Everybody Curses, I Swear!

by Carrie Keagan

Jonah: I’m number one in my own eyes. Yeah. I mean, look, I don’t want to be rude but …

  Me: I’m getting top billing in the cocksucking, okay! (To Michael:) Do you know that we’ve been stalking him [Jonah]? Have you heard the stories?

  Michael: No.

  Me: I think we’ve gone to like seventeen of your films now where we’ve been on the set.

  Jonah: A few. Probably like four.

  Me: Uh … huh.

  Jonah: My first interview was with you.

  Me: In Grandma’s Boy you had all boob all the time. He was sucking on a girl’s boobie the entire movie.

  Jonah: No, for a little bit of the movie.

  Me: It was pretty damn good.

  Jonah: I’d like to think I’ve advanced a lot since that time … uh … in my technique of … sucking boob.

  Me: Who was responsible for the flow of hookers and blow on this set?

  Jonah: Ummm …

  Michael: The producers, I guess. I mean, who do you, who does that? I don’t know who does what really. I assume it all just kinda shows up.

  Jonah: Yeah. It just shows up. It just comes together.

  Michael having spilled the beans on the producers, I decided to find out firsthand if that was the case. That led me to a life lesson from producer Judd Apatow that day about how movie sets work in general:

  Me: Who was responsible for the flow of hookers and blow on this set?

  Judd: Well, that is something that naturally happens around all movie sets. A movie is like a little city. So whether or not you’re doing a movie like The Departed or you’re doing Flags of Our Fathers or Superbad, as soon as you start shooting somewhere, cocaine and dealers and hookers will come around and service the crew. That’s just part of the business. You don’t hear much about it. That’s just how the business works.

  Me: So it’s like, would you like a line of blow with your eggs? Is that how it works at catering?

  Judd: Just there’s this guy that’ll sidle up next to you. You’ll see. You go to any movie. Go to a Meryl Streep movie. Got to a Meg Ryan movie. Go to the set. There’s hookers and blow everywhere. It’s part of the business and people understand it. They let it go. But it’s fine.

  Me: It’s not considered cheating then if it’s on the set?

  Judd: No. Of course not. That’s … that’s the ultimate rule of show business.

  Shooting the cameo was great fun. They put me in the party scene where the girl periods on Jonah’s leg. Periods is a verb, right? Then it was back to my filthy interview with them. Having discussed the central issue of hookers and blow, I moved on to the socio-political quandary of the ham sandwich dilemma. Which is this: Let’s say you’re in an orgy, and you’re going down on a girl. Suddenly, it feels like you’re getting the greatest blowjob ever. You look down and see a four-hundred-pound sweaty dude jerking you off with a ham sandwich. The dilemma is: Do you let him finish? Do you blow your load or hit the road?

  Michael: Why did I come to this orgy with this four-hundred-pound guy who always pulls this ham sandwich thing? Why did I get myself into this situation?

  Jonah: I say does he know that I’m Jewish and I don’t like pork products.

  Michael: But what does this have to do with being hungry?

  Jonah: Couldn’t it have been a turkey sandwich?

  Me: It could have been a turkey sandwich. What if it was tuna salad?

  Michael: It’s not kosher.

  Jonah: I’d say no to the whole thing.

  Michael: Then this would be the tuna salad dilemma.

  Jonah: I gotta be honest, the whole thing is not for me.

  Michael: Why are you having an orgy with a four-hundred-pound guy?

  Me: You don’t know the four-hundred-pound guy is there. You just look down and there he is.

  Jonah: Here’s what I would do. If I walked into an orgy I would walk around and see like, hey, are there any four-hundred-pound guys walking around with a ham sandwich?

  Michael: Exactly.

  Jonah: And I would look in every crevice and room, and if there were none in there, I would go on, and if there was, I’d be like, not my kind of orgy.

  Me: So I’ve actually just informed you both on how to get out of a bad orgy situation.

  Jonah: Proper etiquette. Right.

  Me: Yes. So now you’re going to be looking for the ham sandwich …

  Jonah: I’m going to even go in the fridge and see if they have ham, bread, and mayonnaise.

  Michael: You’re awful!

  Me: ’Cause if someone’s making the ham sandwich, you’re done!

  Michael: That’s not traditionally what ham sandwiches are used for. Is that what you’re saying?

  Jonah: Ummm … ayyyy … ummmm …

  Michael: Yeah, ’cause normally people just eat them. You don’t normally … (Makes jerking off with a ham sandwich hand gesture.)

  Jonah: Woah! You’re blowing my mind.

  Apparently any time on set ended up being a bit more memorable for Seth Rogen than I could have ever imagined. If you listen to the DVD commentary, when I flash across the screen dancing in the movie, Seth says, “Remember that girl? She’s fucking bat-shit crazy!” Which of course is a huge honor coming from the Dalai Lama of bat-shit crazy!

  9

  WHEN I’M GOOD, I’M GOOD WHEN I’M NO GOOD, I’M BETTER

  Though this be madness, yet, there is method in it.

  —Hamlet, William Shakespeare

  Our name was never meant to just be a clever entrée into a realm of mischief and mayhem. In a business where every Dipshit McGee has the next big idea, it was our battle cry against mediocrity. It’s as much about who we are as it is about what we do. Being “No Good” is a state of mind. It’s all about attitude. It’s about closing your eyes, opening your mind, and letting go. Think of it as smoking an existential wonder-joint.

  Those two words have always represented a creative culture, a point of view, and a sense of purpose. A vow to constantly evolve while always staying true to yourself. I know it sounds like heady shit for our brand of lunacy, but I forged my identity on these ideals and discovered I was better for it because there is a huge difference between being “No Good” and not good. You may think it’s ironic that a business built on blasphemy would have such ethics and standards, but like I’ve been saying all along, this was no ordinary donkey show. It was an extraordinary one!

  Our little company that we affectionately called “the little NG that could” was blazing through the entertainment landscape like a hotshot. We were growing faster than any of us ever anticipated, and it was time to find a bigger playpen to house the soon-to-be one hundred members of our team. After an exhaustive search of every office building, warehouse, and outhouse in Los Angeles, we stumbled onto a beautiful twenty-four-thousand-square-foot, three-story office space smack dab in the middle of Beverly Hills. We quickly set about invading the space and converting it into the nightclub/state-of-the-art production facility/Thai whorehouse we needed. Wall-to-wall fur, a twenty-foot fully stocked bar, and every toy a creative mind could dream of filled our playground of the imagination. As comedian Bob Saget succinctly put it, “I feel like I’m inside a hooker’s vagina right now” when he waltzed into NGTV.

  From the outside, it purposefully looked like an empty building, but on the inside it was a twenty-four-hour party palace where anything could happen and often did. The only way to describe the vibe would be The Wolf of Wall Street meets Animal House. During the day, everybody wore white lab coats around the office and called each other doctor because we were creating programming we likened to media rocket science. After all, we were all members of the Surgical Media Strike Team, a phrase coined by Kourosh and myself. At night, the lab coats came off and the real fun began. Everything from an ABC party to human Jenga. Let’s just say we had a twenty-foot-tall chandelier in the middle of the space, and it really knew how to swing!

  “Oh fuckballs! I’ve never seen something this beautiful in my life!”
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br />   —Kat Dennings

  We built a full-fledged, legit, and operational television studio complete with two shooting stages, an audio mixing suite, green screen, 3D graphics department, screening room, and an eighties arcade. But the center of our universe was our bar, which we lovingly named the Shark Tank. It was our place to congregate, brainstorm, and celebrate. The complex was designed to give us everything we’d ever need so we never had to leave. A soup-to-nuts solution for the creative mind … heavy on the nuts! The environment at No Good TV was what you might call lax. The bar was always open, and we took hour-long breaks every four hours to play Halo. There was never any judgment, and you were free to indulge. As long as you met your deadlines, we didn’t care.

  Without a doubt, the key ingredient to No Good was always our people. They were second to none. A group of twisted badass motherfucking genius mad men and women!! Talented, fearless, and exceptionally skilled at partying! They are the ones who delivered the unforgettable experience you’ll be telling your grandkids about once you determine if they’ll forgive you or not. Like a collection of characters out of a Scorsese movie or, better yet, This Is Spinal Tap, they helped you get down with your bad self, and they were flawless in their execution.

  Just like two fingers of Macallan 18 served on one large rock by master of ceremonies and my partner in crime, Shark “Is this gorilla thong too much?” Firestone, the atmosphere at No Good TV was always just right. No matter when you walked in, whether it was for a job interview with our kick-ass head of production Kenneth “My Spidey sense is tingling” Stroscher and our exceptionally talented creative director Ismael “Anything is possible, but…” Obregon, or for a creative rap sesh with our brilliant marketing maharishi Ron “Can I get a witness?” Hebshie, or for that highly sought-after 9 A.M. Clamato Chelada service on the rooftop lounge by our inordinately hot makeup prodigy Nicole “What’s wrong with girls showering together?” Armijo and the Michelangelo of hair, Matthew “Don’t worry, I won’t be late” Motherhead, where you could have your portrait drawn by world-renowned artist Mari Inukai while discussing Piaget’s theory of cognitive development with her Mensa-candidate daughter, Sena, oh yeah, the joint was hopping!!

  The music was louder than it should be in an office thanks to wunderkind audio engineer Avi “Steak and a blowjob” Kipper and guitar-phenom and mega-composer Gabriel “Elevator Party” Moses and the lights were dimmer than legally required to actually work thanks to cinematography maestro Chris “Can I get a little more bounce off the 2K?” Burns and his lighting commandos, Jamar “It’s all right, I brought my own sheets” Franklin and Justin “Why would he?” Woiwode.

  There would always be more than a few people at the bar to keep you company, like the uber-talented 3D animators, CG artists, and compositors Adam “Windex will fix that laser disc player” Ghering, Colin “I don’t want to talk about my dad” Cromwell, Joi “to the World” Klinmalai, Amanda “Would you like to hug my pillow” Lee, Maria “Hello Kitty” Fleischman, Ariel “I’ll have the surf ’n’ turf for dinner and another one to go!” Sinson, N!K “The Dick” (not because of a character flaw), and Ken “Avatar was good but I think I can do better” Dackermann.

  And that lingering feeling you couldn’t shake that two people were fucking somewhere close by and could probably use a third was thanks to the twenty cubic miles of purple and red fur quaffed to perfection by in-house renaissance man Jon “I’ve never created artificial intelligence but gimme the weekend” Gaiser (aka McGaiser) and his wife, talented licensed architect Audrey “You want me to put fur on what?” McEwan. By the way, that wasn’t just a feeling but an actual state of being thanks to the mood visualist and virtuoso art director Amul “Can I get a wingman?” Patel. You should have gone with your gut! Many did. The DO NOT ENTER sign created by our shrewdly skilled social media manager Emily “I give tittie twisters when I’m drunk” Carroll was just a suggestion.

  You would swear that we were throwing full-blown parties every day thanks to our incredibly crafty associate producer and troublemaker Tania “I think it’s totaled!” Hamidi under the watchful eye of her sister, our brilliant head of finance and emergency consultant Natasha “Are we Persianing this?” Hamidi. Every business pitch with gifted executive producer, philosopher, and resident “Braveheart” Scott Bachmann; interview taping with our incomparable production manager Nicole “We don’t have a coke bowl!” Elliott; or confab with our tour-de-force assistant editor Dan “Everyday should be your birthday!” Thompson and exceptional segment producer/editor Jesse “Now that’s a knife” Kane, ended in a key party!

  It was like a nightclub on the edge of forever. Except here you were surrounded by stunning women who didn’t treat you like shit or only hung with you for your drugs, like our lethally gorgeous production team made up of Devorah Reyna, Carissa Blades, and Nan Savage. You couldn’t tell what time it was thanks to all the hydrating you were doing all night with our signature spa water, a reenergizing and refreshing beverage made from vodka with a splash of water served with an orange slice courtesy of our magnificent fashion stylists Quentin “I don’t mind a dirty boy, ’cause I can get ’em clean!” Owens, who brought the recipe, and Niki “In pursuit of sexy” Schwan, who brought the attitude. And you never wanted to leave and always spent way too much time in the therapeutic meditation lounges thanks to the diabolical genius of head writer and senior producer Beth “It’s all about the bio-availability” Spruill and her partner in “It’s a grey area in federal crime” mischief and exceptional 3D artist Michael “It’s about the implication” Ore.

  We also had our own Captain Jack Sparrow roaming the halls and giving away free booty to everyone (it’s not what you think … or is it?) thanks to our invaluable production coordinator, Jack Tavitian. And just to throw you off balance, walking around, making sure everyone was busy being … busy, was our talented five-year-old chairman emeritus, who appeared in some of our fucked-up videos as Nickles McFidget, Super Agent. Because if you’re shooting a scene with hookers, blow, weed, and booze, why wouldn’t you want a kid in it? And to top things off, we even had a couple of Russian OGs in charge of VIP security and keeping an eye on you, the beautiful twins Mila and Gera Marinova; what else would you expect at NG? To the men, women, and children of the Surgical Media Strike Team, I salute you!

  The vibe was freewheeling seventies, anything goes. Movie stars, rock stars, TV stars, porn stars, at least one billionaire, and our celeb “regulars,” like NBC’s Chuck star Zachary Levi, stopped by like it was their corner bar. “Chicks with guns and alcohol! That’s NGTV. You don’t get this on CNN, son!” Zach would exclaim in one of his many appearances. On one occasion, we were giving a huge presentation to the heads of Showtime with our superagent Ari Emmanuel (whom Ari Gold in Entourage is based on) while my dear friend and star of Showtime’s Masters of Sex Michael Sheen just sat at the bar enjoying a glass of Merlot. It was surreal … but that was just a normal Thursday.

  We had several signature cocktails, including one called The Asshole, a lethal combo of Bacardi 151, Old Grand-Dad, and Cuervo. Another deceivingly delicious adult beverage that we concocted using liquor that we imported from another state (because it wasn’t legally sold in California) we called Fist because it was stronger than punch! Our guests loved them and asked for them by name. Some of your favorite celebrities have been Fisted at No Good TV, including Star Trek’s Zachary Quinto; Glee’s Jane Lynch; Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban; Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer; Two Broke Girls’ Beth Behrs; Newsroom’s Emily Mortimer; Taboo from The Black Eyed Peas; Margaret Cho; Bob Saget; Tom Green; author Jackie Collins; Larry the Cable Guy; director Guy Ritchie; Stephen Dorff; Marvel’s Avengers’ Aaron Taylor-Johnson; Superbad’s Christopher Mintz-Plasse; rockers Bret Michaels, Sebastian Bach, and my hero, Mike Patton from Faith No More; David S. Goyer; sci-fi legend and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s executive producer Brannon Braga; Cobra Starship; hip-hop stars Akon, Ray J, and Luther Campbell; The Good Wife’s Matt Czuchry; t
he Broken Lizard crew; and Community’s Danny Pudi, to name a few.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, BALLS … scrotum!”

  —Jane Lynch

  Paris Hilton happily got Fisted twice while comfortably, yet obliviously, sitting on one of the many cock-shaped pillows we had lying around the studio. Which was mild compared to what else was going on at NGTV. The stars that showed up came to know that they were totally safe inside our walls. They could party their asses off and none of it would ever end up in the tabloids. What happened at No Good TV stayed at No Good TV. Our parties were off the chain, and everyone who was anyone in the business tried to find their way to our den of iniquity nestled amongst the unsuspecting mom-and-pop retail stores on Santa Monica Boulevard. Discretion is a key distinction between being No Good and being not good.

  Being the face of No Good TV has always been a singular experience. The things I’ve had the chance to do and the places I’ve been to are unparalleled and have redefined my view of the world. In those days, I was living inside the eye of the hurricane. I was aware of our success and how we were blowing up but I was working harder than the seams on Lenny Kravitz’s leather pants. I never really had time to sleep, let alone stop and smell the roses. When I wasn’t interviewing stars at the Shark Tank, we had junkets every other day—indie films during the week and the big tent-pole films on the weekends. And because the studios had really started to embrace us, I started traveling all over the world, shooting segments, which were fun, but the rapid-fire schedule could sometimes be taxing.

  It’s not like we’d fly to some exotic location, fuck off for a week, and call it work. Some of these jaunts were hilariously short. I remember when 20th Century Fox flew me to Cairo and then to Rome over the span of three days to interview the cast of the movie Jumper. Do you have any idea how far Africa is from the U.S.? I shot my dirty interviews, literally, sitting a few feet away from the Sphinx on the Giza Plateau in Egypt, then immediately boarded a bus, then a plane, took a four-hour flight, then another bus, and “magically” jumped to Italy, where we were standing smack dab in the center of the Coliseum for the sum total of fifteen minutes, then boarded a bus, then a plane … you see where I’m going with this. In the two hours between the Coliseum and my flight, I ended up fucking around in the streets of Rome with Hayden Christensen, Jamie Bell, and director Doug Liman, who just happened to have a camera in his hands. With the help of a little jetlag and alcohol, we created our own mini homage to Roman Holiday but with fewer Vespas and more wine. A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, to say the least, but man, it was a whirlwind.