-Our first guests tonight are one of Hollywood's
funniest couples who you know from their films
like, "Thunder Force," "Superintelligence,"
"The Boss," and "Tammy." They produced the documentary, "Bob Ross: Happy Accidents,
Betrayal & Greed," which begins streaming
on Netflix tomorrow. Let's take a look. -Bob liked the thrill of watching a new student smile with a fresh, new,
beautiful painting. ♪♪ Bob would just make them
so happy, it's -- it's unreal. ♪♪ It's like, "Man, did I do this? I couldn't have." "Yes, you did." -There's a lot going on
besides painting. And I think people are aware
of that, and they enjoy that. -Please welcome to the show Melissa McCarthy
and Ben Falcone. It's lovely to see you both. -Hi, how are you?
-Hi! Good to see you. -So -- First of all, like
I said, it's great to see you. Melissa, you've been
on the show before. Ben, it is your first time. I am so happy to have you guys
here together. And together is where you spent
most of, I guess, the last year in Australia.
How did it treat you? [ Both sigh ]
-Very nicely. I have to say,
we kind of really -- We got in there
at an amazing time. And at first,
when they were like, you know, "Would you consider going
to Australia to work?" I was like, "No. Like, we --
We can't go down to the street. I can't move a family across
the world. That's insane." -Yeah, we can't go to Australia
if we can't go to Trader Joe's. -"This is nuts. We can't go to
Trader Joe's, we can't go to --" And then our 14-year-old's like,
"We should leave tonight. Get me out of Zoom classes.
We should leave tonight." We were like...
"Wait, let me call somebody." And it was kind of great,
you know? It's a friendly -- It's a chatty, friendly -- -Very Midwestern kind of time. -Yeah, we're both Midwestern. Like, you know, you go down
a grocery aisle, and you're going to have
like three full conversations just about random stuff.
-Yeah, about bananas. "You like those bananas?"
-See, this is great. I was going to ask if you guys
can do the accent now. That was really good, Ben. Melissa, I heard
you can't do it. -[ Gasps ] I think -- I think I can do a few things. But then any Australian's like,
"That's awful." I like, "Noyr." 'Cause they put an O-Y-R
at the end of the "Noyr." And then I-I --
You shave with "rayzor blaydes." -Oh, that's -- -Razor blades really fast is, "Ah, I've got
some razor blades." -"Razor blades." Max said,
"Don't move your mouth." -This is very, very helpful. Hey, I want to ask this. When
you guys travel across the world or whenever you travel together,
because, Ben, you famously played an air
marshal in "Bridesmaids" -- for my money, one of
the funniest movie scenes that ever took place
on an airplane. When you guys travel together, is it jarring for other people
on the flight? [ Both laugh ] -I think they're always
a little bit like, "Ha, ha!" Or they're like, "Oh, my God. You guys got married after
that?" And I was like,
"Well, we were married." They're like, "Right." -One time, a drunk guy did say, "Hey, you going to
keep us safe?" And I was like, "Yeah, you know,
I'll try to." And he goes, "Seriously. Are you are going to
keep us safe?" I was like --
What do you say to that? I was like, "It was a movie." [ Laughter ] -You mentioned
you were both Midwesterners. And -- And I was aware
that you guys met working together
at the Groundlings in L.A. But then, you actually
hadn't met then. You had met back when you were
growing up in -- in Illinois. -We had had an encounter.
I think I can call it that, which was --
I've never called it that. -Ooh. So mysterious.
-Ooh! We're breaking news here. -It's getting very nighttime. We -- I went to college
at SIU Carbondale, Southern Illinois,
which is where Ben grew up. He's three years
younger than me. So I was a freshman when he was
still in high school. And when we became friends
in L.A., like a week into it,
he was like, "Oh, my God. I know who you were." And I was like, "No, you don't. You would never recognize me.
No, you --" And he's like, "No, I did."
I-I think I know who you were." And he goes,
"No, I was afraid of you." And I was like, "Oh, my God.
That was me." -Yeah. Once -- Once I mentioned that she struck terror
in certain people, she was like,
"Yep, that was me." 'Cause she was very,
very goth, very -- And all my, you know, friends
who were of that age went, "Oh, my God. I wish my mom
would let me dress like her." -And really, all I was doing
is I was so hot because in Southern Illinois
in, like, August, to commit to a full-length cape
and, like, opaque tights, you're digging in
in a way that nobody should. -So, Ben, the first time
you laid eyes on your wife, she was caped. Is this what we're hearing? -Yeah. It was probably
the dead of summer, and she had a very heavy cape and kind of a nice --
a nice shade of blue hair. -That's a -- you know? -And his eyes
just went to hearts. [ Laughter ] -So, you guys started -- I think a lot of us had to find
ways to entertain ourselves over the past 18 months. You started a movie club
with some of your friends, a thematic movie club. And you were, like, very much
at the beginning of it, because you've really
charged through a lot of films. -It started with,
we were just like, "We're not -- I'm just scrubbing fruit all day
with Clorox wipes," which, by the way,
don't do that. But in the beginning, I think
we were all like, "I don't know. How do you -- How --
How clean is clean?" And we were realizing, like, we
weren't having any connection to anybody when we were all so,
I mean, as we all did. And so we're like, "Let's Zoom, and we'll have, like,
Friday night drinks with a couple people." And then, literally, they're
like, "Oh, well, we all know -- Let's add a couple people,
add a couple people." And Ben said -- He's like,
"My brain's going to mush. I need to do something. I'm going to start and watch
every single Best Picture winner from the Academy Awards." -Yeah, from --
We decided in 1960. And it's that sort of thing. You
know, when the pandemic started, we were all going
to take piano lessons and learn a bunch of languages.
And I'm gonna -- "Oh, trig? You got it.
Trigonometry? I got it." -I'm gonna get my master's! Although I never got past
freshman year in regular college,
but whatever. -But, so --
But it actually is because -- Because it turned into this
really fun thing, we've -- I think we've watched, you know, definitely over 50
Best Picture winners. -No, I think we're into --
We're in -- We're past 55. -Yeah, yeah. It started at -- -Is there one that --
Is there one you can say, "Hey, you probably
haven't seen this one. It's better than you heard.
You should definitely watch it"? -Ooh, there's --
There's a lot of great ones. -I think just remembering
how, like, rewatching things that you've seen
so many times but you didn't -- And, like, we watch it
during the week on our own, and then we meet.
There's a -- There's a Q&A. -Great.
-There are costumes, and there are prizes.
-Trivia components. -Very stupid prizes given. But I think, like, watching
"Terms of Endearment" again -- -Yeah. -...watching
"Kramer vs. Kramer." -"In the Heat of the Night."
Sidney Poitier. -Oh, my God.
-Oh, my gosh. -All three of those are --
Those are all Marvel movies. People don't remember.
-Yes, exactly. And then to sit there
and actually having fun but also, people being like --
watching a movie, talking about it with a bunch
of different filmmakers and actors and producers
and writers, like, you don't -- You know, you don't really
get to do that since college. And, like, it's just been --
It's been so fun. -So it's a lot of laughs. And you sort of by accident
learn a lot of stuff, too. -And then there's a few
that you're like, "Aah. Sorry, but --"
-We won't name names, but there are
some turds in there. -"Patton"? -There are some turd
Best Pictures. -Oh, she named the name.
-Sorry, but "Patton"? -He said we weren't
gonna name names. -It starts -- He's got
toothpaste on his eyebrows. -[ Laughing ] No, he doesn't. -Oh! My God. All respect,
but you start out a movie with toothpaste on --
on somebody's close-up, and I'm like, "I'm out. -It was not too great. -Hey, so you guys have been
writing partners for a long time. I don't know. Is this the
first -- Is the Bob Ross doc the first time you guys have
produced a documentary together? -Yeah.
-Yeah. -And so, what brought it about? -Well, you know, I'm super
interested in Bob Ross and have loved him
for a long time. And I actually wanted
to write a biopic about him, half because I'm interested and half because she's always
wanted me to have a perm. -[ Sighs ] I really do. -So I was -- And I did
your basic, you know, cursory, how -- What do you find -- You know, we no longer
go to the microfiche. You know, you go just
and look on Google and like, "Alright,
Bob Ross news" or whatever. And there's nothing there. So it was really interesting
to find, in this day and age, you can find --
I'm sure if we google you, there's zillions
of pages of stuff. You'll be like, "I don't even
know what some of this is." But there was nothing. -Yeah, which was just so -- We were like, "Wait, how -- How can anybody
that -- that well-known, you know, for this many years," there's only like three
small bites of information. So it just made us really
kind of start to wonder what is the story there? And then we met these, you know,
great documentary filmmakers. And they were like, you know, "Are you guys thinking
of doing anything?" And they -- They had just
done "Lorena," and -- And then, you know, we said,
"What -- What about Bob Ross?" He's kind of --
Like, we're currently down, like, this wormhole
of, like, what is the story?" And they just -- They loved it.
And they went -- It's such a different process.
They went right into, kind of, this, like,
investigative research. We're going. It's feet on
the ground, knocking on doors. It was like -- It was exciting. -And there's a certain
poetry to it, because the way
that our filmmakers, Joshua and Steven, you know,
described it to us, they said, you know,
sort of something akin to, "You know, the movie
reveals itself to you." And I was like,
"Well, we should do that." -And I was like, "That's
what I was going to say." -It really does, though. And it's -- It is fascinating,
like, what you say, I think we all just assume
we know everything about him. And then you realize you don't
actually know a single detail other than his hair
or that he paints, and it's really
a wonderful documentary because of how much we find out.
-Oh, thanks. -Oh, good.
Glad you like it, Seth. -You guys, it is so lovely
to see you, as always. I wish you the best, and hopefully next time
I can see you in person. -Absolutely.
-I hope the same thing. -Your hair looks fantastic. -Still great hair! [ Laughs ] -"Bob Ross: Happy Accidents,
Betrayal & Greed" begins streaming
on Netflix tomorrow, and "Nine Perfect Strangers"
is streaming now on Hulu.
