'Bee Movie', Director, Steve Hickner

0:06Jawad MirHow are you?

0:07Steve HicknerAll right. How are you?

0:09Jawad MirI'm doing good. Keeping busy?

0:11Steve HicknerYep.

0:12Jawad MirThat's good. That's good. What are you working on nowadays, aside from teaching?

0:16Steve HicknerThat's it.

0:18Jawad MirThat's it, eh?

0:19Steve HicknerYeah, work on a thing, a book, but mostly just teaching. That's in my, s… free time.

0:26Jawad MirWhere do you teach?

0:27Steve HicknerPlenty. Hm?

0:29Jawad MirWhere do you teach?

0:29Steve HicknerAnimation.

0:30Jawad MirNo, where? Which school?

0:32Steve HicknerOh, Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida.

0:36Jawad MirGreat. I guess you must be loving it then.

0:39Steve HicknerOh, I love it there. I'm right by the beach.

0:40Jawad MirNice.

0:41Steve HicknerIt's great. I get Wednesdays off. You know, after 40 y… plus years of working, you know, 60 and 70 hours a week, I'm... I love it.

0:54Jawad MirThat's great. I'm glad to hear that. I'm glad to hear that.

0:57Steve HicknerAnd I enjoy working with the students. It's really, very rewarding.

1:02Jawad MirSo i… is it, like, a very well-known, school for where kids graduate to go to Disney and DreamWorks or?

1:09Steve HicknerYeah, I would say it's one of the top two schools in the country.

1:15Jawad MirWonderful. And has, any of your students been, involved in any of the projects that you know of?

1:22Steve HicknerYou mean, they work at a lot of the studios.

1:25Jawad MirOh, so you do know a lot of them. A lot of them did make it.

1:27Steve HicknerOh, yeah. Many of them. There, in fact, I think three of the graduates from last year are now interning at, are now, animation trainees at DreamWorks, so.

1:39Jawad MirFantastic.

1:39Steve HicknerAnd I think they're Pixar, yeah. They're all over the place.

1:42Jawad MirThat's really good. That must be a really good feeling.

1:45Steve HicknerYeah. It's good. It's good to pass it on to the next generation. I feel like, people were very good to me for my whole life, and now it's time to pay it forward.

1:56Jawad MirThat's nice. That's great. Well, thank you so much for joining me again, Steve. I appreciate it. I had a great time talking to you last time about Prince of Egypt.

2:05Steve HicknerYeah, it's funny because I just got an email from Simon, yesterday saying that DreamWorks wants to do a panel of, with Brenda, Simon, and I about Prince of Egypt.

2:16Jawad MirOh, great.

2:17Steve HicknerAnd so I th… if they do it, they'll, I mean, Simon's still in Los Angeles, but I'm not, and, Brenda lives in Northern California, so they'd have to patch two of us in. And I personally feel like it would be better to just have Simon do it live in person than patch us in, but we'll do, I'll do whatever they want.

2:38Jawad MirWell, that must be, that must be something different. So is that something for like the animators, like, just kinda like a discussion?

2:44Steve HicknerI guess, I guess so.

2:47Jawad MirGreat.

2:48Steve HicknerI'm always amazed when people still remember it. It's gonna be 25 years, not this Christmas, but next. Whatever it is do… November 14th or December 18… whatever it opens.

3:01Jawad MirDecember 18th. December 18th.

3:02Steve HicknerDecember 18th, yeah. That's gonna be t… 2023 is gonna be 25 years.

3:08Jawad MirIt's funny you mention that because I was watching, an interview with Francis Ford Coppola or listening to one, and he was talking about, he was trying to convince the person who asked the question that Godfather wasn't really that big at the time. It's over time films become timeless if they're good. People remember them over time more than they do when it comes out, right? And I think, I think to some degree that's true. What do you think?

3:32Steve HicknerIn the case of The Godfather, I don't know if I agree with him. It was, it won the Oscar, I mean, won most of the Oscars.

3:39Jawad MirIt did.

3:40Steve HicknerIt was instantly regarded as one of the great, movies of all time. It kinda redefined the gangster movie on the spot. I think it's true that, I think, I mean, The Godfather's my favorite movie. I think that it's grown in stature through the years and become even more influential. But even in its day, it was, regarded as a masterpiece. It won the Oscar, it won the Best Picture, and then its sequel won the Best Picture. Nobody had ever done that before.

4:11Jawad MirYeah. That's what I thought, but, maybe he was being humble. You know? He was saying what he…

4:16Steve HicknerWell, and, I mean, I wasn't, like, living there. I wasn't trying to get jobs from it. I mean, when he did Apocalypse Now, it's not like the doors opened for him, even with The Godfather, with that movie. So in that regard, he's correct, and I think The Conversation came out the same year as The Godfather, and nobody cared about that, so.

4:39Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

4:40Steve HicknerHe still struggled, so I understand why he says that.

4:44Jawad MirYeah, he did, because i… have you seen that documentary that his wife made? I forget the name.

4:48Steve HicknerYes.

4:49Jawad MirYeah. I mean, the amount of stuff that he had to go through, you know, it's amazing the fact that he went... And which is something that everybody feels about Hollywood. Like, once you s… sc… you know, sc… like even Spielberg, the likes of Spielberg, has difficulty going through things. I mean, it's just the nature of business. Maybe not as much as somebody in the beginning, but you pay your dues.

5:06Steve HicknerYeah.

5:06Jawad MirRight? So.

5:07Steve HicknerAnd you're…

5:08Jawad MirGreat

5:08Steve Hickner... You know, you're, they're always being judged by whatever you did last.

5:12Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. Well, good to have you back on. I wanted to speak to you about…

5:17Steve HicknerAre you in Toronto? Is that where you are?

5:19Jawad MirYeah. Yeah. Have you been there?

5:22Steve HicknerYeah, I went to, Sheridan Animation School. Do you know that school?

5:27Jawad MirYes.

5:27Steve HicknerYeah.

5:27Jawad MirYeah. It's about 20 minutes from where I'm... It's, it's been, always been popular for recruiting Disney animators, even 20 years ago.

5:34Steve HicknerYeah.

5:34Jawad MirYeah.

5:34Steve HicknerIt's the premier school in, Canada to me.

5:37Jawad MirYeah. It's, I think it still is pretty big in terms of animation. It's become, it became a very much, like, a practical place for even filmmaking now, but I think animation is more of a main thing.

5:49Steve HicknerYep.

5:50Jawad MirGood. Bee Movie. You know, I remember when it came out. I'm a huge Seinfeld fan just like, anybody else, I'm sure, you know, yourself too. And, it, when it came out, when even the concept came out and just to see Jerry Seinfeld doing this, it was, it was quite interesting and different. And just tell me the evolution of Bee Movie. Like, when did you hear about it, how it sort of started? Do you know if Jerry brought it to DreamWorks or, you know, in that regard?

6:22Steve HicknerYeah, Jerry did. DreamWorks had tried to get Jerry Seinfeld, as a voice artist on Madagascar because that was clearly a Seinfeld-ian. And, Jerry said that he doesn't do anything that he doesn't write.

6:41Jawad MirWhich is true. Yeah.

6:42Steve HicknerAnd so... And he doesn't.

6:43Jawad MirYeah.

6:44Steve HicknerIf he doesn't write it, he doesn't do it. He, I don't think he considers himself an actor for hire. He considers himself a writer/comedian.

6:51Jawad MirYeah.

6:51Steve HicknerAnd so, he doesn't want to do stuff that's the material isn't his. And I get it, and I, it served him well and, you can't argue with it. And so, what happened is, the story goes, as he tells it, that he was having dinner with Steven Spielberg and he's, was joking around and he said, "What about a movie about bees called Bee Movie?" And Steven laughed. He said, "I love it." He said, "Let me call Jeffrey about that." He called Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the next thing he knows, he's got a deal to make that movie with DreamWorks. So that's, that's how it started.

7:34Jawad MirThat's pretty cool. I mean, that's normally how... I wonder if he actually just threw that, you know, the title just to kind of see how Spielberg's…

7:41Steve HicknerI think he probably did.

7:42Jawad MirYeah.

7:42Steve HicknerThey were probably just saying stuff and were joking around.

7:46Jawad MirYeah.

7:46Steve HicknerA Bee Movie, about bees.

7:49Jawad MirYeah. No. And, how did you... I know you directed, Prince of Egypt, and we spoke about that last time, in 1998, well, you started way before that, but, and this started work in 2004. So what was your transition, on this film along with, Simon, the, your co-director?

8:07Steve HicknerSo, I was, I think I was working on or just finished working on Over the Hedge.

8:14Jawad MirOkay.

8:15Steve HicknerAnd I think. And, that this opportunity came up and they had, they had us be interviewed by Jerry at the Peninsula Hotel in Los Angeles. So I went down, I think on a Saturday morning or something, and I think he, interviewed Simon first, who I knew because we had worked together on the Shrek 4D ride.

8:41Jawad MirOkay.

8:41Steve HicknerSo I knew Simon from that. So I think Simon had the first interview, I think, and then I had the second. And so that's where we met Jerry and we had the interview and I thought, you know, "I hope that goes well." And later I asked Jerry, I said, you know, "Why did you know, why did you pick us? Why did you think we'd work?" And he said, "Because," he said, "Yeah, 'cause my hair was crazy." He said, "You had crazy hair, and I thought someone who wears hair like that has gotta be kind of funny."

9:14Jawad MirYeah. What kind of stuff did he ask you? Like, in terms of like the story itself or like how would you tackle it?

9:19Steve HicknerNot at all. We just talked about... I mean, I felt like I was interviewing him. He said, I think, it wasn't so much an interview. It was, it was basically to lose the... It was, the job was ours as long as we didn't blow it.

9:34Jawad MirYeah.

9:34Steve HicknerAnd he walks away going, "I can't work with this person."

9:37Jawad MirYeah.

9:37Steve HicknerSo, I was asking him about stuff and we were talking about animation and other things. I remember, I said, "I have a question for you." I said, "I collect toys and I have this, magazine called, Flake, and it says on it that you, that you've read this magazine about cereal box collecting." And I said, "Did you really? Have you really read..." 'Cause it's such an esoteric thing. "Have you really read this book about collecting cereal boxes or this magazine?" He said, "Yes." And as you know, Jerry likes cereal. He had…

10:15Jawad MirWell, Seinfeld, right?

10:16Steve HicknerYes. It was a big thing in his show.

10:19Jawad MirYeah.

10:19Steve HicknerThe alphabetizing of the cereal and things. So he had a fondness for cereal, so he did read that magazine. So we were talking about that and we were talking about cereal.

10:31Jawad MirGot it. So it was more of a conversation than anything else.

10:34Steve HicknerYeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, and just talking about things in ani… in maybe animation. Not so much about the story so much.

10:43Jawad MirYeah. And…

10:44Steve Hickner'Cause I don't remember

10:45Jawad Mir... How much did... Had you read the script before you met Jerry…

10:48Steve HicknerYes

10:48Jawad Mir... Or was it after? You did.

10:50Steve HicknerYeah, I think so. I think so. He had given us the script and then he, may... I can't remem… It seems like we had. And then we had this, a meeting at DreamWorks, which they like to do, where they gave a whole bunch of people the script and they all came in and gave Jerry notes. And for like three hours he sat there and got notes from everybody on how to im… improve his movie. And then when everybody left, I said, "Jerry, how do you do that? How do you sit there and take all those notes?" And he said... I said, "Isn't that difficult to have people constantly giving you notes and stuff?" And he goes, "No." He said, "I listen and if I think there's a good note, I write it down and put it." He said, "But I'm under no obligation to use anything they say." So he said, "I just use it as a informational gathering thing." And I thought, "Boy, that really is smart." I mean, normally we always feel like we have to use the notes in some way.

11:50Jawad MirYeah.

11:50Steve HicknerBut he was in a position where he didn't have to do that. So he had the best of both worlds. He would get all these notes coming in with ideas and he only had to use the ones that he liked. So if something…

12:04Jawad MirYeah

12:04Steve Hickner... If he disagreed with something, he didn't do it.

12:07Jawad MirYeah, no, I, and I wonder if that has anything to do with, him being Jerry Seinfeld, or is it just like a... But he seems like a pretty... Like, I've seen a lot of his interviews. He just seems like a very chill guy. Like, even with

12:19Steve HicknerYeah

12:19Jawad Mir... Coffee in Cars. Like, he just seems like a very relaxed guy. What he is on TV is what he is in real person.

12:25Steve HicknerYes. That's what he is, and having been around him, like out in public, it's very interesting because the difference between a movie star and Jerry is that Jerry was a TV star, a huge TV star…

12:40Jawad MirYeah

12:40Steve Hickner... The number one show. And people got used to seeing Jerry in their living room every Thursday. And so he's like a friend, which a movie star isn't. They're up there in the…

12:54Jawad MirYeah

12:54Steve Hickner... Movie theater. And so, the public has a different relationship with TV people because they're like their friends. They're like part of their family, and so they had that familiarity with Jerry, and he's very approachable. So I think that's frankly one of the things that's allowed him to stay relevant and in touch with people is that he's not in a vaulted, cocooned world that doesn't have anything to do with people, and that lets him keep stay in touch with people so he can continue his comedy. Because if you did, if you did live in a cocoon, very quickly you would lose, what makes Jerry, which is being able to observe life and comment on it. And if you live in a bubble, you can't do that anymore. So, he's, fortunately for him, he's cultivated this thing where that never ha… And for us as an audience, where he doesn't have that happen.

13:51Jawad MirYeah. No, he's, and I think it's also the way the character Jerry and Kramer…

13:58Steve HicknerYeah

13:58Jawad Mir... Elaine and George, like, they were just like very average people, like, you know, dressed casually.

14:02Steve HicknerYeah.

14:02Jawad MirIt wasn't like anything over the top, and people tapped into that, for sure, aside from the humor, of course, which was top-notch.

14:09Steve HicknerAnd Jerry said that he never had wardrobe on the show. He said he was the one person who didn't have wardrobe. He said, "Whatever I wore in that day, that's what I wore on the show."

14:20Jawad MirThat's great.

14:21Steve HicknerAnd he wanted it that way. He said, "I don't want all this, I don't wanna worry about that stuff, all the wardrobe and stuff. I just want whatever I wear, that's what's gonna be... Whatever I wear that day, that's what's g… I'm gonna be wearing on the show."

14:35Jawad MirBig. And that probably gave him a lot of, ease. Like, you know, when you're, when you're wearing what you're comfortable with… ... You're truly yourself, as opposed to, you know, trying to find your place in the clothes, and you're uncomfortable.

14:46Steve HicknerWell, I think that's why he always, you know, said to... I remember one time we were recording something, and Jeffrey Katzenberg said to Jerry, he said, "Jerry, it sounds like you're laughing, when you're delivering this line." And Jerry said, "Jeffrey, have you ever seen the show?" He said, "I'm laughing. I'm trying to keep from laughing with every line in the show." He said, "If you watch me on the show, I'm trying not to laugh all the time." He s… he said…

15:17Jawad MirYeah

15:17Steve Hickner... And he said that's why he surrounded himself with such good actors. He said, "Because I'm not an actor. I'm just playing me. This is me." And so that, I think that is part of it, is it is, he is just walks off the street into the show, and he's Jerry Seinfeld, and he's playing Jerry Seinfeld.

15:36Jawad MirAnd I'm glad that you mentioned that because I saw that in an, in an inter… I think it was like behind the scene on Seinfeld, that if you really pay attention to over-the-shoulder shots of when he's talking to Kramer, especially Kramer or George or Elaine, and you look at his si… like, side profile, you can see him, like, y… his cheeks are, like, already, like, smiling or laughing. It, like…

15:58Steve HicknerYeah

15:58Jawad Mir... In every take he's up to something, and that's just his personality.

16:03Steve HicknerYeah. And that's what made, for me, what made those three and a half years like an absolute delight. And when we were coming to the end of the movie, I remember saying to him, I said, "Jerry, you've ruined me for the rest of, my career because this has been so much fun." And he was in the position of his life that if it isn't fun, I'm not doing it. If it's not fun to go do it every day, I don't wanna do this.

16:28Jawad MirYeah.

16:29Steve HicknerAnd that's what it was like to work on Bee Movie with him is I think he had fun. I had the best time. I loved it. I, if I could have, I would've done that for the rest of my life. You know, I would've had Bee Movie, you know, never finish. But he said from day one, he said there wasn't gonna be Bee Movie 2. He said, "I did one TV show. I'm gonna do one movie."

16:51Jawad MirYeah.

16:51Steve HicknerAnd interestingly, he's directing a movie right now, that Pop-Tart movie.

16:56Jawad MirOh, he is? I'm not, I'm not aware of that.

16:58Steve HicknerI'm, I'm sure by now he's finished, he's finished shooting it, but it was, we were shooting it in LA in the summer.

17:04Jawad MirWhat is it called?

17:05Steve HicknerIt's, I don't know what it's called, but it's about Pop-Tarts. It's from that…

17:09Jawad MirOh, sure

17:09Steve Hickner... Pop-Tart routine that he did.

17:12Jawad MirOkay. Okay. Well, I'll look that up. No, and speaking of that, working with Jerry, I mean, one of the things I saw in the, in the special features on the DVD, which is, like, a normal thing now, but back then it was, like, a huge deal. Like, he was in New York because he didn't wanna leave New York, for the, recording or for some meetings or something, right? Is that correct?

17:34Steve HicknerWell, he would sometimes be in, but he would be in LA, like, every other week.

17:38Jawad MirOkay.

17:38Steve HicknerHe was in LA a lot, a lot more than I expected. Is…

17:44Jawad MirWhat was that like? I mean, now I know we have Zoom. It's like a normal thing.

17:47Steve HicknerIt was like, it was like Zoom except better because they built a, an editing room in his studio, in his, work area in New York that had, like, perfect, picture. There was no delay at all, and perfect, Picture quality so we could run our editing machine in absolute sync with what he was seeing, and we had cameras around the room, and we could talk. And so it... And we had a big television over the thing, so it worked very well.

18:26Jawad MirSo he was…

18:26Steve HicknerIt wasn't as good as having him in the room, I will say that.

18:29Jawad MirYeah, of course.

18:29Steve HicknerIt was always better if he's in the room.

18:31Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, you're in that, you know, three-dimensional space and…

18:35Steve HicknerYeah, it... So it's about 85%.

18:37Jawad MirAgreed.

18:38Steve HicknerThe other 15% is that incredible thing you get by having him in the room.

18:43Jawad MirSo was it... Was he working with you, and Simon, and Nick Fletcher, or were there…

18:47Steve HicknerYes

18:47Jawad Mir... More people involved? Okay.

18:48Steve HicknerYeah. Oh, there was more. There was Christine, Christina Steinberg, and, Craig Rittenbaum was there in a lot of the meetings. So…

19:00Jawad MirIs that, is that... Was that an exception for that film because Jerry…

19:06Steve HicknerNo

19:07Jawad Mir... Wasn't physically…

19:07Steve HicknerIn DreamWorks it's always the producer, and the directors, the head of story, whoever that is. Like in our case, David Pimentel was in a lot of the meetings, Nick, so you would get that group.

19:19Jawad MirSo how does it,.. I mean, I guess you get used to it after a while, but especially, I mean, I have, I'm an editor as well as a director. But as an editor when you have a lot of people sort of, you know, m… not necessarily the word micromanage, but just in the same room and just... You know, how did that, how does that environment... Is it, is it something you get used to or is it just, like, something you accept?

19:41Steve HicknerYou're, you're talking about a guy who spent 10 years in a writer's room every day… ... Doing Seinfeld, so this was no different really.

19:51Jawad MirNo, I meant for the editor, like for Nick, for example.

19:54Steve HicknerOh, for Nick. I think Nick is used to it. He started with, Richard Williams. I think Nick Fletcher is the best editor, animation editor in the world.

20:06Jawad MirHe is.

20:07Steve HicknerPeriod. Full stop. And, there are a lot of really good animation editors, but, Nick is even a cut above. He's incredibly inventive. I think by now, I think he would love to become, like, the consulting editor and let somebody else do all the hour… He's the same age as I am, and, he's been working these crazy hours for over 40 years. So I'm sure he would love to become the, like, the executive editor and let everybody else…

20:38Jawad MirYeah

20:38Steve Hickner... You know, give notes and then be able to leave and let them.

20:42Jawad MirI think that's what Michael Kahn does now, Spielberg's editor. Like, he has, he just basically... He works on Avid. He switched on Avid, like, 10 years ago, but he…

20:49Steve HicknerHe switched on Avid on,.. What was the... I forget what was the movie. It was

20:55Jawad MirThe War Horse, War Horse.

20:58Steve HicknerYeah.

20:58Jawad MirYeah.

20:58Steve HicknerBecause he physically couldn't do it anymore.

21:01Jawad MirYeah.

21:01Steve HicknerAnd his back hurt too much.

21:03Jawad MirYeah. So he, I think he has, like, a team now who sort of works with him, and I guess that's, that…

21:09Steve HicknerHe must be getting close to 90, I would guess maybe.

21:12Jawad MirI think he's 80 something.

21:14Steve HicknerYeah.

21:14Jawad MirEarly 80s.

21:16Steve Hickner80.

21:16Jawad MirBut yeah, no. And another is I actually, you know, it's funny, I didn't, never noticed the editing, of Nick Fletcher as after, until after our conversation about Prince of Egypt. And then I went back and saw all these movies and it was like he was involved in every one of almost every DreamWorks movie, up until, you know, 2010 at least. But yeah, he's, he's done a marvelous job in a lot of stuff.

21:41Steve HicknerYeah. Very clever, really clever, editor. But his training in with Richard Williams, everybody to a person, if you can last through that Richard Williams boot camp and stay with him, you are at the top of the, your field. Every single person I've ever worked with who spent really any time with Richard Williams was excellent. Dick demanded excellence from everybody. He himself was, at the highest level. And so if you could stay with him, you were good.

22:17Jawad MirGreat. One thing I really loved about, Bee Movie, obviously the detail and the animation, but there was several times, whenever they were actually the character, like Jerry and, his colleague, his friend, I forget the character's name.

22:33Steve HicknerAdam? Adam Flemming?

22:34Jawad MirYeah.

22:34Steve HicknerThe…

22:35Jawad MirLike when they're walking…

22:36Steve Hickner... Adam Florick.

22:37Jawad MirYeah. When they're walking in the, you know, i… in the bee factory and you can see all these details, like the bees walking in the background and there's long... Like, there are, there's a couple of times when there's long tracking shot, like one, you know, take. Was that... And I felt a lot of David Lean and Spielberg in that. Like, you know, you're trying to show the environment that they're in, while showing them conversing, and the character building, and the story moving forward. How, I don't think I've seen that before as much as I saw in the B… Bee Movie. Am I correct or am I wrong here?

23:10Steve HicknerI think, getting the... If I step back for a sec, one of the things that took us forever to get was what that bee world looked like. Because at first it was gonna be a bee version of New York.

23:23Jawad MirOkay.

23:24Steve HicknerAnd the first test that we did immediately showed that was not gonna be the right solution. Because when you cut from the bee world to the human world, you couldn't tell the difference. And so, that was cut. The other thing is by n… by its nature, comedy filmmaking is better if you back off. You can't get too fussy with your cinema and everything with c… with, comedy because it's so easy to kill it.

23:59Jawad MirI guess, yeah.

23:59Steve HicknerThere's nothing easier than killing a joke. And so we would... There's probably or maybe more close-ups, than you might u… use in a regular movie, and longer takes so that you don't break up the comedy.

24:13Jawad MirYeah.

24:13Steve HicknerYou just let the actors act.

24:17Jawad MirWhich I thought was great to see. And I think e… even in, like, non-comic situations, like when it's emotional, like, you know, you see, y… you see a lot of movies nowadays where you just get completely cut from the emotion because it cut from, you know, to a medium shot from a close-up or vice versa. And building that Bee world, I... So, for me personally, and this is just me personally, I found it was interesting because Antz starred Woody Allen.

24:45Steve HicknerYeah.

24:45Jawad MirAnd it was about the world of ants, right? And, like, and Jerry Seinfeld, another comedian.

24:50Steve Hicknerhuh.

24:50Jawad MirAnd they both have very distinctive voices, and you're in… being introduced to this world through them. How difficult w… was it, I guess I shouldn't say difficult, how... Did you go and see a lot of Seinfeld stuff after, you know, before you started working, or was it just like you had…

25:07Steve HicknerAs I was... You know what the funny thing was, I lived in England for the first, five years of Seinfeld. And so I never saw an episode of Seinfeld for the fir… for, until I got back.

25:25Jawad MirYeah.

25:25Steve HicknerAnd so, I had no imp… in... I'd heard of the show Seinfeld, I knew it was a big hit, and, Nick actually had some videos of s… the Seinfeld show that occasionally he would show in editing, and we could look at it. That was my only contact with the Seinfeld show, 'cause I wasn't in England at the time when it was a hit over here. And, so I was behind the ball on that. And then in, '99, nine, 2000, I moved back to…

25:58Jawad MirYeah

25:58Steve Hickner... England again. So when the show was wrapping, I also left. I also wasn't here. So there was a great period of the Seinfeld show where I was not living in the United States, where I didn't have that sense of what a phenomenon the show was because I didn't live here.

26:13Jawad MirYeah.

26:13Steve HicknerSo I saw a lot of it on DVD, a lot of episodes.

26:18Jawad MirBut you saw them…

26:19Steve HicknerThat's how I caught up

26:20Jawad Mir... Oh, so but did you get caught up while you were doing, making Bee Movie, or was it after?

26:24Steve HicknerYes, both. I had seen some before, but then I really caught up making Bee Movie. That's how I saw the episodes. They gave me a DVD set of them all, and I watched them all. Like, when I'd watch an episo… every day when I would exercise, I'd watch a different episode.

26:38Jawad MirI wonder…

26:38Steve HicknerAnd I watched them all in order. So I saw…

26:41Jawad MirWell, there's an arc in Seinfeld. Like, there's a huge…

26:43Steve HicknerYeah

26:43Jawad Mir... Arc of characters, and especially in the last three or four seasons, right?

26:47Steve HicknerAnd there's a difference, with Larry David and without Larry David. I mean, once, I think once Larry David left the show, the wheels were off as far as Jerry was concerned, and now it became less and less tethered in reality. You would get the Bizarro world, and you would get…

27:06Jawad MirYeah

27:06Steve Hickner... Shows that were a little more, out there.

27:09Jawad MirYeah.

27:10Steve HicknerIs that Jerry was leaning into the playfulness of the show, the inventiveness more.

27:16Jawad MirFor sure.

27:16Steve HicknerDon't you think so? The first seasons are more grounded than they later became.

27:20Jawad MirI think, yeah, I... The funny thing is it's one show that I saw again when it came on Netflix last year. Like, I sat with my wife, and we watched the entire series, over a course of five, six months. But you're right because if you even look at the, George's character in the first three season, he's a bit different. He's not really the loser type as he becomes later in the show, but it's done very distinctively. But you're right, the show was very grounded before Larry Da… while Larry David was there, and then after that it was just kinda like anything is possible in Jerry's world, right? Like it…

27:54Steve HicknerYeah, and it was…

27:54Jawad Mir... Could come up with the m…

27:55Steve HicknerIt was really fun like that. I love that he went that way.

28:00Jawad MirYeah. Like, I mean, and any other show is like, "What are you doing?" But with i… in Seinfeld it was just like, you know, you will have Elaine dancing and kicking, and then you'll have, like, the rooster cock fight, like cockfighting. I mean, who thinks of those things, right? Like, you don't think of that in mainstream sh… sh… show. But, what I wanted to ask you, I wonder if you had seen Seinfeld, because the thing with Jerry Seinfeld is his humor is very different. Like, you have to be very witty to understand his comic, comedy. And unless... Like for me, I got Bee Movie because I knew Jerry Seinfeld from Seinfeld.

28:35Steve HicknerRight.

28:36Jawad MirRight? Like his character. If I had not known Seinfeld, I wonder if I had understood Bee Movie as I did, and I wonder if that…

28:45Steve HicknerYou know what's weird? When we were making the movie, the assumption was that it was going to be the Seinfeld audience was gonna go see it. When the movie came out, in fact it was not that at all.

28:58Jawad MirReally?

28:58Steve HicknerIt was the kids that made that movie. It was not the Seinfeld people. The people who made Bee Movie had ne… were too young to have ever seen Seinfeld.

29:08Jawad MirThat's interesting.

29:10Steve HicknerYeah. When it, when it was, in the theaters, the audience was completely young kids. Maybe some Seinfeld people, but mostly young kids. I think since then, it might have grown and became, I think, the number one meme in the United States. In two, 2017, Bee Movie was, like, the number one meme.

29:29Jawad MirOh, was it? Okay. I didn't know. Okay.

29:32Steve HicknerAccording to Vanity Fair, I think that was.

29:35Jawad MirGot it. Was there any technological breakthrough in this film? Because I find with,.. I think Kung Fu Panda came a year after this…

29:45Steve HicknerYeah

29:45Jawad Mir... Or six months after this, and I was just speaking to Mark Osborne and John Stevenson for w… we did an episode on Kung Fu Panda, and the detail in Kung Fu Panda is just another level. But if you look at…

29:56Steve HicknerYeah, it's fantastic

29:56Jawad Mir... But if you look at Bee Movie, I mean, it's nothing short of that, but the only time I felt was, m… I mean, looking back, at the time it was groundbreaking, but just looking back at it, I felt the world, the Bee world to this day is timeless. Like, it just, the detail of the fur, the movement. When it came to human characters, especially, the character that was played by Renée Z… Zellweger…

30:19Steve HicknerVanessa

30:20Jawad Mir... Yeah, Vanell… it wasn't, I don't know if it was intentional, it wasn't… Up to par now as it is, as the Bee…

30:27Steve HicknerYeah

30:27Jawad Mir... The Bee world was.

30:28Steve HicknerNo question. And we had, like, less time to animate it and a larger crew. The great thing that Kung Fu Panda had, and why it is so good, especially the first one, which is…

30:42Jawad MirYeah

30:42Steve Hickner... Which I love, is that they had a smaller crew and a long time to make that movie. So the animation level is fantastic. We had a shorter time with a bigger crew, and it's always better to have fewer people for longer time.

30:58Steve HicknerSo no, our technological br… breakthrough was the anti-technological breakthrough. 'Cause at the time there was a great discussion about 3D, and movies were going into 3D.

31:11Jawad MirRight, yes.

31:11Steve HicknerAnd there was a discussion whether to try to get Bee Movie made in 3D, and Simon Smith, who comes out of layout, was adamantly opposed to it, for the reason that he said, "We can't make this movie in 3D." Like 90% of our shots, I don't know what the real percentage is, but a huge percentage of the shots is Barry, when he… Barry's with Vanessa, is Barry like a quarter of an inch from the camera lens.

31:41Steve HicknerAnd Vanessa's across the room. So if you did it in 3D, you would see that they're supposed to be right next to each other, but they were nowhere near each other. That's why, many times we could not move the camera because if the character's that close to the camera, if you move, they swing right out of the shot.

32:01Jawad MirYeah.

32:02Steve HicknerThey're, so the scale difference between, Barry and Vanessa was so massive that we had to use that cheat of putting it so close to the camera, so we never could have done that movie in 3D or at least not the way we did it.

32:19Jawad MirYeah, no, I'm glad you didn't because, I mean, I know there are some sequences in there, like, which also I always, I was reminded of, like, Star Wars, like the TIE fighter, like when the, you know, Barry is just going through the rain and through the alleyways and everything. But you mentioned about, you know, sizes, and I remember thinking about this when I saw the film when it came out. Like, how difficult was it to deal with that, you know, the size difference in every shot when Vanessa and, Barry were together? Like, was it very challenging or?

32:49Steve HicknerIt was constantly, and it was in the storyboarding. It was in all the time. We constantly had to put things next to Barry that remind you of the scale. And in general, we never did, like, choker close-ups on Barry. Very fre…

33:06Jawad MirOkay

33:06Steve Hickner... A close-up on Barry would be more like what I am right now.

33:09Jawad MirYeah.

33:09Steve HicknerBecause…

33:10Jawad MirI…

33:10Steve Hickner... The minute, if you go from a close-up head to a close-up head, like a close-up head of Vanessa to a close-up head of Barry, they begin to look like they're the same size.

33:18Jawad MirExactly. Yeah.

33:19Steve HicknerAnd so you don't want that. So you can have a close-up of Vanessa or Ken or whoever the human is, but when you go back to Barry you need to be wider so that you see more of his body. And you need to have, cues around him that tell you, reinforce, like putting him next to a pencil, a thimble, a box to constantly, a microphone, constantly reminding you that he's only this big.

33:48Jawad MirYeah. I noticed that in the court scene, and I noticed that in the kitchen scene, Vanessa's kitchen scene, like, when you see, like, the bottle of jam or honey or…

33:57Steve HicknerYeah

33:57Jawad Mir... You know, obviously the m… the grocery store when he's flying around the honey, yeah, bottles. Which I, which the Ra… Ray Liotta thought, that part I thought was hilarious. I mean, that was…

34:06Steve HicknerYeah, it was so sad when Ray Liotta died recently because…

34:09Jawad MirYeah

34:09Steve Hickner... He was such a trooper. He was such a good sport about playing that role and making fun of himself. He really leaned into it. He was completely uninhibited about doing it.

34:20Jawad MirYeah, no, I think I was watching the commentary track and Jerry and yourself and a bunch of others, Simon said the same thing, that he's one of these only actors who can make you laugh, who can make you cry, and at the same time, he can make fun of himself. Like, it's very rare in Hollywood to have someone like that.

34:36Steve HicknerYeah, he was such a good sport.

34:39Jawad MirYeah. Was there any kind of inspiration of Goodfellas that you guys wanted to bring in to that intentionally? I mean, like…

34:45Steve HicknerWell, we had Goodfella, we had one…

34:47Jawad MirI, yeah, I felt that, yeah

34:48Steve Hickner... We have that line.

34:49Jawad MirYeah.

34:49Steve Hickner"He's not a good fella, he's a bad fella."

34:52Jawad MirFella, yeah.

34:53Steve HicknerWhen Jerry says that and, you know, the laugh that he does, you know, I remember when we were doing that thing, Jerry said, he said, "Ray, will you do that laugh that you did in Goodfella?" And he goes, "Okay." And so he did that. When he does that laugh, he does the same…

35:10Jawad MirYeah

35:10Steve Hickner... Laugh from, that he did in Goodfella. So he was completely willing to, you know, do whatever we wanted. He was, he was a c… a great sport about it, as were all the actors. They were, we had such a good cast on that movie.

35:24Jawad MirYeah.

35:25Steve HicknerMy God.

35:25Jawad MirJohn Goodman.

35:26Steve HicknerAnd all of his, comedian friends. Oh boy, it was like…

35:31Jawad MirI, you know, it's funny, I didn't realize that until recently. I didn't pick it up at the time when it came out and now maybe I'm more exposed to, like, you know, stand-up comedy. Like, it was all, like, his friends and it, and it…

35:43Steve HicknerYes, it's all his friends. If you, if you look at Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, all of his…

35:48Jawad MirYeah

35:48Steve Hickner... Friends are in the movie and were writing it.

35:51Jawad MirAnd I think that's what made it work because he knew those people in real life, and the chemistry was there. Even with John Goodman's character, the, you know, the lawyer, like it was just phenomenal.

36:01Steve HicknerWasn't even... Many of the roles were written specifically for his friends.

36:04Jawad MirYes.

36:05Steve HicknerLike, he always intended, 'cause Matthew Broderick is, like, his best friend. He always intended Matthew Broderick to play that role. So we knew that it was gonna be Matthew Broderick.

36:16Jawad MirYeah. That's really cool.

36:17Steve HicknerAnd I'm a huge fan of Matthew Broderick. I love Matthew Broderick from the first time I saw him in, at the Ahmanson in Los Angeles, when I saw him in Bright Beach Memoirs, the Neil Simon play. And, it's like, wow, this guy's fan… he's like a young Jack Lemmon. He's fantastic. He can do drama and comedy. And of course, then he became a big star with, you know, Ferris Bueller and War Games. But I always loved Matthew Broderick, so I was thrilled to get to use him.

36:48Jawad MirW… were they w… in the, in the scenes, you know, where Chris Rock is with Jerry or John Goodman or Matthew, were they all simultaneously in those specific scenes? Were they together or were they separate?

37:01Steve HicknerJerry always recorded with every actor.

37:03Jawad MirGood. Okay.

37:04Steve HicknerThe only one he didn't is one time he couldn't come to the, Megan Mullally recording session where she does the tour of Hunax. I think that's the only session in the entire movie that Jerry wasn't there, for that one da… And I wish he had been there, but for some reason, I can't recall why, he couldn't make it, is that, Megan, I think, was getting ready to do Young Frankenstein on Broadway. We had this window and for some reason, it was in LA and Jerry couldn't be in LA.

37:32Jawad MirGot it.

37:32Steve HicknerAnd he, and for some reason he couldn't, we couldn't patch him in either. I forget what it was. But in every single other session he was in the room with the actor.

37:43Jawad MirAnd, I think it was it Bee Movie that I was watching the making of, where some of the scenes were not ne… necessarily by Jerry or the main cast, but there was, like, a lot of these features where you have, deleted scenes and, like, storyboard deleted scenes, like how the ending was and all that. But there was also a part where you actually see animators physically acting out the scenes. Like, was there anyone, like, you know how they do that…

38:09Steve HicknerOh, yeah. They always do that on every movie. Animators…

38:11Jawad MirThey do that r… recently, right?

38:12Steve HicknerOn every movie.

38:14Jawad MirBut when…

38:15Steve HicknerOn everything

38:15Jawad Mir... Was it like that with the Prince of Egypt time, too, at the time?

38:19Steve HicknerYes. Yeah, they always shoot reference video.

38:23Jawad MirI…

38:23Steve HicknerThat's how they get the, auth… just they all…

38:26Jawad MirI see

38:27Steve Hickner... Go into rooms where they shoot their own performances so they can get…

38:32Jawad MirI didn't, I thought it was something that was introduced around mid, like, early 2000s because I never saw it in Prince of Egypt features. It was just, like, more, like, the recordings, but that's good to know. That's, that's, I mean, it makes sense.

38:44Steve HicknerNot, the technology didn't make it as easy as it is now. Now that it's so easy to do it, you can do it on your phone.

38:53Jawad MirOh, yeah. Yeah.

38:54Steve HicknerIf you quickly needed something, like, it, when, if you wanted to do it alone, you could hold up your phone and act and capture it for yourself right there…

39:03Jawad MirYeah

39:03Steve Hickner... If you don't have time to go into a room. It's just the tools are so available now that, yeah, they, all of them are done like that. It's that…

39:12Jawad MirI think, I think they did that heavily with, Fantastic Mr. Fox, with George Clooney. I don't know if you've seen that movie.

39:19Steve HicknerYeah, I love it.

39:20Jawad MirYeah. It's great movie. And, like, you know, you see him, like, eating cereal and, like, there's, like, a small crew, like, four or five people in the room, and they're just, like, recording on a camcorder and just for reference purposes, which is great. And I'm, this is, I, this was, I wasn't aware of the fact that they did that in Prince of Egypt, too, which is good to know.

39:38Steve HicknerYeah. Maybe not as

39:41Jawad MirIntense?

39:42Steve Hickner... Much. I don't know if then we, they have reference and stuff. Sometimes they just do it in the mirror.

39:47Jawad MirYeah.

39:47Steve HicknerBut, it's so much better to do it on video.

39:51Jawad MirNo, for sure. Jerry mentioned in the, on the commentary track that there was so much mater… I mean, that's with every movie, that when you write it, that you have enough material for to make it two movies. You know, like, you take out so much stuff. But I think it was Jerry, maybe yourself and K… Simon were talking about that there was enough stuff in there to turn it into three films if they wanted to. That was so much…

40:14Steve HicknerWell…

40:14Jawad Mir... That was taken out

40:14Steve Hickner... There has never been, and I don't think ever will be, a movie in the history of animation that will have as many recording sessions as we had on Bee Movie because no other movie has the main actor in the room with you every single day so that you can constantly be recording. We were recording almost every day of that three and a half years, and sometimes multiple times in the day.

40:39Jawad MirWow.

40:40Steve HicknerIf we were in editing, if we were in edit, there w… there was no s… Normally, you have a temp track of scratch actors doing lines. We never had a temp line of G… of Jerry in the movie because he was always there. So if we were in editing and we got a better idea for a line, Jerry would just record it right there in editing. We'd cut it right in. So there's never been a movie that has as many recording sessions or ever will be, I think, as we had at Bee Movie. It was, we were s… spoiled. It was such a luxury to never have any scratch dialogue on your main actor and to have the, that, accessibility to the main person so you can constantly be changing stuff. And…

41:23Jawad MirAnd…

41:23Steve Hickner... I think that they always say that, you know, we have enough movies to make, you know…

41:27Jawad MirYeah

41:27Steve Hickner... Five 'cause m… five movies. I'm always saying, "I just want enough to make one good movie."

41:33Jawad MirExactly.

41:33Steve HicknerI don't care about the other four…

41:34Jawad MirOne great…

41:34Steve Hickner... That aren't good.

41:34Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

41:35Steve HicknerLet's just make the one movie that's good.

41:38Jawad MirW… was there anything that was taken out that you felt very strong about, that you felt very clear?

41:44Steve HicknerThere were things that I liked. They all went out for a reason. There was, there's…

41:48Jawad MirYeah

41:48Steve Hickner... I never felt anything was taken out that I go, "Oh, I wish that was back in." There were things that were fun, but you just have to lose them. I mean, we had a, like, an ending to the movie where it was on, Central Park.

42:04Jawad MirYeah. I've seen, yeah.

42:06Steve HicknerWhere Barry was perf… was performing in Julius Caesar. That was, it was funny, but it was cut because it didn't fit anymore.

42:18Jawad MirYeah.

42:18Steve HicknerAnd then we had a scene with Apollo Jackson at Barry at J Gate which was k… kind of good and exciting, but it ha… it had to be cut. So there are things that exist, but you're, you're looking for the best version of the movie, and if you have to cut something, you have to do it.

42:35Jawad MirOf course.

42:35Steve HicknerSo I never feel like, oh… I wanna go back and put stuff in. I like, personally, I like a very lean movie that's no longer than it, than it can be. I l… like in, like Woody Allen used to always say, "An 82 minutes is perfect for a comedy." And…

42:54Jawad MirYeah

42:54Steve Hickner... I long for the days when movies were 90 minutes. They're always like 2 hours and 20 minutes or 3 hours, and it's like, "How come they can make Citizen Kane under two hours and you can't make a Marvel movie under two hou… like, really?"

43:10Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, I fe… I was talking to this about, to Mark Osborne. You know, we were talking about

43:19Steve HicknerHe's such a nice guy, Mark.

43:21Jawad MirOh, God, both of them, John Stevenson…

43:22Steve HicknerBoth of them.

43:23Jawad MirYeah. They're, they were very, nice enough to talk in detail about Kung Fu Panda, and they, you couldn't even tell that they were, you know, they directed Kung Fu Panda. It was just like such an easy conversation. Same thing with you too. It's just so easy to talk to you as well.

43:39Steve HicknerYeah. D… I love John and Mark. Last time I saw Mark, he had just done The Little Prince, and I saw it. I was at a film festival in Brazil, oddly enough… ... And there he was. And so I haven't seen him since then. I haven't seen, John in some time, but I loved working with John Stevenson.

43:59Jawad MirYeah. No, Mark was saying, I was talking to Mark about that how, no matter what genre it is, you know, action, comedy, documentaries, a narrative, animation, when the first film comes out of any kind of, let's say, a franchise, the reason they work is because they're so character and story focused, right? Like, you look at the first Jurassic Park, you look at, the first Toy Story, like, all these films that are made, and when the sequel comes, then you have to come up with all these new characters, and then all that…

44:29Steve HicknerWhich you don't ha… I don't know why they always feel that, but you don't…

44:34Jawad MirWell…

44:34Steve Hickner... Have to. Mine the characters that are there. You know, you don't have…

44:38Jawad MirI…

44:38Steve Hickner... To add all these new ones.

44:40Jawad MirI completely agree, but then the question is…

44:42Steve HicknerBut they don't do it.

44:44Jawad MirBut the question is then from, okay, so I'm look… I'm being, I'm speaking like a studio head now.

44:48Steve HicknerYeah.

44:49Jawad MirIs like, okay, well, w… people have already seen what they have seen. They wanna see something new, and let's make it bigger. Like j… I don't know if you've seen the most recent Jurassic World…

44:58Steve HicknerNo

44:58Jawad Mir... Movie that came out. Like, that was the f… they just, the theatrical release was 2 hours and 25 minutes, but they just, they released the DVD, which was 2 hours and 42 minutes.

45:10Steve HicknerWow.

45:10Jawad MirAnd it was, I mean, it was a lot of characters because you had the original series characters…

45:14Steve HicknerYeah

45:14Jawad Mir... And the new one. But yeah, I wonder why that is. I mean, it's just something I…

45:19Steve HicknerI think it's a sign of weakness. I think it's a sign that the people don't realize that there's places to mine with that character because Toy Story didn't do that.

45:29Jawad MirNo, yeah.

45:29Steve HicknerToy Story 2…

45:29Jawad MirI just kinda blurred that out, yeah

45:30Steve Hickner... Toy Story 2 is not full of a whole bunch of new characters. It's focusing on the Buzz and Woody story in another way. They did add Jessie, but Jessie was part of the Woody story.

45:44Jawad MirYeah.

45:44Steve HicknerIt wasn't just…

45:44Jawad MirI…

45:44Steve Hickner... Throwing in a new character, and I think that's why Pixar has been able to make four Toy Story movies that are all excellent. I was just talking about this in class yesterday. I said, "I can't think of another franchise, another series that has four mov… that was not meant to be four series." Like, Harry Potter's good, but that was meant to be that. But…

46:06Jawad MirYeah

46:06Steve Hickner... Toy Story was not meant to be that, and yet it's four excellent movies across the f…

46:14Jawad MirBut I wonder if that…

46:15Steve HicknerThey never lost track. It's Buzz and Woody.

46:17Jawad MirNo, for sure, and I said To… Toy Story for the sake of saying, to, a name. But, speaking of Toy Story, what, I wonder if it works with the animation in sequels, obviously a testament goes to the writers as well, is because if you look at Seinfeld, the series, and you look at animation, the one thing I find very similar is they're very quick scenes, and you get the point across…

46:41Steve HicknerYeah

46:41Jawad Mir... In a couple of lines, and boom, and you move on, right? And I think that's probably why it worked with Toy Story, but I don't... Has there been, oh yeah, there's Ice Age. I haven't seen anything other than the first Ice Age. But there's multiple Kung Fu Panda movies I haven't seen, the second or third one. Now they're coming out with a fourth one, I read.

46:58Jawad MirBut yeah, so I wonder if it's just animation, or do you think there are any, well, The Godfather I and II, but aside from those exceptions, can that be achieved in live action as much as it can be in animation?

47:08Steve HicknerYeah, I think the strength is in mining the characters, is that if it's worth doing a sequel, then try to find more things within that charac… I mean, my God, they did 65 episodes of Breaking Bad or something.

47:24Jawad MirYeah.

47:24Steve HicknerBy the time you get to si… episode 65, the cast of Breaking Bad isn't 235 characters. You know what I mean? It didn't just keep getting bigger and bigger, all these new characters. They found ways to make those characters interesting and more complex, and I think that's why Breaking Bad is a masterpiece, and why many of these other things, they just... I remember I took a class from Robert McKee, and he said to be wary of, that there was a difference between complexity and complications. And I think that things like Toy Story series and Breaking Bad are complex stories, but they keep making their stories more and more complex and interesting, and I think some other movies that you've mentioned are just complicated. They just add more stuff…

48:13Jawad MirYeah

48:13Steve Hickner... Because they don't have, they don't have the depth to do it with the characters. But they, you don't ha… I firmly believe you don't have to do that. Otherwise, Breaking Bad would've had, you know, 100 characters by the end of the run. They did 65 episodes.

48:29Jawad MirDid they…

48:29Steve HicknerI'm on the edge of my, I haven't seen the new, the last season of, Better Call Saul.

48:33Jawad MirI was just gonna ask you.

48:34Steve HicknerI'm riveted in that show, and they're not adding new characters all the time. It's the sa… it's Gustavo. It's, you know, it's the same characters. But I am totally into them.

48:45Jawad MirYeah, I mean, I'm not gonna talk about it because you haven't finished it, but I found in some odd way, not entirely, Better Call Saul was a little better than the Breaking Bad. And that is not…

48:58Steve HicknerWhich is astounding.

48:59Jawad MirYeah

49:00Steve HicknerI mean, I might agree with you. I haven't seen the last season, but…

49:03Jawad MirThe best season

49:04Steve Hickner... It's astounding that they could do 65 episodes of Breaking Bad, and then do another f… like 40 something episodes of Better Call…

49:12Jawad MirNo, 60. 63.

49:15Steve Hickner63. See…

49:16Jawad MirYeah

49:16Steve Hickner... I think that's, I think that's maybe unprecedented in the history of television to do work of that quality, of that volume.

49:26Jawad MirAnd the last season in, is the best season of the series. And originally, I don't know if you know, Better Call Saul was gonna be like a 30-minute, show about Saul Goodman just me… taking on clients. That's what it was, the original idea was.

49:40Steve HicknerYeah.

49:40Jawad MirAnd it just kinda went from there to this whole... And it's so weird, right? Like, I was watching when I saw the first, second season, I'm like, "How the hell are they gonna tie it in…

49:52Steve HicknerYeah

49:52Jawad Mir... With Breaking Bad?" And then when you watch the last season, of course it did happen around Breaking Bad time. Like, you're, you're convinced…

50:01Steve HicknerYeah

50:02Jawad Mir... That it wa… it was organically was happening. It's not like they forced into it. It was with fantastic…

50:06Steve HicknerAnd I felt the same way when I saw that El Camino, that they took that…

50:10Jawad MirYeah

50:10Steve Hickner... Movie and added it onto Breaking Bad. I think Vince Gilligan is like a genius.

50:16Jawad MirYeah.

50:16Steve HicknerI think he's like a one of a kind to have done what he's done with that. We're supposed to talk about Bee Movie, but…

50:22Jawad MirI know, I know.

50:23Steve Hickner... I can't help but talk about…

50:24Jawad MirIt's…

50:25Steve Hickner... The genius of that guy 'cause it's so impressive.

50:29Jawad MirYeah. No, this is good. I like having open conversations, so this is, this is all good. Going back to the storytelling of Bee Movie, one thing, I don't know if you noticed this, I mean, I've seen Seinfeld so many times that I picked up on this, and I don't know if it was intentional on Jerry's part, the series of episodes in Seinfeld where they are trying to make a show called Jerry, and they go to NBC and propose this, make this pitch that's like it's a, you know, you get into an accident with this guy, and the judge decrees the guy to be Jerry's butler. I don't know if you remember that. There's a whole…

51:07Steve HicknerAnd I think that comes from, you know, Jerry was on that show Benson.

51:12Jawad MirYeah.

51:13Steve HicknerAnd he was fired from the show Benson.

51:16Jawad MirOkay. So it comes, it comes from that. Because I always w…

51:18Steve HicknerSo I wouldn't be surprised if... And Benson had a butler, right? Didn't it?

51:24Jawad MirYeah. Because I…

51:25Steve HicknerYeah

51:25Jawad Mir... I saw, I saw the similarities with the court thing with the Bee Movie premise, too. Like, how he's trying to go…

51:30Steve HicknerI think Jerry just likes, courtroom dramas probably.

51:35Jawad MirYeah.

51:35Steve HicknerBecause they're, they're very dialogue-heavy, and they're, there's drama. You can't go in a court... It's why there are so many courtroom shows. The minute you're in a courtroom, there's drama.

51:47Jawad MirYeah. No, that's, that's true. And I…

51:50Steve HicknerAnd you can't hide from it.

51:53Jawad MirNo.

51:53Steve HicknerYou have to answer questions. You can't hide. It's really, charged. It's a great place.

51:58Jawad MirAnd that's something that he mentioned, I think, in the commentary track of Bee Movie, too, is that... And, when I heard that, I'm like, okay, that makes sense about Seinfeld, too, is that he, with Bee Movie, he wanted the locations to change…

52:11Steve HicknerYeah

52:11Jawad Mir... Constantly, obviously, you know, relevant to the script. And that's the same thing was because if... Movement, right? In any kind of storytelling and location changing with an…

52:21Steve HicknerTempo with comedy is very important.

52:23Jawad MirYeah. And it, and it works so well. And Jerry, the, Bee, the character that Jerry plays, Bee, Benson, he's in almost every single frame, of the film.

52:34Steve HicknerYeah, he's in there. They almost never cut away from, Barry.

52:41Jawad MirWa… was that something that obviously came with the writing, or was that something that was intentional, or?

52:47Steve HicknerProbably because, it's, is, it probably happened just by the nature that when you cut away from him, it's less,.. The thing you worry about is you just lost the comedy.

53:01Jawad MirYeah.

53:03Steve HicknerIs that now it's going to be like exposition and just storytelling. Jerry allows the absurdity of the whole thing to keep working, and I think the feeling was that if you pull him out of the shot, it becomes a normal world. What keeps this whole thing like lu… kind of ludicrous is the talking bee.

53:29Jawad MirYeah. And I learned something new from that movie about, you know, the, it was done so well in a way, like, there was all this witty humor. But there was so much educational element to it. And that was something that was never done before. I mean, go figure what... It's so obvious to make a film on the bee world, but nobody did but Jerry. You know what I mean? Like, it's just so…

53:51Steve HicknerYeah

53:51Jawad Mir... It's right there sitting in front of us, but nobody tapped into that.

53:56Steve HicknerYeah. And I was just thinking about what you said about Jerry's on it all the time. It's like I, when I would, was young and would watch, like, the Marx Brothers, I didn't like it when they cut away from the Marx Brothers. I don't care about the other guys. You know, I don't want a m… a movie full of the love interest.

54:13Jawad MirYeah.

54:13Steve HicknerI want... That's why, to me, Duck Soup is my favorite of the Marx Brothers movies because they don't bother cut… No, they don't bother with the other characters. It's all their stuff. It's, it's such a fun movie.

54:27Jawad MirWell, then it, that kinda reminds me of all the, Warner Brothers and Disney cartoons from the '40. Like, you know, Donald Duck will have his own cartoon, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck.

54:38Steve HicknerYeah.

54:38Jawad MirAnd you never cut away from them in the five minutes. It's literally focused on them, and that's why they worked because that's what people were tuning in to watch. I wanna watch Daffy Duck today, or I wanna watch…

54:47Steve HicknerYeah, you wanna watch…

54:48Jawad Mir... What you think…

54:48Steve Hickner... Jerry Seinfeld in a movie. You don't wanna see the guy who's the dry cleaner.

54:54Jawad MirYeah

54:54Steve HicknerAnd what his story is.

54:56Jawad MirWas, so is there been any kind of a, I know s… Jerry didn't wanna do a sequel and anything, not that I have any intentions of watching a sequel or a TV series, but you figure a story like Bee Movie can easily transform into a TV series. Like, was there any conversation about that ever?

55:12Steve HicknerI don't think, first of all, as I said, Jerry only wants to do stuff that he does everything. I don't think that s… Jerry has any interest in writing a television series about Bear. That would be a huge amount of work, and how would you keep up the quality? To me, it's all of the work and none of the, payoff.

55:33Jawad MirBut I wonder…

55:34Steve HicknerAll it would do is weaken him.

55:36Jawad MirI wonder…

55:36Steve HicknerHe's written the best show in history, comedy show in history.

55:39Jawad MirNo.

55:39Steve HicknerI don't think, or one of the best comedy shows in history. Why would you wanna have, like, the 50th best?

55:45Jawad MirI know. I agree with you. What I'm asking was, and maybe I should rephrase the question, I don't know who owns, well, obviously DreamWorks owns the rights to this story, right? Like, and now Universal. I wonder if they can make a show without Jerry.

55:57Steve HicknerI don't know.

55:57Jawad MirI mean, it's not gonna work.

55:59Steve HicknerI don't know why you'd wanna see it.

56:01Jawad MirI don't.

56:01Steve Hickner'Cause it's…

56:01Jawad MirI don't. I'm just wondering if they have a…

56:03Steve HicknerDo you wanna see a Marx Brothers movie without Groucho? I don't.

56:06Jawad MirNo. I'm not talking about me. I'm just talking about…

56:09Steve HicknerI know, I know

56:09Jawad Mir... I'm talking about how studios work. That's what they…

56:12Steve HicknerYeah

56:12Jawad Mir... Always cash in on, right? Like, it's just a…

56:14Steve HicknerYeah

56:14Jawad Mir... I'm surprised they haven't done that.

56:16Steve HicknerI think everybody knows there's no, there's no Bee Movie without Jerry.

56:21Jawad MirThat makes sense. That makes…

56:22Steve HicknerThere are, you can do, maybe find someone else to do the voice of Po maybe. Although Jack Black is so... You can't…

56:29Jawad MirWell, he's in the TV series, right? They, he's…

56:32Steve HicknerYeah, you can't…

56:32Jawad MirYeah

56:32Steve Hickner... You can't do it with…

56:34Jawad MirIt's, it's like Mike Myers' Shrek, Jerry being Bee, and then…

56:39Steve HicknerYeah

56:39Jawad Mir... Jack Black being, Po.

56:41Steve HicknerExcept even more so because Jerry wrote…

56:44Jawad MirTrue

56:45Steve Hickner... And the only example that he wrote it. So he really is in that DNA of that character in a way that those other people aren't. I'm…

56:55Jawad MirYeah

56:55Steve Hickner... In fact, I can't think of another animated, the only one that's close to that, I would say, is Robin Williams as the Genie because he wrote so much of that material himself.

57:05Jawad MirOh, he did?

57:06Steve HicknerWell, he improvised a lot. You can tell. He improv…

57:09Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, he improved.

57:09Steve HicknerThey clearly had written a lot of stuff, but he improvised. So maybe…

57:12Jawad MirThat makes sense

57:13Steve Hickner... Maybe, you know, maybe 40% was, improvised and 60% is the script, or maybe it's even 70% is the script, but he's improvising even the narrative lines so much and making it his, that you can't separate Robin Williams out of that genie.

57:32Jawad MirI wonder why he didn't come in and do any of the DreamWorks films. I mean, that would've been perfect.

57:38Steve HicknerWell, he did, you know…

57:40Jawad MirDid he?

57:40Steve Hickner... He did, Ferngully, and he did

57:44Jawad MirBut Ferngully was 20th Century Fox. That was in the early '90s, 2000s, I think, or late '90s. But I don't think he came in any of the DreamWorks films.

57:54Steve HicknerNo.

57:54Jawad MirRight? No.

57:56Steve HicknerNo. Well, there was that, you remember, there was that incident when Aladdin came out where Jeffrey had promised not to, use Robin Williams in commercials, and somehow they used him in a commercial.

58:11Jawad MirOh, I don't know about this story.

58:12Steve HicknerYeah.

58:14Jawad MirThat's okay. We don't have to get into it…

58:15Steve HicknerSo…

58:16Jawad Mir... If it's, if it's controversial.

58:18Steve HicknerSo that, I don't, that might have tainted it. I don't know. I mean, Jeffrey apologized profusely, and he got a, Picasso out of it. But, that might have been a factor. I have no idea. But also, I feel like, oh my God, once Robin Williams had done the Genie…

58:38Jawad MirYeah, there's nothing to top it, right?

58:40Steve Hickner... It's like, how are you gonna come up with something…

58:42Jawad MirYeah

58:42Steve Hickner... To use his talent better than that? I mean, he's incredibly talented. He was an incredibly talented guy, but as an animator, I would be so intimidated having, see, "Well, I can't use that kind of freewheeling, spitballing thing 'cause it…

58:55Jawad MirYeah

58:55Steve Hickner... The Genie did it so well."

58:58Jawad MirOh, he did. And it's, it's the same thing with, Woody and Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story movies, right? Like, I don't know if you saw the most recent Buzz Lightyear film.

59:07Steve HicknerNo.

59:07Jawad MirI didn't like it because there was no Tim Allen. I mean, there's no, I know there's…

59:11Steve HicknerI liked it, but I, whole time I was thinking, "Why didn't they use Tim Allen?"

59:15Jawad MirWell, their whole theory was that it's toys made out of, yeah, toy's voice is always different than the original character, right?

59:23Steve HicknerYeah, but…

59:23Jawad MirLike, I don't know what the reason was

59:24Steve Hickner... I'm a, I'm a toy guy. I could tell you that as for a toy person, they want the original voice in the toy. They don't want a soundalike. You know?

59:35Jawad MirI wonder if it had any kind of political reason behind it, but I was very…

59:38Steve HicknerThey probably wanted someone who's a bigger star than Tim Allen was, but

59:42Jawad MirEven Tom Hanks did it

59:43Steve Hickner... They really could've used Tim Allen. I really loved…

59:45Jawad MirYeah, even Tom Hanks said, after watching the film, he's like, "I didn't realize there was no Tim Allen in Buzz." I mean, which is, you can't have Buzz and Woody without Tim Allen and, you know, Tom Hanks.

59:55Steve HicknerI feel the same way with, like, Dory and

59:59Jawad MirSame thing, yeah

1:00:00Steve Hickner... I mean, Ellen DeGeneres as Dory. She's so perfect as that character. She's so perfect.

1:00:05Jawad MirPerfect.

1:00:05Steve HicknerOr I think Nathan Lane and Timon is brilliant, or Eddie Murphy and Donkey. Those are like the…

1:00:12Jawad MirOh, yeah. Chemistry

1:00:13Steve Hickner... Like, the absolute best marry, marrying of voice and character that it's like Nathan Lane as Timon was brilliant.

1:00:24Jawad MirAnd it's interesting you mention that, right? Like, because when you're watching certain films and you know that who's voicing them, but when it comes to Timon and Pumbaa, and when it comes to Shrek and Donkey, and several other examples, Buzz and Woody too, you just think of them as Buzz and Woody and Shrek and Donkey. Like, you don't think about Tom Hanks, Eddie Murphy…

1:00:45Steve HicknerYeah

1:00:45Jawad Mir... Tim Allen. And that's what, that's a testament to the chemistry that they develop, right? Like, these are real pe…

1:00:49Steve HicknerYeah, 'cause Tom Hanks is an enormous star.

1:00:52Jawad MirHuge.

1:00:52Steve HicknerAnd yet he doesn't, he doesn't, like…... Eclipse the character of Woody. It doesn't become Tom Hanks, is that Tom Hanks and Woody are one person.

1:01:02Jawad MirYeah.

1:01:02Steve HicknerThat's a tribute to the quality writing of the Pixar team to re… allow that, 'cause it would be very easy for the actor to eclipse the character.

1:01:13Jawad MirYeah. Were you involved, or was it more the marketing team, in any of those live action trailers they made with, Jerry Seinfeld? The ones…

1:01:23Steve HicknerYeah, Jerry wrote them with his friend. I mean, we sometimes were in them or something. I think I might have been in one, but not really.

1:01:31Jawad MirThere were two. One was with Spielberg where he pokes fun at Spielberg.

1:01:34Steve HicknerOh, those trailers.

1:01:36Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

1:01:37Steve HicknerOh, yeah. Yeah.

1:01:40Jawad MirWere you involved in…

1:01:40Steve HicknerWe were there when they filmed that, yeah

1:01:43Jawad MirSo, but was that written by Jerry or was that

1:01:45Steve HicknerYes, everything is written…

1:01:48Jawad MirThat's crazy, eh?

1:01:49Steve Hickner... By Jerry. Nothing with him is gonna not be written by him or he's not gonna do it.

1:01:55Jawad MirI guess that's Jerry Seinfeld. I mean, he has the upper hand…

1:01:58Steve HicknerThat's…

1:01:58Jawad MirUpper hand

1:01:58Steve Hickner... That's how you protect your brand.

1:02:00Jawad MirYeah. Yeah.

1:02:01Steve HicknerThat's how you keep it so that's what is... And to Jerry, the most important thing he owns, for him, I can't speak for him, but I suspect he would say this, is he sees him first as a standup comic.

1:02:16Jawad MirIt, I agree.

1:02:17Steve HicknerWhen his…

1:02:17Jawad MirI think I've heard him say that

1:02:17Steve Hickner... When he gets his obituary, someday, when he's in the pantheon of entertainers, standup comic comedian is gonna w… he's gonna want to be the first thing. He, so not TV show, standup comic. That's his…

1:02:35Jawad MirIt's a holy grail.

1:02:37Steve HicknerYes. That's the thing he most identifies with, and so that's what he cares about the most.

1:02:44Jawad MirBut I think, a… a… and you're right, and I think that's true for a lot of, if not a lot, all the comedian, like, even a comedian like Steve Harvey. Like, he has TV shows, but he always talks about being standup comedian. Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy. A… and it's just, I think it's, it's that sense of accomplishment, right? Like, it's almost equivalent to being, winning an Oscar, I think, for a comedian, that I've done standup.

1:03:08Steve HicknerOr even more than that, it's his identity.

1:03:10Jawad MirYeah.

1:03:10Steve HicknerIt's like the great thing about a standup comic, it's just you and a microphone. That's it.

1:03:14Jawad MirAnd the audience, yeah.

1:03:15Steve HicknerAnd you're writing your own material. It's you. There's no net. That's why, comedians have such a close fraternity with one another.

1:03:25Jawad MirYeah.

1:03:25Steve HicknerBecause only another comedian, can understand what it's like to be a comedian.

1:03:33Jawad MirYeah. It's fantastic.

1:03:34Steve HicknerAnd if you're a comedian, it's like in your DNA to them, so…

1:03:38Jawad MirHave you ever seen Jerry in, doing standup? I know he's doing a lot of tours.

1:03:42Steve HicknerYeah, I think, I think maybe three times we went.

1:03:45Jawad MirWas it recently or a while ago, around Bee Movie?

1:03:47Steve HicknerDuring the movie and then after the movie.

1:03:50Jawad MirWell, did you enjoy it?

1:03:52Steve HicknerYeah. Yeah, it's fun.

1:03:54Jawad MirYeah.

1:03:55Steve HicknerBecause

1:03:55Jawad MirAnd that's the... Sorry, go ahead.

1:03:58Steve HicknerHe has that connection with the audience, which is really fun to see.

1:04:03Jawad MirAnd I w… I was gonna say, like, you know, that's what's, we're going off topic, it's all good. That's the thing with standup comedy, is that it's even the people who come to see you in that hall are there to see you.

1:04:16Steve HicknerYeah.

1:04:16Jawad MirThey come for a reason. They'll pay the ticket. They're not being forced to come in. So then when, that's, it's, it's that bond that you have with your audience, and you're just sharing, what, an hour and a half, an hour and 20 minutes with them, and it just becomes, like, a very family type…

1:04:32Jawad Mir... Feeling. About Bee Movie, in terms of production or post-production, any kind of interesting stories or any kind of troubles you guys went through and how you overcame them?

1:04:46Steve HicknerWell, I t… I told you, we had that s… that long thing, what Barry was gonna look like.

1:04:52Jawad MirYeah.

1:04:52Steve HicknerYou know, we did versions that were caricatures of Jerry. We did, you know, more humanized ones with antennas, le… less humanized ones that looked like bees. We had many versions of the bee world before we settled on what it was. And then, and then we had the problem of the color palette with the bee world, is that you don't want a yellow world. That's very boring. So we had to look at honey and wax that, from beehives and get a color palette that would allow us to feel natural in something part of. So we looked at, you know, beehives from all over the world to get different kind, colors of, wax…

1:05:37Jawad MirOh, yeah

1:05:37Steve Hickner... So that we could put that in our, color palette. But it would still feel like it was within the world of a bee and it wasn't, foreign, 'cause you didn't want that. And, you know, when, a lot of times when people think of the beehive, they think of the, actually a wasp nest, that Winnie the Pooh thing with the lines.

1:05:56Jawad MirYeah.

1:05:56Steve HicknerWell, that's not what a beehive looks like. So we weren't gonna do that. We were gonna make it the beehive, which is the honeycomb.

1:06:05Jawad MirAnd y… you worked on Prince of Egypt, which is, like, a completely…

1:06:10Steve HicknerYeah

1:06:10Jawad Mir... Different movie, right? And, obviously that required a lot of research because there was a historical aspect to it and locations and all that stuff. Was there obvious, probably not to that level, was there any kind of research of physically studying all that stuff at this p…

1:06:26Steve HicknerYeah, I mean, I knew about bees 'cause I love animals, so I already know about that. But th… this is really, Bee Movie is more, is, like, closer to a Billy Wilder film than a David Attenborough film.

1:06:42Jawad MirRight. Yeah.

1:06:43Steve HicknerYou know? It's more of, like, social commentary and, analyzing what we're like as people, and then projecting that and using bees kind of to make fun of us.

1:06:53Jawad MirSure. Absolutely.

1:06:54Steve HicknerSo it's, I would say the research is more the study of people. I mean, there is…... Some science in the bees and we have, like, the most rudimentary knowledge. But the idea that people know, you know, people know that there's a hierarchy in the bee world, and there's a queen, and s… and you kinda don't wanna go too deep because then it's not funny.

1:07:18Steve HicknerYou don't wanna have to really expl… you don't wanna become lecturing people about bees. You want 'em to, people know enough to get it, and you can go on with the world.

1:07:29Jawad MirYeah. Yeah, no, that makes sense.

1:07:31Steve HicknerBecause then they won't get the joke. If you went too, inside baseball, as it were, about things that are bees, people wouldn't underst… pe… most people wouldn't know that, and it wouldn't be funny. So you gotta kinda reduce the bee world to the five things that people know, which is they know they have queens. They know they sting people.

1:07:51Jawad MirYeah.

1:07:51Steve HicknerThey have stripes. They have honey, and they have, and they live in wax, you know, beehives. So I mean, if you take those five things, that's enough.

1:08:02Jawad MirMakes sense.

1:08:02Steve HicknerFrom that, those are the building block, blocks for c… comedy.

1:08:06Jawad MirHow was it,.. Was it any different, I'm sure it was, but just wanna hear it from your perspective, working on Prince of Egypt, and then Bee Movie? Like, that was, like, by the time Bee M… Prince of Egypt came out was 1998. Bee Movie started 2004, so that's six years of gap. Obviously, you did a lot of work…

1:08:23Steve HicknerYeah

1:08:24Jawad Mir... As, you know, art department and all that stuff. W… what, which one... And this is not to cause any kind of controversy, but just…

1:08:31Steve HicknerYeah

1:08:31Jawad Mir... More of a personal thing. Which one did you have more fun in? I'm assuming Bee Movie because…

1:08:34Steve HicknerYou know, I live, I loved working on both of them for different reasons. Like…

1:08:39Jawad MirYeah

1:08:39Steve Hickner... I loved working with Brenda Simon and on B… on, Prince of Egypt. It was the first movie at DreamWorks. It was very exciting. It was exhilarating time for the company. We had a fantastic crew. B… Bee Movie's a different kind of a thing. I loved, I loved working with Jerry. I would say that Bee M… Bee Movie is more my personal sensibilities. Like, I…

1:09:03Jawad MirYeah

1:09:03Steve Hickner... I'm totally in the Jerry Seinfeld world of let's just laugh and have fun all day.

1:09:09Jawad MirYes.

1:09:09Steve HicknerYou know? And, the, I did, I have to say, I did love working on Prince of Egypt because of the material was so deep you could do dr… dramatic stuff…

1:09:21Jawad MirYeah

1:09:21Steve Hickner... That was really interesting. I mean, I think our animators were given things to animate in Prince of Egypt, of subtext…

1:09:29Jawad MirRight

1:09:29Steve Hickner... Which is not normally in an animated movie 'cause they were very serious subjects. I feel like same way when we did, that direct-to-video Joseph story. Those, both of the Bible movies, they give you fantastic material to work with. But I mean, given my druthers, I would make a comedy all the time. I love cartoons. That's why I like animation. I w… I really wanna make cartoons. I love cartoons.

1:09:56Jawad MirWere you, were you ever into Animaniacs?

1:09:59Steve HicknerYou know what? There again, I was living in…... London when that was a hit, and so I had friends who worked on it, but I never saw the show until later.

1:10:08Jawad MirSo you did see it, but have you seen the most re…

1:10:10Steve HicknerI did see it 'cause my friend worked on it

1:10:13Jawad MirDid you, have you seen the recent ones that they came out with? I haven't seen them.

1:10:16Steve HicknerNo.

1:10:16Jawad MirYeah.

1:10:16Steve HicknerNever have.

1:10:17Jawad MirYeah. Anything else you wanna add, Steve, that I missed?

1:10:22Steve HicknerNo, I've enjoyed this.

1:10:24Jawad Mirhuh.

1:10:24Steve HicknerI'm gonna have to run to the store pretty s…

1:10:27Jawad MirI have, I've enjoyed this very much, too. And any projects that you're working on?

1:10:30Steve HicknerI don't know if it had too much to do with Bee Movie, but I think we had fun.

1:10:33Jawad MirNo, that... See, the thing is, it, we had a great conversation, but we did talk about Bee Movie in a sense that we didn't overstretch it too much at, just for the sake of it, right? It's like

1:10:42Steve HicknerNo. And, you know, to be absolutely candid, I'm much more interested, and you probably tell that, talking about everybody else's work rather than my own.

1:10:51Jawad MirI know. I know. But, and…

1:10:52Steve HicknerI would, I would sit and s… spend an hour easily talking about Breaking Bad, and The Godfather, and Toy Story, and Finding Dory, and finding new... 'Cause I love, other people's work.

1:11:04Jawad MirMaybe we should…

1:11:04Steve HicknerThere's nothing more fun to me than looking at something, or Kung Fu Panda, than looking at something that's of excellence. I love it.

1:11:12Jawad MirMay… maybe we should do that sometime down the road.

1:11:15Steve HicknerOkay.

1:11:17Jawad MirSounds great. Thank you so much, Steve, for your time, and

1:11:20Steve HicknerAll right

1:11:20Jawad Mir... I hope you have a great weekend.

1:11:22Steve HicknerOkay.

1:11:22Jawad MirTake care.

1:11:23Steve HicknerBye-bye.

1:11:23Jawad MirI hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for watching and listening. Don't forget to subscribe, like, share, and comment, and do come back for another episode. Until then, have a great day.