Hasan Minhaj talks Patriot Act with The New Yorker’s Vinson Cunningham

[Applause] thank you thanks for coming Hasan it's awesome thank you tan tan France we're gonna get the tan - all right it's funny I met you a year ago yeah and back then you were saying you were kind of cryptic you're like I'm working on this thing and that's all you said you're like right right right Lauren just today that that was actually you were doing that sort of proof of concept of video yes for this so I just love just off the bat to know how it was to like come up with this idea this fresh take kind of a whole new-media of how did you kind of build it from before then until now yeah so what so what he was referring to as a year ago were we were we do doing an interview for homecoming king we were doing an interview like right after honking yeah that's right it'd just come out on Netflix and we were sort of talking about you know hey what are you working on what do you would is there something else that you're thinking about a night and I did tell you about this thing but one of the things that had really connected with a lot of people was the the visual storytelling aspect of of homecoming king using you know multimedia to show emails or evidence or establish tone just emotional tone of a scene and it translated people really dug it and I had sort of hit this point at The Daily Show where you know The Daily Show very much is your Scottie Pippen - you know like John is you know Mike and your Scottie Trevor it's his show and then you support Trevor but it was one of those things where I said if I had sort of the wingspan to have my own thing what would I want to do and I was putting together the next one-man show and it was all these stories of sort of different political topics that I had covered in the field and then I was talking to Prashant the co-creator the patriot act and he goes no no that's that's a TV show yeah each act of this isn't it's not a one-man show it's like a proper television show and coming out of that and the Correspondents Dinner we were getting a lot of interest oh hey what do you want to work on next and I knew that Patriot Act was gonna have a very distinctive visual language and I wanted to produce something that could show the network's hey this is what it looks like and this is what it feels like because you know you your fingers before you know it you're behind a desk and it's like gods Indian John Oliver liked it so I didn't want that like the fake skinny skyline and I'm just looking at camera one I didn't I didn't want that I knew there was a very specific language that I wanted to create and you can only you have to see it you know and so that was sort of that secret you know project that it's interesting you mentioned like homecoming king in some ways Patriot Act does have this very distinct yes visual language as you say but it is also in another sense kind of an extension of what you are already doing right with homecoming it's like it's really a study and like invoice which I'm really interested in yeah across all the arts it seems like you've sort of honed and honed from the Correspondents Dinner routine from homecoming king it's like finding your voice on stage and how you relate to people through the camera how it has it been to kind of find what that is and then use it in this very specific yeah I wanted to pick topics where you can clearly tell from from the jump oh I only really care about this topic if I'm gonna take 20 to 25 minutes at your time it shouldn't matter I should be adding value to your life of some capacity it shouldn't just be something that you can get anywhere else that's the first thing just from a personal storytelling aspect of what is my anchor to the story and then the second part that I really wanted to explore and Patriot Act was sort of this graduation from homecoming king of like okay sure I can mine my personal life for a lot of stuff but can I apply that storytelling skillset to things that are maybe ancillary or one or two or three degrees removed from me and can i still find connective tissue there yeah in terms of choosing the topics right things that you care about but I wonder also kind of what you want or what you imagine your relationship to the audience to be with respect to these topics is it like I want to tell you about something that's maybe not the big clickbait topic it's like a step removed or is it here's a thing that you I know that you know yeah because you know I know that you're an engaged kind of person in the world that's why you're watching this and I just want to a layer deeper on it like what is it what do you want to bring to the audience yeah I mean because we're on Netflix one of the things that was really important for me is it has to feel timely and timeless there has to be something that there's a spark of oh this is happening right now so with affirmative action it's in it's in federal court right now but there was this Babe Ruth element when we were putting it together of this is going to the Supreme Court the Supreme Court loves affirmative action cases yeah and so for me you know I wanted to put something out where hey you can revisit this in 18 months because best believe when it goes to the Supreme Court Trump is gonna bang that drum yeah you know I wanted to put it sort of on on the record two very distinctly talked about my community in the way we're approaching this subject yeah and and and that's that's another really important thing for me is if I'm gonna be a part of this landscape I really wanted to look at the white space that exists in the medium these sort of topics that are kind of radioactive for a lot of other hosts to touch yeah I mean I was thinking about this like how do other hosts engage with affirmative action right it's just too radioactive for them and when I saw the Asian students suing Harvard I'm like all right we are right in this wedge issue right so let me talk about and I can I can I can entertain and talk to both sides which i think is special or unique or with Saudi Arabia the same sort of thing yeah I'm both an American and a Muslim okay this is a weird [ __ ] yeah really is it's such a it's such a weird relationship that we go to soared prom with Saudi Arabia and for me I'm like how do I engage with this I'm sure that many of you have seen that Saudi Arabia episode but it's like I think it's really the kind of prime example of some of this stuff because it's all of the research that this show takes all of the deep thinking yeah that it takes to bring this to to the screen but then also like your personal story which is always kind of the subtext yes yeah show but now it's very it's foreground it yeah this is why this matters to me like I guess I wonder whether there you feel some risk in that in certain points even in this episode the affirmative action episode you're kind of challenging this figure that you say like the aunties the uncles yes like you're kind of getting into your own community there's this element of let's be real yeah are you really agent MLK or is this about your son yeah you like that's the you know that's the thing that I wanted to sort of put on the record yeah you know so does that I wonder if that by the way there's moments where it's not it's not that deep like with our amazon episode right the general take was look I'm addicted to prime like that's my addiction and and the take was I'm lazier than I am woke yeah when it comes to pride yes like convenience is the commodity that I guess matters the most I've I've researched this and there's the graphics and the whole thing and I still use prime to get diapers for my daughter you know it's one of those things and I just wanted to be honest yeah and let that be the undercurrent and it seems maybe that's like also the way you earn your criticism of others to also put some criticism on yours oh yeah yeah yeah I'll dunk on myself yeah yeah yeah but do you like I wonder I found myself wondering like what your what your parents think of the show or like is it like oh you're like too close to the bone here like is there a worry that you have of like the older generation not understanding or or receiving it in the way right the love that you intend it yeah their concerns are more about safety because they know what specific things like the Saudi Arabia episode you're poking the bear and you know my mom and dad are very much like hey you know there's a lot of stuff that you make fun of in America and and and knock on wood we're relatively safe here but you know autocrats and dictators don't like getting made fun of yeah by their own yeah no and that's their concern of like do you want to keep poking the bear because there are repercussions to that and that's something where I just had to sort of come to terms with specifically in regards to Saudi Arabia I'm making pilgrimage all that stuff and I've had to come to personal terms certain things in regards to that yeah I mean that reminds me of something in homecoming can you talk about yeah the sort of mismatch in expectations between yes you and your dad specifically like you have these I don't know if entitlements or the world but like optimism I have I say it's optimism versus pragmatism right and I think I think like I talked about that the pendulum swings between the two yeah and I get it now especially as a parent - like there's moments where I'm extremely just pragmatic and I'm like the world's not changing so this is what we have to do yeah you know get on a rocket ship exactly yeah totally but that optimism is also like you see it in other places in the show where like I love the the you have a riff maybe in the next episode where you talk about the lota yeah you know that's it for the culture moment yeah but I feel that that to me like talks about a kind of confidence to say I'm gonna talk about this very specific you can explain for everybody what yeah a lotta is basically like the manual transmission of bidets yeah yeah but like to make such a specific reference that speaks to your community and not worry that you're gonna lose an audience because it seems to me that there's a confidence like no like now we're in the wrong in the like didn't but don't you feel like that with are you consumed as a kid you may or may have not been in that community but the art that I love made me feel like I was in the room right and it you know you know it also didn't disrespect my level of intelligence yeah it was like no no I I will speak to you as if you're me yeah or a friend and you'll get it and I think that that that's actually respecting the audience the most yeah I was felt that way about black culture that it was distinct but it was welcoming and that was why it became just American culture is like and I see that with you where you're just like it was funny like we can talk about tan now and that Netflix like the little thing of you guys there was a moment there that was really deep though he was talking to you about like you know you can like use more western hair products if he wanted you said no like let me school you real quick like yeah oh yeah everybody's trying to be like us from like this and that like this kind of acknowledgement that the gravity of the cultural gravity I guess you could call it is like headed in your direction correct yeah yeah 20:42 baby yeah you know I mean it there's that lag come on man why do we have to have stuff now yeah yeah yeah also I mean like to me interesting art is are the anomalies like my favorite authors or musicians sort of art it they're exceptional because they're unlike the rest they make clear creative choices to be like no no like I'm making a distinct choice to do a lotta joke and I call me by your name Italian peach joke in the same yes like that's a choice yeah and I certainly hope that people see that that's oh he's doing it all and it's not he's not compromising who he is or what he's about yeah and there that also I mean it kind of connects to this kind of what I think is really interesting about your show is that like 10 15 years ago when maybe I guess the Daily Show is of course like the sort of first of a kind of model the mantra of comedians who did shows that were promised on the news right was it's just comedy right right like right this is a parody of a Fox News or MSNBC and if you're taking this too seriously you're doing it wrong whereas I think that you're like kind of up to something different there these are issues that you want to talk about yes you're making jokes yes but there's an an earnestness right like a seriousness of intent with you I mean was that a something that you all always knew you wanted to do well I would say this I would say that in regards to sort of that commentary that I think John really sort of pioneered of hey hey like I'm on Comedy Central the show before me is a show with with puppets that prank call people so this isn't journalism I think he said that on crossfire he's like you're telling me I'm a journalist but like I have crank calling puppets before my show yeah it's not news but I do feel like that software needs to be updated because especially right now a lot of people do get their news from these shows yeah we're able to distill a lot of insanity into this like very distinct comedy news espresso which people actually do take as truth but the interesting thing that's happening right now is some of these shows are now breaking proper news like in the Saudi Arabia episode we had the CENTCOM document it was just there it was out there like the fact that the US military had this document yeah that was really really offensive in terms of the language that was right in Chapter one it described you know the people sad Rabia is having Negro blood and all this sort of stuff and I was like how is this PDF just living on the internet and it's given to every military official that goes to Saudi Arabia and then the US military ended up apologizing and taking that down right yeah that's breaking news that's in journalism how to be breaking news but the the the thing that I try to tell people is for my job the necessary condition is comedy the sufficient condition is is this news is this interesting so people come up to me all the time and they're just like hey man you're like you're the melon and Savior you need to talk about rojan jaw and I thought I can't make that funny dude you have to talk about it and I'm like I can't make that funny yet yeah that's why real journalism matters because the necessary condition is news the sufficient condition is is it interesting the problem is is I think cable news and a lot of certain sort of click baiting media is the necessary condition is is it salacious yeah well people want to click on it then are we providing information or context yeah I mean so your whole game has been sort of flipped on its head now which is weird yeah it and back to just your choice of topics that it does seem to be an argument against perhaps them the loudest the most because there's a version of this show that's just about like what Trump said today right like I mean in yeah that's a lot of daily a lot of the daily stuff is in that vein yes do you already just it's a it's a lot of recap stuff hey this happened did you see that gaff did you see that senator say that dumb thing play the tape and then just you know milk tag joke joke joke joke joke good night yeah and it's it's really in the recap sort of business and I think there's been this new this new space that's created I took a lot of inspiration from storytelling and podcasting or longer form journalism like what you guys were doing like what you guys are currently doing and what I love about that is the shelf life of best you can you can walk away from some of those articles or those podcasts right feeling like it wasn't just like sugar yeah good laugh at a gaffe and then you're done you know you know and you sort of like what's the bigger takeaway yeah yeah on a technical level then does the because you're choosing a different kind of news right because you're sufficient condition is different than maybe right that for a different show like does that change the kind of joke you do like the necessary part of your job like does is there a kind of different approach even to structure and how you make comedy if it's something that you also like you say want to live for longer to be evergreen yeah what how does that work like how do you what kind of jokes are you wanting to get from the writers room that or that kind of help make concrete that longer or shelf life my big bigger thing is what what larger question are we are we answering yeah so to me like you know the affirmative action headline piece you know people around the world can see it in different countries have different forms of affirmative it's not called affirmative action it's called different things yeah and to me it's hey is there a larger question we're answering here and that episode to me is a is a discussion of meritocracy who gets what and why right the Saudi Arabia episode is if we know about this complicated relationship why aren't we reassessing it why did it take this this very public and brutal murder for us to finally sort of talk about this really weird you know thing existed since FDR that to me is that to me is where for me as a comedian really interesting comedy lives in that space yeah so doing this show I know that you just kind of finished also being on tour for your yeah I guess there's a second special or yeah will or material well the the tour that I did was almost like the mixtape to Patriot Act would even studio album no it was a bunch of headlines that we had been working on God did that didn't and that aren't in the show currently but that became sort of the genesis of so what is then it was if I was Lil Wayne it was at the drought mixtapes yeah which then which then came became the Carter yeah which made him the greatest right I mean that's the best analogy I can think of yeah it's a good one all right well 92nd Street Y like it mixtapes comedies fun right but does buy the visit I just like love the pockets of like eight people laughing it's the best you get it's like well you know one of those like tectonic maps where you're the hot spots you know like yeah yeah people those people yeah what it's kind of how I got Netflix is just like yeah it's like you like murder documentaries and you also like cooking shows is that yeah you like the Lil Wayne the drought right but you also like talking about meritocracy and affirmative action does this change how you think about live performance though like to the extent that you do another special cause special yeah in whatever way that that yeah looks does this kind of further because you were already like not doing additional traditional stand up like with that sort of brick wall behind yeah but does this further complicate how you think about stand up yes yeah I'm I'm really interested in seeing how far we can continue to take the medium yeah a sort of storytelling in comedy and and I'll be a hundred percent honest I think a lot of what the comics are doing in Edinburgh on Europe is really interesting yeah versus what a lot of comics are doing in in America I've taken a ton of inspiration from what they do and you're up there's comics that will turn around a whole new show every year yeah it's it's sort of their it is their mission statement to I earn around a brand new hour every year and it's a show centered around a specific theme and that's my big presentation to the world I think that's really cool and interesting so as I continue to explore that that's that's something that I take a lot of inspiration from yeah you mentioned the sort of what do you say melanin save your thing in Messiah I think it's it's it's true that because like you look at one of your tweets and you'll go to and in it's it's very heartwarming or like your Instagram or something people will be like I've never seen someone talk about this that's very personal to me yeah and now it's being represented on this say does that turn into like what does that mean for you is that like a responsibility is it just nice but you just have to do what it is that interests you how does that sort of manifest in your like thought life in terms of how you do your work are you like now I really can't let XYZ people down I mean the there is definitely pressure the the pressure that I feel is that I just don't want to mess up I don't want to let I just don't want to let you know the fan people people who support what I'm about and the move the movement that we're trying to create I don't want to let them down so I do my due diligence to make sure we're airtight in terms of our argumentation in terms of the jokes I really do the best that I can with my writers and my sort of staff and it's really diverse to go hey what do you think of this take or what do you think of that like yeah you know to really sort of just cross your T's and dot your i's but also at the same time what excites me the most is I remember as a kid like seeing the Arsenio Hall Show and I remember they would have these great shots where the camera would turn and it would be the studio audience yeah and I just remember viscerally you can even watch the clips on YouTube now being like oh this is different like I've never seen this before in my life and no one had seen this but just like even the audience reactions and to be in the same era as Johnny Carson and when you cut to that audience shot you see Malcolm X baseball caps it's a it's a very different video audience than what was going on also in Burbank at that time - yeah and to me that was like it's really powerful to me on our camera floor you can see shots of people in the studio audience like wearing a black lives matter hoodie next to a girl in her job next - you know it's real that to me is really cool yeah I love that I don't know it like gives me energy yeah yeah how does that work but I've always wondered that you you're just coming from rehearsal right how does that work so you do a couple shows in front of the same audience and then you think of more more material and then you do a couple more yeah I mean same audience I mean the cool thing that we've done with Patriot Act is because there's this sort of threading of the story I'll do these secret shows in New York load these be these like pop-up shows with the fat black pussycat which is in the village and it's just yeah it's like me and like a like a TV screen and just a PowerPoint me and Jamie my stage manager for homecoming game and it'll be the PowerPoint version of what the show will be and it'll just be a drop in show and people will think I'm gonna go to state I'm gonna go see you know how son do stand-up and then I'm just like affirmative action as we know it is about to die yeah and then like I do the headline and then the writers are there with me and then I'm like thank you so much good night they're like what but it really it gives me like feedback like I know where people I can I'm watching people in real-time sort of understand or shake their heads or not understand something and then we take notes and then we transition that into then what goes into the sort of big stage show that you see which is this like shiny Ferrari okay this we need this for clarity we need this for just this is a cool fireworks moment like the Abigail Fisher scene that you guys saw that was something that we had rehearsed a bunch of times and pop-up shows and the different iterations that we had created for that people didn't it wasn't translating and we had to continue going back to the drawing board to be like how do we elucidate this yeah you know and then what you finally see coming out of rehearsal which is on our set - then what's taped in front of a live studio audience is this sort of refine owned thing which to me I just placed I think it plays to my strengths as a storyteller yeah you know and how do you know like through that that it's working you got a really fun another video that you had about your like your hand motion yeah you yeah I've got the same problem I met my wife ten tonight we have a game of like am I gonna do weird things with my hands and I think I think I'm winning but I don't know but so how do you what's your approach to like watching yourself like how do you know when like I'm hitting like this is what it is like I'm doing a good job here I mean comedy is one of like they'll let you know like what I did that Lil Wayne joke I knew how well it did you guys let me know so you know and you know as a child of immigrants I'm very used to getting dunked on and slapped around so I can take it yeah nothing you tell me is any worse than what I've heard of growing up so yeah you can you figure it out fast the thing the thing that's more important to me is the take and there's these very visceral moments when if you make a really good point I can you can just hear it in the room like you can hear those gasps or you can hear the like the nods or like the mmm like you can hear people yeah sort of understanding that to me is the stuff that's really important to me and then layering on jokes afterwards or you know it's I think that's a little bit easier believe it or not yeah that's so interesting to me cuz like again Mike with comedy all you hear when you hear people talk about yeah comment it's like all I'm looking for the life and you're like trying to compress many different buttons right yeah you don't hear lots of comics talk about this sort of the gas button they're like yeah well but don't you feel like when you wake up and you open up Twitter yeah it's just jokes are are there they're available for free 99 just start scrolling yeah you'll see a lot of jokes yeah there's a lot of you know there's also just a lot of like hellish in craziness in Ian's and but but like whenever you see like a great take you know you respond to it it's a very powerful you know and some of the comedians that have inspired me are able distill it and I witness it with my own eyes when Trevor has been in the pocket or John has been in the pocket I've seen them I'm like that Act one it was your take that took it out of the park yeah yeah now actually everybody we're gonna have a cool surprise I'm gonna get some of your collaborators out here gonna have your showrunner Jim Margolis in Margolis and your creator and had to hit her head rather yeah so I would love to have them come out and and they'll introduce themselves yeah that's pleasing introduce yourselves please I'm Jim Margolis I'm the showrunner I'm prashanta thank it to Raman a gem that crazy name you guys see after the credits that you're like what was that you didn't even say it I noticed you mentioned his name yeah we were like I think John go in for the Latin I can't yeah because the thing is I was like I'm gonna push onto it because if I ever trip up on it I'm like I gotta clear the run we're gonna get roasted by the brown ant Internet yeah I I went straight out the Ottomans are gonna be like how could you do it's dirty like that but since we're kind of on the talking a little bit about just how the show is made I'd love if you guys could talk a little bit about just go a little bit deeper on how the you know the how from idea to execution what is the writers room look like who is coming up with these ideas and how you know you've made the joke that it's like a kind of comedy TED talk but to me it's it also kind of seems like a funny New Yorker article like from well you know I mean like it's it there's an obvious it's the product of a journalistic process I just love to hear about how that all comes off often that's borrowed from The New Yorker that's the khashoggi stuff was taken from The New Yorker yeah and and there was a nice parallel where the your affirmative action piece came out like a little bit after one of my friends wasu did a great yes yeah affirmative action piece in The New Yorker so there's like finding the different things than that but yes and and in fact we have like it's a very thorough kind of legal vetting process so we have a lawyer who once we like the show is you know once they get a script and usually he's questioning all the sources but in the Saudi Arabia episode he's like oh this is from The New Yorker this is great we don't worry about this and everything else he's like can you get more six or more than six sources and I'm like how is BuzzFeed not enough it's like it's not and I'm like whatever dude it's been shared three thousand times on Facebook that means it's true yeah yeah but I think it usually starts with either one or one or two things there sometimes a news news pitch or it's coming from like a storytelling element of like I really want to talk about this but we will we will pitch we will have like sort of like a news pitch meeting and a lot of stuff will run through Jim you know and Jim will sort of determine all right are we presenting something new or interesting that hasn't been said before but but the staff is different it's not like I think when people think of writers rooms they think of 30 rock and it's not it's not like that we don't we actually have a physical writers room but rarely is it a bunch of people in there it's most things are done in smaller groups and and I think more importantly we have a whole staff that's that's the journalist I mean there's comedy writers there proper journalists yeah comedy writers then this amazing staff of journalists and people who are what we call footage producers but there I mean they too are journalists so they find the aj Cathar ease yeah they find the thing of like you know one has seen this and that usually is a big thing like me Jim and Prashant if there's that sort of holy [ __ ] how did I not know this moment then you have to play will you generally try to press play on that right but but the cut I guess the the very short version of the process is a story gets pitched by anybody we take you know we encourage everyone to pitch from the news team to the writers to to everybody else who works on the show graphics people at cetera and then when we decide something seems worth looking into the news team looks into you know starts developing it and they create what we call a book which is kind of like a dossier mm-hmm and then we go kind of go through that dossier and then write writers get involved and they write outlines based on the dossier and and then you know and then scripts and then we keep rewriting and rewriting and Prashant basically never leaves the office which is not an exaggeration and then I am here right now right they love ya tonight this is the office yes yeah and so that yes so that's I mean you can yeah I think the other thing is because the graphics element is you know so ostentatious we kind of start flagging some of these early moments of clarity or joke runs that we go oh this would be a really funny thing to do and we want to do a big graphics joke on it so we try to get that to our graphics department early and go hey like mock this up let's take a look let's see if it plays and we do the same with like Kisa of the Abigail Fisher run where we'll go this is a really important thing that we think makes our case stronger or makes the argument stronger and we think elucidating this in a very interesting way is gonna be beneficial to our audience I think the other thing that just from a mechanical standpoint that we learned along the way is just how these stories need to be backed up every step of the way because sometimes like you'll go oh how come like you said you know Rohan go like why why isn't he just talking about that or oh I'd love for him to talk about the wealth gap or some something esoteric but like when you often do like these meditations on things they just don't translate cuz then you're just watching someone learn or pontificate yeah what I mean you're not watching someone presents something so that was like like how do you reign in the story we have like there is this thing like when we first got the writers room going there was a couple times people pitch like you've got to talk about climate change and it's this huge like topic and the thing was like you know me and Jim and Prashant were like look we we recognizes as a thing to talk about but it wasn't until the oil episode the Taylor oil spill was a thing that sort of rained it in of like there was one writer who was making us feel like climate didn't change deniers because we like well we're not that's just not funny like yeah that's a we finally that's cool if you don't care about them yeah exactly yeah yeah and like it's not funny all of our deaths yeah it's like how do we open the show and it's like look if the earth warms up two degrees we're definitely gonna die three degrees oh we're gonna die even faster like it no that's how we turn off this show right now yeah like that was the yeah [Laughter] something that I've thought about watching that I've never really had this awareness with anything else that I've watched on Netflix is that everything else we watched on TV especially in this kind of space that talk show late-night space you think of in an American context but often when I'm watching this show I'm thinking oh wait like Netflix is in I don't even how many countries is a hundred ninety one hundred and ninety countries so doesn't this sort of does the International nature of this of the the platform change the way you think about writing and producing and creating the show I mean there's certainly stories that I feel like we can talk about because oh we don't we don't necessarily have to anchor it to what's happening in America this week which is very liberating but then there's also parts where it's like hey I am an American and letting my identity as an American sort of be the anchor and speak out to something it yeah it's a case-by-case sort of situation yeah it is also tricky because so much of this way the show's produced relies on footage right and certain that helps you know with exposition or something funny happens and you know as certain countries they don't getting access to news there and getting access to footage to help tell the story sometimes can be very tricky and difficult and so we just have you know all these people scouring YouTube sometimes to just get us you know stuff to because it just can't be him you know talking the whole time with these grappling I mean it needs to be grounded in reality and and a trusted source for it to actually have you know gravity and often will find footage and then we're not allowed to use it and that becomes very I mean that just happened this week and it's like you'll find footage and you'll have this great joke run and and then we'll hear oh you can't they're not gonna license it to you you know and you these are very real walls I mean there's stories that die I mean you you'll experience the same thing in writing we're a source didn't come through or whatever yeah it's the worst it's the worst yeah yeah gotta move on yeah does does the process of creating this change well as people as creators of I guess the sort of awful technocratic where it is like content but as creators of television for you know entertainment does this change just I mean now I'm asking you to do the thing that you don't want to do on your show it's sort of like pontificate but like does it change the way you think about the future of this kind of this kind of thing like cuz there's not gonna be too many like X John Oliver's right like that mean just like like you say like that's just like this is a good question for Jim cuz he's seen it from you know he's been at The Daily Show for so many he's seen these iteration I don't know I mean will there always be the guy like what they're like bad I mean I I feel like there always is that guy but I feel like what I when I when I started working on the show I truly didn't understand the visual element of the show and it's it's really I mean it's it's it's insane what goes into it every week so good to hear Jim it'll it'll I would be surprised because I was thinking about this I was thinking like we're gonna see not understand no like I'm not on social media like I am very much an outsider Jim's like I'm here to figure out what the show is if if this this isn't the most copyable format at least visually I mean obviously last week tonight and from that the daily show they I mean if you watched the summer where where where John Oliver took over for John you could see that he was doing something different and that's what led to what he did so I mean I think it all kind of evolves into the next thing yeah I think the other thing I'll add and one thing you know when it was just me Jim and Hassan just in like a bombed-out office these shows even though they seem you know like you know a lot of them look the same or they're covering the same topics they really do need to fit the host of the show and that's a really important thing this show is like wrapped around HUS ins perspective his how he performs like even like the hand gestures like everyone's just like you know like the hater YouTube comments are like oh they got rid of the desk so what you know but it is a big thing to let that's a valid question place but it's but it is really important it actually is because like giving him the ability to walk the stage use his hands for emphasis all these things really play up the performance and have let him sort of sing the song and that that really does make it distinct and we also had this thing where we were trying to figure out we spent basically the summer trying to figure out what the show is and there was it's true I mean and and there was a lot of we were like okay we're gonna we're gonna and we had all these conversations with the network who by the way would keep using Chelsea Lately as a reference because that was their that was the other show they've done like this and we kept thinking why did what do they think this is but we went into it thinking okay we're gonna start the we're gonna start at the top of show with something topical from that week and then we're gonna transition into something longer and and then we found out that one it would basically like the turnaround time from when we tape to when it can be on Netflix was much longer than we thought things would be stale yeah and then we realized and these guys spent a lot of time just kind of obsessively studying Netflix and how people consume it and and they came to the conclusion whatever our main story is just get to that absolutely give them the stick I just am imagining people at home on the train like whatever like I was like close your eyes imagine it boom and we're into it and then if I'm just like hey did you hear what Kelly and Conway said this week and then everyone's like but if you're watching it two weeks later or three weeks later like all of a sudden yeah you're you know because Netflix is not bound by time it's actually time timeless people go to Netflix to escape time or forget about time and and I was like then these things need to be both timely and timeless there has to be an urgency to it but it also has to be one of those things where okay I can watch this two weeks from now when my friend tells me you got to see his Amazon thing or there's nothing on this you know and then we did it and we started hearing from people our first episode which was the one tonight and no one was saying you know what I'd like is another story is yeah is something I'm you know something about Trump or you know so we we kind of like there was this process of trying to at least carve out what we thought the show should be that that best suited both his voice and the material I mean a big philosophical thing that I've talked about with them I've turned to like Jim and Prashant them really had lengthy discussions they don't know what the show is about something yeah I mean so right now I was like number one are you yeah yeah I was like I was like say it again there's things first can I pitch you the show but but also was it's this idea that like the term the variety show is built around this concept where you have to you know networks have these late-night shows to fill in swathes of time you're filling in time to get to commercial break right but but Netflix is the it's on the internet so everything on YouTube or on Netflix is it the steak itself and so I this is this was a real philosophical question I had with them I was like do you need to give people more extraneous stuff if you don't have to fill in time yeah and to me that what what's happening right now through streaming is showing I think the death of variety it's not variety do what you do yeah the other thing too with what he's saying is you know people feel when there you're wasting their time they can set right now hey remember when you were like remember you're like I don't know if something's worth it we're yeah I think he was right on you're wasting time now when you're wha huh I don't even know where to go dude we live like emperors now if people are like I watched three minutes of it thumbs down there's zero patience I've told you how many times I've told you this I'm like never underestimate how impatient people are yes and how lazy people well the funny things you have to feed like we just research and we need these screens and we're getting up to the premiere of the show and then he does this thing with tan France it's like three million views we're like what are we doing after the tan thing I went I remember I was just like being smart is done it's so dumb people are like why don't you go shopping with tan more and I'm like in an hour of me putting on jackets it was more entertaining what they want look yeah that's right I couldn't hear you guys watching the thing I'm just like vegetables and then we're tan is just like it's like Keeping Up with the Kardashians with they see people and everyone's like give me more ah lot more work is hard life is hard just give me things where I don't have to think yeah it would be really funny if we pivoted and we had a show called Patriot Act that was just you getting dressed like yeah this aggressive US policy it's like so you're 32 episodes yeah we're kind of the way that I always saw it being publicized was like 32 episodes in the run-up to the 2020 election right it's like and that's when the it's like kind of that was the sort of pace of that 32 so I guess my question is your ability to be kind of about what you want to be about and not waste people's time on sort of hyper topical things does does that evaporate next July when like you know Michael a Vinod is in the HEPA Iowa you know I don't think he's gonna be in Iowa after what happened who ever like does does is does the imperative to be more time-based when like as I guess if my question is more philosophical as the world starts to accelerate does that change your pacing or do you feel the confidence to just do it I however you're doing I mean we've had conversations especially when we're pitching stuff with Jim is like we try to see the iceberg coming oh the Iowa caucuses are here these are some of the big questions leading up and to it and we very much entertain what is the big thing that we're trying to talk about that would maybe suit that period of time or oh there's this big international election happening here around this time maybe we plan something around that or we choose not to and there's another larger thing that while every while everyone is talking about this thing oh you know this thing's happening right now and it's really really important to like it's cool to me that we did our Amazon headline piece two weeks before hq2 got announced and we had this big sort of decision are we gonna include the thirst traps that cities were slaying out put hq2 here you know that was a thing yeah and then we again we wanted to peg it to something larger but that was also something that that we we saw I mean we took Amazon down to fat black and we ran it and we had the HQ to thing and and it was so clear yeah no one can I mean it was because everyone knows it it means like yeah it's been done to death yeah so and and that's one of the other challenges is we are in kind of a crowded marketplace that we have to find things that that hopefully other people haven't done or certainly have not done exactly the way we're doing it yeah I sometimes feel don't you feel with the runway time that we have the fact that we don't ever have to throw to commercial that to me is liberating where I'm like sure somebody talked about that but they could only cover it this much but we could cover this because we can just keep going yeah yeah there's also like our process dictates our content as well because we're because the screens and the technical limitations it's like we are not and we're you know it's being figured out but like we're not as nimble because we're a new show and nimble at all yeah you got a very good taste of like what writing processes we have to like kind of figure out the graphics the week before and then we tape on a Wednesday and then it's on Netflix on a Sunday so this is what they say about like the sonnet right that limits help creativity I mean but but the thing is is that where we have certain limitations we also get certain freedoms like everyone's like oh we'd love to do the show this way but all the other shows are also facing their own specific limitations that seem like their freedoms but they're constrained to them you know so there is like a give-and-take there but but I do think the answer to your kind of Iowa caucus question is is we don't really know but I think what will happen is there will be elements of what's happening in the moment that he can speak to and that he has something that he has something to say and if that's the case we we will do it we will do a very topical show or shows or many shows or or whatever the case may be and but it is it is an interesting question because yeah I mean who knows what its gonna feel like when that happens and we are in that world yeah yeah I think it's time to take some questions from the audience which have already I guess been here they are thank you I thought you're about to say trickling out yes so I guess I would love it if the first one was when are you gonna do more with tan France yeah haha what's up with tan though like what subject on the show surprised you the most while learning about it researching and making the show what was the thing that was like a AHA for you what would you what would you say shop that's a really good question I think one thing this actually I'm gonna this is an answer to an adjacent question you guys I'm not gonna answer that I do wanna but but I think it's interesting because I've been thinking about this a lot lately I've drawn a whiteboard yes I love whiteboards I wish I had one on my shirt so I could just there's a there you get to when you do show like this and you can get to hang out with like these really smart people who understand journalism you get a really cool peek behind the curtain of what you're allowed to say and what you're not allowed to say and it's really eye-opening yeah I'm just like lessons oh it's great there's certain things I've said they're just like you cannot say that and I'm like so-and-so is a war criminal they're like you can't say that yeah like why I should be able to say that cuz he is yeah yeah I'll be like but he is and they're like well technically he's an autocrat and and it's welcome to that's been fascinating because there's been you know articles will be base research on or you know stuff for the show and then we'll dig deeper into the research they use to make the article and we'll go oh I say something alright and this week's episode I make a very specific joke about Gandhi and just know when you watch it that had to be reined in okay by me I could hear them on the headset so like he cannot say that we have to pick that up again he cannot because I just went off the rails a little bit and we had to contain the beast but that's been a very interesting and you I mean you obviously know about that like but when you look into it you go oh we can't quite say that because yeah this publication and I can't go filter it this way and the and the other thing too is the Internet is just savage so like these people will fact check us on everything there are people that screenshot our show and they Circle our sources and they're crazy like are you serious as it is yeah at Patriot Act yeah and all the journals we cite like people will pick up on them and they'll go they'll tag the people who authored the paper and they go Patriot Act use your research and they'll like high five and mode you know emoji but I'm like oh my god they were like watching yeah but it's like if we're trying to obviously say some sort of real stuff that's in a controversial space I thought we tell them each other all the time and you know Jim has always been like we're not gonna be wrong on we cannot be wrong on the show yeah once you lose credibility then it's it's it's it's downhill from there but but I will say the answer that the thing that was interesting or the story that was most interesting to me was all right every question you've lobbed I just answer something else and Jim's like to answer your question well but went out at all that started I started working with them in May and and one of the very first he came in and and this was right after Mohammed bin Salman had come here and you know been with Oprah and dog-and-pony show and and Hudson came in he's like I want to do something on this guy cuz I think he's bad but everyone thinks he's good and I don't know if I'm right and let's figure that out and then we spent all summer working on it and then and then events kind of overtook us and we we did it but but it was really interesting like that is not something that I would have ever considered from his from the point of view of a Muslim and it was it was kind of really interesting to go down that road and to see that and then to see what we had to deal with as the story kept changing what I like this question because there are times when you kind of like lightly roast other Netflix things today I was watching the the oil one and here I like about The Bodyguard but um what everybody answer quickly what is your favorite Netflix show aside from your own what my favorite color is green [Laughter] [Applause] I mean III was sucker for house of cards like if they got me or like I not I mean not like no no don't make it weird come on I'll black the black mare yeah I don't know what I mean I watched the first episode of narcos last night I'd like to quit oh and dirty money that's one of my favorite shows on Netflix dirty money is awesome ask me what my favorite show that a Netflix executive once used in reference to our show I am I am asking you that Riverdale as as storytellers who do you take inspiration from that's really like so you talked a lot about it like sort of the primacy of storytelling in this endeavor who tells stories in a way that sort of has inspired you I love this came from Prashant Radiolab the way a host can be maestro to a field piece the main story come in and out of commentary on something but you there almost sort of dj2 all the elements of reporting that to me was really cool and I was like if we could do a comedy version of that visually it'd be amazing awesome so I was a huge inspirational brain similarly I mean like I look my favorite movie is pod this is for both of us I'm seeing like podcasts were a huge inspiration for the show because they they are like you know there's no air time they just upload them and they it's another model where'd like don't waste my time just tell us a really cool story in a really interesting way and we will keep coming back to he says something real awful he goes I listen to who's your favorite guy jad radio labs more perfect yeah he goes I listen to them because if they're telling if they're putting it out that means it's worth my time right and I go if we can get our show to that level where people are like oh he did a thing on that that means it's worth my 20 min that's right because they took that and you see that happening I think with streaming [ __ ] like that's that is how people like really rabid fans of John Oliver feel he'll do some show about something very obscure but you will tune in because you go they must have found something really ended I didn't know yeah that in that excites me that's that's the thing that excites us like this weekend's episode is it's exciting to me it has not been talked about and it's something I'm really passionate about yeah this this is gonna be the last question I like really like this and I'm asking it because my wife and I always talk about how like lit the music is to your show how it's like oh and it's like yeah we're just like sometimes I wake up area so this question is related to that first I would love for you to tell me about how like that theme song came to be but also this says name three songs that would make up the soundtrack to your life oh man I could totally answer this okay so I worked with this composer named Ludwig goranson on homecoming king yeah Ludwig is a producer for sort of childish game you know and he scores a lot of movies like like black panther and tons of tons and tons of TV shows but one of the conversations that we had going into homecoming king was he I had put together a list of sort of beats that I really really liked that I wanted to be the opening theme song we were having a conversation on the phone and some beats just weren't really working for me and he goes all right you have two choices you can do I can I can produce a beat for you or I can do stuff that's more of an anthem and anthems have melody and you're able to sort of hum them and I was like that that to me seems cool yes let's do that and Ludwig is is one of those guys where you can just tell him to go and give him a sort of a soul or sample of like what what does feel like a big anthem that builds and this is the song that I gave him was Kanye West's power because that sort of is its endemic and it builds right and it was pre RedHat and it's like it really is a great anthem it's great you can't take that away from her yeah but my favorite my favorite songs all-time public service announcement jay-z Mo Money mo problems from Torrey edgy and I can't think of a third one right now but those two are like my all-time like I put them in rotation would you say for me yeah I don't think I can answer this really seems like I saw the first episode of Marcus yeah didn't know what it was about three songs I love this so 990 second why Eric Whitacre has a song called the stolen child I love that song it's one of my favorite hold on just let me finish the pressures on man you did it to yourself Jill Dre this is this is like live YouTube comments like my wife everybody that's only only like a performer creatives wife would give it to you that honest cuz be know would do the same thing with me yeah did the audience she'd be like nope and can't see me Tupac oh yeah what was that I'm look I'm looking at Jim now I'm the same if he's gonna take it Homer oh I don't know I can't I can't do it I would just let everybody know juice give me your three give me her three Humira three my three yeah public service announcement by jay-z is such a great you know for me it's a Fuji lab by the Fuji oh that's a great one yes like turn my whole thing upside down you know green eyes by Erykah Badu Wow good song all these like New Yorker songs I don't know I mean it by that you mean no but your third one has to be like getting jiggy with it but I will prefer Womack I prefer wild wild west but yes and that's enough thank you guys thanks [Applause] you

Channel: 92nd Street Y

Views: 433,892

Rating: 4.8179212 out of 5

Keywords: 92Y, 92nd Street Y, Hasan Minhaj, Patriot Act, Netflix, Vinson Cunningham, comedy, funny, trump, politics, political humor

Id: 4RjC1Q-Jli0

Length: 61min 16sec (3676 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2019