#314 Jon Beckerman is having Dinner with the Parents

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

All right, Jane, thank you so much for that amazing introduction. You got this show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Welcome, everybody to Episode 314 of classic conversations. As always, I am your host, Jeff Dwoskin. Great to have you back for what's sure to be a family classic episode for the ages. John Beckerman is here, writer, producer director, we are talking all about his brand new TV show that he created dinner with the parents on Amazon free TV. I got a sneak peek at this sure to be a classic sitcom. We're talking that we're talking ad we're talking so much more and that's coming up in just a few seconds and in these few seconds. Steve Hytner visited me last week after a weekend of comedy together. Steve came on to the podcast he shared so many great stories from Seinfeld Do not miss that episode. But right now do not miss my conversation with John Beckerman. We're diving deep into the amazing, hilarious show dinner with the parents. We're talking about how we created the TV show Ed, we're diving into the Late Show with David Letterman. Lots of great stories coming at you right now. All right, everyone, I'm excited to introduce my next guest Emmy award winning creator and showrunner of Amazon freebies dinner with the parents is credits include head writer Late Show with David Letterman, co creator of Ed, welcome to the show, John Beckerman. Hey, John,

Jon Beckerman 1:57

Hey, Jeff, thank you for having me.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:59

I am so excited and obsessed with your new show dinner with the parents. I love it. It's amazing. Thanks for giving me thank you. And I know it's everyone can start to watch it on Amazon and I want to talk about that a lot. Cuz I meant to like I was gonna watch a few episodes just to prep. And then next thing you know, I'm waking up early under the covers watching I got through. Anyway, so it's it's amazing. I love it.

Jon Beckerman 2:23

I'm thrilled to hear that. Thank you.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:25

It's my new favorite show. It's always great to discover a new, amazing show. I mean, the cast everyone it really was It was super hilarious. I will let's get to that. We'll tease that because everyone can wait. And we'll talk about that a lot. Okay, you have such an amazing career. This lead up to this ad writer Late Show with David Letterman co created ad. Where did you start born in Pittsburgh? Where was that jam of I got to get into the world of writing and comedy growing

Jon Beckerman 2:54

up, I was sort of an academic geek for the most part with deep interest in comedy and cartooning and comment, stuff like that. I grew up in the 80s, when it was not easy to come by the things that fascinated you. So it was a matter of waiting around for, you know, Monty Python to show up on Saturday night on PBS, which was miraculous that what is this, you know, or scavenging every Barnes and Noble or whatever the bookstores to the chain bookstores were at the time for Stephen King paperbacks that I didn't already have in my collection, you had to go out and find stuff. And that was how I spent a lot of my time going out and finding music, comics, books, comedy. Then the next big step was thanks to my academic nerd. I managed to get into Harvard. And when I got there, I discovered something called the Harvard Lampoon, which is this ancient College Humor magazine that has its own building on campus that looks like a castle. And that had this very exclusive, mysterious aura about it. And freshman year I managed to get on staff at the Lampoon as a cartoonist. And it was only then that I started to see people a few years older than me go on to forge careers in comedy and TV magazines. What have you had that not happened? I think today I would probably be a professor or some other kind of writer may be, but it was only because I saw years, people who were several years ahead of me, but we're already becoming kind of legends like Conan O'Brien that that gave me the idea that this was something that could possibly be within my grasp. When I got out of college I moved to New York hoping to write for either Saturday Night Live, or Letterman. Letterman was my favorite show on TV by far and somehow, miraculously around a year after Her I got out of college. I was on the Letterman writing staff. As crazy as that sounds, you know, I like to think that some of it was due to whatever skills I had. But clearly, a lot of it had to do with connections that I had made thanks to the Harvard Lampoon. Specifically when I was a senior on the Lampoon, we got a call from the National Lampoon, which was not really directly affiliated with the Harvard Lampoon, but which had been started by some Harvard Lampoon grads back in the 70s. I think that's right. They were doing a college issue where they were reaching out to all sorts of College Humor magazines, wanting submissions, and I wrote a bunch. And I managed to sell two or three pieces to them. And when I'm, I met these editors that were working there, and they all went on to have amazing careers, like on The Simpsons, and all kinds of TV shows, but I was lucky enough to meet them in that moment. And that led me led to me getting hired for some very early jobs that I had in New York. And similarly, I had met a writer named Paul Sims, who I believe was a senior when I was a freshman at Harvard, I met him through the Lampoon. And he went on to have an incredible career, which he still has. And he was very helpful in getting my material in front of the right people at Letterman, because he, he worked there pretty much immediately out of college himself. So by the time I had graduated, he had already been and gone from Letterman. And I don't know if anyone would have ever even noticed my submission had he not said, you should take a look at this guy's stuff. It really is all about who you meet, for good or for bad. That's just kind of the way it works.

Jeff Dwoskin 6:44

Thank goodness for Paul. John, what does submission to the Letterman Show look like? Like, what did you put together? So

Jon Beckerman 6:51

at the time, and I don't think this changed much they asked for, unless I'm making this up. I think they asked for some monologue jokes, or as we called them on Letterman opening remarks. And then they asked for maybe a couple top 10 lists, I think, then just ideas for comedy bits of the sort that they do on the show, we used to call them act ones and act fives or act fours, because that was where they fell in the show's rundown. And I think I don't have it handy, but I believe I still have my submission. And somehow they saw something in it. I remember after I got fired, being in Steve O'Donnell's office for some reason, and Steve was the incredible brilliant head writer of the show for many years, who hired me, and I remember seeing my submission in a heap somewhere in the clutter of his office. And there was a there was a post that stuck to it that said, indications of a lively visual mind. And as you can see, I never forgot that because it you know, it meant everything to me to have any sort of approval from someone like Steve. So when I saw that, and I, and not that that's the highest praise in the world, right? indications of a lively ritual. Didn't say funny, but I was like, alright, I'll take it from Steve. That's fantastic. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 8:11

he saw something. So that's Yeah. Seeing from as I guess, is, so yeah, it's everything. When you're starting out? Do you engage with David Letterman a lot? Oh, yes. Yes,

Jon Beckerman 8:24

Jeff. I did. Yeah, that was a big part of the job practically from the beginning, because I hadn't been there for very long at all, where I was sent off by Rob Burnett, who became the head writer shortly after I was hired to sort of supervise a remote remotes or what we call the pieces were typically on a Friday, we'd go out with the cameras and do something with Dave, it could be going door to door, asking weird questions. It could be any of those pieces that we shot out in the world. The first one that I was sent out upon was Dave, helps Marv Albert, buy a suit. And I hadn't spent much time one on one with Dave at that point. And I just remember getting into the van to go, you know, to shoot this thing sitting beside Dave just being speechless. Probably just staring at him as if he were some character from a fairy tale come to life magically. You know, it was I was a kid and this person who I essentially worshipped was there in the flesh next to me, and I was overwhelmed. And I probably said two words on the, you know, entire day and was not much help today at all. But then, you know, going forward from that, I found myself doing more and more of those pieces, which meant that I be working with Dave a lot be in his office show and Ken cuts up things all the time. And then I was promoted, along with my fellow writer Donek carry To become the new head writers when Rob Burnett moved on, and yeah, at that point, I was seeing Dave several times a day every day and calling him during his commute back to Connecticut every night to pitch him stuff. And that became a big part of the job

Jeff Dwoskin 10:15

as head writer, are you doing the top 10s And the monologue? Or are you overseeing certain people that do some of those, but you don't necessarily write all of those pieces.

Jon Beckerman 10:24

When you become head writer, you the thing that I disliked the most about that gig. And there were many things if I'm being honest, but the biggest one was, you're not a writer anymore. And you know, I think where I enjoyed myself the most, and probably where I had the most to contribute was that a writer I was as a writer, rather than as the person wrangling the other writers materials and trying to sell it to Dave, I was supervising all of the comedy on the show, with the exception of the opening remarks. The monologue, which there's almost kind of a separate staff or there was a late night and Late Show. There were writers who exclusively worked on that and were great at it. And I think other writers were welcome to pitch jokes contributed, see if they could get jokes on but it was never something that I gravitated toward. I don't think I'd ever submitted a page of monologue jokes. I just at the time, I couldn't quite wrap my head around that task. Top 10s however, were one of my favorite thing to write for the show. And they don't seem that different from monologue jokes, but the way my brain works, they were a whole different thing and something that I I really love, like I wish I was still writing. I just enjoyed it so much. And then you know, all the remotes all that kind of sketch type bits, viewer mail, all of that was under my supervision.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:47

Top 10s are my favorite monologue jokes must be hard, because they're only good for that moment, you know, and you have to write the top 10 They're just genius. I remember like a camp like everyone. I think that's the thing, everyone, nobody would go to camp and start doing top monologues. They would go to camp and we would make top 10s. And yeah, just like we saw on Letterman, those were it worked once I wrote a top 10 for a conference that hired a letterman impersonator.

Jon Beckerman 12:17

Man, that's great.

Jeff Dwoskin 12:19

I wish it went better. It wasn't a very good Letterman impersonator. I. But, yeah, no, I just think that's brilliant. That sounds like a dream job. So I'm sure you get to interact with the guests that come on. I found a clip online of you. Yeah. Spending a lot of time with Bill Murray. Oh,

Jon Beckerman 12:39

yeah, that was, that was within months of me starting at the show that was back at late night on NBC rather than late show on CBS. And there was a period of time where I would get cast fairly often on the show, I think because of some combination of my looks and demeanor and sort of deadpan kind of hangdog, like sad face. And that was an idea that I did not come up with, I think maybe spike Feresten had this idea, which was when Bill Murray was going to be a guest on the show. What if bill were to see that there was one person in the audience who did not seem to be enjoying the show, everyone else is laughing and loving it. But what's wrong with that guy, and I played that depressed guy in the audience. He pointed me out to Dave and then he took it upon himself to cheer me up and he spent the rest of the show, you know, so there'd be periodic cutaways to me and Bill doing different things where he was trying to cheer me up, he bought me a snack from the vending machine. At 30 Rock, he conscripted the Reverend Al Sharpton to give me a pep talk. So I was in a scene with Bill Murray, Sharpton, and it all ended with skating together, holding hands on the Rockefeller Center, ice rink, you can imagine as an 80s kid who grew up on drapes and meatballs and all of that stuff, Ghostbusters, and all of it that I couldn't believe that somehow life had put me in the situation where I was ice skating, holding. Bill Murray was incredible.

Jeff Dwoskin 14:16

That to me, seems like it's the story topper. Anytime you're if someone's like, Oh, guess who I met and go I got one too. You go first. I don't want to ruin your story. Yeah, you go first. No, it's

Jon Beckerman 14:27

an amazing thing about that job. And I suppose probably a lot of late night talk show type jobs, which is that, you know, for whatever period of time you're, you're doing that job, you are very regularly encountering all kinds of famous people. That doesn't happen when you're working on a sitcom say, you know, because you've got the cast, you've got whatever guest stars they're going to be but it's not just the constant influx and flow of the most famous people in the world and you find yourself writing sketches for them and giving notes to them on their performance getting yelled at by. And it's a crazy part of that job.

Jeff Dwoskin 15:08

Who were your favorites? And that could be like, more like they Oh my god, I can't I Bill Murray would be the first one. But like, yeah, that gets a Bill Murray or third, like we are like Pete Hartley, the Martin. Oh, Steve Martin

Jon Beckerman 15:21

would be right up there with Bill Murray. I mean, again, I just grew up worshipping this guide, loving his movies and a stand up and his records and all of it. And he was another guest who had put a lot of work and thought into his appearances and would come in advance of his day of his guest appearance to shoot stuff with us to kick around ideas and all of that, and I got to work on several pieces with him. There was one time I found myself in his makeup room, just the two of us waiting for something for what turned out to be a long time. And it was incredible, because I was just with me and Steve Martin, but it was also like, Oh, God, what am I going to say to this guy? And he seemed perfectly content to not say anything. And I suppose I should have been missing. But I felt you know, that people pleasing thing where you feel like you have to build the air. I remember reading somewhere that he had been a philosophy major as I had been as well. And so I brought that up. And we chatted about the loss of a few minutes, which is all I really remember about it. But yeah, there were I mean, Regis you haven't lived till you've been screamed at by Regis it would only be with love. He was not like an angry screamer. He was more of a he would roast you constantly. And that was a privilege to be paraded and mocked by Regis or Tony Randall or William Shatner, or any of these figures from my childhood. That was fantastic. That's

Jeff Dwoskin 16:56

amazing is see Martin's right up there with me too. I have I used to have his album right on my shelf. I learned the juggler because of Steve Martin. Like yeah, I was so enamored with his routine when he would do the kind of thing with the ball where he's kind of like I taught myself how to juggle and I I'm always like, just the other day someone meant mentioned France. And I'm like woof means egg. Chapeau means it's like those friends have a different word for everything.

Jon Beckerman 17:23

Yeah, that stuff was amazing. Oh, and I should add, I got to spend an entire day with Lawrence Henderson.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:29

You all know it. This is Brady all day. I love it. That's that's right up there to you are.

Jon Beckerman 17:35

For me that was that was maybe a highlight of the entire experience. Not that I aspired to the comedic brilliance of the Brady Bunch per se, but I have seen every episode many times as anyone my age should have and which I've managed to pass along that fandom to my now teenage daughters makes me very happy.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:56

Yeah, I've talked to on the podcast. I've talked to Susan Olsen, Christopher Knight, Robbie, and Lloyd Schwartz. Wow, yeah, that's great. I would have more but I just they won't return my calls. Oh, they're very busy. They're very busy. Yeah, it's an impressive list. And I'm sure there's like a million more. And then you work with another guest who I co worker of yours that I had on my show who I just was enamored by was Steve Young. Oh, yeah.

Jon Beckerman 18:20

I worked with Steve Young for many years. He was another lampoon grad, we didn't overlap by much, if at all. But yeah, I quickly got to know him and be good friends with him on staff at Letterman. I just admire that guy so much. He's a very specific guy in his interest in his the things that that he finds compelling. And he's he's fantastic, super funny and smart, with a real breadth of knowledge. Or I should say depth of knowledge about certain very specific things that are funny, like the industrial musicals of the 1960s for example,

Jeff Dwoskin 19:00

I became obsessed with that and that's what we talked about last bathtubs over Broadway. And we dove into that and learning about that world was so fascinating that how we learned about it from the Letterman Show. Great getting funny writes for Dave Right. And then there's Ms. Maisel had a little industrial musical thing going on. Oh, I haven't seen that the last season and then it was funny. I was reading read a runner's book. She was I was going to talk to her and she had one line one sentence it said in in New York, I did industrial musicals it was it right and um, I when I talked to Steve so I'm like that just just popped right out of me and so I brought it up there and just started singing one of the songs I mean, it's just it's such an amazing it's cool I can only imagine like what is it with Harvard and being funny Do you think that because you mentioned the Simpsons earlier? I'll gene and Oh, yeah. Now the Simpsons folks. A lot of them came from there as well. It's

Jon Beckerman 19:51

yeah, many many people from many shows. Office SNL Futurama, so many shows. I can only say that when I got there, I felt like I had found my people. You know, people talk about that moment when you finally click with a certain group of people that you've sort of been waiting to discover. And that's how I felt when I got there. I felt like I walked through those doors. And then I just didn't leave for four years. It was just people who shared my love and obsession with comedy. And there was a building for them to party in. I mean, I think it's just the fortune of such a place existing. I think a lot of schools have humor magazines, or at least used to, but probably not on the scale of at the Lampoon, they probably don't have a castle. And, you know, it was just incredible, good fortune for me to manage to get into Harvard, and then to get on staff there. I think it's just like minded people. And then, like I said, seeing other people, you know, go on and get a toehold in show business makes you think, well, maybe that's something I could do. Because otherwise I never would have

Jeff Dwoskin 21:04

tried. Yeah, it's important to be able to see other people do things to like, just even if it just gives you Oh, that is a thing. Sometimes when you're young and you just see like, you don't understand how it actually all comes together. Sorry to interrupt, have to take a quick break. I want to take a quick second to thank everyone for their support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors. You're supporting us here at Classic conversations. And that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my conversation with John Beckerman at Letterman, talk to me about like meeting Rob Burnett and then becoming a collaborator with him co creating, Edie? Yes.

Jon Beckerman 21:38

So Rob, as I mentioned, became head writer shortly after I was fired. And, you know, he mentored me for a while there was a period of time where I didn't really know what I was doing. I when I started at that show, I you know, obviously watch the show, a lot college and as a teenager, and the moments that I enjoyed the most were the moments when things did not go well, because I loved watching Dave, navigate that. And I thought that was when he was at his funniest. And I thought he must like it when stuff bombs. So I was literally trying to write stuff that I thought was so weird and obscure that the audience wouldn't laugh. And so then David could yell, and it would be hilarious to the home viewer. And I had to be taken aside and told we want the audience to laugh. As crazy as that sounds, this happened. You know, Rob was like, Look, this stuff has to get laughs in front of an audience or you're gonna get fired. And I was like, oh, okay, okay. And then set my mind to the task of writing things that filled that overlapping part of the Venn diagram of things that I found funny and things that whoever showed up in the audience that night might also find funny, and that's what I've been doing ever since once I turned the corner and was able to be a value on the show. I think I became one of the people that Rob would turn to when we were in crisis mode, or, you know, when we really needed something. So I ended up spending a lot of time in his office, working on things together with other writers as well. I think we just developed a really good rapport and friendship and shared a very similar sensibility with we'd love the same things. You know, we both loved Albert Brooks, we both loved Christopher Guest. We both loved Steve Martin, we had the same the same references that we were pulling from what happened was Rob went off to create an run a show with Barney hunt, the hilarious actor Barney hunt, and that got on the air but I guess didn't last long for whatever reason. And he, he returned the Letterman that had been a Worldwide Pants production, I should add Dave's company. When he got back, he asked me if I would be interested in developing a primetime series with him. And I absolutely was I was thrilled to be asked, and that was where Ed started. We, at the time, I was still contributing to late show, but I would spend part of the day with Rob batting around series ideas. And our initial thought with Ed was what if we did a sitcom about a guy whose entire life blows up in a single day so it didn't have any of the elements that the show went on to have like bowling alley, his law practice, it didn't have any of that it was going to be that in New York, I believe it was going to be a half hour, I think multi camera comedy where we were going to try to kind of deconstruct the comedy by not having any of the things it turns out you need for comedies such as a set or a calf. But you know, we were we were young lions eager every They are selves. Anyhow, that version of things only got so far. And really, the problem was that we were kind of called back to work at the Late Show again for a while because Rob became the EP, he replaced Robert Morton, who had been the fantastic EP of the show for many years known to fans as Morty. Dave made a change. And Rob took over that gig, which meant he was not free to go do ad or whatever the show was called time. And I was called back to be head writer, again, there was a whole period of a couple of years there where we had to put it on the back burner, we finally got to get back to it. We sorry if this is is this is to inside baseball, but where else am I can talk about these things. It was very important. It was important to us to do a single camera comedy. These were not in vogue at the time, you know, now it's just about all you see. But at the time, half hour comedies were onstage in front of a studio audience and our long dramas were got like little movies, while we wanted to do a comedy that was shot like a little movie. And there weren't a lot of examples. There was The Larry Sanders Show on HBO, there wasn't much else going on in that format. So we were like, Huh, well, if we do ed as an hour, nobody will be trying to get us to do it on stage or the laugh track. So we wrote an hour long version of Ed, in which this is where it became a rom com, where he is life blows up. And then he moves back to his hometown, because he remembers the girl that he longed for when he was in high school. And he thinks maybe I'll just go back and I'll re meet this girl and all my problems will be solved. And of course, it turns out she is in a relationship. And you know, none of it goes right. But he ends up visiting the bowling alley where he used to hang out and in a fit of dumb, you know, nostalgia, he buys it and he decides this is going to be my new life. We pitched that to CBS. They ordered a script, probably mostly because they were in business with David Letterman. Not because they were dying for an hour long show about a guy who buys a bowling alley. But they did order a script that did make the pilot that was where we cast bomb Kavanaugh, Julie Bowen and the other members of that excellent cast. And then they passed the BS passed and the pilot. And we thought this thing that we've been working on for years is now dead. What happened next was very surprising, which was that NBC called and they said, we saw this pilot. We liked this cast. We like what you're doing. Would you be interested in essentially re piloting it for NBC? And we said, yeah, and they said, right, the second episode, you know, okay, he's back. Now what happens next? And, to their credit, they also did look, you got to give this guy a job that he can do every episode that's not just running a bowling alley. It's got to be something with stakes, as we'd like to say, and TV, and screenwriting. So Rob, and I sat down and made a list of all the jobs that a person can have, where there's kind of a case of the week of some sort, and settled on, somehow there never been a show that a lawyer, I'm joking, of course, there's a reason why these jobs are the stuff of television, it's because you can introduce new characters and reasonably high stakes to tell the story about you know, your person helping this person. That's why there's so many medical police detective lawyer shows there will always be and I believe it was even got Sasa, the NBC executive at the time who said, Yeah, you should put his law office in the bowling alley. And we were like, Yeah, okay, that's weird and good. And we did it. And that became kind of the calling card of the show, such as it was like it was the bowling alley lawyer and got four seasons out of that.

Jeff Dwoskin 29:04

That's amazing. All right. Let's talk about your new show. I'd love to have dinner with the parents.

Jon Beckerman 29:10

Yes, this is a show based on a format created by the brilliant British comedy writer Robert Popper, who created a show some years ago called Friday Night Dinner, which ran very successfully in the UK for a number of seasons or series, as they call them. And the format is very simple. It's about a family that gets together for dinner every Friday night. And then things go as wrong as they can possibly go. BBs studios had the you know, the rights to do an American show based on that format asked me if I was interested. I watched the original show a few episodes of it enough to see that this was very much my family that I grew up in that you know, just so happened that Robert Paul burned, I had very similar neighborhoods that we came from very similar family structures, relationships with our brothers terrors of being embarrassed and mortified, you know, which is kind of what, what we think is funny, though, I jumped at the chance to do it. And it all miraculously worked out that Amazon freebie ordered the show, straight to series from a script that I had written. And I got to make 10 episodes of this show, my approach to to the project was not to try to recreate what Robert had done, because I felt like those shows exist, you know, many episodes are there, you can watch the dad based on Robert stead, and the whole rest of it. And I thought, the way I could make myself the most useful here is if I take this format of the family getting together every week, and just make it more about my, not my family, exactly, but my kinds of relationships and people that are in my life. So that's what I did. The characters are named after my family's middle names. So like, there's David because I'm John David, there's a Greg because my brother is James, Greg, and so forth. And definitely drew from some things about us. And it's the most fun I think I've ever had making anything, it was a total blast. And I hope that comes through to some degree and the finished product. The

Jeff Dwoskin 31:24

finished product is amazing.

Jon Beckerman 31:26

Thank you so much.

Jeff Dwoskin 31:28

I loved it. I mean, usually I'll watch a little bit of something just before I talked to someone, I watched the whole thing. Like, like, not the whole episode, awesome. The whole thing. This is what I realized, at the end of it the whole time, I'm watching and I'm like, oh, that's just like my family. Oh, my dad was like, and then I realized, wait a minute, I'm as old as the dad in the show.

Jon Beckerman 31:48

This is something that I had to sort of work my way through because people, when people write a story, there's generally the character that's kind of the avatar for the writer, you know, and usually that characters kind of your way into the world of the story, right? So like, on this show, you know, the character I named after myself is the older brother, David, and I'm a big brother, David is a mathematician. I was a math geek. And I was definitely drawing from my experience being the big brother, being a nerd with a cooler brother, which my brother is cooler than me, although he might argue with you about that. But then I found that when I was trying to create this family, I related much more to the dad point because I am a dad, my kids aren't as old as the brothers on this show. But they're teenagers. And I have the embarrassing dad now. I'm not the kid being embarrassed, I am the dad causing the embarrassment. And so I had to, I had to sort of create this weird hybrid of my dad and myself to be the dad on the show. So that that was weird. Well,

Jeff Dwoskin 32:59

it would throw me off at first not realizing like, wait a minute, I am as old as parents on the show, which is it's weird because you grow up watching shows and you relate more to the kids. And parents are the old ones. And I'm thinking myself, Oh my God. And what threw me at first is a dad on the show was a dentist and my dad was a dentist. So I was saying so immediately. I've like I just made him my dad. But then I was like, oh, wait a minute. No, no, no. And by the way, there's tons of great I'm not gonna say any of the jokes because I want comedies. I think when people show a joke or something, it's like the band that he's in hilarious. There's, there's some great like callback jokes later on where you just referenced something that happened earlier, that was great. entire cast is insanely hilarious. And everything was like the brother dynamic is hilarious, because that's how we all are. We're like who we are. And then for some reason, when we get together as a certain unit, we become who we were.

Jon Beckerman 33:52

Yes, that's what the show is about. And that's what I immediately saw when I watched Friday Night Dinner. Oh, this show really gets that it gets the way that family relationships are kind of frozen in amber for decades. And they never really evolved. You know, I mean, maybe in some cases they they do but they it's always rooted in whatever happened when you were at the beginning of your life. And it's it's crazy how persistent that is. 100%

Jeff Dwoskin 34:21

the UK show Friday Night Dinner, which did run for six seasons and Wright was out at least nominated for lots of awards. The late Paul Vetter who was the father Yeah, brilliant. Yes. So is there people watch British shows now it's a thing I mean maybe it's always been a thing but I do know now there's like services you can pie and I have friends that are box as well. Yeah. bread box. I have friends that are obsessed with British shows. Is there a little bit of a it because it's a show? It was a revered show? Right? It was like to make a version of that knowing people can like I feel like when people watched on the family they didn't. No one had seen the original show. I think right, so Right. Yeah,

Jon Beckerman 35:02

I mean, that's definitely a thing. You know, I'm sure there will be people outraged that we would dare to do this. And but by the way, it's not like I just snuck off and did this, like Robert popper is one of the EPS on this show, you know, there's several people involved in Friday Night Dinner that worked on this show, and that I now know and value enormously my relationship with them and getting to work with them. So this was a joint effort between me and some people who made Friday Night Dinner. Having said that, you know, all I tried to do was make a great show and make a show that would be funny to me. And that in no way is trying to replace the original show, which as I said, it's there, go watch it. Enjoy. I took the American office as my best case scenario, where I love both. I love the Ricky Gervais office, I was skeptical when I saw that they were going to do an American office. But after watching a few episodes, I was like, this is fantastic. This is hilarious, you know. And so with any luck, that's what people will say about this, all I can do is try, I feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to to use a format that works and make it my own. Put it this way, if I had just gone out and said, I want to make a show about a family that gets together for dinner every Friday night, and the characters are going to be loosely based on me and my family. Nobody would have made that show. We can talk about why that I'm just telling you, nobody would have made that show. We're in a world of IP, where all you have to know is that something worked once somewhere. And it's like, all right, this is a this is something we're taking a rolling the dice on, because that's all it ever is, is rolling the dice. I'm just thrilled that I got my hands on it. Because I developed a lot of projects. And this is the first one lately to make it all the way to series. I guess it's all my way of saying if there are negative comments on YouTube, I'll be okay. I got to make a Show. A show that I love.

Jeff Dwoskin 37:12

I just wonder if there was a little a little pressure like I'm sure they felt pressure when they were making the office because that was such a Yeah, I mean, it won't feel good if I think you have nothing to worry about because show was insanely great. Well, that's really nice to have you thank you putting the cast together. Michaela Watkins, Dan Bakkedahl, Carol Kane, John Glaser, Daniel Thrasher, Henry Hall, he was great. This his first role is Julia Louis Dreyfus and Brad hall's, son he is

Jon Beckerman 37:40

and he's done other things. But I would say that this is the first time he's been, you know, a core cast member and kind of a leading man on a series. He hadn't done that before. And he stepped right into it. To a degree that astonished me. I remember we first bonded over zoom, when not to bring up Albert Brooks again. But he's such a touchstone for me. And there were things about Henry's audition reads that reminded me of Albert Brooks and I said that to him, and he was like, Ah, really, because that's, you know, that's my hero. And that's incredible. And I just felt like this was a guy that even though we're, you know, different generations, we kind of spoke the same language in terms of comedy and taste. And he, I should add that he, he has a music career as well and is astonishingly talented as a singer, songwriter, musician. And it was fun having him on set when we were between takes, because he would grab a guitar off the wall, one of the guitars that up his, you know, Dan Bakkerdahl's character supposedly plays and Dan does not know how to play the guitar, that Henry is an exceptional guitarist, and he would just start noodling around, and everyone would gather around and just watch in amazement, I'm so happy for him to have this showcase for what he's able to do. And for people to get to see it. I love the guy, and Daniel Thrasher, who, you know, similarly, I don't know if he had any kind of conventional television credits before this, but has created an empire for himself as a YouTuber with millions and millions of views and followers out of just nothing out of turning on an iPhone camera and doing funny things. Also, an incredible musician, which is a big part of his YouTube channel is his combination of music and comedy. And this guy, who is a trained actor, and, you know, it's not like, Oh, it's this YouTuber, and we put them on a show because, you know, saw his YouTube videos, it's like, this guy is the real deal. And man, I mean, he runs away with so many of these storylines and is is just, I just can't wait for people to see what he can do. I'm very excited. it for him, because I think he's about to get a lot of recognition that he deserves for what he did on the show. Hopefully

Jeff Dwoskin 40:07

you lock them down to a lot of seasons already in the contract.

Jon Beckerman 40:12

Yeah, I know. I know. He is great.

Jeff Dwoskin 40:14

And their dynamic together is great. When I started watching the first show, I just I just started watching it. I didn't realize it was about a Jewish family. And and so Henry's character walks in the house. And there's this subtle on the wall picture just kind of a corner of it. Yeah, of a bar mitzvah. That the quintessential Bar Mitzvah boy shot of the whole prayerbook with the Talas around you. Yeah. And I saw, like every wound it did I just see, like, oh, okay, yeah, I loved how you know how Jewish the show was. So at that point, I'm like, what was it subtle? Or is it gonna know that? Well, it's not subtle as you moved on. But like, Yeah, but I was like, Oh, this is I love this, there was just so much of that kind of stuff that just was so great. And I loved how you took what could be considered boring or mundane Jewish things and made them awesome Shiva Passover, like all those things like,

Jon Beckerman 41:09

Thank you. Well, yeah, look, I mean, I just came out of a few different things. You know, one was just that Friday Night Dinner was about Jewish family in North London that gets together for Shabbat dinner. And I happen to be Jewish it was, you know, I grew up in a very Jewish neighborhood, similar to where Robert popper grew up. And, to me the best comedy is always Pacific and drawing up what you know, you know, and that's what I know. That's how I grew up. So it was super fun to draw from my background as a very Reform Jew that doesn't know what I'm doing most of the time, and apply that to this family, and put them in situations where they kind of need to know what they're doing. And they, you know, which is just another way to have embarrassed themselves in public, which is a lot of what this show is about. It's about wanting to be seen a certain way, whether by your parents or by outsiders, and making terrible choices, because of that desire. We actually had, particularly for the Shiva episode, which is our fifth episode, and I think one of the exceptionally funny ones. And also for the series finale, which is our Seder episode, we had sort of a Judaism consultant on set, who was the brother of somebody on our staff, he was a very observant Jew. And during the shoot, he'd be sitting off to the side behind the monitors like not far from where I was, and he'd have his his headphones on, and he'd be watching the filming. And I would just see him shaking his head, sadly, what we were doing. And when I saw that, I knew we were getting exactly what I wanted to get. Because the point was not to represent these customs and rituals, like perfectly The point was to show here's what happens when people who didn't pay that much attention in Hebrew school, after hosts a Shiva or conduct a Seder, people get upset. And

Jeff Dwoskin 43:16

that was very fun, very relatable. No, I totally get where you're going for you're going for the realistic person who doesn't know is just enough, but doesn't know everything. And like, has to do that Hanukkah candle prayer, but doesn't really remember that there were two. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I love that. Yeah, totally. I totally.

Jon Beckerman 43:36

Yes. And then there's just the fun of the embarrassing, all of this is universal, it just specifically to my American suburban Jewish experience, you know, there were words for things that I don't even know if these words were Jewish words, or if they were just my family words, like one of them is saying make us city instead of like, go pee, like, go urinate, like, I gotta make a sissy, like, this is what we call it when I was a little kid. And when I say that to somebody, they look at me, like I'm out of my mind, but that's what we called it. And I put that right into the show. And, you know, it's like, David's parents yelling at him to go make assessing when he arrives at the house, because they think if he's been away from a bathroom for 10 minutes, well, he better go or he's, you know, it's like, he's like, I work five minutes from here. I don't have to make it you know, the note is that Jewish is that Pittsburgh, I don't know what it is. But it was a sort of more self mortifying pleasure to put stuff like that in the show.

Jeff Dwoskin 44:38

I love that. I love that we I remember my parents convincing my brother that his Hebrew name was Michigan ah. Growing up we had Shabbat dinners as well as a family with my aunt and my cousins. And so I grew up really close to my cousins and my grandparents were there and one of those watching the show it reminded me something that this A day, I mean, decades, decades, decades later, I feel guilty about you know, my grandma, she was older, you know, and I was in high school you want to get you want to leave, you know, you don't want to you want to put in the time, but then you want to go and I go, Oh, Grandma meeting friends, she like, oh, what time and I would look at the time and if it was 630, I'd be like, six, six o'clock at 630 You better go Jeff's gotta go. I'd be like, Oh, by everybody. And then I would leave. You know, you'd set the time. But then you look back. And it's like, you know, people pass away and like, you know, the time goes on and the dynamic changes. And I was like, Ah, I was in such a rush to get out of there. You know why conduct? Enjoyed it. But yeah, family, family dinners are the best. And you've made something extremely special. And there's no weak links. Every character is just as funny or funnier, depending on the episode is everyone else. And I it's like I said, I couldn't stop watching it. Stop watching it. And I'm gonna have to watch it again with my wife. Like, couldn't wait, that's awesome. Wait, I had to just do it?

Jon Beckerman 45:55

Well, I'm glad it's given you a little bit of joy. And that's, that's really all this show is meant to do. It's, you know, it doesn't really have an agenda beyond making you laugh and giving you a little release and happiness for half an hour. We just tried to do that with as much craft and as much art as we could muster up. So I'm really glad to hear it work for you. Well, it's

Jeff Dwoskin 46:18

amazing. Everyone needs to watch this incredible show dinner with the parents is it via Amazon Prime or with free V and that you get through kind of Amazon.

Jon Beckerman 46:28

It's a freebie original. And what that means is you do not need to be a paying Amazon Prime subscriber to watch the show. But if you go to the Amazon Prime website or app, you will be able to find the show through that or freebie has a standalone app, you know that you can watch on your Smart TV or your phone or your whatever either way works. It's called freebie because it's free. There's no subscription required. Very

Jeff Dwoskin 46:54

clever name of the app. John, thank you so much for hanging out with me giving me the inside scoop pleasure Letterman and Ed and your awesome new show. I'm excited for everyone to discover it. Thank you so

Jon Beckerman 47:06

much, Jeff.

Jeff Dwoskin 47:07

How amazing was John backer man, listen, I'm being 100% about this dinner with the parents is amazingly hilarious. The entire cast is amazing is four episodes released. As I'm recording this. I've seen the entire series, those four and all the rest, and I loved every second of it. Everyone in it's amazing. It's up there, everything's great. So definitely go support that there's no barriers to watching dinner with the parents. Thanks again to John Beckerman for hanging out with me talking about creating that show and Ed and Late Night with David Letterman, so many great stories. And thank you to all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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Transcribed by https://otter.ai