Well, the transcript is finally done. Again, I'm sorry that you had to wait so long, but I've been very busy lately. Thanks for being so patient! Good luck with writing those Family Guy articles! :)
COMMENTARY FOR "420"
TRANSCRIPT
[Commentary starts]
MACFARLANE: Hey, it's Seth.
MEIGHAN: I'm Patrick Meighan.
GOODMAN: I'm David Goodman.
WINSLOW: And I'm Debbie Winslow.
MACFARLANE: It sounds like you have a cold, Patrick.
MEIGHAN: I do, I was laid up all weekend long and I am back and better than ever and ready to tell America about this episode.
MACFARLANE: That's great, well I for one am so happy to have you with me in this enclosed space.
[laughter]
GOODMAN: You worried? We can kick him out.
MEIGHAN: America doesn't care about your comfort Seth, they just want some enterTAINMENT.
GOODMAN: Patrick wouldn't come to work if he was still...
WINSLOW: I didn't realize it was an enclosed space but, now that you mention it, I'm kinda freaked out...
MACFARLANE: Yeah. Yep, we're all gonna get sick.
[laughter]
GOODMAN: Well, this is gonna be a lively commentary.
MEIGHAN: Yeah!
GOODMAN: I'll be doing plenty of the talking.
MACFARLANE: Are you on antibiotics Patrick?
MEIGHAN: No I'm not - Hey America, I'm at least fifteen feet away from Seth MacFarlane, and still - I'm not exaggarating and he....
MACFARLANE: [interrupting] In an air-tight room. I'm just pointing out, everyone gives me shit [1] when I get sick, they get mad when I don't come to work when I'm sick. That's the kind of business TV is. [1] (Meighan: [hard to make out, MacFarlane talks over it] this is... this is what you're uh... you can be fifteen feet away from him and he's still positive you're gonna get AIDS...)
WINSLOW: But you still come to work when you're sick?
MACFARLANE: I know, I know, I don't have a choice, 'caue they'll crawl up...
WINSLOW: [interrupting] They make you come in until you're head explodes.
GOODMAN: Do you wanna do this commentary another time Seth, should we cut the commentary?
MACFARLANE: I'm a little worried about, Meighan just recovered from... I'm a little run down, my body is ready to accept some new... strain of flu'.
GOODMAN: Do you wanna call it quits? 'Cause we're already ten minutes in, we could stop now...
MACFARLANE: When did you get sick, Patrick?
MEIGHAN: You know, probably last week at some point, but after I last saw you... I don't know. [Meighan's credit comes on screen] Hey, that's my name, right there.
GOODMAN: So the idea for the episode started when Seth came in and wanted to do a show about legalizing pot, is that right Seth?
MACFARLANE: Uh, yeah!
GOODMAN: Are you not gonna talk about the episode at all? [indigestible]
WINSLOW: We're totally missing the orange cat, there was something about that cat. Wasn't it orange because of your cat or something? Because it was white to start with.
MACFARLANE: You know, it was originally grey...
WINSLOW: That was it.
MACFARLANE: I don't know why we changed it, I think felt it was kinda dull-looking.
GOODMAN: So Debbie, this is your first commentary?
WINSLOW: No, I've done one before a while back...
GOODMAN: A while back, and you were the retakes director on this episode.
WINSLOW: Yes.
GOODMAN: You wanna briefly say what the retakes director does? 'Cause I'm not sure, although I hear about it all the time.
WINSLOW: The show is completely produced here and then it goes over to Korea for about what, eight months or something? And then when it comes back it's basically my problem. And I have to do whatever it takes to get it on the air, including any rewrites that might be funnier or something that doesn't work in the boards or the timing...
GOODMAN: Sort of the final animation after the...
WINSLOW: Yes, whatever there is, and they.... Korea, they can't dance, so anything that involves dancing will have to be redone...
MACFARLANE: That's an nightmare...
MEIGHAN: So you just heard a hate-crime America.
WINSLOW: No, I didn't say I hated them because they can't dance.
MEIGHAN: That's a good point, all right.
MEIGHAN: By the way, that word, "Catittudes", we had to swear to Fox that that was a fictitious store, so if there's in fact a store in Vermont called "Catittudes", just keep your mouth shut about that because we could get in a lot of trouble.
GOODMAN: Just take the publicity, please?
MEIGHAN: That's right, take it as a gift!
GOODMAN: Now, in terms of what happens to this cat, Seth, didn't we get in a bit of trouble?
MACFARLANE: Um...
GOODMAN: Or did we...
MACFARLANE: There was some flap from... [scene showing Peter in a theater plays] boy that sounds just like Donald Maffet. [laughter, Meighan coughs extensively] Oh my god, you sound terrible.
MEIGHAN: No I'm great...
MACFARLANE: It sounds like you have bronchitis.
MEIGHAN: That was a laugh of amusement, not a laugh of...
MACFARLANE: I'm gonna open this door now....
MEIGHAN: All right America, he's heading to the door, now he's propping it open. Yeah. Now Seth MacFarlane isn't even physically in the room.
WINSLOW: I didn't know that one thing would stretch that far... I didn't know you could prop that thing open.
MEIGHAN: I think we may have lost Seth, but that's okay. You know what...
GOODMAN: We'll just keep going, so there was some flap... [1] because of what happens to the cat... ([1] interrupts WINSLOW: I would be surprised if there wasn't, actually...)
GOODMAN: Even a cartoon cat, you can't kill a cartoon cat...
WINSLOW: Didn't we hear from PETA?
GOODMAN: We may have...
[Peter kills Quagmire's cat]
MEIGHAN: Here's something to recognize, while this occurs here. Family Guy has been nominated for a Genesis award by the Humane Society for Outstanding work raising public understanding of animal issues.
WINSLOW: Really?
GOODMAN: But, we killed a cat... We're doing a commentary Danny... Now people are wandering into the record booth.
MEIGHAN: America, [coughs extensively] people unrelated to the commentary are physically entering the room. And... there you go.
GOODMAN: I think we've lost Seth...
MEIGHAN: And that's okay. That's alright, we don't need Seth.
MACFARLANE: Hey, it's me!
GOODMAN: Hi Seth!
MACFARLANE: Now I'm in the other room!
MEIGHAN: You know what America, now you're gonna learn something: we don't need Seth to do this show, we can do this show without Seth.
MACFARLANE: They don't need me at all.
GOODMAN: He's literally now in the technitian's part of the room.
MACFARLANE: Here's the problem, when I get sick, and I'm laid up in bed like Patrick is, th [cut off abruptly]
GOODMAN: I think, maybe we wanna re-schedule this?
ALL (except Goodman): No!
MACFARLANE: See, they call me and they get ticked off at me for being - can you hear me?
ALL OTHERS: Yeah.
WINSLOW: It's "echoy" sounding.
GOODMAN: You cut us off when you...
MACFARLANE: They get ticked off at me for being sick so... it's a real healthy way to do business.
MEIGHAN: By the way, who is "they"? Because some people think that you're in charge Seth.
MACFARLANE: Oh, it's a myth! I report to people just like anyone else.
MEIGHAN: See, we have a phrase in the writer's room for that, the phrase is "Super Seth", so in situations like this when Seth says "Oh, they're getting on me", we are like "You should go complain to Super Seth", and he'll uh, you know.
GOODMAN: "We" don't have a phrase, Patrtick Meighan has a phrase. He coined the phrase "Super Seth" and he's used it once.
MEIGHAN: That's not at all true.
GOODMAN: I've only heard him use it once. It's very funny when he does it.
MEIGHAN: Okay, by the way, there used to be another Brian rape joke there, "Brian poops like a soft served ice-cream cone". But Fox wouldn't let us do that.
WINSLOW: I've never heard taht. That didn't make it to me. Even in retakes, we actually thought that thing that Chris says was kind of intelligent for him.
GOODMAN: What is he saying?
MEIGHAN: Oh, Albert Poohole? Who is your favourite baseball player, Albert Pooholes? Yeah.
GOODMAN: There are some sports fans on the Family Guy staff - Seth has just stepped out of the - Seth, just remind them that you're here? Just say something.
MACFARLANE: Hey, what's going on?
GOODMAN: Because it's gonna say on the commentary: Seth MacFarlane, ba-ba-ba, Jewish guy, two other people, and you know.
MEIGHAN: That's a pretty decent one.
WINSLOW: So he could be the writer, you could be "Jewish guy" and I could be "girl".
GOODMAN: That's right.
[A parody of "Above the influence" plays]
MEIGHAN: I always really liked this guy.
MACFARLANE: This is a funny gag, the problem is where the length of time it takes to do animation kinda fucks ya. Because when we wrote this, these commercials were on the air, and they were on the air during Family Guy, and by the time it [the episode] aired, they stopped running them. But it's still funny we hope.
WINSLOW: Well everybody still got it I'm sure. I just liked it 'cause it was really easy to draw.
GOODMAN: Did this come in late?
WINSLOW: No, it didn't, but the retakes on it were a singe.
MEIGHAN: [coughs] Now, I really am fine.
GOODMAN: Now I'm literally right next to Patrick and now I'm getting concerned. And I don't mind being at home sick actually. Nobody actually yells at me for not coming to work. I think a lot of people enjoy it.
MACFARLANE: You're speaking as if (?) corporations are run by fear, David.
[laughter]
GOODMAN: No, I think that just people would rather I stay home.
[laughter]
MEIGHAN: That's not true...
GOODMAN: I think there are a couple of people on this staff who wouldn't mind if I didn't come to work. Plenty of enemies, plenty of enemies.
MEIGHAN: We're a good half way into this now, let's...
GOODMAN: Let's get to the end!
WINSLOW: Now we gotta figure out what's happening....
GOODMAN: Oh right, he's gonna do the urine test. Now, Patrick named this episode "420", you wanna explain what that is Patrick?
WINSLOW: It's funny is what it is.
MEIGHAN: Well, the term 420 is, like that minor sentence (?) is that... the term 420 has marijuana connotations and...
WINSLOW: Isn't that like the police code for when you're...
MEIGHAN: Right, it's the police numerical code for marijuana or something, right. So, but this was kind of an inside joke that the only people who are gonna get are the people who will be confused and annoyed by it, because, here in Family Guy and in a lot of other TV shows too, we don't really refer to episodes by name, we refer to them by number. So the first number will be the season number so the first episode of season 6 would be 601. So this is actually episode number 616, but I called it episode 420 just kind of as an inside production joke. It was an attempt to be confusing.
GOODMAN: And it worked, because in fact 20th Century Fox called me in confusion, because they didn't want to pay Patrick because 420 was several years ago, and someone else's episode.
MEIGHAN: For a few months I didn't get paid on this because Fox was like "Oh we paid 420 a long time ago".
GOODMAN: So he screwed himself basically. I get a great deal of pleasure telling Patrick this. I'm sorry Patrick.
MEIGHAN: No, I kinda had that coming.
["A Bag O' Weed" starts playing]
GOODMAN: Seth, tell them what song this is?
MACFARLANE: This is from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". It's called "Me Old Bamboo".
GOODMAN: It was written by the Sherman brothers if I'm not mistaken.
MACFARLANE: And these are four xylophone players, if I'm not mistaken, that are playing together for this arrangement. This was originally sung by Dick Van Dyke and we liked it so we took the song and so we used the original arrangement and put new lyrics to it.
GOODMAN: This was the Sherman brothers, right?
MACFARLANE: Sherman brothers, yeah.
GOODMAN: And it was interesting, in the original there was a... movie... ah, nobody cares.
WINSLOW: Yeah there was a few problems with that.
MACFARLANE: This was a hard one to get accurate, but it ended up looking great in the end. It was a lot of work getting up there but it really paid off.
WINSLOW: I'm gonna be forced to have to learn to dance eventually, I'm going against it kicking and screaming but....
MEIGHAN: Not like Korean people, is that what you're trying to say Debbie?
WINSLOW: Yes, exactly, I have to learn because they're not gonna learn.
GOODMAN: So, who wrote the lyrics to this?
MACFARLANE: I did some of it, I feel as if someone else contributed.
MEIGHAN: I wrote one or two octuplets.
[Stewie and Brian are playing the bongs like xylophones.]
MACFARLANE: On the original version, I don't remember what they were doing in the original version during this part but I remember hearing this xylophone solo, with multiple xylophones, which you don't hear that often, and thinking "This would be a cool image to have all these bongs lined up, and they're playing them like xylophones and they're tapping on them and"... it came out well.
GOODMAN: It's a very memorable song, and I really have to give the network credit for airing this I mean this is something you don't see on television very much in terms of the message of the song. Fox takes it on the chin for a lot of stuff and yet they let us do this and this aired on network television, which to me is just astounding.
MACFARLANE: Well, pot will be legal. It will be legalized soon.
GOODMAN: Maybe, but it's not now and there's still a very strong anti-drug...
MACFARLANE: Left over from our friend William Randall Hurst.
GOODMAN: That's right, which is mentioned in this episode. Patrick, did you know before Seth told you and you put it in the script?
MEIGHAN: I did.
WINSLOW: I had no idea.
GOODMAN: I'm just curious, because I didn't know that.
[song ends]
MEIGHAN: By the way, that song used to end with a clip of Gonzo playing his trumpet as at the end of the Muppet show theme, but Disney decided not to clear that.
GOODMAN: We have been trying to get Gonzo to blow that horn into several episodes.
MACFARLANE: The instrumental part of that song in the original version, when you here those flourishes when the guys are leaping through the air and what not, in the original version those are scored to whatever dance moves they were doing in the movie, but here we sort of had to do it in reverse. The arrangement is the arrangement so we're like, "All right, the strings are doing this in this spot, the trombones are doing this, we've got to find something for the character to do that looks like that sounds." So it's a kind of backwards, interesting way to board something.
[Brian talks to Lois about how the pot is helping Quahog]
MEIGHAN: Brian at one point in there said "productivity is up," and you're right Fox deserves a lot of credit for letting us do this episode, but for some reason, Brian saying that productivity is up... It was a problem for Fox. They were like "You can show all this marijuana, but don't say that productivity is up."
[list of celebrities rolls]
GOODMAN: This list was a lot of fun to compile, I remember.
MEIGHAN: Yes, I agree... Poor Bonnie Franklin, what did she do?
[list ends]
MACFARLANE: David Arquette, he's on that list, right? He called, or e-mailed me, and actually was very cool about it. He sent me a very funny, jokey e-mail saying "I saw my name, what the hell man, why do you hate me." I exchanged some e-mails with him and he was actually very cool about it. He was the only one on our list we heard from. I explained to him that it's not that we necessarily hate these people, it's just... I said "Listen, it means you're relevant enough that somebody pitched your name."
[Lois' father sings]
GOODMAN: Who pitched this gag, I think maybe Seth? Getting the words wrong on that sound.
[Lois' father offers to lend a jo-jo to Peter if he helps him]
MEIGHAN: That's a Rich Appel, right there.
GOODMAN: Oh, that's when Rich was on our show.
[Peter shows Lois' father his video]
MACFARLANE: This is a great gag.
GOODMAN: This was also very late in the process, as I remember.
WINSLOW: Yeah, this one was, in fact it was mostly me and Eric Brown... I don't know who is finding the clips.
MACFARLANE: Didn't we have to pay a substantial amount of money for this clip? I just wonder to who.
[Lois' father says that the clips of Hitler were owned by Fox]
WINSLOW: Well, there it is.
[Peter films a new video]
GOODMAN: Oh, that was our shot at Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Which is a movie we actually like. They're very funny.
[Peter, resembling a mermaid, sings on a rock]
GOODMAN: Now this gag had been floating around for literally four years.
WINSLOW: Wasn't it from fourth season or something?
GOODMAN: Yeah. Something like that, I remember Cherry Chevapravatdumrong pitched it. It kept getting cut for time, it's a very long gag.
[Lois' father offers to publish Brian's books]
GOODMAN: This was my idea. I don't take a lot of credit for things, but this was my idea that Carter publishes Brian's book as a bribe. I remember pitching it and I'm very proud of that idea. Because now we get to see the book, ..Faster than the speed of love.
WINSLOW: But then, is Brian still writing a book?
GOODMAN: This allowed us to have Brian move on to another book, because we had had a fair amount of jokes about this rip-off of Iron Eagle. Iron Eagle 3, in fact, that he wrote as a novel.
[Brian sings why pot is bad]
GOODMAN: Obviously this second pot song was a lot easier to animate.
WINSLOW: It was, I had a lot less retakes on that.
[newscast showing a painted picture of Brian]
GOODMAN: Who did that drawing?
WINSLOW: I thought it was Bau (don't know if spelled correctly). I could be wrong, but...
MEIGHAN: That "children is getting sexier" is noteworthy because I think that is Kirker Butler's final joke as a Family Guy writer.
GOODMAN: And now, because he's on The Cleveland Show, it was the last joke he ever pitched.
MEIGHAN: Ooooh noooo. Now we have to start the WHOLE THING over! (they don't)
MACFARLANE: I think there's a friendly rivalry between the three programs.
WINSLOW: That was worse than me insulting the Koreans.
[episode ends]
GOODMAN: Thanks everybody!
MEIGHAN: America, this has been a different kind of DVD commentary but... difference is good sometimes!
GOODMAN: It doesn't top the one where Tom Devanni (again, I might spell the name wrong) pretended he was Wellesley Wild. We've kept that kind of a secret. You want to say anything else Seth?
MACFARLANE: Goodnight everybody.
[commentary ends]