TRANSCRIPT Bullseye with Jesse Thorn: Laurie Metcalf

[00:00:00]

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Transition: Gentle, trilling music with a steady drumbeat plays under the dialogue.

Promo: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

Music: “Huddle Formation” from the album Thunder, Lightning, Strike by The Go! Team—a fast, upbeat, peppy song. Music plays as Jesse speaks, then fades out.

Jesse Thorn: It’s Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. Laurie Metcalf is a veteran actor. In the late 1970s when she was in college, she and a few of her classmates started putting on plays at a Unitarian church in Deerfield, Illinois. Those classmates included people like Gary Sinise, John Malkovich, and Tracy Letts. The theatre, called Steppenwolf, became one of the most acclaimed in the United States.

Maybe you were lucky enough to see Laurie in the Off-Broadway rendition of Balm in Gilead back in the 1980s. She won a bunch of awards for her part in it. And you almost definitely at some point saw her on TV’s Roseanne. For nine years, she played Jackie—Roseanne’s sister. She’s now starring in The Connors, Roseanne‘s spinoff. That shows wrapping its seventh and final season right now. But have you seen her in Lady Bird? You haven’t?! What are you doing?! It’s a fascinating, beautiful coming-of-age movie directed by Greta Gerwig. It earned Academy Award nominations for Metcalf and for her co-star, Saoirse Ronan. Laurie and I talked about it in 2018.

Lady Bird is about its title character, Lady Bird McPherson, played by Ronan. She’s a high school senior. She lives in Sacramento, and she dreams of leaving town, moving to the East coast, going—she says this—“wherever writers live”. Laurie plays Marion, Lady Bird’s mom. And the relationship between the two of them is one of the most compelling bits of the film. It is complicated and messy. They fight, they push each other’s buttons, but they also share incredible love.

Let’s listen to a little bit of Lady Bird. First, a bit of background: this is toward the beginning of the movie. Lady Bird just made plans to spend Thanksgiving with her new boyfriend. And in this scene, Marion has taken her to a thrift store to pick out a new dress.

 

Transition: A whooshing sound.

Clip:

Marion (Lady Bird): Did Danny say whether his grandmother has a formal Thanksgiving?

Lady Bird: I don’t know. There are a lot of kids, but she lives in the fab 40s.

Marion: Oh, well your dad and I went to a dinner party once in that neighborhood—the CEO of ISC. That was pretty formal. (Beat. Clothes hangers clicking.) You’re not going to a funeral.

Lady Bird: Well, I don’t know. What says rich people Thanksgiving?

Marion: I just think it’s such a shame that you’re spending your last Thanksgiving with a family you’ve never met instead of us. But I don’t know. I guess you want it that way. (Beat.) Are you tired?

Lady Bird: No.

Joyce: Hey, Marion.

Marion: Hey, Joyce! Hey, how’s the baby?

Joyce: She’s great!

Marion: Ohhh, I wanna see a picture at checkout.

Joyce: Okay.

Marion: So, if you’re tired, we can sit down.

Lady Bird: I’m not tired.

Marion: Oh, okay. I just couldn’t tell because you were dragging your feet. Well, I just couldn’t tell.

Lady Bird: Why didn’t you just say, “Pick up your feet”?

Marion: I didn’t know if you were tired!

Lady Bird: You were being passive aggressive.

Marion: No, I wasn’t.

Lady Bird: You are so infuriating.

Marion: Please stop yelling.

Lady Bird: I’m not yelling. (Suddenly excited.) Oh, it’s perfect!

Marion: Do you love it?

Transition: A whooshing sound.

 

Jesse Thorn: Oh, man.

(They laugh.)

Laurie Metcalf, welcome to Bullseye. It’s great to have you on the show.

Laurie Metcalf: Thank you, Jesse.

Jesse Thorn: I have to say that when I watched Lady Bird—and I watched it really knowing nothing about it; I watched it before it came out, because we were gonna have Greta Gerwig on the show. And I had more like intense, upsetting high school flashbacks of the relationship between my wife and her mom—which was a wonderful relationship and is a wonderful relationship. And my mother-in-law’s the best. But those weird emotional dynamics are so tense and so continuous.

Laurie Metcalf: Yes. The mother-daughter—well, it’s a beautiful and so complex mother-daughter relationship that Greta captured on the page—you know, as the writer, the screenwriter, and also in the direction that she so brilliantly did. And it’s how those—the intensity can just spin out on a dime, and then everything falls away and is forgotten, because you’re onto the next lovely moment between the mom and the daughter. She just really did that well.

Jesse Thorn: Did living with the script change the way that you thought about your relationship with your own kids or your relationship with your mom?

Laurie Metcalf: You know? It really did. I was looking at it from the mother’s point of view, obviously.

[00:05:00]

And when I first read the screenplay, I knew instantly how the headbutting scenes would go, because I was actually living that at the time with a teenager in the house. And so, those were really easy to connect to. But I was also really thankful that Greta peppered in the moments of heart between the mom and daughter where they are on the same page. They’re comforting each other, or they’re reminiscing about, or they’re having a very nice, shared experience together. Because this is a—we’re just seeing them during this dysfunctional moment in their lives. It’s never always been this way, and it won’t stay this way.

But I was really shocked when I sat in an audience for the first time and listened to it, watched it, hearing some of the language come out of my character’s mouth. Because in playing it, I knew where that character was coming from. And it was from a place of heart, actually, of wanting to help, of wanting to—you know—kick this kid’s ass and get her into gear and make her just sit up and start to appreciate things. And you know, everything that the mother wants for her daughter.

But to hear it come out in such an aggressive way when I watched it was really startling to me and really did make me think of how I have phrased things to my own kids.

Jesse Thorn: Was there anything that Greta Gerwig told you about what she wanted the character to be and what she wanted the film to be beyond what was on the page?

Laurie Metcalf: No, I think it was all on the page. It really—she had worked so carefully on the script, so meticulously, that by the time we got to the set, there was never that weird scramble that you can have sometimes, where everybody looks at each other and says, “Well, this isn’t working. Now what do we do? Because we have to get this shot in, you know, the next three hours.” We were all on the same page.

We had a couple of days of rehearsal—not days; a few meetings where Greta would spend with either as many of us together as she could in whatever city that we were in, or Saoirse and I got to spend a couple of days with her in her apartment, or at her office in LA right before we were about to shoot, just to make sure we were on the same page. Just to make sure that if we were gonna have another antagonistic scene together, that we didn’t wanna make it the same as the one before it.

Because there’s a lot of that throughout the film with the mother and the daughter. And so, we wanted to parse out, you know, who was actually triggering it this time around. Who was being passive aggressive, who was interpreting something benignly said in an antagonistic way. You know, mix it up like that, so all of the battles weren’t the same.

Jesse Thorn: There is kind of an amazing blend of textures in those relationships as I see them. I mean, it’s something that I have with my mom, but I don’t feel like it’s the same. Which is there’s a lot of just kind of like—there’s a lot of kind of poking and falling back. And I don’t think it was a relationship that I had seen before in a film, that kind of— There’s a lot of bruise pressing, but not a lot of dressing down, you know? Oh! I’m getting chills just thinking about it!

(They laugh.)

Laurie Metcalf: Chilly, yes! Because it’s so real. It’s— You know, she just—maybe we haven’t seen it, but it certainly exists in probably every family that I know. And she’s really captured it.

Jesse Thorn: We’ll be back in just a second. It’s Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

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[00:10:00]

Transition: Thumpy rock music.

Jesse Thorn: It is Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. My guest is Laurie Metcalf. She’s one of the stars of Lady Bird, The Connors, and more. Let’s hear another scene from Lady Bird, and my guest is Laurie Metcalf.

So, in this scene, the whole family—including the brother and his girlfriend—are all sitting down at breakfast. And Marion, which is Laurie’s character, and Lady Bird are arguing over who should make the eggs. And then the vegan girlfriend—who is maybe like 19 or 20—she’s kind of saying that eggs are bad for the environment. And the dad is there, and he’s reading the newspaper and not really paying attention. And they’re all sitting together, and they’re talking to each other, but no one is actually breaking through to anyone else.

 

Transition: A whooshing sound.

Clip:

Lady Bird: Why can’t I just make the eggs?

Marion: ‘Cause you take too long, you make a big mess, and I have to clean the whole thing up.

Girlfriend: Eggs aren’t good for the environment anyways.

Lady Bird: What?

Brother: You heard her.

Marion: Eat quickly, please.

Father: Look at all these pictures. Every newspaper looks like USA Today.

Brother: Shelly and I are trying to be vegan, hence the soy milk.

Lady Bird: You wear leather jackets.

Girlfriend: But they’re vintage, so they don’t support the industries.

Lady Bird: They aren’t done; there’s white stuff.

Girlfriend: You know how much you love Rambles? Pigs are smarter than him, even.

Lady Bird: I never thought Rambles was a genius, okay? Mom, the eggs are not done!

Marion: Fine. Make your own (censor beep).

Lady Bird: I wanted to. You won’t let me!

Girlfriend: Your sister doesn’t like me.

Brother: She does—

Lady Bird: I’m hungry!

Marion: There was your chance! Go to bed!

Transition: A whooshing sound.

 

Jesse Thorn: I have a buddy who has actually guest hosted this show before—a comedian named Guy Branum. He is a huge, gay genius from outside of Sacramento.  And he’s from what you might call rural Sacramento. You know, it doesn’t—you don’t have to go that far outside of Sacramento before you’re in America’s breadbasket. And I think Guy connected more deeply to the Sacramento-ness of this film than anyone else on this planet. And as I was reading about your early life, I wondered if—as a person from Southern Illinois—whether you related to that Sacramento-ness, that feeling of living in almost like an outpost.

Laurie Metcalf: Yeah, I did. I think Greta described Sacramento as the Midwest of California. So, I felt perfectly at home whether we were, you know, shooting scenes within the house—which was actually set in LA—and during the last two weeks when we got to go up, and it was my first time seeing Sacramento. And things just sort of clicked. I mean, it seemed like a small town, and you couldn’t— I saw the beauty in it, but I could see how easily it would be passed over, especially by a teenager having grown up there. And the architecture even made sense to me. I don’t know. It’s a love letter from Greta to Sacramento, and it made me really, really appreciate the place.

Jesse Thorn: If you were telling someone what was special about where you grew up in the way that she did with Sacramento, what do you think someone wouldn’t understand about what it’s like to be from Southern Illinois?

Laurie Metcalf: I like the flatness of it. (Laughs.) And I love— Of course, it was, you know, a very long time ago, so there was a naivety that I liked, growing up where I did. Small town. Again, I think at that point the town was only was under 10,000, maybe. I just—it was very clear to me. Right? Southern Illinois just has a very—has a clearness, I guess I just understand. You know, the people are very practical and upfront about things. There’s not a lot of roleplaying going on or anything. You just—you understand somebody pretty quickly. They just are what you see them as, you know?

Jesse Thorn: It really is something, the extent to which the kind of cultural experience of growing up in a particular place doesn’t translate perfectly when you are somewhere else. And you have to really like not just learn how to understand how people from other places are in the world, but also just understand that other people from other places in the world are different.

[00:15:00]

Like, it’s sort of a two-step thing.

(Laurie agrees.)

Did you have that experience? Like, when you—?

Laurie Metcalf: Well, my first experience was when I did go to college. And I didn’t go as far as Lady Bird; I didn’t go across country. I stayed within Illinois. So, I went about—I don’t know—a few hundred miles away to Central Illinois. From Southern to Central, which was a huge move for me. And I started hearing a very, very particular but, to me, foreign accent—really, really strange. I had no idea what it was. And it finally dawned on me that these were kids coming down from Chicago.

(Jesse laughs.)

It was like a different land. (Chuckling.) And it took me a long time to piece it together to figure it out.

Jesse Thorn: Eventually, you learned that they were the ones holding a jar of sport peppers, the signature Chicago condiment.

(They laugh.)

Laurie Metcalf: Yeah. And little did I know that I would move there and form a theatre company and spend the next 20 years, you know, staying.

Jesse Thorn: I feel like you—I get the impression that when you were a teenager, and even when you were in college, you did not have a plan.

Laurie Metcalf: Nooo, no plan. No. I mean, I worked up the nerve to audition for a play while I was in high school, and that’s as far as it went. You know, I was not trying to kid myself that I would ever be able to make a living at being an actor, because nobody did. Nobody that I knew. Nobody within, you know, thousands of miles of me.

Jesse Thorn: When you were in college and you were majoring in, I believe, initially German, which—

Laurie Metcalf: Pointless.

Jesse Thorn: Is that a romance language? It’s definitely a very romantic college major.

Laurie Metcalf: Oh, I don’t—you know, I had taken it in high school, and I really loved the language. But what I thought that I was gonna do with it? I mean, this is typical 17-year-old thinking. You know, like, “There’s no way I’m gonna be an actor, so I won’t pursue that. But I will pursue the study of German.” Thinking—what? Oh, I’ll be a translator somewhere? You know, where?! There was no connecting of the dots anywhere. So.

(Jesse laughs.)

But I did know that I liked the language. And in hindsight, I think I just like language, and I like writing. And I like to be a literal interpreter, so I was going after being an interpreter in the wrong way. So, acting kind of solved that for me. I’m able to be an interpreter—not only of language, but of body language. And that, to me, is really fascinating.

Jesse Thorn: Among the folks who ended up being founding members of the Steppenwolf Theatre, who were your friends in college, who do you remember glomming onto first? Or glomming onto you. I don’t mean to be presumptuous.

Laurie Metcalf: Well, it was—we glommed on all together as some icky group, frankly. I mean, it was very incestuous.

(They laugh.)

So, you know, we switched partners all the time. We were very secluded and insular. We knew nobody else, especially when we formed our little, tight, weirdo company. But we were all taken with each other. We just had a shared sense of humor, and we had a shared passion for theatre. And what we all wanted to do more than anything was either make each other laugh in a role or make each other cry in a part. You know? So, we challenged each other in that sense.

And we were very lucky. We had a lot of talented people. It was just a fluke. And we also had a lot of talented directors that came out of it. Because none of—we were all just actors. Nobody wanted to direct. That was like the—that was the dud job, if you had to direct a play. ‘Cause that meant that, you know, you didn’t get to be on stage with the rest of the gang.

Jesse Thorn: What did John Malkovich wear when he was 20?

Laurie Metcalf: Well, I don’t know how to describe it.

(Jesse chortles.)

He would wear a suit, that’s for sure. Which was unheard of. A suit and a tie, and maybe even a vest.

Jesse Thorn: I mean, this was like 1974 or 5 or something, right?\

Laurie Metcalf: Yes. Ridiculous. And then paired with giant, giant platform shoes.

[00:20:00]

Or for a while, I think he went through one of those phases where he wore those little Chinese slippers. They’re just black, and they have a little strap that goes across.

Jesse Thorn: Like a Bruce Lee, Mary Jane situation?

Laurie Metcalf: Yes, yes. He was the most fashion-forward of all of us. I mean, the rest of us—and I still do—are in jeans and a flannel shirt every day. That’s what I’m wearing right now. You know?

Jesse Thorn: Was it as intense as the reputation suggests it was? And not just intense, like intense almost to the point of like—to whatever is just sort of violence, I think is pretty much what the reputation of that theatre.

Laurie Metcalf: Yup. Yeah, yeah. It was. Yes, it was. Yes, it was, yeah. Yes. We would do things on stage that—I mean, if we were supposed to beat each other up on stage, then we’d beat each other up. You know, we didn’t see any other way except to do it that way. And it was intense in the sense that we were 20 years old, and everything is intense. You know? And so, you can have a company, meeting and somebody’s going to start screaming and run out into the street, you know, and want to be begged to come back. “Please! Please! We didn’t mean it!” You know. Everything was heightened.

And again, we had—you know, people were having relationships within there. And that comes with its own baggage. You know? Like, maybe one couple is just broken up, and they’re not speaking or not on good terms, and everybody’s tiptoeing around them. You know. It was a melting pot of adolescent angst and excitement. And I don’t know that I would want to revisit that again.

(Jesse laughs.)

But in the moment it was always exciting.

Jesse Thorn: I was shocked to read that, literally, when you were picking what play to do, you just—you’d go to the library, to the play section.

Laurie Metcalf: Yeah. So, what year? That would’ve been like ‘78 or 9 or something like that. So, we would go to the library and check out Best Plays of 1977 and just try and find something that at least had a role for a couple of us, and then the others could fill in.

Jesse Thorn: Laurie, I don’t know if it was a good plan. It’s a better plan than checking out Worst Plays of 1977. (Chuckles.)

Laurie Metcalf: True, true. Yeah, but we had no resources, you know? And nobody could write. So, we were chomping at the bit to get great parts and wanted to act, and we needed that vehicle. You know? So, we would just— And any play was good enough. You know, we would just go at it 150%.

Jesse Thorn: You had a part that transformed your acting career in a play called Balm in Gilead. Which, by the time you were doing it in Steppenwolf, was already a revival. And then you as a group brought it to Broadway.

Laurie Metcalf: Off-Broadway.

Jesse Thorn: Off-Broadway. And this is in the early 1980s, I guess.

(Laurie confirms.)

And I read Frank  Rich’s review from The New York Times of that show. I don’t—I mean, I have hardly ever read a more effusive review about an acting performance than the paragraph that he dedicated to you. I think he said that “it will surely be one of the highlights of the year in theatre” or something like that.

Laurie Metcalf: Well, (chuckles) it was a really special play, and it was a really special time to be in New York. It’s the first time I’d ever gone to New York. Went there as a group. We knew the play worked, because we had done it in Chicago, and it was working really well. And it was a very theatrical play, which was different for the time. And John Malkovich directed it, and he threw in music by Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen and Rickie Lee Jones.

And it really—it took off. And those three people came to see the play in a little 125-seat house. It was really a heady time to be doing theatre. But it came with this terrific part that I got to play, which had a long monologue in the middle of it which was so beautifully written that it was just a real surprise to the audience. And to this day, about every two or three months, somebody stops me somewhere and says that they saw that play and that it has stayed with them. They can quote lines from it.

[00:25:00]

They remember it vividly, because I think it was so theatrical. It had 30 people in the cast, and sometimes people would freeze, and a big spotlight would come down on one person, and the music would swell. It was very, very different. And people remember the pictures that it formed, and they remember that monologue too.

Jesse Thorn: That monologue—when you say it was a big monologue, that was like a 10- or 20-minute monologue—like, almost a one act play in and of itself. I don’t have any recordings from 1984, but I do have a recording from a few years ago at Lanford Wilson’s memorial service where you performed just a little bit of one of the monologues and talked about what the work and what he meant to you.

Your character, Darlene, is a somewhat naïve prostitute, and you’re in this diner that you described that’s full of various types of people who are on the outs, you know? Runaways and junkies and all this kind of stuff. And this character is very—has an odd sort of optimism in her foolishness. So, I want to take a listen to just a little bit of my guest, Laurie Metcalf, performing Darlene from Lanford Wilson’s play, Balm in Gilead.

 

Transition: A whooshing sound.

Clip:

Darlene: This guy I used to go with when I first got a room of my own up on Amity Street—do you know that (inaudible). Most of the streets either run east-west, or… up and down.

(Audience laughter.)

It’s pretty much one or the other. But some of them kind of cut across all the rest of them like Amity Street does, and a lot of the nicer ones do. Fullerton does.

(Laughter.)

And they’re wider with big trees and all. And there are all of these lovely old apartment buildings, very well taken care of with the little lawns out front, little flower boxes in the windows and all—you know. I mean, and the rents—compared to what they charge you with here, the rents are practically nothing, even in this neighborhood.

So, my apartment was two flights up right in the front. It was so cute. You would’ve loved it. They had it all done over when I first moved in. They had three rooms and just this lovely big living room, looked right out onto Amity Street. And a cute little kitchen and the bedroom looked out onto a garden. And across from the garden there was a park. Grand Park… or Cell Park. I never remember it.

(Laughter.)

Transition: A whooshing sound.

 

Laurie Metcalf: Everything she’s saying is wrong.

(They laugh.)

She’s getting all the names of things wrong. And this was so wonderfully written that it was a character that—you know, I think somebody said, “You would kill yourself if you were caught on a long bus ride with this person.”

(Jesse chuckles.)

And so, it—and she’s just… beyond stupid. And it goes from being a character that you would totally write off to someone who is very, very deeply moving, at the end. And that was the brilliance of the writing. And that’s why I think the monologue stood out so well. Because it was just something that you hadn’t seen, or you didn’t expect it. You thought, “Okay, I know this person,” right off the bat. And then 15 minutes later, you’re sobbing because of what she’s saying.

Jesse Thorn: We’ve got a lot more to get into with Laurie Metcalf. She’s a theatre icon, an Oscar nominee, and a beloved sitcom star. We’ll get into her work on Roseanne and The Connors after the break. It’s Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

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Transition: Bright, chiming synth with a syncopated beat.

Jesse Thorn: Welcome back to Bullseye. I’m Jesse Thorn. My guest is the actor Laurie Metcalf. She is, of course, the co-star of the shows Roseanne and The Connors. She’s a Tony-winning Broadway performer as well. When she and I talked in 2018, she’d just been nominated for her first ever Academy Award for her part in the spectacular film Lady Bird. Let’s get back into our conversation.

You were not an accomplished screen actor when you were cast on Roseanne.

Laurie Metcalf: No, I’d never done anything. No—no, I take that back. I had done one movie.

Jesse Thorn: Yeah. You were in Desperately Seeking Susan. Did you move to Los Angeles and start auditioning for sitcoms or—?

Laurie Metcalf: Well, I went —I was in Chicago, doing plays back-to-back. And then, you know, went to New York to do Balm in Gilead. And off of that I got cast in Desperately Seeking Susan. And I thought, okay, well that was just a one-time only film shot or whatever. Then I went back to Chicago. More plays, more plays. And then I thought, “You know what? Maybe I’ll—” Gary Sinise had moved out to LA, and he was having some good luck getting some TV work, I think. And I thought, “Maybe I’ll go out to LA. I’ll give it two weeks. I’ll stay on somebody’s couch and see if I can get a movie.”

And then it just so happened that the same casting directors who cast Desperately Seeking Susan were casting Roseanne. And they were in LA, and I happened to be there. I mean, literally in the right place at the right time. And I went in and read for them. They didn’t even have the sides written for the sister. So, I read Roseanne’s sides, and I got the part. And then I thought, “Oh, I don’t know, though. A TV role? What if I end up getting typecast?”

And they’re like, “You know what? You’d be an idiot to pass on this.”

So, I took it. And luckily it was just one of the best written sitcoms ever.

Jesse Thorn: Yeah, I mean, I— How about this? Let’s hear a scene from Roseanne and my guest is Laurie Metcalf. Laurie played Jackie, who was Roseanne’s sister. Roseanne was the lead in the show alongside John Goodman. And so, in this clip from the show, Jackie and Roseanne are finding out that their dad passed away. And Roseanne is sitting at—I think it’s a kitchen table. And Jackie is talking on one of those phones that hangs on the wall, and Roseanne has made her call a relative to break the news that their dad has died.

 

Transition: A whooshing sound.

Clip:

Jackie: Annie Barbara? It’s Jackie. (Louder.) Jackie. I’m fine. (Louder.) Fine. I’m fine! (Choking up.) I have some bad news. Dad is not with us anymore. I said, (louder) Dad has passed away! (Even louder.) He’s passed away! (Yelling.) Dad is gone. Dad’s dead! He’s dead! No, DEAD! DEEEAD!

(Still shouting.) He’s fine! He sends his love! Bye!

I am not doing that again! You can’t make me!

(The audience laughs and applauds.)

Transition: A whooshing sound.

 

Laurie Metcalf: You know who wrote that?

Jesse Thorn: Who’s that?

Laurie Metcalf: Norm MacDonald.

Jesse Thorn: Oh! Well, there you go!

Laurie Metcalf: He wrote that little bit. Yeah, he’s got a wicked sense of humor. You know, he was one of the writers on this Roseanne reboot. He came in to write.

Jesse Thorn: Yeah, he was sitting there in a room with my buddy, Morgan Murphy, who’s a brilliant TV writer. But I was like—she’s sitting in there with Norm MacDonald in a windowless writer’s office.

(Laurie laughs.)

Transition: Bright, relaxed synth.

Jesse Thorn: Laurie Metcalf. As we mentioned, you can catch her in The Connors on ABC. And if you haven’t seen Lady Bird—oh man, what a movie! Just watch Lady Bird. Come on. One of my favorite movies ever made.

Transition: Relaxed, chiming synth.

Jesse Thorn: That’s the end of another episode of Bullseye. Bullseye is created from the homes of me and the staff of Maximum Fun, as well as at Maximum Fun HQ overlooking beautiful MacArthur Park in Los Angeles, California. I live right near Dodger Stadium, so I’m anticipating some opening day fighter jet buzzing.

[00:35:00]

But I’m feeling great, because the Giants just won on the ninth inning, Wilmer Flores’ home run.

Our show is produced by speaking into microphones. Our senior producer is Kevin Ferguson. Our producers are Jesus Ambrosio and Richard Robey. Our production fellow at Maximum Fun is Hannah Moroz. Our video producer is Daniel Speer. We get booking help from Mara Davis.

Our interstitial music comes from our pal, Dan Wally, also known as DJW. You can find his music at DJWsounds.bandcamp.com. Our theme music was written and recorded by The Go! Team. It’s called “Huddle Formation”. Thanks to The Go! Team, and thanks to their label, Memphis Industries.

You can follow Bullseye on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube, where you’ll find video from just about all of our interviews—including the ones we heard this week. And I think that’s about it. Just remember, all great radio hosts have a signature signoff.

Promo: Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

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