00:00Please join me in welcoming Bill Lawrence to the stage.
00:06I did not know Vince was going to be up here staring over my shoulder, but it's alright.
00:19Did you hear Melvin say that Bad Monkey was pretty good?
00:24I feel like he could have said very good, though. He could have said very good.
00:30I don't know. Alright.
00:32These aren't reading glasses. It's to make me look smart.
00:36God, it bothers me that Vince is younger than me.
00:40Vince and I met in our early 20s, and we played poker together.
00:45I remember one night that he wasn't feeling that confident in his life,
00:50and we were both kids trying to make it in Hollywood.
00:55We remember that time because it's easy to feel insecure about how it was going.
00:59I remember having a beer with him, and I told him that he was so money he didn't even know it.
01:05That's not supposed to be a joke. It's real. It's not real.
01:08I so badly wanted to have given him that line. You have to understand that all of us wish that story was true.
01:17You've got to get it. I saw Jeff Schaefer here from Curb.
01:20He's a comedy writer I came up with, and Matt Tarsis, who did Bad Monkey with me.
01:24He's here.
01:26Different actors and actresses, they're icons for me are here.
01:30The truth is you could not have grown up out here as a comedy writer, a comic, an actor, or an actress of any age.
01:38There's no way you weren't influenced by Vince's comedic style and talent.
01:42It's innate in all of us now.
01:44He spoke like we all thought we spoke to our friends or how we all wished we spoke to our friends.
01:48It just wasn't true. We weren't that quick.
01:51He walked this kind of comedic line that I've tried to walk in my own career.
01:56What it really is is I think you can play a character that gives other people snark and gives them crap and sarcasm
02:03as long as you can tell that there's love underneath.
02:08It's my favorite part about Vince as a performer.
02:11Even the lines that Peter was saying, you could tell that they came from a place of caring and sincerity
02:17that you don't always get when people throw comedy around.
02:20Look, I don't need to talk about his career too much because Peter did it.
02:24He's an icon.
02:26Everyone has a favorite scene or movie that they can quote.
02:30The easiest thing for me is to tell you about my experience with him.
02:34My idol is sitting here today, Carl Hyasson.
02:37He's an amazing author. He wrote Bad Monkey.
02:39He's written 1,000 bestsellers.
02:41For me, getting to a point that I could go to someone that I felt like that about
02:51and say, can I make one of your books into a TV show?
02:54He said yes.
02:55When Vince agreed to do it, I was both excited and scared because as a comic,
02:59for a long time you go, oh, Vince, he improvs.
03:02He makes up a lot of lines.
03:04I said, what if I get to set and Vince is just riffing it from the start?
03:07But he set the tone for the whole show.
03:10It's who he is as a person.
03:12He showed up and he said, first we get one the way it's written
03:15and we really talk about the intention of the scene
03:17and where the characters are going and how much the words mean to us.
03:23Then we get to play.
03:25He was always so respectful, not only of my material but of Carl's.
03:29It meant so much to me.
03:31Then the best thing is when he plays, as you all know,
03:34the best thing as a writer is Vince makes up these amazing lines on the spot
03:38and then later someone comes up to me and says,
03:40I love it when Vince said that, and I just go, thank you.
03:43As if I had anything to do with it.
03:45It's an absolute gift.
03:47You just have to understand, he cares so deeply about the work.
03:53This is true, we hadn't talked about it,
03:55but sometimes the only way that I could get him to stop dissecting a scene
03:59was to let him talk about his family.
04:02He's so proud of his kids, of Vern and Lachlan.
04:06He's heard so much about volleyball.
04:08Honestly, it's almost too much.
04:11Seriously, you should know it though, it never stops.
04:13And Kyla too, by the way.
04:15He obviously cherishes you and your relationship
04:17because I almost feel guilty about using it as a way to kind of get back to work.
04:22Just to say, hey, tell me about your family for a little
04:24and then maybe somebody say action.
04:30And I say this not just to joke around because it's going to get personal.
04:35It's also why I'm here.
04:38I'm the same way with my family.
04:41My daughter, she's a singer and she hadn't acted before
04:44and one of the biggest gifts for me in doing this
04:47was I got to put her in this show, Bad Monkey.
04:50It was so fun and it's pretty good apparently, the show.
04:56The most important thing is when we started work,
04:59just to show you who Vince is as a person,
05:01I was worried that I put my daughter in a situation that she was set up to fail
05:05and I was nervous for her as any dad would be.
05:08And when you make a TV show, you have the earphones on
05:10and all I could hear, her first scene was with Vince,
05:13was him coaching her and working with her and putting her at ease on the first day
05:19and teaching her how to do things and talking her through lines
05:23and telling her things to say, setting her up for jokes.
05:26And he mentored her throughout the whole show
05:29and she's still out there talking about it to all of her friends now.
05:33And so for me, that's all this really is.
05:35It's a chance to show up for Vince and say thank you.
05:40And you have no idea how grateful I am
05:43and I will always show up for you because of it
05:45because that's the way that you've led your career
05:47and everybody should know it.
05:49And that's it.
05:52Congratulations.
05:54Appreciate it.
05:55Alright.
05:56Thank you, man.
05:57Appreciate it.
05:59Appreciate it.
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