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The end of a long-running TV show or movie franchise must feel bittersweet for actors. On one hand, they’ve usually negotiated quite the residual or kickback deal by the time the project ends, so they don’t really have to worry much about securing future successful projects. On the other, actors usually want to, you know, act. They want to prove that they’re not simply one-trick wonders who lucked into an enduring role at the right time and in the right place. Instead, they hope to prove their range and make daring choices. It’s a (fortunate) conundrum that we’ve seen many casts (Harry Potter, Twilight, Friends, and Seinfeld, among others) grapple with to varying degrees of success. Then there’s The Big Bang Theory, which ended in 2019 after twelve seasons.

Despite the Jim Parson-led show’s enduring nature (and someone must have loved the thing), this wasn’t a quality show by any stretch. The formulaic arcs and well-worn tropes stood in abundance, so much so that so-called “real” nerds, at best, strongly disliked the series. In the middle of it all stood Kaley Cuoco, who portrayed Penny, the stereotypical “dumb blonde” neighbor, to lucrative effect. And following the show’s end, Cuoco stood at a crossroads. Could she step away from the Penny box?

The odds were stacked against Cuoco. Her position when BBT ended was similar to that of Jennifer Aniston (who’s still best known as Rachel from Friends), or even Katherine Heigl (Grey’s Anatomy, which is obviously now in motion without her), both of whom succeeded in movie-romcom-land. Yet that route largely dried up years ago. If romcoms exist now, they’re streaming affairs. Aaand she also needed to overcome winning two Razzie awards (for Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Road Chip and The Wedding Ringer) that she “won” during her BBT tenure. It’s all good though; Kaley’s doing just fine without romcoms, and she’s not punching above her weight in an Oscar quest.

So far, she’s succeeded mightily as the voice of animated Harley Quinn, the DC-Universe-turned-HBO-Max animated series about the Joker’s ex-girlfriend striking out on her own and experiencing delicious personal growth. That show found new life after two seasons on DC Universe as an HBO Max Season 3 pickup, and she’s launching The Flight Attendant (which had a planned release date of November 26, but HBO Max went ahead and released the first episode for free on November 18). Both are highly entertaining series (we are very fond of Harley Quinn here at Uproxx, and we’ll review The Flight Attendant before more episodes release). Is it surprising, though, that Cuoco’s career appears to actually be reaching new heights, when it’s usually pretty tough to move on so quickly after a long-term role ends (and with two Razzies)?

Yes, it’s unexpected, especially with Kaley veering far away from Penny. She landed two high-profile projects that aren’t exactly for the “girl next door,” which is what she played for twelve seasons already. Instead, she went profane and nerdy and darkly comedic. Time will tell if The Flight Attendant fares well, after the rest of the season surfaces. What is fairly telling, though, is that I don’t really think that many people (not even the biggest comic book nerds out there) expected the Harley Quinn TV series to be, you know, better and more successful than Birds Of Prey, the Harley emancipation movie starring Oscar-nominated actress Margot Robbie that struck many of the wrong notes. Of course, there are a lot of reasons why that movie fared only decently at the box office and with critics, whereas Harley Quinn has been a resounding success on both ends.

It’s fair to say that Kaley’s Harley did not succeed through not sheer luck for the actress who voices her. She has, after all, executive produced the series since signing onto the project, so it’s safe to assume that she has a voice in where Harley goes. And Kaley’s Harley has shown a ton of character growth over two seasons while still maintaining her sweetly anarchic spirit. It’s kinda crazy how one role in an animated series has done a lot to distance Kaley from being stereotyped inside the BBT box for good.

What I appreciate most about the current state of Kaley Cuoco’s career is the chutzpah factor. She’s not punching above her weight, but instead, she’s damn savvy at picking roles that work with her strengths. These roles are punchy and profane, and she is seriously convincing at freaking out in The Flight Attendant. We’ll talk about that more soon, but it’s clear that Kaley’s doing a heck of a lot better after Big Bang Theory than people expected. I’m looking forward to seeing how audiences receive The Flight Attendant and what more will come for these daring career moves for an actress who probably never needed to act again at all. Kaley Cuoco’s doing something very simple and admirable with her new projects: she’s entertaining the hell out of people. Some “serious” actors forget do forget… that’s what showbiz is all about, so yep, keep your eyes on Kaley Cuoco. She’s (surprisingly) going places.

HBO Max’s ‘The Flight Attendant’ will drop future episodes on November 26.

Many people have celebrity crushes, or could at least come up with one without too much thought when asked. That’s true of celebrities, too, including Lorde. One of hers isn’t an obvious heartthrob pick, though, as she revealed that she “definitely” would have had sex with legendary artist Pablo Picasso.

Lorde and Cazzie David recently had a conversation for Interview, in which they discussed their friendship and various other topics. At one point, the chat drifted towards art and Picasso. David asked Lorde if she would have had sex with the artist, and Lorde responded, “Yeah, definitely.” David pressed her for more, and she continued, “He was tiny but had an epic potbelly. That’s my whole vibe. I’d be down. He was kind of freaky.”

Elsewhere during the conversation, Lorde showed her appreciation for the government of her native New Zealand, saying, “I feel like our government is more proactive about acknowledging that we are living in a rapidly changing climate and legislation has to reflect that. People care in New Zealand. You can’t not when you live there. It’s in every part of who we are and how we live. It’s the only thing that matters. There’s nothing less cool than not caring about the environment in New Zealand, which I love. […] We had a solid 100 days without COVID. It was a good run.”

Read the full chat here.

The last time The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air co-stars Will Smith and Janet Hubert, who played the original Viv, spoke was 27 years ago. She was replaced by Daphne Maxwell Reid after season three of the NBC sitcom, with Smith claiming that “Janet Hubert wanted the show to be The Aunt Viv of Bel-Air Show because I know she is going to dog me in the press,” and Hubert responding, “He probably is responsible for my firing. He has a lot of clout. It’s too bad that it’s a Black-on-Black attack. I tried not to name names. I have more class than that.” It got ugly. But the pair finally settled their feud for the Fresh Prince‘s 30-year reunion special, now out on HBO Max.

“I just wanted to know one thing: Why?” Hubert asked Smith. “You guys went so far. I lost so much. How do we heal that?” The actress was going through a lot in her personal information that Smith didn’t know about, including the network wanting to cut her salary for season three and an “abusive” marriage. “During that third season when I got pregnant, there was a lot of things going on in my life and Will’s life as well,” she said. “Home life was not good at all. I was no longer laughing, smiling, joking because there were things going on that nobody knew about. Cast had no idea what was going on.”

Smith replied, “During that time of her pregnancy, I wasn’t sensitive, wasn’t perceptive. Now that I’ve had three kids, I’ve learned some things I did not know at the time. I would do things very differently. I can see where I made the set very difficult for Janet”:

“You took all that away from me with your words,” Hubert told Smith. “Words can kill. I lost everything. Reputation. Everything, everything. I understand you were able to move forward. You know those words — calling a Black woman ‘difficult’ in Hollywood is the kiss of death. It’s hard enough being a dark-skinned Black woman in this business. I felt it was necessary for us to finally move forward. And I’m sorry I have blasted you to pieces.”

The duo ended up apologizing and embracing. “You’re still my Aunt Viv,” Smith said.

(Via E! Online)

Earlier this year, it was speculated that Post Malone was thinking about starting a beer pong league due to trademarks he had filed at the time. We already know watching Malone competitively throw ping pong balls into plastic cups is a good time for all, as he had a hoot doing it with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show in the summer of 2019, so the prospect was certainly appealing. Now, it’s all coming together on Malone’s new show, Post Malone’s Celebrity World Pong League.

The ten-episode Facebook Watch series drops new episodes on Wednesdays and Fridays. Fans will be able to enjoy the show via the new Watch Together feature available on Instagram, Messenger, and Messenger Rooms, which lets friends watch programming like this together in real time over a video call.

He recently spoke about the show with Fallon remotely from Utah and called out Drake by insisting he’s “no good” at pong. Around the same time, Malone had an email exchange about Celebrity World Pong League with Uproxx and offered some more details about the show. He also chatted about his uncommon chart longevity, getting positive feedback on his Nirvana livestream concert from Dave Grohl, and his upcoming music, so check out the full conversation below.

Tell me about the Post Malone’s Celebrity World Pong League. It sounds like a dream opportunity for you.

Definitely, everyone knows how much I love pong, so this whole experience was perfect for me. We teamed up with Messenger to bring fans a new 10-episode series called Post Malone’s Celebrity World Pong League. We’ve got Halsey, Diplo, Quavo, Machine Gun Kelly, YG, and a few more of my friends on the show. The best part is that you can watch the new show with your friends in real-time on Messenger, Messenger Rooms, and now on Instagram using their new feature called Watch Together. We really had a great time filming, so I hope y’all tune in to see me kick some ass and to see all the crazy stuff we had to do if we lost a game.

You have a lot of great guests on the show, and I’m sure everybody made for fun episodes, but who has the best actual pong skills, aside from yourself?

For sure, everybody that came on was super cool to play with and shoot the shit with. And listen, I’m definitely a seasoned vet when it comes to pong — but Smitty [Malone’s DJ] and I had some decent opponents throughout the show.

It was reported recently that you didn’t have a song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time since January 2017. Additionally, “Circles” broke the record earlier this year for the most time spent in the top 10 of the Hot 100. Both of those accomplishments are pretty incredible. Did you ever imagine yourself having this rare sort of sustained success?

I can’t believe this many people still want to hear my shitty songs. It’s crazy with all the talented artists and all the massive records out over the past year or so. For me to have a song on the charts that long is just unbelievable.

The Nirvana livestream was a big moment for you this year. Dave Grohl said of the performance, “I watched a bunch of it. I was like, ‘That was really cool.’ I don’t get to see other people do Nirvana songs often, and he seemed perfectly comfortable with it, and it sounded great.” How does it feel to have a member of the band say that?

When I read that from Dave, it was crazy. It was basically all I needed to hear to know I didn’t mess it all up. It was so much fun doing those songs, and for it to be for a good cause during a bad time just made it all seem right.

If you were going to do another covers set of a different artist, who would it be?

An entire set? Probably Bob Dylan or Johnny Cash.

You announced this summer you’re part-owner of the Dallas Empire E-sports team. What has that experience been like? Have you been playing any of the big viral video games this year, like Fall Guys or Among Us?

They’ve always been family, but I just had became part owner a few weeks before they won the championship and holy shit, I heard I’m getting a ring. And I’ve really just been playing Call Of Duty, especially now with the new systems out.

Dre London said in March that you’re working on a “quarantine album.” How’s that been going?

Yeah, I’ve been making music since this all started. Just been going through the same process, even though it was made during quarantine. We just make a bunch of songs and really see what works and what sticks and just get a tracklist going, and before you know it, we’ve got a nice culmination of sounds.

New episodes of ‘Post Malone’s Celebrity World Pong League’ premiere on Wednesdays and Thursdays on Facebook Watch.

COVID-19 vaccines are on the way. As Dr. Fauci put things, “the cavalry is coming,” but in the meantime, major American cities are locking down ahead of the holidays in an attempt to slow the virus’ spread. Texas is not doing so hot, particularly in El Paso, and the rates are high across the board, including in Austin and Houston. That’s why it’s pretty surprising that the legendary Dave Chappelle — who engineered some socially-distanced Ohio comedy shows with pals earlier this year but cancelled September sets — is out there performing right now. By “there,” I mean the Lone Star State.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Chappelle (who recently fired off a scathing SNL monologue fit for 2020) has a three-night comedy engagement at The House of Blues Houston for this upcoming weekend. Social-distancing guidelines are being stressed (including that tickets can only be “purchased in groups of four”), with mandatory masks:

[M]asks will be required at all times while inside the venue. In addition to wearing masks, each ticket holder will receive a mandatory rapid COVID-19 test prior to entering the venue. Those with negative test results will be allowed to enter.

Customers who receive a positive test will be turned away, but refunds will be available.

This isn’t Chappelle’s first recent Texas rodeo, either. He popped into Austin for three shows earlier this week at an outdoor venue, Waller Creek Amphitheater at Stubb’s Bar-B-Q. Those shows were sold out, but there’s no word on what capacity will be at The House of Blues Houston, which is not an indoor venue. Houston is currently advising that people limit gathering numbers throughout the holiday season.

(Via Houston Chronicle)

Wheel Of Fortune may create more commonly viral mishaps than any other game show out there, but rarely do they turn out to be as poetic as someone declaring “victory” and immediately losing.

The latest victim of the show’s rules is contestant Alex Lisenko, who was leading headed into the show’s final puzzle of the night and appeared headed for the bonus round as a 16-letter, two-word puzzle came into focus. He guessed a “Y,” and even show host Pat Sajak seemed to know that Lisenko was ready to finish things off.

And then hubris, or perhaps just a moment of excitement he will forever regret, struck out of the blue.

“I’m declaring victory,” Lisenko said, raising his hands in time. Well, that’s nice, but like Michael Scott declaring bankruptcy, saying it doesn’t mean it happened. Lisenko was wrong, the next contestant solved it and Lisenko missed out on a nice payday.

So what went wrong here? Well, when you’re solving a puzzle you can’t add in any extra words that are not on the board. And so despite the fact that he had the “declaring victory” part perfect, putting anything before the puzzle phrase means he actually guessed it wrong. It was a brutal loss, and the camera work many at home did showed how hard the poor guy took it. Lisenko clearly knew the answer, and he was a strong player throughout the game. But a moment of excitement proved to be too much, and his declaration turned out to be extremely premature. He did end up winning the game and getting to the bonus round, but that wasn’t what got a lot of people talking on social media.

There’s a special cruelty to the moment in that the category was “What Are You Doing?” It almost seems like a setup in a way. And unfortunately for Alex, he fell for it. Hook, line, and loser.

Almost exactly a decade ago, Nicki Minaj launched her career with Pink Friday. Her debut album dropped on November 22, 2010, and it was a great look for the then-up-and-coming star: It topped the charts, spawned the hugely successful single “Super Bass,” and featured collaborations with Drake, Eminem, and Kanye West. Pink Friday is a work worth celebrating, and that’s just what Minaj is planning on doing soon.

Last night, she took to Twitter to tease some sort of “virtual celebration” for the album, writing, “Barbz, Friday is the 10 year anniversary of Pink Friday. get your outfits ready for the virtual celebration.” Some fans apparently couldn’t contain their excitement and started the party early, as Minaj added a few hours later, “Ummm barbz why yall starting the celebration already? It starts tmrw night. I’m not even dressed yet. Go to bed”

Minaj has yet to offer any info beyond that, so it’s not clear if she has some sort of virtual livestream event planned or if she just wanted to see her followers don pink wigs and do their own thing. Whatever ends up happening, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Lil Nas X join in on the fun, especially since he just dressed up as Minaj for Halloween.

Almost everyone is familiar with at least some of the work of John Hughes, the writer behind a number of classics in the ’80s and ’90s, including Home Alone, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Uncle Buck, and so many more. Hughes, however, was a notoriously private man. He retired from public life in 1994 and very rarely granted interviews up until his death in 2009. It’s not like he went into hiding, however. John Hughes simply returned back to his Chicago-area home and lived out the rest of his life.

It was during that period that Vince Vaughn befriended Hughes. Vaughn is from Lake Forest, Illinois, which is from where John Hughes hailed — many of his films were also set in the Chicago suburbs in towns like Lake Forest. “John was so special, and I had the fortune to get to know him really well,” Vaughn told his Dodgeball co-star Justin Long on this week’s episode of the Life is Short podcast. “Later in life, once I had had some success, I reached out to him just as a fan, and he was so gracious to me.”

“John did so much for me,” Vaughn continued. “He did so much for people, be it financially, giving to causes, and giving to people, and also with his time. He never took public attention for it. Like, when he passed away, there were some pen pal letters that came out,” Vaugh added. “A girl sent into a magazine … these letters that she had as an exchange with John. What she didn’t realize is that she was one of very many” kids with whom John exchanged letters.

Hughes also told Vaughn that, at the time of his biggest success, he had a hard time getting a lot of the films he wrote with female leads made. The studios would say, “Yeah, we can’t have a girl as the lead because men make the purchase choices. The men decide what to go to, and John said to them, ‘What house do you live in? There’s a lot of decisions being made by the women.” Meanwhile, John — “who was just a great listener and a great writer, wrote these terrific [female] characters whether it was Sixteen Candles, Breakfast Club, or Pretty in Pink.”

John was “always kind and connected, and he never lost that sense of being a child,” Vaughn added. One of the many surprising things that Vaughn learned about Hughes was when he went to his funeral and “so many people came in and got up and spoke about how much he meant to them. There was a young Black man who … didn’t have a father figure. John took him under his wing, so much so that he took the kid to all the Blackhawks games with the family. John would take him to vacations in Europe. He became part of the fabric of the family.” Vaughn said that the kid, who is now an adult, spoke at length about how he has had a successful life and a family of his own because of the lessons he learned from Hughes.

“He did great things in his life because he was a beautiful person,” concluded Vaughn, who also stresses (correctly) that there hasn’t been a better teen movie made in the 35 years since The Breakfast Club.

Vaughn is currently promoting his body-swap horror flick, Freaky, currently in theaters.

Source: Life is Short with Justin Long

“I don’t want to be a fucking tragic, pathetic artist,” Jason Lytle tells me by phone from his current residence in Montrose, at the mountainous edge of Los Angeles.

And, for the record, Lytle is very much not those things. He’s on the verge of releasing a spruced-up version of what is arguably his most beloved work, 2000’s The Sophtware Slump, the second full-length released by his band Grandaddy. At the time, Grandaddy was referred to by some as America’s answer to Radiohead, which made a lot of sense considering that Lytle found much inspiration from that band as well as other indie artists of the time, like The Flaming Lips and his friend and tourmate Elliott Smith. But those kinds of comparisons fade over time, and in 2020, Grandaddy can stand on its own and claim ownership for a page of indie music history, buoyed by that release along with the two great collections that bookended it, Under The Western Freeway and Sumday.

The Sophtware Slump took elements experienced in Lytle’s hometown of Modesto, California and colored it through the lens of a world advancing exponentially. The relationship between nature and technology is central to his works, as well as how core human emotions of sadness, loneliness, and longing don’t dissipate with quick wi-fi or the latest iOS update. And the lyrical content is juxtaposed with ornate compositions that weren’t afraid to show off their homespun nature. Lytle often lets the seams show, if only to the benefit of knowing that his handmade, one-of-one craftsmanship couldn’t be made by anyone else. In short, his music sounds couture.

Grandaddy would eventually call it quits as their fourth album descended onto the world in 2006, reuniting briefly in 2012 and then more formally in 2017 for the album The Last Place, soured by the death of founding bassist Kevin Garcia the same year. It’s hard not to think of Garcia, Smith, and the many other contemporaries that have passed away over the years when Lytle reflects: “I want to have a healthy, productive life. I have too many friends who have seriously just died or committed suicide. It’s too much. And I’m trying really hard to be really healthy. A weird thing, man.”

For now, Lytle is certainly productive. In addition to the reissue, Lytle re-recorded the entirety of the album on solo piano, which he’s offering as part of a very cool vinyl set this month and on its own next year. And he’s still writing music, noting during the interview that he just got an eight-string ukulele that he’s looking forward to tuning up after our call, for work on a new solo effort that he describes as “really slow, pretty, bluegrass-kind-of music.” We spoke about the reissue, the atmosphere it was released, and the double-edged sword of nostalgia, edited and condensed below.

Tell me about the time in 2000 or 1999, when you were writing this music, what you saw in the world that you were trying to convey at that time?

Well, I remember wanting to make a really good record. I remember the whole Grandaddy thing had really kind of started firing up and our minds were kind of blown by how busy we were and how interested people were after the whole touring cycle of Under The Western Freeway, the album before it. And I just wanted to step up. I wanted to make it the most interesting, imaginative sounding record that I could. There was a lot of exciting shit going on at the time, too. The Flaming Lips were making these really amazing, cool, weird-ass, imaginative sounding records. Radiohead’s OK Computer blew my fucking mind. I was just feeding off of all that stuff.

The whole idea of making exciting, experimental records at home was becoming more of a reality with the gear and the technology. And luckily, I got really involved and excited about home recording about five years prior to that. By the time we started getting into money, we got this deal from a record label called V2 Records based out of London. It was actually an international presence, and I just felt like everything was lined up and I just started buying tons of gear. And I’m really inspired by gear, I’m really excited by equipment and just like sound and audio.

All that time of being hunkered down in Modesto, which is like this really weird place. It’s very indicative of all that sort of awkwardness that existed at the time. Primarily, I guess the example I can use is the internet age. We had entered into the internet age and some people used it wisely. Some people used it in a very idiocrasy kind of manner. And I think I was more fascinated with that. I’m a lot more at home just like sitting on a bench at the mall, watching people walk by, and quietly profiling everyone.

And I think that that was probably one of the best decisions I ever made with Grandaddy was deciding to stay in Modesto and not getting caught up in the need to keep up with some scene or keep playing at that one venue because that’s where shit’s going on. It was just like stay there and develop and develop and develop and develop, even to the point of getting weirder and then you don’t even know that you’re weird anymore. You created your own thing and you only become aware of that when you finally do go on to play shows and you find yourself hanging out with other bands, and they’re just telling you that you’re this thing. And you’re just like, well, we’re just this thing, and they’re like, no, but like, you’re this thing.

I never felt owed. It was never expected and my mind was just blown that anyone even gave a shit. It just makes you want to try even harder.

You mention the idea of expectations and I just feel like the history of Grandaddy, especially those first few albums, is characterized by expectations versus reality. And it sounds like there were high creative expectations that you guys placed on yourselves for this album. But in terms of commercial expectations or where this will take your career, did that all come afterward?

We had a really weird little period at the very beginning. One of the first labels that we got on, it almost ruined us. He was like this super skinny dude and he gave us like… Actually, I have a great story that goes along with this. It almost ruined us being on this label. He heard about us, he was like this ex-lawyer and his life was too boring, so he wanted to get into the music business. It was right around the grunge time. He was from Seattle and he’s probably literally just sitting in an office watching the grunge thing happening in Seattle and just going, my life is boring. I need to hang out with more chicks and go to more strip clubs and stuff. This sucks. I’m going to start a record label.

He did and somehow, based on his connections, he got a partner who lived down here in LA because that’s what you do. I’m cool with his partner now, but this guy that started the label was fucking evil. He gave us this small advance and somehow they came into cahoots with Don Was, the famous producer of The Rolling Stones, and others. And Don Was’ job was to come to Modesto and convince us to get on this label.

Modesto just has like the shitty little regional airport that like nobody ever flies out of. All of a sudden it’s like, Don Was is coming to Modesto. His job was to talk us into it but it’s like if Don Was is telling you to get on the label, you better get on the label. The only reason this story is even at all interesting is that my drummer had the super shitty Ford Escort that didn’t have any seats in the back. We went to pick Don Was up at the airport and we made him sit on an upside-down milk crate in the backseat. And this guy is like used to riding in limos and f*cking leased BMWs and stuff. We were just dying laughing because we’re like driving down the road, going to some bar to have this meeting with Don Was and he’s like sitting on a milk crate in the back of our friend’s shitty car, legs all tucked up under his chin.

Anyways, we made this record, Under The Western Freeway, and it did okay but they were about to drop us, or they just kind of lost interest. And then all this whole other thing started happening where I went to a show, I gave a tape to this guy named Howe Gelb from the band Giant Sand and he passed it on to his management and his management was going to start this new relationship with V2 Records. And the lady who was about to get the job at V2, she was like, ‘I will get this job, but the only reason I’m going to get this job is if you bring on this band that I found called Grandaddy.’

All of a sudden there was this label, and V2 Records was funded by Richard Branson, who’s this gazillionaire in Great Britain. And with this interest from a label that had tons of money and just as we were about to get dropped by Will Records, the dude finds out and he turns it into like this nightmare bidding war. He didn’t give a shit about us. The band almost just died. It almost killed the band. The whole thing took a year with all the lawyers. And we hadn’t even really done anything very exceptional. It was kind of a nightmare.

We got bought with some amount of money. And after that got sorted out, I was just like, I’m not placing any eggs in any basket. This is an amazing adventure but going back to the expectations thing, I have no expectations. As soon as it makes sense to step away from this, I’m ready. I’m totally fine to just like take it as it comes, but with that comes some responsibility. It’s like, you’re not always looking for an out.

Every time there’s a new opportunity, you work hard, and a lot of times, I work too hard and it was like finding that balance of how not to go too hard, but also always entertain all these new opportunities. All this shit would keep happening and I was just like, all right, cool, let’s do this. But I always felt like I was just along for the ride, but willing to do the work as well. You just keep going and keep going and keep going and keep going until it doesn’t make sense anymore, which led to me dissolving the band. But up until that point, it made sense just to keep hammering away at it.

I was living in Santa Cruz when this came out originally, which is a couple of hours from Modesto. And as I got more to know the people who I grew up in that region, in the Central Valley and stuff like that, you guys were something of local legends around those parts. When you get into smaller areas, people hold on to that idea of “the guy down the street that’s playing at the house party, that might make it out and make an impact.” For anyone who is a creative, there are stories like that and I feel like Granddaddy was kind of one of those stories for that area.

Did you ever feel like Granddaddy represented more than just your own creative ambitions, that they were kind of a voice of a region or a period in time?

Well, first off, I mean, it’s all nice and sweet to see it like that now. But have you ever heard that saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt?” If there’s a band that’s from your town and you hate living in your town, you’re just going to hate that band. They actually represent what you don’t like about being there. So people are just like, “There’s no way they can be good because they’re from here. And I hate being here and everything here sucks.” So it took a while for us to get through that. And at some point, it was actually very sweet and it was very… I love the fact that we were so highly regarded in our hometown. It got to the point where I was like, “Oh, even if you don’t like them, it’s badass, they pulled off what they pulled off.” That was cool. And it still stands to this day, whether or not you like the music or not.

I realized at a point how important it was to stay in Modesto. And there was plenty of opportunities to entertain the idea of moving somewhere else, where there was a scene… Things might be a little bit easier resource-wise. But I saw the worth in just hunkering down and developing a thing that was there, for better or for worse. And how it would be unique for better or for worse.

It literally comes down to cheap rent and just familiarity. And if you could do away with all that extraneous stuff and just focus on being creative, there’s a good chance… I mean, being poor is exhausting. So let’s just say, moving to a big city, you have some shitty dishwashing job and you’re paying all this rent to live somewhere and you’re just exhausted all the time. And you’re stressed because you have no money. And it’s just, that was less of a factor, living in Modesto. It’s cheap to rent, you know where everything is. All you have to do is just, every now and then, drive to the Bay Area and buy some more gear and come home and just hunker down and try not to be too distracted by keg parties and your idiot friends doing something down the street. I realized in the long run, the results were going to be a lot more interesting.

I need calmness. I need focus-time to come up with extraordinary results. And the only way to do that was to stay in the hometown. And then inevitably the music was going to be affected by that sort of cabin fever of just being stuck in your own hometown. A very weird hometown, too, I might add. It was always on the list of Forbes’ “worst places to live in America.” It was always making the top five for any number of reasons.

The air?

Air quality. Oh, f*ck. You name it. In order to make that top five, you have to check all these boxes. And it was car theft, it was drug-related crime, it was murder. It was the economy, it was joblessness, you name it. It was a grim, grim place. And people loved hearing those stories too, especially abroad.

The other weird thing about Modesto is how, proximity-wise, it’s also the gateway to the most beautiful places on the planet.

Yeah. I used to always use that example, too. That almost makes it worse. Everything is just almost slightly out of reach. Yes, you’re that close to Yosemite. Yes, you’re that close to San Francisco. Yes, you’re close to Napa Valley or whatever. But it’s just like, “Oh if you don’t have any money, it’s a day trip.” First off, it’s not a day trip. You have to have money for a hotel and gas. And you have to know where you’re going. And it almost makes it worse. That it’s slightly out of reach and you can never go there.

Yeah. I feel like all of these dualities, they’re always very present in the music. I mean, that’s a lot of the essence of your songwriting, nature meeting broken technology. The future that’s not quite as good as we imagined, that kind of stuff. Once this release was announced, it was kind of cool to see, personally, these group chats popping off, of my friends from back in those days. And then seeing that the music still means a lot to a certain type of indie fan of a certain age and maybe of a certain region.

And I think that nostalgia is probably harder on musicians than it is for fans. But for both, I think we have to kind of examine the good with the bad. And you have these good memories associated with the music of your past, but also you have to reconcile the bad memories and who you were versus who you are and all this stuff. As a musician, how do you deal with that? Is this all good stuff that you’re diving back into? Or is there a lot of pain in looking back, too?

I can go on forever about that, but I’ll try to distill my thoughts as succinctly as possible here. So let’s say that you have something in your life that’s just tearing you apart. And the only way to deal with it is to write it down in a journal, which lots of people do and it helps. You get it out. It’s on paper. You’re just like, “All right, it’s in physical form.” There’s something kind of cathartic about that like, “All right, I feel better.” And you just move on. You close the journal, you put it in the drawer. Maybe it didn’t fix you, but you feel a lot better.

It took me a while to figure this out, but I’m not one of those people that wants to just mindlessly beat myself up. I’m a pretty healthy person. I’m just trying to wake up and do good. I’m not trying to wake up and be tragic and fucking chain-smoke and watch black and white movies and just drink whiskey. It’s like a double-edged sword. You want to write a song that means so much.

And in a way, you’re getting that stuff out of your system by writing that song. But there’s something perverse about having to sing that song on a nightly basis. The reason that you’re writing it was to kind of fix some things or deal with some stuff or get some stuff out of your system. But who writes down in their journal all this gnarly shit just to fix themselves and then on a nightly basis, opens that journal back up, like clockwork. Your routine is to reread it again. That’s almost just like you’re asking for it. You’re not able to let the thing go, which is kind of the point, to begin with. And I was just like, “Man, it might actually be better to write all of these light fluffy songs that don’t mean shit. And then you can sing them on a nightly basis and they don’t do anything to you.” I had to start questioning the concept of playing live shows at a certain point.

My line of thinking used to be, “Make the song mean as much as it can. And then you can invest yourself in it on a nightly basis.” But I started kind of thinking that, “Man, this actually might be harming me. I might not actually be able to move past a lot of things in my life because I’m not letting these songs go. I just need to…” But that’s weird. In a way that’s saying, “All right, I’m not going to play live anymore. It’s too harmful to my psyche or whatever.” And I’m still wrestling with it. On one hand, it’s very satisfying to play a song and be transported back to the place, because you pour that much into it when you’re performing it. But on the other hand, I think it might be not allowing me to move past certain things.

You get to a certain age. I’m 38 now and at a point, you have to decide if you’re going to be one way your whole life or if you’re going to try to figure it out and be that healthy person that you need to be to make it through.

Certain ways just aren’t sustainable.

I think that’s the workaround of this collection, though, is you have this piano version of the album that makes it so it’s not just solely looking backward, and it gives the songs a new life and presents them in a new way. And so did that idea stem from those solo piano shows you’ve been doing over the last few years?

It definitely helped, and it helped my confidence a little bit. A lot of the songs I had been playing already. If I learn a song on guitar, I’ll do it on piano and I bounce back and forth. I just think it’s like knowing two languages; it just allows you to understand. If you have a conversation with somebody, it’s like, “All right, let’s do it in English. Okay, let’s do it in Russian now.” You’re going to see other things that you didn’t see with the crossover, and I think that’s a responsible, productive way of writing songs. It’s just seeing as much as you can in the writing process.

So my last thing here is, I’ve got a couple of Jason Lytle hot takes that I’m want to put on the record. “Our Dying Brains,” I think it’s the best song from this era, even though it’s not on the album. I mean, it’s going to be on the vinyl, but that song is just very near and dear to me. And then I wanted to mention that your first solo album, Yours Truly, The Commuter, I think is a remarkably strong song collection that should be spoken about in the same breath as those first three Grandaddy albums.

So the question here: is there anything about your career that you look back on that you feel is under-appreciated, that should have more shine?

I have a funny thing that I’ve said a couple of times. This is a perfect opportunity to say it again. First off, I could have never, never, ever imagined the trajectory and just how colorful this whole ride has been with Grandaddy. And for so many years, especially around the time putting out a new album, the press, there was just one fucking thing they kept saying. At first, I was like, “Eh, whatever,” then it started to get really annoying. It was “You’re on the verge of greatness. On the verge of greatness. Grandaddy, on the verge of greatness.” And then next year, next album: “On the verge of greatness. On the verge of greatness.” I was just like, “That’s so backhanded.”

But the more I meditated on that line and the idea, to be honest, my life was so insane. My life, everything was so crazy and I was dealing with way more shit that was beyond my ability to handle. If I was any more famous or any more popular or any more successful, I wouldn’t have been able to handle it. I would never wish upon the whole situation to be any more than it was. I think that how it went down or how it’s still going … and it’s the only reason you’re talking to me right now. I had to shut everything down for a little while and reassess.

And now, I’m back and I’m still funny, still introspective, still a relaxed man working on things, and it’s amazing that that’s even happening right now. And the only way that could be the case is just things went the way they did, and if it was any more than what it was, then we probably wouldn’t be talking right now.

So I’m fine with how everything’s gone down and I’m super grateful and I’m just fucking stoked to be around and still excited about working on stuff, and things are sounding super cool. And at this point, my highest priority is there are legions of super faithful, appreciative Grandaddy fans, and just knowing that they exist, it’s just like, “Great. Got some more music coming out.” And that I can even be a part of that and that we can share that just blows my mind. It’s a pretty cool situation to be in.

The Sophtware Slump 20th Anniversary Collection is available November 20 via Dangerbird. Get it here.

Adam Brody recently appeared on Dax Shepard’s podcast, The Armchair Expert, where they talked about — among other things — Dax nearly replacing Steve on Blue’s Clues, their shared obsession with rocket engineer Jack Parsons, how Brody “back-doored into hunkdom” on The O.C., and working with Vince Vaughn on Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

They also talked about Brody’s work with Dax Shepard’s wife, Kristen Bell, on the Showtime series House of Lies. As Brody explains it, he played the wealthy owner of a dildo company. In fact, they filmed their scenes in an actual dildo factory (and according to Shepard, Bell brought a nice gift bag home).

On the series, Brody also filmed a “love scene” with Bell and Dax Shepard’s, uh … yeah, Bell was pregnant with their daughter.

“Kristen was like eight months pregnant at the time, or at least about as pregnant as you can be,” Brody explained. “And we have a sex scene where we break-up during [the sex scene]. She was on top of me, which is about the only way she can be. It was pretty weird because your child was on my stomach,” Brody told Shepard. “Very, truly on my stomach.”

“When I first talked to you about it,” Shepard laughed, “you described it as ‘my only three-way on camera.’”

“It very much was,” Brody confirmed, although he added that it wasn’t even the most awkward part of that sex scene. “We shoot the close-ups. The three of us [Brody, Bell, and the fetus],” Brody says, “and then for the wide shot, they bring in a 21-year-old stand-in with pasties and she has to sit on me very awkwardly, slowly gyrating for the wide shot, and we’re trying to avoid eye contact. And we’re both like, ‘Uh, hi, nice to meet you.’ It was so brutal for both of us.”

The two also wax poetic about the thankless job of playing a body double for sex scenes. “There is almost no reward,” Shepard said. Brody agreed. “You have no rapport, you don’t know them, and they’re not allowed to speak on camera. It’s just unfortunate.”

Brody can be seen in The Kid Detective in some theaters, although the film should be available on streaming formats soon. It looks surprisingly good.