#WAYFTour: Interviews - part 2
Sidewalk HustleSH: Thoughts on Drake?
Zac: Huge Drake fans.
Max Joseph: Oh my god we just spent a whole two car rides just blasting Drake.
Emily: They’re on Max’s SnapChat which I’m gonna drop right here because I know it means a lot to him.
Max: You didn’t even drop it.
Emily: Max’s SnapChat.
SH: Last record everyone bought?
Zac: I just bought Compton on iTunes, Dre’s new album.
Emily: I don’t buy albums anymore, but I downloaded Joanna Newsom’s new single.
Zac: Favourite new song and video is “Alright” by Kendrick Lamar for sure.
Max: I think I physically bought a record, the last record I bought was Graceland (by Paul Simon).
Emily: Cute.
Zac: And you bought me the Talking Heads.
Max: That’s right!
SH: Which one?
Emily: Speaking in Tongues?
Max: I think it was Stop Making Sense.
SH: Have you seen the movie?
Zac: Naw.
Max: I didn’t get him the dvd just the record.
Emily: You need to see it.
SH: House VS Techno?
Zac: Ooooooooo!
Emily: Techno
Max: I was just in Berlin a couple days ago and the techno coming out of there was pretty awesome, but I think I’m a progressive house guy.
Zac: I don’t know. I’m torn because Wes Bentley (who plays the role of a DJ named James) got me into techno, and like you know, Soundcloud and blah blah blah.
Max: Wes used to make music.
Zac: Wes used to be a legit DJ and go out and preform with vinyl. And he got me into techno during filming so I really dig techno.
SH: Dubstep VS Reggae?
Emily: Reggae.
Max: Dubstep.
Zac: Oh man. How can you compare?
Max: They’re two different things!
SH: That’s the whole point.
Emily: She’s making us choose.
Zac: Oh if I can only listen to one - then I choose reggae.
Max: That’s like apples or lasagna.
Emily: That’s not a hard question, lasagna easy.
SH: Disco VS Trap?
Max: Disco.
Zac: What kind of trap? There’s so many kinds. You talking about like real trap? Or Santa Barbara trap? Or the hood trap?
SH: What do you prefer?
Max: Is LOUDPVCK Santa Barbara?
Zac: LOUDPVCK is like, Montecito. I like LOUDPVCK trap music, they’re a good trap band.
SH: We heard Zac has a thing for rap music. Any new hip-hop or coming rap artists you’re really hype about?
Max: These two love Kendrick Lamar
Zac: Kendrick Lamar!
SH: He’s not really new…
Emily: Fetty Wap is a new one I really like. Rich Homie Quan.
Zac: Chance The Rapper I really like.
SH: Classic jam that gets you going? What gets you grooving at a cheesy wedding?
Max: “Jump (For My Love)” by The Pointer Sister
Emily: That’s great. God damn it.
Zac: Any young Michael Jackson track.
Emily: I don’t know if they would play “Erotic City” (by Prince) at a wedding. I love that song. Oh - “Twist & Shout”!
Max: Wait, which version thought Elvis or The Beatles?
Emily: Beatles.
SH: Best party you’ve ever been to?
Max: Not my bar mitzvah, I cried at my bar mitzvah.
Emily: *singing* “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to”
Max: The DJ was not good and they were not playing all the -
Emily: They weren’t playing things at 128 BMP!
Max: They were not playing all the hip-hop that I wanted them to cus they had to appease all the older folks and I got really mad. So my bar mitzvah was not the best party to the chagrin of my parents.
Emily: I had a 17th birthday party, my birthday is in June, and we had Halloween in June party. It was really fun and the cops came. Everyone was dressed up.
SH: What was your costume?
Emily: Like a 60s girl. It was cool. I had a black wig. It was pretty rad.
Zac: Best party of my life was probably this epic one we threw I was like 6 and it was at Chucky Cheese’s. Very rad. All my friends showed up, we had cake, all the candles were LIT. It was crazy. It was so sick. I’ll never forget it.
SH: You smoke a lot of joints in this movie. What was the weed that you all smoked on set?
Emily: Haha!
Zac: What was that was terrible, terrible stuff…
Max: You hated that.
Zac: It’s awful.
Max: It got in your eyes. It’s sage?
Zac: It’s a different mix of herbs that doesn’t even produce a good amount of smoke, but it’s hard on your lungs.
Emily: But it looks efficient.
Max: It gets in everyone’s eyes and it makes they’re eyes really messed up. Which kinda works. It worked for Cole (Zac’s character), Cole definitely looks stoned.
Zac: It sorta just gives you a low grade headache. I think I smoked, what was it, 30 joints in one day?
Max: Yeah that was a lot. We just had someone rolling all day long.
SH: Alright last question, favourite cocktail?
Max: Whiskey.
Emily: I like a Hendrick’s Martini, dirty with two olives.
Max: Wow, that’s specific.
Zac: I like a lot of green juices like kale and stuff. Like kale and beets. Yeah.
Emily: All about turmeric and ginger?
Zac: All kinds of weird stuff man. I like to juice it myself.
Mr. Willy WongEfron tells us first about the process of becoming a DJ in We Are Your Friends, by no means considering himself an expert. “I had a crash course with DJ Them Jeans (Jason Stewart) and learned to use decks to the best of my ability. Over course of Movie, I learned about the style to making it look cool.”. “It’s not just twisting knobs, it’s BOOM! Really twisting knobs!”, he adds. “I’m proficient at it and good at acting it.”.
[...]
In many ways, the Trio already consider We Are Your Friends a great success story, even prior to its theatrical release. Efron feels that success isn’t just based on numbers. “I would like our generation to identify with the Film in a way I did. I knew that while making the Movie, we were telling a story I felt was current and what I was going through at a certain time in my life. It’s well-written and I hope it’s taken that way and means something to others.”.
[...]
Joseph concludes, “I’m psyched I got paid to write a script, let alone that it went into production, got these amazing stars, get picked-up by Warner Bros. and that we’re here. That is success.”. “If it resonates with one or two people and they came out of the theatre feeling chills or walk-out with a different bounce in step or feeling catharsis, that to me is success.”.
ThumbAfter the screening, I got a chance to ask a very tan, buff, and cheerful Zac Efron about his thoughts on EDM. How much did he know about the music before making the film? "I was aware in the mainstream sense of what was popular and accessible. I didn't really delve deep into all the different genres," he said. "I could tell you the difference between dubstep, reggae, and house, but on a basic level, I couldn't name too many DJs."
Efron said he was coached by DJs like Alesso and Them Jeans, well as the actor Wes Bentley, who plays Efron's mentor in the movie (and apparently used to DJ too). "Wes got me into SoundCloud and taught me about so many subgenres. He taught me about minimal house and minimal techno-when we were filming, I was bumping that in my trailer."
Armed with a few USBs worth of tracks from Them Jeans, Efron said he practiced transitions and effects on his new Pioneer gear at home, "until I would get so lost and tired I would pass out-there's a lot of math going on with matching BPMs!" His speakers faced straight into the house of his neighbor Charlie Day (of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia fame), who would call Efron saying, "'I have a baby, dude!'" (Celebrity neighbors: they're just like us.)
But forget mixing or beat-matching. Efron said the part that he had the most fun doing was "learning stylistically what these guys do to make [DJing] entertaining."
"Alesso showed me how to really feel the music and get the crowd pumped up," Efron continued. "When he transitions tracks, he jumps up in the air. On the decks it's just a twist [of a knob], but he turns it into an event. You just have fun and do a show. That shows the audience that you're into it." Can you get an Oscar for emotionally-charged fist-pumping?
Hollywood Reporter“The best advice that I got [about spinning] actually was the simplest advice: Just have fun, and enjoy yourself when you’re on the decks,” Efron told The Hollywood Reporter. “Once you learn the basics of transitioning and adding effects, they said, ‘Now just get into it. Live with it.’ That’s what Alesso taught me. That’s what Dillon Francis taught me.”
[...]
“I feel like we should start a band. I’m asking people for suggestions! Like Max, Zac, Emily - the trio. What should our band name be?” Ratajkowski playfully asked Efron, who stood a few feet away from her.
Efron referred to the eight-city international tour as a “whirlwind” after jokingly asking his publicist, “Are we in L.A.?” When asked what his reaction was to the thousands of screaming fans he’s encountered while on tour, the actor grinned and replied, “Everyone has been nuts.”
Irish Times “He could have done any movie he wanted,” Joseph says. “I originally thought it was the music that resonated with him. It was more that he grew up partly in the Valley and had friends just like these guys. It resonated with his own life experience. He understood that story of trying to get out from the shadow of that early life.”
Since emerging in High School Musical, Zac Efron has proved to be a bright fellow with a taste for professional experiment. His arrival to the project inevitably inflated its profile. A film that started out as a personal project ended up as a star vehicle. Joseph says there are ups and downs to the added attention. I assume that, shooting on location, Efron must have attracted the odd photographer.
“Yes, just a little,” he says. “The paparazzi were a factor. I didn’t foresee the extent of it. It is really intense. They are everywhere. I don’t know how they know where he is going to be. But he handled it like a gentleman. He didn’t let it distract him. There are all these scenes where he’s smoking fake weed. So they were over that. But I am very proud of how he handled that.”
GuardianThe months leading up to the shoot I trained Zac at his house, teaching him how to DJ but also how to look like a DJ. It’s not all fist-bumping and jumping up and down. You’re always fiddling with a knob, checking switches, moving faders, so I was showing him that, right down to how to wear headphones properly. He looks the part. He’s probably more musical, with better rhythm, than most professional DJs nowadays and that goes a long way.
I wanted him to get the feel of the equipment, too. You know those military movies where they give the soldier his gun and he has to take it apart and put it back together with extreme precision? We made Zac do that with the mixer, decks and cables. By the end he could mix by ear, on the decks not by laptop, although when he’s DJing in the film, my large frame is curled up into a ball under the booth, directing him and guiding him.
I gave him a crash course in electronic music, too, seeing what stuck. What interested me was he really got into tech house, that deeper, groovy kind of vibe, but I showed him everything from house to dubstep to drum’n’bass to hardcore to disco. We fell into YouTube K-holes, jumping from song to song. Two hours would go by and we’d be listening to Aphex Twin with Zac saying: “What the hell’s going on?”
[...]
Zac’s snuck into warehouse parties I’ve DJed and even jumped on to the decks, leaving before TMZ catches up with him, but since the movie wrapped he’s been busy on other projects and I’ve been co-hosting a show on Beats 1 with Josh “The Fat Jew” Ostrovsky, so we haven’t seen much of each other. But don’t worry - we will party at the premiere!
Rolling StoneEfron's exposure to dance music, however, mostly came from hitting up Coachella over the years; it wasn't until he got involved with the movie that the High School Musical star got schooled in everything from dubstep to deep house. "Max really opened my eyes to electronic music," he says. "He started a playlist that I followed on Spotify. I had never heard any of the music on it. And [co-star] Wes Bentley was also a DJ growing up and would actually spin at clubs on vinyl. Learning about the world was fascinating."
As for his more technical mentorship, DJ and producer Jason Stewart - better known by his nom de EDM Them Jeans - helped teach Efron the art of moving a crowd. "It's half technical and half style," the actor says. "I learned how to use the decks properly, how to transition tracks. It's also the energy and enthusiasm you put into everything you do. You don't just add an effect, you kind of zone into it. You put your whole arm into each knob twist."
[...]
The climactic final scene in particular involved staging a real block party featuring acts like Nicky Romero performing for free to a crowd of dance music fans. "Zac had only two 20-minute segments to get up in from of the crowd in between these big headliners and perform his final track," Joseph says of that day.
"I keep thinking about the butterflies I had. I'm having flashbacks right now," Efron adds. "Luckily, I had put in some time in rehearsals and knew what I was doing up there a little bit, but it gave me the rush and the feeling that I imagine DJs must thrive on. It's like doing theater or something."
PopSugarPOPSUGAR: Obviously you guys know each other well now, but what were your first impressions of one another when you first met?
Zac Efron: Ooh, good question.
Max Joseph: Yeah, we haven't really ever talked about the first time we met. You [to Zac] came in, your energy was a little low. You were kind of quiet, and I was expecting high-energy Zac Efron. I thought something was on his mind. I thought maybe you were having an off day, in a weird way, and it was really interesting. I liked it. He was quiet and thoughtful about something else.
PS: Which is sort of how the character is too.
MJ: Yeah, and I kind of leaned into that. I was like, that's really cool, and I don't think anyone has seen a side of him like that. There was some major inner life happening in there.
ZE: I think what was on my mind at that moment, and what's always on my mind when I first meet for a project, is, what does it mean to me? There was something profound about the sizzle reel that Max sent, and I had not read the script yet, but I was just caught up in how much I was really engaged with the material. And that's always scary, because it feels like you might be committing to something.
Emily Ratajkowski: It's like going on a first date with someone you already know you want to marry.
ZE: Yeah, exactly.
PS: Emily, what were your first impressions?
ER: I met Max first, and I have to be totally honest, I had not seen Catfish, and I was just not totally convinced about the whole thing. I was kind of feeling a lot of trepidation, not sure about the character, but he was very much - now the images I see of Max behind the camera, holding it, that was my first impression. That image.
PS: And what about when you met Zac?
ER: With Zac, I have to say, I had no preconceptions. You know, again, I hadn't seen High School Musical, I was fresh to it, and he's just a super professional dude. When we did our chemistry read, it was like, you're a really great actor. Which, to me, made me even more excited about the project. And I'm not bullsh*tting when I say this stuff. Both cases are totally honest first impressions.
ZE: I was a little intimidated when I met Emily for the first time. She was coming off of working with incredible directors, and was out of nowhere -
MJ: Emily's also never intimidated by, like, anything.
ZE: Anything! She's super smart and inquisitive all the time. She knows a lot about a lot of things.
MJ: Most people would come in a little nervous. Not Emily, though.
ZE: Not Emily. She was so prepared, and we immediately had our chemistry.
PS: Zac, your character, Cole, is in the middle of the hustle, just starting his career - did this role make you kind of nostalgic, or make you look back on your early days in Hollywood?
ZE: It was oddly reminiscent of them [those days], for specific reasons. If you took music out of the equation and put acting in, I sort of ran around with a crew of hustling actors. We were all on our own paths, some of them were hustling harder than others. I was somewhere in the middle. I wasn't really like the head of the pack, I wasn't trying to be the party or anything like that, but I also wasn't, you know, the runt. I was just one of the guys. I found several mentors, and I had some good luck, and I found my way.
PS: Can you guys talk about the party scenes? I'm really curious as to whether there was actually music playing and how that looks when you're filming it.
ZE: Contrary to most movies I've ever done, yes.
MJ: There was music playing in all the party scenes, yeah. We knew that there wasn't going to be dialogue during those scenes, so we played it, and we played it loud, and we just let it roll and roll and roll.
ER: At the end, with the credits, when you see us all dancing, that's real.
ZE: The cameras never stopped.
MJ: Some of my favorite bits of footage is from before we even started shooting, when I rented a house in the valley for the weekend and I invited the guys there to do some male bonding. Just for them to meet each other and establish their friendship. I shot a lot of it, and that's in a lot of the opening credits, and it's at the end, too. They were freestyling at the house and just hanging around. It was all very natural and real.
PS: One of my favorite details of the movie was the multiple "Drunk in Love" requests. So spot-on. What are the go-to songs you request that you'll always dance to?
ER: (Singing) "Get your booty on the floor tonight, make my day."
MJ: I always like "New Shoes." (Sings the beat) Yeah, that'll always get me.
ZE: Any Michael Jackson song.
MJ: Mary J. Blige, "Real Love."
PS: You've mentioned the Vegas scene in a couple interviews. How was that shot?
ZE: That was so fun.
ER: We, like, ran around Vegas together. Literally with maps and a cameraman. That was it. It was so guerrilla. My legs hurt for three days afterward because we ran so much.
ZE: I don't know who was guiding us on this journey, but we were basically just running around Vegas with Max leading the way, doing whatever we wanted to do. We didn't know where the cameras were, we didn't know what was going on. We ended up on rides, and suddenly there's a Ferris wheel. We had music going the whole time, and it just felt experimental and fresh. It was fun.
ER: In the room, we really had a dance party. Everyone else went into a separate room and we listened to Chuck Berry's song from Pulp Fiction and just grooved. And then once we got it, everyone came in and we just all danced together in the room. It was a really nice moment.
ZE: Yeah, it was really cool.
PS: Speaking of music, Zac, it's been a thread that's weaved through your career, from High School Musical to Hairspray to this. Was it fun to get back into a performing role, even if it was a different kind?
ZE: Yeah, music and cinema always go hand in hand. Music can be the pulse of a film. It just so happens that in our film it's electronic music and it really drives the characters and the story. I love it for that reason. I love playing musicians.
PS: Emily, what's next for you? Are there any upcoming projects you're excited about?
ER: Yeah, I'm starting filming on this movie in October in New York. I'm not supposed to talk about it. I'm hoping to announce in the next couple weeks, but I'm really, really excited about it.
ZE: I'm excited. I can't wait!
Chicago Sun-TimesThe actor laughed when asked how good a DJ he’d be in real life - since that’s what he plays in the new film (opening Friday).
“I don’t know,” he said. “For this film, I did a lot of research and worked hard with a coach.” When pressed again about if he had pursued music rather than acting as a career, Efron admitted, “I think, as with anything, 10,000 hours of practice and you’ll likely get good at it. … At least I’d hope you would.
“If I had started training to DJ when I started acting, I might have become a good DJ, but after making this movie I’ve come to realize it’s incredibly difficult - especially the production of the music. That’s what people we call DJs actually do, and they don’t always get the proper credit for it. They make actual electronic music. It’s incredibly complicated. If you’re going to be a superstar at it, you have to work hard.”
Red Eye ChicagoWhen you arrive at a party, how aware are you of the music? Does it fade into the background, or you can’t help but notice it and it impacts the way you experience the night?
Zac Efron: It definitely impacts the party.
Emily Ratajkowski: Come on, think about that feeling when you walk in the door and you hear a great song, and you’re like [dances in her seat], “Let’s go on the floor right now!” And get really excited-that’s a great feeling.
Max Joseph: I generally feel I’m looking for a reason to-I’m always a little shy when I come into a party, so if the music is good, all of a sudden I’m enticed to open up and have a good time. But if it’s bad, that’s just an excuse as to why I’m like, “Oh, yeah, I don’t think tonight is going to be the night.”
If it’s good, will you dance your way in like Emily does?
MJ: [Laughs.]
ER: Yes, I’ve seen him do that.
ZE: Sometimes music’s the reason to go to the party.
ER: Profound.
MJ: It’s a haiku.
Would you rather to go a wedding that has great music and OK food or OK music and great food?
MJ: Come on.
ER: Great music.
MJ: Great music, 100 percent.
ER: Nobody eats the food even if it’s good. And you’re too drunk at that point to want to eat the food. [Laughs.] I love weddings.
MJ: Who doesn’t? Yeah, weddings are joyous celebrations, and the better the wedding, the less you eat.
I feel like sometimes people just hire the same DJ everyone else has and play the same songs. Do you feel like people give as much thought as they should to the importance of the music in that setting?
ER: I think there’s like classic wedding songs you know are going to appeal to-‘cause weddings are one of those rare moments where you have the grandmothers and the little kids and your friends, so you have to get a set playlist that appeals to the masses.
ZE: Yeah, your first thought’s always go with the band, right? It’s live, it’s cool, the music’s there. But that’s wrong!
MJ: [Laughs.]
ZE: You’ve gotta go with the DJ, ‘cause then you get to hear the actual songs. You want to hear the actual songs.
MJ: That’s really the question: At your wedding, do you want a band or a DJ?
ER: I want a band, and then I want a DJ.
ZE and MJ: [Laughs.]
ZE: A band and then a DJ for later.
MJ: Spoiled rotten. She wants her cake and she can eat it too.
On that note, this movie made me think about a DJ or a band having control over a crowd. How do you compare the control a DJ has vs. a rock band?
MJ: Um, rock bands can read the audience, but they certainly-
ZE: -are playing a song they’ve played-
MJ: -they only have so many different options, so many different directions to go in if the input that they’re getting from the audience is that they should make a right turn. DJs can really control the party, and they have a much larger menu of things to choose from.
That would be incredible if bands were playing a song and saw the crowd didn’t like it, so they just stopped.
ZE: Yeah, yeah.
MJ: Well, a good wedding band can play any song.
ER: Or a bar mitzvah band.
MJ: Or a quinceañera band as well.
Gotta cover all our bases here.
ZE: Or the Beatles.
MJ: They can do a lot of different covers.
What’s an EDM stereotype or misconception you’d like to see go away?
ZE: One that I know is not true anymore is that it’s incredibly simple. [Laughs.] That anyone can do it, [that] you can press play and sit back. You’d have to be a pretty good faker to pull that off. I found it to be pretty challenging in the time I spent with it. The decks are pretty complicated; there’s a lot you can do with them, and it requires a lot of time and effort to really master those controls. I sat with Afrojack at my house, and I watched him-he plugged in my decks, and I saw him with no USB; there was no USB plugged in at all. He made an entire song based just on the effects that he had on two decks. And he made a beat and a track in like maybe 7 minutes. And it sounded cool. It was awesome. He did it purely off the sound effects on the Pioneer decks. No enhancements, nothing. It was really nuts.
What goes through your head if a DJ is up there and just presses play and dances?
ER: I mean, they still are controlling the crowd, though. That’s what’s so amazing about when you go and see Deadmau5-he’s more performative. But someone who’s just standing up there and does that, they just stand there and people are, like, enthralled. And when they hit one button it completely changes the energy of the crowd, which is something really incredible about DJs.
So even if you think they’re not doing anything, they are, basically.
MJ: Oddly I think that a lot of the haters of EDM and DJs are actually within the world of electronic music. There’s a lot of in-fighting between different people who make one kind of music [and] think that people who maybe do a big room or something aren’t as talented and are just pressing buttons, and then of course to the outside world it seems simple. Whether you are just orchestrating songs and pressing buttons or whether you’re actually performing a whole song live, you are manipulating an audience and bringing them on a journey one way or the other, and you are ushering them through an emotional experience. Some are conductors, and some are musicians, but I don’t think that one takes away from the other.
Zac, you’ve said you have a tendency to over-think things. How much does that lead to your interest in music that, as the movie says, gets you out of your head and into your body?
ZE: I think music does pull me into the present moment, get me out of my head. I think that’s what it’s always done for me and that’s why I was drawn to this project in the first place. I think that’s why we love this genre so much, why we go to festivals, is to get out of our heads and be in our bodies in the present moment. That’s what acting does too. It’s fun.
MJ: Yeah, you both say you like to listen to music in your trailers to get you more in the moment for the scene.
ZE: Yeah, music is a sense-memory mechanism for me. I can use it to recall certain moments in time. I can use it to evoke different emotions. Or set my mood. Wake me up. I love the fact that we can hear the bass upstairs. I just wish we could hear some treble.
Do you guys use music to wake up that way too?
ER: I mean, I listen to music all the time throughout my day, definitely.
MJ: I find reggae is really nice in the morning.
ZE: Yeah.
MJ: It’s not like listening to dance music too early, which sometimes can be a little jarring. However, if I wake up and need to get moving and get my brain in order and just wake up, some dance music is a good-
So 7 a.m. thumping …
ER: I can’t imagine the thumping at 7 a.m. I need a coffee before [any of] the thumping.
MJ: I listened to that song “Sister Saviour,” the DFA dub that’s in the pool party scene, I listened to that song on repeat like every morning for the year that I was writing. It’s one of the most-played songs on my iTunes.
ZE: I love that song. I was listening to it yesterday.
I thought it would be fun to list a few DJs, and you can each tell me if you think the DJ is real or made-up. First, DJ Awesome.
ZE: Fake.
ER: Fake.
MJ: Real.
DJ Fantastic.
ZE: Real.
ER: Fake.
MJ: Even if you told me that either one of these were fake, I’m sure that they exist somewhere. Based on a quick Google search …
ER: Yeah, this isn’t fair.
MJ: Those names are very broad. There’s some 13-year-old kid at least somewhere that’s DJ Awesome.
So what’s your answer for DJ Fantastic?
MJ: I’m gonna say real.
Grooverider.
ZE: Sounds real.
ER: Real.
MJ: I’m gonna say not real.
ER: God, you’re annoying. Can we go in a different room?
Dance Ninja.
ZE: I like ninjas.
MJ: Maybe Zac’s DJ name.
ER: That’s actually my DJ name.
ZE: Let’s go real.
ER: Yes. It’s me.
MJ: No, Dance Ninja.
DJ Onesie.
ER: Yes. Oh, shit. [She’s swearing because I asked them to answer in the same order each time.]
ZE: Yeah.
ER: I think it’s real.
MJ: It’s real.
ER: Do we get to know the answers?
Yeah, I’ll tell you at the end. DJ Tanner.
MJ: [Laughs.]
ZE: No.
ER: Fake.
MJ: I know that DJ Tanner’s real, and it’s the best DJ name ever. DJ Tanner’s from “Full House.”
ZE: [Sarcastically] Oh!
ER: [Sarcastically] Um, we’re not a part of that generation. Does that make you feel weird?
MJ: Well, it’s coming back on Netflix, so deal with it.
DJ Momjeans.
ZE: No.
ER: Yes.
MJ: Yes.
Relaxed Ralph.
ZE: No.
ER: Yes.
MJ: No.
Laidback Luke.
ZE: Sounds real.
ER: Real.
MJ: [Real]
DJ Jazzy Steve.
ZE: Real.
ER: Real.
MJ: Probably real.
DJ Awesome is fake, DJ Fantastic is real, Grooverider is real, Dance Ninja is fake, Onesie is fake, Tanner is fake, Momjeans is real--
MJ: There is a DJ Tanner.
ER: I said Momjeans was real.
Well, she’s not a DJ, she’s just a “Full House” character.
MJ: No, there is a DJ Tanner in L.A. 100 percent.
Google has let me down; I stand corrected.
MJ: That’s what I mean. There’s so many that’s it’s going to be hard-
ZE: There were more no’s this time. Did I win?
(P.S. Relaxed Ralph was fake, Laidback Luke was real, DJ Jazzy Steve was fake. Removing DJ Tanner, about which there’s some dispute, the results are: ZE: 4; ER: 3; and the winner, MJ, with 6!)
Is it worse to lie in an online relationship, like in “Catfish”, or an in-person one, like lying while picking someone up in a club?
ER: Equal. Actually, no, picking someone up and lying is worse because I like the idea that the Internet allows you to put on a different hat and you maybe can’t invade someone’s life as much if you’re just on the Web.
So you like that you can be anonymous?
ER: I’m not saying I like it, but I think it’s less bad as you said.
ZE: I don’t know how to tell lies. I’ve never told a lie ever. That’s true.
MJ: George Washington.
ZE: That’s Abraham Lincoln.
MJ: Is it Lincoln or Washington?
ZE: Honest Abe. [Laughs.] You said George Washington?
MJ: Who was at the cherry tree?
ZE: Cherry tree was Abe Lincoln. [Editor’s note: It’s a legend about Washington.]
MJ: That was Washington.
ZE: Wait, wha?
MJ: I’m getting my presidents confused.
ZE: [Laughs.] Honest Abe.
MJ: Washington, not a real president; that’s a fake presidential name.
ZE: [Laughs.]
MJ: DJ Washington. What was the question?
ER: “Catfish” or …
Lying in person.
MJ: Oh, right. I think in-person is more sinister, but they’re both not good for a relationship.
ZE: Online is more fun for a TV show. Actually, I don’t know; they’re both pretty cool to watch on TV.
MJ: They’re both kinda messed-up. I think in-person is worse, but they’re not good.