not I don't understand and the virus zombies similarly like just cough on everybody?
Why not? Why what's the bid? And also, okay, why don't they have a thing that comes out of their eyes?
You did the kiss? You did the kiss? That was so good, that was really good. So what was going on there? So the idea is in the game, it's spread by sports, and we were gonna we were gonna do that. But the thing is it works in the game. In reality, spores are heard to film their heart to make look real. And also, I feel like if it's spread in the air, who's making it out?
You can't fight the air.
So we were looking at this other thing that that when a fungus like Cordyceps infects an ant, it starts to move through the ant circulatory system with this fiber. These they form fibers called my celium, and that's this, these fungal strands, And we like the idea that that for whatever reason, this brand of Cortyceps would would need to get its strand into you as opposed to a spore, right,
so it's a slightly more advanced, you know, structure. And then the thought was they're gonna get this into you however, they can if you're running away, if you're fighting, they're gonna get violent. But if you just stand there, maybe they take their time. Maybe it's not violent. They don't need to rip you apart. In fact, the more people they rip apart, the fewer people are going to be successfully in fact, because a bunch of them are going
to die. But I mean, listen, the the zombie like Game of Thrones, my ending, this is what I wanted for.
The end of Game of Thrones. I wanted the Night King to win.
Everybody gets turned into a white a zombie, right, everyone, And when the last living person is turned into zombie, they all look at each other and kind of go.
Oh, and then they just stand there.
And that's the last thirty minutes is just them kind of shuffling, sadly, going we won.
Sure, Yeah, what's the point.
Yeah, I'm so glad he was not the showrunner on Game of Standing. Thirty minutes of Standing, my original pittis fascinating.
That's that's worse than the kid in the wheelchair becoming the guy.
That's worse. Thirty minutes. I would have watched that. If people would have watched come Back on You, it would call friends, they can believe this. The numbers would have gone up. I don't believe John watching zombies go if you have to the Cohonies to do it. But you know what, He's exactly right, because I would have been
I've never stick everything starting live tweeting. It would have been I can't believe it still standing real and a couple of zombie struggling, a couple of zombies doing what this is?
It are at NYU the next day. The brilliance of this end.
I'm in the longer it lasts, It's like the longer last. It's like a joke that keeps going and going, like a good of godfig joke. Do you laugh, then you don't laugh, then you can't believe he's still going, and then you laugh again, and you get angry, and then you get angry. I mean, he just this is I didn't realize that break now I just got his narrowing.
The only way would work is if the last line of the episode was one of the white stands the other and goes, well you want to get coffee?
Yes, that would have been should we get a coffee? I don't have a stomach. I don't have a stomach smug.
Should hear like somebody that's lost the ability to use language still struggle to form the words.
So do you want to get coffee?
There you go, cup of shoe? I see another daytime, Emmy coming my way. But that's the other thing. The other thing that zombies and movies and stories that bothers me. Where are the kids? You should see thousands of zombie kids. You don't see. Where is all the body parts and the bones? Where the maggots and the flies? You need a circulatory system to move your leg Yeah, you would do rigamort if that ain't happen. And the animals, where are all the animals? The animals? It's like, really, come on,
you're absolutely are there any other sport animals? And I don't see? We know.
We decided that this particular brand was human Longus was human only and only worked with human brains. Otherwise you were going to have just the biggest problem you'd be dealing with is just courtyceps deer constantly running at you. It's like, oh no, not strong, it's not strong drama. But we did show We showed kids and people and
they're alive. That's the other thing is that are are in fa to people are they're sick, but they're alive, so we don't deal with, you know the fact that death means that your body is gonna fall apart within days. That's the only part of like Walking Dead where I'm like, they're all bloated and gross. So there's decomposition in yes, somehow.
Yeah, somehow, he's smells. I didn't go the ears didn't wait, here's how are your ears? Come on? Come on, you know you're smelling? What just those muscles? Yeah? Thank you?
And he's and their show is tricky because they got they got the slow clickers in the fast you know.
I like that.
I like the slow zombies myself because I was I remember in Night of the Living Dead when they're interviewing the sheriff, and the sheriff I was surrounded by six or seven of these things. Would I be in trouble? He goes, Oh, no, they're dead, they're all messed up. You just get you get something, hit them in the head, Just whack them in the head.
You'll be fine. I like those kind of zombies.
You're you're fast clickers, like I don't like, we got we gotta blend the others.
My grandmother could go off a brisk walk, it would still be Let me ask you something you realize in the world today, divided as we are, and it's fragment. We are sign for seventeen to twenty million people watching the finale, so nobody's nobody. What do I have to Jerry see to Larry King? You right now?
These were the network days.
I think we had sixteen yeah, right, yeah.
But the point is super Bowl numbers.
Super Bowl numbers, we don't have that anymore. And I started thinking, being infected, like the COVID infection is one of the last levels of real community we have left, which is really weird to shared experience.
Well, you know what, I'll tell you what's interesting, And we did not expect this. By last count, something like forty six million people have watched the first episode of the Last of Us. So it's it's it's not it's not you know, signfold, it's never going to be.
No one's that's huge.
Yeah, but it was.
That's the part that was really startling to us because we were kind of expecting that we would have to come up with interesting metaphors for a large community, and we actually got a large community, which is scary because you know to an extent as somebody that does it. Now you feel the weight of all those eyeballs, right for season two where you didn't season one.
Who else, maybe no one.
Will watch, it doesn't matter, So that that was pretty pretty remarkable. But we do have You're absolutely right, A, there's a shared language around epidemic and isolation from each other. There are things we've learned. I mean, who knew that toilet paper would be the thing? I didn't know, you know, toilet paper. So now we've learned things about what happens when the world ends. The very first thing we do is panic about wiping our asses. Then apparently we go to the next thing, which is food.
Yeah, yeah, it is the I don't mean this the way it sounds, because I know, you know, you're a member of every guild that's on strike.
This is at this point, yep.
It's a huge disruption into everybody's lives and certainly the lives of our colleagues. But to the extent that it affects your show, how devastating is it right now?
Well?
Not.
We had kind of an interesting circumstance for planned for the second season where we needed to start shooting not right away, in part because well A, it took a long time to make the show and to put it through post production. We don't finished post production before the show airs. We finished it in the middle of the run, so the last episodes, the VFX and the sound were happening kind of while the show was running. But we also there's certain weather requirements we have because we shoot
across seasons. We want real spring, we want real winter. So the way our schedule has sort of been laid out and lined up, I'll tell you if it if the strike should end real soon, I think we get to stay on track. Who knows if it will. If it goes much longer, then we're going to have to push it. Yeah, I mean we're right up against it right.
What are you hearing? By the way, you know you were You're in the board of directors of the writers go for a while many years. Are you hearing this? It seems so. What seems so daunting, Greg is the focus is content and ownership of content and trying to figure out if if AI is going to be pulling from scripts that exist, and how do people get credit and what are they going to do with actors and making them AI and again shows are being produced really differently,
very very differently than they were in the past. I mean, I was a story editor years ago when I came out here and probably wouldn't get paid what I got then now, and there'll probably only be eight episodes. And then on top of that, all the below the line people are dying right now, all the craft services people, all the wardrobe people, all those people whose jobs depend
on production. Are you hearing anything or do you hear are daunting this is or have they figured out a way to address it well?
In terms of the impact the strike has had on everyone, Yeah, it's been brutal. And if it weren't so necessary, I think we would have done anything we could to avoid it. I think we did do everything we could to avoid it. It does take a terrible toll, especially on below the line folks we think about all the time who have had especially here in southern California. They've had such a bad run of it for so long because the production
just doesn't happen here the way it used to. And yeah, everyone is suffering, and the great majority of the Writers Guild and the great majority of the screen actors Guild, Dash AFTRA are not wealthy. They are either middle class or they're just kind of breaking into the business trying to get something going, and the way that they have
all been treated is pretty awful. And this is I think something the companies are only finally now at day one oh whatever, is starting to understand that this is weirdly the circuit break of our business, that there are whatever, maybe two hundred people in the writer's skill that the companies are like, we'll give you millions to do stuff, but if they mistreat everybody else, this is how everybody else gets them by saying, hey, you know what, we vote.
This is a democracy in the guild.
We vote, and we're voting to go on strike because you can't just ignore us. And I support the strike. I think it was absolutely necessary to do. I don't like strikes at all. Who does. But this time with the amount of stuff that had a changed recently, like AI's very recent for us to be concerned about, and then the stuff that it was just legacy stuff that had been kind of swept under the rug. COVID was sort of like, h we can't go on strike in the middle of COVID and all that it finally caught
up with everybody. This had to happen, and you know, all I know is this strike won't stop until they take care of these issues in a significant way. We're not going to get everything we asked for. If we did, we didn't ask for enough. But I think we're gonna get a lot of it the stuff we need.
Speaking of that on a very serious note, what does nickol Ferman have that I don't have?
What's going on? This coming? Forgot answer?
I don't want to go over.
But he prepared.
A podcast I don't know. He does not need, but he does some lovely woodworking.
Yes, I think he's gonna make me a canoe. You can't do that my luck.
He's gonna call me and go we got a party on the show. I'm gonna go up there and he's gonna wrap me in clicker makeup and I'm gonna be.
Assist. I'm gonna be sitting in a.
You'll find out when the call she says you have to get there at three three.
Yeas right, because of the makeup. We congratulations, that's what a what an accomplishment today's world where I just said, we don't have shared experiences that's a pretty big shared experience, and it resonated. And like I said, everybody can who the zombie and the virus and the spores and an infection because we've all it could be us. And do you are you one of those Gus just said year three and we're out, We're done. I know how many
years is going to go. I know where I want to do, and I I we'll tell you.
I won't tell you the year, but but I will say that, yes, there is an end. We have a built in ending. I don't know how to write narrative that has no end. I don't I admire it. I just don't know how to do it. I need to know what the end is.
So yes, we have everybody, everybody standing around going, well, he's going to He's not going to do.
You have to read between the laws, between the lines.
Thank you so much, sir, God bless you. And by the way, no small thing. Congratulations on creating a show that is a phenomena in this day and age when when it's very hard to do that. To get forty six million people to watch anything.
It is.
Fascinating, fascinating. What do you million people watched that? Wow?
Wow?
I'm sorry. I didn't know I got the numbers wrong in this sorry stuff. Yeah. Sorry. By the way, just to freak everybody out, Warman temperatures in the Arctic are thawing the region's permafrost, a frozen layer of soil beneath the ground, potentially stirring viruses that we we have no no immunity too. And also that's my next series that by the way, that wouldn't be a bad series, right
to do that. It's permafrost. Yeah, permafrost heroes. I mean, well, but they did that with a horror movie, the thing where they buried under the absolutely. But they've brought back now, they've brought back the viruses from hundreds of thousands of years ago that their testing. This is a whole area that makes me nervous. But I laughed at you because
we were talking yesterday about the zombie thing. Zombies cracked me up because part of the appeal of zombie it could be us, it could be any one of us, and you can be a hero. But it's also the zombie. It's like it typifies your death. I get up, I have cereal, I do my work, I come home. Yeah, that's kind of right, it's that monotony of zombie. And also when I was looking at the appeal of zombies, the other part is in a zombie apocalypse, you don't
have stuff. Everything is gone. It's a simpler life. You're not you're not doing with a lot of stuff. The survivors, right, I can't the survivors who has given up stuff. Sure, it's much simplistically. Yeah, you just have to worry about me. Good day, I didn't get eaten. You just have to make it. You just have to make it to the store. Would you ever? Honest?
So this was something when I was watching Walking Dead, This was a question I had all the time because their lives are so miserable. They're constantly scared, they're running. The humans are despicable. The zombies are out to eat you. It's a zombie apocalypse. For the real thing you want to be a survivor running around in that is.
That you know you say this to you, it's really weird. Do you say that? Because I love zombie I love harmony.
This is the same thing as people go, you know, I want to be able to survive the doom. Thank guys, I want to be able to survive the nuclear attack? Really, what's that world?
So God saying that I can't be because that's a really interesting thing you ask. I love harmon. I've always loved the horror movie since I'm a kid. And we'll talk about a in the minute, because there's a horror paradox about where we like horror movies. But anytime I'm watching Walking Dead or something like that, that comes up in my head right and I go, I think, I just throw myself in there and get the hell of it with what do I want to do this every day?
Try and find something to eat and yell at this guy and and have them against the fence, and I know other people we go, I would do everything I can to live as long as guy. Now, I would protect my family. But that said, my sense of you your face is like I wouldn't. No. I mean, that's that's certainly a reason.
But I also look, I'm thinking about if it happened tomorrow, am I the go to.
To protect my family? I think my family's gonna wind up having to protect me? Okay, are you the guy that like dad's walking a little slow? I would like to also think that I'm the guy that goes all right, don't look back. I'm going to distract them. Run. Am I that guy? I think I'd like to be that guy, But I think i'd be the guy going I'm that guy.
If I strap on a suicide fest. I don't want to my way out. I don't want like nine people. I don't want to be. I don't want to be the buffet table for now.
Okay, the other thing I asked you if I can take out fifty of them. The other thing is it doesn't make sense. We went through a litany of dumb zombies stuf right, Yeah, Like the thing's been deteriorating for eight eight months now, and yet it has superhuman strength. But boy can wrestling All of a sudden it's got superhuman strength. And I'm going to how are you to have barely here? Look at you? How are you figure out how to get up a curb? How are you?
How are you possibly doing this? But but this the thing that drives me crazy. But the stuff is so you can put on blood and whatever and walk among and they don't know that's a walking dead. But that's okay, walking you're there. Wouldn't that be in your well?
That's the other thing that was my thing I talked to you about un Walking Dead. They shoot them in the head, the head explodes, They blow them up, they kill them. They got the zombie MoU zombie is like dry humping them and they stab it in the eye and things are dripping into their eyes, dripping into their mouth. They're covered and think the only way if a gouy, If a zombie bites you, you're infected. But if he basically secretes into your mouth, prints and spit, I don't understand.
Well, but that's the other thing.
You got rotting corpses everywhere in this apocalyptic world.
The amount of to get the zombies with diphtheria. You know, I'm gonna rub rub a zombie on your head and go to them all for daddy. Oh my god.
In episode two of The Walking Dead, they realize if you shmear zombie guts on you, you're invisible to the zombies. I would put on a zombie unitard and live my life.
And half found a turkey form and a right. So the horror paradox is interesting why we like horror. The horror paradox, even though you intellectually understand that it's a movie, it still gives you that fight and fight syndrome thing, so that you come out energized. So if you're in a date later and that lasts for a while, so there's that excitement to that. There's also that where we pass an accident, we want to look, I want to see.
We're trying to make sense of stuff, and it's a survival instinct to see what's going on there, what's going on there? So it's a fascinating phenomenal.
You know, there are so many genres of horror, and my cousin Jonathan Penner has a wonderful lecture that he does about why we are attracted, most of us to the different genres of horror, Like when you see things like body modification, it's because that's one of our great fears about what if I lost a leg, body was changed, what if I had what if I was sick? What if in the fly? What if my fingernails were setting?
And it has to do with your own sense of aging and mortality, and you confront that the stranger danger thing of what you know, what what would I do in this fleet?
Can I trust this person next to me?
Do it?
Should I distress? Horror is cathartic in many ways big time. We can play out so we can't do in real life. Absolutely. The funny thing is you move to the undead and you move the vampire, which is a whole different thing. Zombies are a group group. Vampires are solo. They don't rely on anybody. They don't need stick. It's just my teeth. The only thing about a vampire that bothers me is the cape because you're never fitting in with the cape.
Well you're doing dragu Doku. But then I then I realized they can't see how it looking in a cape because they can't see the imagine the mirror. So that cape looks great, that's.
Why, but they can't that's why they keep wearing the cape. The cape is great, but I don't see them in the cape look like a schmuck. And the they just they can never they can never do. But that's the same thing with on what we do in the shadows. The mean he felt to think a line in what we do in the shower. She's standing the vampire.
She's on the roof with the vampire, and they're getting ready to turn into bats, right, and he looks at her and she's getting naked. He goes, what are you doing? She goes taking off for clothes so I can turn. But how do we have closed at the other end? And he looked at her and went, we don't discuss that, so you know what.
But here's the other thing about zombies though that now seriously to bring it into the real world, this notion of we are kind of living in a zombie culture right now, because in a way, and I don't mean to present this comedically, but in a way, we are so divided with each other that half of us think the other half is essentially brain dead, that they don't
get it. They're inhuman, they don't feel what we feel, they don't think the way we think, and we vilify them, and in many ways some of them go, I want them dead.
You know, I got to get rid of them.
The only way to get the way to bring the world back is to get rid of them. There's something about I almost feel like we have been infected.
You got Google time to wrap things ups? Yes, David, what did we forget? What do we need to know?
Yeah?
Well, it was really embarrassing guys on the last of us. They don't have zombies. You kept saying the zombies flickers.
They call them clickers.
They're called the infected, and they never it was it was a thing on set, even when they were producing it. You were not allowed to call them zombies.
Now, wow, you know what, let's throw the whole thing is. I don't want to appear stupid. That's a lot of throwing out, Laurie, it's a lot of deleting you're going to be doing. You're absolutely right. They don't call them zombies. God, I feel so horrible. There not not Okay, that's.
Really all I got.
I we had some some origins of of zombies and vampires.
I don't know if we want to get into that, but the.
Nod absolutely not, not nowhere even near. That's that's actually one of the interesting things. The vampire legend has actually been around for over a thousand years, but it was located in a very small.
Area of what's now Bulgaria. It was a Slavic legend.
Okay.
The vampire actually loosely translated means ghost monster, and the original vampires were absolutely nothing.
Like what we understand as a vampire. There was no blood.
Sucking, there was no capes, there was no turning into a bat.
They were actually more.
Like a ghost instead of the blood thing.
There were more bringers of plague, in disease and destruction. That's more where they came from.
It is amazing that as far as back this dozen years that we had to develop stories. They frightened us, and that assigned a reason for things to happen. There's always a higher source. There's always an entity that we don't understand it. We got to make it something, We got to give it a hot.
Also, you know, it's I hate when these great old legends and these great stories they get monkeyed with. So it used to be you hold up a crucifix, the vampire can't look at it. Now I've seen movies where they go f you and they turn it into flame. Then that you steak in the heart, they're dead. Now it has to be a certain wood from the land that they came from, and you go, hey, you know, the kids need.
More exciting the kids need more exciting stories. And then holding up a crucifix in a little bit of water, okay, doesn't work. Doesn't work.
Here's the final thing I'm going to ask you. Are you ready You're gonna eat mushrooms.
I love mushrooms. We just turn the whole thing. Could right now, any moment, a moment the mushroom. You go out in the wood. Did you just need any mush I don't need anything from the woods? An idiot, right? You don't pick you don't pick anything up in the woods. I'm be an idiot. I eat from the woods. No, you don't even going. It's nice for being with us. Go in the woods? What do you no? You don't go in the in the woods. You don't go in the woods. You don't know me, I don't know you
see you next time? Woods?
Now, really really No.
Thank you Craig Mason for coming on to discuss all the crazy real life.
Fungie out there, and of course your award winning Last of Us program on HBO. You can find us online at reallynoreally dot com. We're also on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, and threads at.
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