00:05Ciao Jason!
00:06Hey man!
00:07Come are you?
00:07Cool backdrop!
00:09Thank you!
00:10Thank you!
00:10Thank you very much!
00:11So I can't express in words how much I'm a fan and admirer of your work.
00:16Wow!
00:17Thanks!
00:17Yeah!
00:18So I have to thank you because of Forgetting Sarah Marshall,
00:21it was one of my comfort movies during a rather difficult period of my life
00:25and Dracula's Lament to this day is still a serotonin dispenser
00:29for me.
00:30So thank you.
00:31I love hearing that.
00:31I just performed it recently in secret.
00:34I showed up at a club with my puppets and I did it.
00:38Great!
00:39So how inspiring and motivating is it for you knowing that through your work
00:42you also do some real life gyming for other people?
00:49To me, I've come to think that that's sort of the point of why I'm doing any of it.
00:53It's not actively or intentionally trying to help people,
00:58but what it is is having the understanding that the more honest you're willing to be on camera,
01:04the more likely it might be that it will help somebody.
01:07Because seeing somebody go through something helps you make sense of going through it.
01:14I also think, which is kind of a running theme and the stuff I write and my work in general,
01:20the stuff I'm drawn to, is that being willing to express that life is really tricky and hard and uncomfortable
01:26and that sometimes you cry for no reason.
01:30All of these things, these traits that my characters all seem to have,
01:36makes people feel a little less isolated in their own absurdness, in their own craziness, in their own pathos.
01:43It's hard on everybody out here trying to make sense of life.
01:48I agree.
01:49Since that one of the cornerstones of shrinking is the dialogue between generations,
01:54if you could talk to your younger self from the Freaks and Geeks era, what would you tell him?
02:03I think that this would need to be a two-way conversation because I think that it has as much
02:07to offer me as I have to offer it.
02:10I think that what I could assure it of, although I don't know that it's a helpful thing,
02:15would be that everything turns out all right.
02:18But I don't know that it would have been helpful for me to know that when I was scared.
02:23I think being scared was a really valuable period of my life.
02:27I think more importantly, and I try to do this now, is talk to the guy who wrote Dracula's Lament
02:35and say like,
02:37hey, don't forget to be brave.
02:39Don't get too strategic.
02:41Don't get too savvy about that you can't end a movie with a Dracula puppet musical.
02:47Of course you can't.
02:49But I did.
02:50You know what I mean?
02:51I did because I didn't know I had the naivety of youth.
02:54I said, why can't you?
02:56Actually, if I'm honest, never even occurred to me that you couldn't do that.
02:59So I'm trying more and more to remember to follow my gut and to be brave with my instincts and
03:07to be less and less strategic.
03:09I don't need to be a studio head or a producer on my own creativity, you know?
03:17Yeah.
03:18So we are now in season three of the show and your comedy timing keeps getting better and better and
03:24better.
03:25Wow.
03:25Watching you guys performing is like watching an orchestra.
03:28So how much of shrinking is scripted and how much is improvised?
03:33Well, I think an interesting thing has happened over the years, which is they've gotten to know our voices really
03:40well.
03:41So there is increasingly less improv, not because we're not allowed to, but the writing has really captured our voices
03:51now.
03:51So by the time the scripts arrive, it's all it's all in there.
03:58So there is a real symbiosis between the writers room and the actors.
04:02You know, occasionally the value I think of improv.
04:07is that something is happening different than you pictured when you wrote it, like all of a sudden Harrison Ford
04:16is looking at you funny.
04:18And I have always found there is value to why are you looking at me like that, Paul?
04:24This little interesting pocket opens up and then you find your way to steer back to the scene.
04:31It's like you're given this treasure map, you know, and the treasure map is really good.
04:35It'll lead you to the treasure.
04:36But when you get into the three dimensional world, you're like, oh, but these trees over here have something interesting
04:40in them, too.
04:41You know?
04:42Thank you very much, Jason, and kudos once again.
04:45Bye bye. Ciao.
04:46Thank you.
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