This is gonna be the thread through the whole thing, okay.

I thought you were reading this book.

Please welcome Jay Larson.

Jay how are you?

[Jay] I'm great.

I didn't know if Austin was done dropping any more credits,

you know what I mean?

He's gonna pop up as a picture in picture,

like when they play, you know, the less important game,

that's a blowout

and he's gonna be just dropping credits in there.

'Cause he's booking things as we speak.

He just booked right now.

Are you working?

Are you staying busy? Oh yeah look at this.

[Jay] I saw you asked Austin if he's done any commercials,

I directed a commercial during this whole thing.

Yeah, and then just for future reference,

if you could take all

of your questions based off of Austin credits,

it's gonna help us do a great thread for the show.

[Jay] That's you know what I mean?

I like unity and concise.

Yeah, okay.

So you directed a commercial pandemic wise,

which is it's already difficult enough to do a commercial

cause it's a hodgepodge crew.

People that have not worked together.

[Jay] Yeah.

Are we, are you doing this remotely

Or are you onset?

No, we did on set, we did two days.

One day on set in a church

and then another day out at a golf course.

Are you getting rapid tested before

or are they just winging it?

Got tested day before we had someone on set.

You got your temp checked three times throughout the day.

Everyone's in masks, social distance,

masks off for shooting.

But you're in a mask the whole time?

Yeah.

How does that work, cause you like to,

when you direct you like to scream an actor's faces.

[Jay] I get in people's faces big time, bro.

You have a breakfast so you're, you're on your game.

Don't eat my raisins.

[Jay] Get away from craft, sir.

Kevin Nealan was our lead.

And so like, I have such respect for Kevin Nealon,

like trying to give direction, I'd be like,

Hey Kevin, what if we, and he's like,

Oh yeah, you're gonna love this.

You're going to love what I do here.

And then everyone would just be laughing,

you're like, yeah, yeah, let's let's move on.

Don't got to do anything.

Yeah it was great.

Are you going to do more of those or was it such a weird

experience or was just like,

let's just wait or you like work?

[Jay] I had no problem with it.

I'm on a, I write on a show

and I wrote and directed five sketches for

the show during the pandemic as well.

I think if everyone is just cautious and you're smart

and you're safe.

I mean, you're seeing commercials with people in masks,

so clearly they're making content or shooting commercials

during Covid, you know what I mean?

Unless Jeep grand Cherokee knew about this and they

released the virus.

Are they behind it?

Is this something Lee Iacocca, you know,

was ahead of the game on,

I know that might be an old school reference for you and

maybe some of the audience,

but I'm educated and I'm informed,

you know what I mean?

Yeah, you're informed.

It is, it does change the relationship onset a little bit.

It's a little less collaborative and that everyone's afraid

of each other.

And also the writing room can be weird.

I've been in some writing rooms now where you don't know if

your joke that pitch bombed

or it's zoom bombed and it just crashed.

[Jay] Yeah, or there was just a delay.

What if it, it crushed?

But the delay was so long, you missed the tire response.

Yeah, and then you already back out,

like if someone pitches a joke, it's like, oh yeah,

so then he fills up the back of the truck with a bunch of

toasters and then that falls.

But yeah, I don't think we have the budget for that.

So we'll just, yeah, we'll move on.

[Jay] Yeah, well we can, we can rip on the guys maybe,

maybe later.

Yeah, I'm in a writer's room,

I have been the entire pandemic and it's like crazy.

We have some people in Florida and some people in LA.

So we were, you know,

like working out times and just making it work.

You just get so comfortable on zoom,

just being like, well,

let's just make it work.

I think moving forward,

industry-wise writer's room and even

some sets will be a little bit more remote because we've

proved that it can be done.

[Jay] I hope not. I hope that listen,

I'm all about being safe and we've been like completely safe

with our kids and like groceries.

I haven't eaten out anywhere,

but I also believe that like when we get control-

I say DJ Khalid, yeah.

You know what I mean?

Once we get control of this,

that we should,

writer's room you need to be next to people,

with people, riffing,

like getting a sense for them seeing them, like that's like,

there's such a,

it's such a part of the creative process that I think like,

I hope maybe there will be some rooms that will,

I think we should use it as like an advantage to be able to

be remote if someone needs to be.

But otherwise I think being in a room together,

like really benefits the writing.

Yeah, absolutely.

Because it is an energy thing where you need to throw out a

bunch of bad ideas to get to the good one.

And you can only really feel safe

doing that when everyone's doing that,

and you're all in the same room and you can pick up on

certain social cues,

like you'll read comments with this,

I could live habits like, Oh, this podcast boring.

And it's like, well,

it's just different than being on stage having to

deal with this delay.

I also think when you're in a zoom room,

you're constantly like the clock is constantly ticking.

Like when is this ending?

Whereas when you're in the writer's room,

so you might just like accept joke because you're like,

well, this thing has got to end some point.

Let's just get that joke done.

Whereas in a writer's room you could like be like,

all right, let's just wait on that.

Let's go work on this. And like, oh dude! You know?

How are you handling it with kids?

Are you homeschooling?

You're supervising homeschooling.

I'm not a big,

I don't want my six and a half year old on three hours of

zoom call.

So we de-enrolled them from school

and set up our home as a homeschool,

and then we hired a teacher,

that we like went through the COVID process with.

So now she like every day nine to two is with my kids,

and like they do project based learning activities,

learning.

They do field trips, you know,

it's a lot more organic and a higher engagement level

than zoom.

So you hired, so your essentially a principal.

Yeah, I'm VP, my wife got the principal.

I mean, it's not a big deal.

It's not a huge deal.

Seem really upset about it.

[Jay] It hasn't been a thing, dude.

It hasn't come up. It hasn't been an issue.

I'm not saying I have better credentials or whatever,

You know what I mean?

Do you have the same power as your,

your wife as the principal.

[Jay] Don't, you know, the structure of the principal,

vice principal?

I'm the fun guy.

Vice-principal kind of seems like, lunch is over,

you know, kind of serve at the lunch room

and then you're back in.

[Jay] Yeah, that sounds right.

That's kind of, that's pretty accurate.

You move everyone's cars when the car needs to back out.

[Jay] You gotta move cars, you know.

Hopefully you'll get a promotion,

So it's also on you to kind of keep the kids busy.

I saw you're building stuff,

You built a whole science experiment table outside.

I just love being interactive with my kids,

and so we built a science table.

I built them a Lego table.

I like doing adventures with them.

Like when the whole thing started,

my job was like the first two weeks of COVID,

they were like, let's just be loose.

And the kids were out of school,

so like, I would take them on hikes

and then find a picnic table,

and we'd like collect leaves and turn them into projects.

I just liked that idea, of like constantly making learning

a fun experience, you know?

Yeah, it's a great time to be picking up leaves

and anything you find on the street right now.

You know, like, what is that bacteria?

What better way to learn about COVID?

Getting COVID.

I think your kids are gonna find the vaccine,

on one of your leaf trips,

which is actually them just cleaning the yard.

Listen, when you say leaf trip,

it almost sounds like you're de-valuing it.

No, it sounds like I actually want to go on it.

It sounds like you're a great dad and talking to you,

makes me wish I had a great dad,

because it sounds, it sounds fun.

It is fun. Yeah.

It is very fun. They're fun.

They're wild kids. So they, they, they take to it.

What else have you been doing to keep them busy?

You've been showing them movies?

No.

Not at all.

[Jay] You know, what I did is I've been doing, like,

we did this field trip to the beach.

We went to the beach with like my buddy and his kids,

but we've been watching Goonies.

Are you a Goonies fan?

I wasn't allowed to watch a lot of movies growing up.

Like I thought Star Wars was the most boring movie,

Cause my parents had edited all the violent parts out.

So it's just a movie,

a bunch of people talking

and then a brown bathrobe falls on the ground.

Totally sucks.

No, I have, I've seen clips of it,

but I haven't seen the entirety of the movie.

[Jay] Yeah, well Goonies, Goonies is, you know,

it's Spielberg dude.

You're like, dude, this is Steven Spielberg.

And we showed it to the kids and they fell in love with it.

And you know,

there's a treasure hunt and there's a map they follow.

So after we watch it, I took the kids to El Matador beach,

which has got like rocks and caves.

And I made the night before, a treasure map and made it look