E32: Behind the scenes of Elon hosting SNL, CDC failures, America's real-time UBI experiment & more

Look at this red on my stock screen. I can't believe what's going on. Stocks are down. Does it mean I'm a loser? I don't know. I need some self-worth now. Oh, God. In 3, 2, 1. Let your winners ride. Rain Man, David Sack. I'm doing all in. And it's said.

We open sourced it to the fans and they've just gone crazy with it. Love you, besties. Queen of Kinwa. I'm doing all in. Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Welcome back. The All In Podcast is back. Apologies about last week. I had a personal emergency. Are we allowed to say why?

Of course. I mean. You can say it. Go say it. Say it. Say it. It's a humble brag. With us today on the program. Say it. No, say it. Explain it. You want to say it. Explain why. Queen of Kinwa, David Freberg. Stop. Tremont Fowler. Oh, my God. And the Rain Man himself, David Sacks.

I was on a world tour. I was on a world tour. No, no, no. Come on. I'll tell the story. Obviously, I don't like to talk about a certain friend of mine because he's very high profile. And I don't talk about it in public. Just flex. Just flex. Just do it and move on.

I have been lifting. I just want to let people know the gun shows back. No, you were backstage at SNL helping Elon with the SNL appearance. Were you not? This is true. Tell us what that was like. Tell us about the backstage experience at SNL. Yeah, tell us about the backstage experience.

I mean, we were living it out in real time with you guys, but tell us what it was really like. First, tell us why Elon recruited you to do it. All right. So. Are you Elon's funniest friend? Arguably. Well, I mean, he's got a lot of friends. No, guys, hold on.

Don't you remember the joke at Saks' roast five years ago? Remember when Elon was late and I had that ad lib joke? There were two jokes that I landed at Saks' thing, which I thought were the two fun. No, my thing. No, Jason, my thing. I and I. When I was being roasted?

No. Wait, was it Jason's party? Saks. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I hosted Jason's roast. That's right. That's right. It was your roast. It was your roast. Yeah. Anyways. Okay, go ahead. You're the funniest friend. Otherwise known as the funniest night of. All of our collective lives. It was really funny.

That was really funny. We'll have to tell stories from that sometime. Sometime we'll tell the J-Cow roast. You probably are Elon's funniest friend and have a talent for writing. Let's not beat around the bush. You do. Let's not beat around the bush. Okay. So let's give you credit. I'll take the compliment.

So I left to go on a little trip to go to Austin to see some friends and then Miami to see some friends, one of those friends who I hooked up with and was hanging out with in Miami was obviously Elon. And he was doing Saturday Night Live and we were just coming up with ideas around the dinner table and we were just laughing our asses off, just brainstorming ideas that would never be allowed on television, you know, and he said, Hey, would you come with me to Saturday Night Live?

And I was like, Oh, that's great. You have enough tickets. I assumed he meant Saturday night, you know, and you know, he said, no, I don't have a lot of tickets. It's COVID. It's like half his money. I would you come with me to the writer's room and just, you know, be my wingman basically.

So I had like three or four board meetings and five podcasts. So I just, you know, I talked to him. It was like an instant yes. You checked your schedule? You had to check your schedule? I didn't have to check my schedule. No, I mean, I take my work seriously.

You're like, can you give me about half a second to decide? I had already made the decision in my mind that if my friend needs help, you guys have been in similar situations where you've asked me for help. I've rolled with Chamath on speaking gigs or going down to try to, you know, save Saks from going into complete utter madness.

Oh my God. This is not crisis management. Anyway, so you said yes, you went. So I said yes. And you know, without giving, well, without giving away anything that was private or confidential, they have a process that they've been doing for 46 years. And we came in, you know, with our own process of what we wanted to do.

And it kind of was, you know, kind of an interesting thing because a lot of the ideas I had were, let's just say a little too far out for the cast or for the writers, but some of them landed. And I got to spend a lot of time with Lorne Michaels and I really worked on my impersonation of him.

He's Canadian. He's Canadian. And I was like, so Lorne, tell us who were the worst hosts ever? And he's like, um, it's an interesting question, Jason. You know, we don't like to think of it that way, but, um, with, um, there in terms of people who thought they were smart and maybe were not as smart as they thought they were.

Steven Seagal, um, was a little bit difficult and. What a safe choice. That's a very safe choice. There was Chris. Offerson, um, you know, back in 78, he wasn't a musical, um, guest that was Carly Simon. And um, he liked to drink and, uh, in this very green room in 78, he had a couple of drinks during the rehearsal, the dress rehearsal.

So we, we, we all did some coffee and like any sports team, when the game starts, we play the game. Okay. So who was responsible for the Chad skit? Okay. So Chad's an existing character. And that was a really amazing one to watch because we went to Brooklyn to a warehouse and the production was incredible.

And what the role I played, if I'm being totally honest is to just, you know, be Elon's friend and be there with him, but also, you know, was that funny for you? Was that fun? Should I do that? Should I not do that? Cause there are some no, you were a punch up man.

I was a punch up guy. I wrote some lines without, you know, taking anything away from the writers there who do the bulk of the work and the actors and the set designers. It is amazing. That's what they do. Uh, like we had to go through 40 scripts and you know, when you read something in a script, it's kind of hard to know if it's funny, but then when you put Chloe or, you know, Kate McKinnon or Colin Jost or Che or Mikey day, like these people are phenomenally talented.

So all of a sudden the script comes alive, but for the, for the, um, the, the, the, the two punch ups, I got really good. I'll just give you one anecdote. Cause I don't want to get myself in too much trouble. Were you responsible for besties in the Gen Z hospital?

I can't comment on that one. As soon as I saw it, I thought of you. And then the other one that I thought was incredibly well done was murder dirter. Okay. So I had nothing to do with that one. Um, and I thought we thought that was like, we thought that one was incredibly dumb.

Like when you read it on the script, it was like, is this funny or not? But they, you know, this is the thing you add tremendous performance and you, uh, add incredible set design. And we were, we were in Brooklyn at three in the morning and Elon comes out with that wig on in a, in a suit.

And he's like, oh, I'm going to be a laughing hysterical. And he just goes right into creepy priest. It was, it was great. But what about the Asperger's joke? Because yeah, that was me. Yeah. Cause you use that as a tease, uh, amongst people we may mutually know a lot.

And so when I heard it, I was like, oh, that's a Jason joke. That's actually what I'm proud of. No, but what's so ironic is the Asperger's joke came out and then everyone, all these press articles got written saying Elon has admitted publicly. And he is, we are so proud of him and it is such a moment to come clean about having this, this thing.

And it was like a Jason joke. Yeah. This Jason joke that became a, uh, oh my gosh. You know, what did I tell you? I'm particularly proud of that one because here's how that one went down. They had an idea to do jeopardy and it was probably the flattest pitch.

Um, because you know, it's like 11 o'clock at night, a writer comes in and says, we want to do jeopardy, uh, auditions. And we want, it's a kind of a feature for the cast to do auditions. Have you ever saw the star Wars or additions or the Jurassic park or additions kind of in that vein.

So I was like, for me, I was like, oh, that sounds like it's got potential, but it was a very dry pitch. They didn't have any examples. And when they actually did it, it was like really weird characters that were obscure. So I had pitched, uh, my own version of jeopardy and Elon had his version of jeopardy.

Elon's version of jeopardy was dictator jeopardy, which was Kim. You know, MBS Putin, you know, et cetera. And he was like, how to deal with your adversaries. And he was like, uh, for 800 and he's like, Plinonium. And I was like, genocide. And we got really dark. So we are laughing our asses about that, you know, but then like there were security concerns.

Basically we're kind of dialing this around the, it would be as funny as the, it would be a direct correlation of funny to the chances of Elon being assassinated by one of those people. So then we decided maybe we don't do that one. And I said, I've got a great idea.

I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it.

And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it. And then we're like, okay, let's do it.

And then obviously Elon. And so you'd have Elon playing Zuck, somebody playing Elon, and then Chloe playing Elizabeth Holmes, and they would be like, you know, how to deal with an intense situation with an employee and then press it, don't make eye contact. So one of the writers, I could tell she was not happy about this.

And she says, listen, my husband has Asperger's, my two brothers have Asperger's. And all of a sudden, we're in like, okay, you know. We can't offend anyone, Landon. We can't offend anybody, Landon. I would say, you know, 80, 90% of the staff is very, you know, like, let's go for it.

And then there's probably 10 or 20 who are very sensitive to different topics. And so there's a little navigation you have to do there. But we really want and then so you I have Asperger's. And you know, like the whole room is like, wow. So then I was workshopping with somebody and I wasn't in the writers room.

I contributed 2% that max, other than, you know, being Elon's friend and supporting him. But you know, they came in and said, Hey. When they didn't want to ask Elon something, they came to me. And I negotiated some situations like they didn't originally want to have any Doge father or any cryptocurrencies on the show.

We had to negotiate that. Oh, my God. Well, I mean, no, they have they have they have general counsel there. They have standards. They're now on it. Now we know why the show is not funny anymore. There's too many people with the veto. I love the show. I think it's very funny.

I just think Elon Elon made it culturally relevant for the first time in like a decade. So they can you're describing is too many people with a veto, right? Over the content of the show. That's what makes it not funny. You got to be willing. No, no, I think the show I think the show is very funny.

I think they take some artistic at risk. And what's not funny to us might be like funny to some other folks. So that's why it's hit or miss. But certainly moving the show from 1130 on the west coast definitely has an impact. So what they could have done 10 years ago, before the timing was synced between the west and east coast is different.

They're now on time. There's still a big cultural shift that's happened. It's like, yeah, I'll give you the two. It's not John Belushi anymore when the the like the corporate CEO comes on the show and wants to do crazier, wilder stuff than people, you know, the regulars. But anyway, keep going.

So anyway, you know that one of the folks who's working on the monologue, you know, comes in and the original monologue, you know, all these things go from rough to potential to good to great to amazing. And so for me, it was, you know, just you guys know my career choice, I just really made me think like, maybe I picked the wrong career choice.

Pretty fucking good at this. I should do this. So I started to call it at the after party. I was like, you know, I've kind of made my money already. Is there any chance I can get an internship? He's like, no. Jason, you can you can always take credit for being the third or fourth writer on Elon's monologue.

Perfect. They said they wanted to do an Asperger's joke, I said, so I wrote the Asperger joke of, you know, hey, I just want to let people know I've got Asperger's and so there's not going to be a lot of eye contact tonight. So if you see me looking off screen, it's not that I'm looking at cue cards, it's just that I have Asperger's.

So they didn't keep the cue card part, but they kept the rest of it. And then they did the OJ joke, which was written by Colin Jost, who is absolutely phenomenal as a human, just as a writer and a collaborator. And we spent a lot of time with Colin Jost, he came in.

And they had this joke about OJ having been on at 79 and 96. The 96 was a joke. He wasn't actually on a 96. I think that's when he went to jail or something. And I said to him, I said, I don't think people understand the joke, they actually think he was on.

And he said, "Well, I was on at 79 and 96." He goes, "Well, let's just rehearse it." So we're in the green room rehearsing and Elon goes, "So hey, and like OJ, like I'm smoking weed on every podcast." That's like saying OJ murdered once and now he's a murderer forever.

And side note, he was on in 79 and 96. And I just go like this, and he killed both times. And the room, there's like a silence and then everybody goes hysterical. It's like one of my poker asides. Yeah, it's fabulous. It's like, "What'd I drop here?" I'm like, "I'm gonna take a joke and I take a sip of my wine." That's fabulous.

That's fabulous. So I drop it. I bet there was like a split second where everyone looks left and right. It's like, "Is it okay to laugh?" No, that's my point. Like, "Is it okay to laugh at this?" Yeah. And Colin just looks at me and goes, "That's getting in there." And so I landed that one.

So there were some moments like that. For me, I tell you, I'll get emotional talking about it. It's one of the happiest times I've ever seen in Elon's life. And I've been with him for 20 years. Actually, I've known him for 25, obviously. In the feeling of... I mean, I've known him for 25 years.

I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years.

I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years. I've known him for 25 years.

E32: Behind the scenes of Elon hosting SNL, CDC failures, America's real-time UBI experiment & more

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