“Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Publisher: In-Sight Publishing

Publisher Founding: March 1, 2014

Web Domain: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com

Location: Fort Langley, Township of Langley, British Columbia, Canada

Journal: In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Journal Founding: August 2, 2012

Frequency: Three (3) Times Per Year

Review Status: Non-Peer-Reviewed

Access: Electronic/Digital & Open Access

Fees: None (Free)

Volume Numbering: 12

Issue Numbering: 3

Section: A

Theme Type: Idea

Theme Premise: “Outliers and Outsiders”

Theme Part: 31

Formal Sub-Theme: None.

Individual Publication Date: June 22, 2024

Issue Publication Date: September 1, 2024

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Word Count: 4,413

Image Credits: None.

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN): 2369-6885

*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citations, after the publication.*

Abstract

JD Mata, Lance Richlin, and Rick Rosner started a show called “Naked at Night.” (There is no real nudity of them, as far as I know.) It formed out of “Lance versus Rick.” JD is a musician, producer, and director. Lance Richlin is a conservative and classical realist painter. Rick Rosner is a liberal and comedy writer. Here I talk to them about their new adaptation of the show through PodTV. They discuss: “Naked at Night,” the show on PodTV.

Keywords: Lance Versus Rick show, PodTV adaptation, liberal comedy writer, conservative artist debates, Rick Rosner art model, Lance Richlin conservatism, political argument show, JD Mata filmmaker, YouTube censorship, election misinformation, COVID-19 discussions.

“Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, you three have a show, adapted for PodTV, originally called Lance Versus Rick. Fundamentally, it is about a liberal comedy writer and conservative artist having talks about a wide range of topics. What was the original spark for that show?

Rick Rosner: I have been an art model. I haven’t done it that much lately or at all for decades. That is how I met Lance. He hired me to be his art model. Lance, you woke up to conservatism after 9/11. 

Lance Richlin: Right.

Rosner: I don’t know what we argued about before then. Maybe we didn’t argue at all. I always leaned liberal. I became more informed as a liberal when I worked as a late-night comedy writer because we had to be informed about the events of the day so we could write jokes about them. This whole divide became more dire and more loaded in the Trump era. I thought it would be an easy-to-do show that might be funny. The original idea was that I would pose naked, and Lance would draw or paint me. I thought it was funny for people to have a political argument while one of them was naked. I thought it would be easy to do. All you had to do was just set up a camera, courtesy of JD. In the interest of not having my d— all over the place, we started with my pants on. I have never been entirely naked on the show. That was in either late 2016 or early 2017, right after Trump had been elected.

Jacobsen: What about you, Lance?

Richlin: It didn’t work out the way I thought it would. We’re friends. But as soon as that show starts, boy, these arguments are shocking. I think that is kind of the way America is these days.

Rosner: Yes, it’s not like I am the most liberal person in the world. I put myself as less liberal than 30% of everybody. I’m guessing. I’d say Lance leans further to the conservative side than I do to the liberal side. But we are each fairlyintractable in our stances on the stuff that we disagree about. JD?

Jacobsen: How did you get involved, sir? 

JD Mata: I’m a filmmaker, musician, and director here in Los Angeles. I met Rick many, many years ago at the gym – great dude. At the time, I was shooting. Later, I wrote a web series called Wisdom and All His Wisdom. I asked Rick to star in it. He is great. He is a terrific actor. He is super smart. He is just a go-getter. He and I, in terms of pursuing the industry: He has been very successful, and I have been very successful in the Indie world. I say, “Rick, Rick!” I have a part for him. He comes. He is great.

Rosner: JD has written, produced, directed, cinematographed, cast, acted in, like – what? – close to a dozen feature films. And many dozens, scores, of music videos, which you’ve shot for yourself and mostly for other people. You’re just a kickass musician and composer. All three of us, four of us, if we include Scott, are pretty good at what we do or very good at what we do. We’ve had everybody in showbizzy stuff, stuff. It’s challenging. 

Mata: Thank you, Rick. I do not have a dog in the fight in terms of the political aspect. In terms of Facebook, I do not espouse my views. But Rick gave me an opportunity to be the tech guy for this: Set up the camera and help with topics.

Rosner: To be the director, you are not just the tech guy.

Mata: Yes, but in terms of the whole content, I explore both sides. I was a political science minor. So, I know where to get information. My role is not to get involved in its politics but just the technical aspect of it – having the show run smoothly. I am grateful for Rick because I am a struggling artist – very much so. The reason I have been able to survive is Rick and the gig he gave me.

Rosner: The gig has forced JD to be as fully informed as I am, which is kind of a burden. It is painful to be well-informed in America right now. JD is truly on the border. He is from McAllen, Texas. Which is – what? – 3 miles from the Southern border, he has relatives who are as Trumpy as they come. Your sister is married to a sheriff. I think they’re former news anchor, conservative. I think also liberal people. Everybody in LA except for Lance is liberal. He knows people from both sides and has seen the border stuff semi-firsthand via growing up in McAllen and seeing how the border has changed over the decades. So, he is a great asset. Although, he pisses me off.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Rosner: Because that is his job, to get Lance and I to yell at each other.

Jacobsen: Would you, Rick and Lance, agree that JD has succeeded in getting you to yell at each other?

Rosner: I have only thrown furniture one time as part of a show. It is a testament to my prudence. Lance has – you’ve seen his studio – like a hundred pieces of excellent art. You don’t want to fuck them up by whipping a chair into them.

Jacobsen: [Laughing].

Richlin: We’ve had to stop a couple of shows. Several of you include the girl. 

Rosner: There was one episode. We tried to get other people in for guests and for Lance to draw. Somebody standing in front of an art class naked, wearing a bikini, or whatever, doesn’t want to do the same in front of a political fight. We went to a casting service. We cast a young woman. She was triggered. People throw around the word “triggered” all the time. “Conservatives are triggered by,” “Liberals are triggered by,” except this young woman. We have never been able to show the episode, nor would we want to, because it was not our intent to traumatize anybody. 

Richlin: I would like to show it. But didn’t we sign something? We were afraid of being sued. 

Rosner: I feel like I may have caused something.  She may have stopped working at a gym I go to because she found the whole thing so traumatizing. 

Richlin: Then they tried to get me to go out and apologize to her. I said something like, “If you really believe your ideas, you should come back and debate me about them.”

Rosner: That didn’t go well.

Jacobsen: [Laughing] Classic.

Rosner: Everyone, including you, the interviewer, has had to argue for one side of some controversial subject. Plus, except for you, we’re all almost senior citizens. 

Jacobsen: [Laughing]. 

Rosner: I did a lot of bouncing. I was a bouncer in a bar for 25 years. I had people say terrible things to me. 

Jacobsen: [Laughing]. 

Rosner: Liberals are supposed to be about being politically correct. I think you can talk about anything. Lance believes you can talk about anything. JD believes you can talk about anything. The only taint is constraints about talking about stuff. You can make a joke about anything. You just have to know the landscape. That’s why Twitter has been a swamp since Musk bought it. But it used to be and still is to some extent. You can go to Twitter and see the dialogue on all these hot-button issues. You can clearly see your way of making jokes that cover areas that are subject to political correctness.But you can make jokes in those areas as long as you are not a fucking idiot about it. 

Richlin: I think things are changing. I think people are fed up with political correctness.

Rosner: Comedians have never had any truck with political correctness. I used to follow hundreds of comedians on Twitter. When Twitter became shitty, a lot of them left. I still wish I was following hundreds of comedians. People who are good at making jokes will make jokes about everything, especially the things that might set people off. If I go too far, people on Twitter will go, “That’s a little shitty.” I will think about it. If I agree with them, I will take it down. 

Mata: The yin or the yang to the show that was a disaster was when Rick had cancer and had surgery. We actually did a show at the hospital in his room. It was a very touching show. It got a lot of views. Do you remember that, Rick?

Rosner: Yes… I had cancer; when? [Sarcasm]

Jacobsen: How has the arc of the development show been? It has been through basically two chapters. 

Rosner: We did it for four years, the entire Trump administration, including 2020, which was a tough year for everybody with Covid and the election. Then Trump didn’t get re-elected. We kept going with the show. We thought it might be better if the nonsense, if what I consider nonsense as a liberal, would evaporate because Trump was an accelerant, anamplifier. I found that it got even worse with the big lie, the election denial, the election fraud, and the Covid stuff. After about a year of this Covid, I was sad. I thought there was too much nonsense riding around. We quit it for a year or a year and a half. 

Richlin: A long time, I don’t remember.

Rosner: Then I got hooked up with this PodTV. I started going on their shows. They have a lot of talking head shows. I said, “I’ve got this show we used to do. Why don’t we do it again?” We started doing it again on PodTV but in a more controlled format. We try to limit the episodes to 30 minutes apiece. When we were going as long as we could, we went around and around a lot. Anyway, Lance and JD?

Jacobsen: Lance, what’s your perspective on the development?

Richlin: We were having a lot of fun on YouTube. I liked it because you could argue incessantly. There was no time limit. It got a little difficult because we kept fact-checking each other on the computer, which added an extra 40 minutes to each show. 

Jacobsen: Rick, let him finish. 

Richlin: Then Rick became very censorious about my views. 

Rosner: Well.

Richlin: You did! You just said you didn’t want me to spread nonsense. 

Rosner: it gave me the sads.

Jacobsen: We’re not filming the show right now [Laughing].  

Rosner: YouTube started censoring us, which added to the misery of doing the shows. They started pulling the shows down.

Richlin: So, we literally couldn’t continue. 

Rosner: They have computers that listen for topics like election fraud or mentioning hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin, then they think you’re… and we were. They didn’t want to spread Covid misinformation in their minds. I agree with their points of view. I didn’t agree with getting rid of our show. In my mind, and in YouTube’s mind, and not in Lance’s mind, they didn’t want to spread COVID-19 and election misinformation. So, if you talked about those things on your show, then they would pull the shows down and would threaten to remove the show altogether. 100s of hours of work would go away. 

Jacobsen: Is this what is termed “throttling” in a way?

Rosner: No, it was pure. If there were three strikes, your show was pulled off the air. In my understanding, you wouldn’t be able to get the shows back. I’ve since found out. That may not be the case. I appealed to YouTube. When you appeal, you still do not necessarily get a human. “When these things come up, it is two guys arguing. I am the guy who says when this comes up, ‘That is fucking stupid.’” I don’t know if a person or another robot processed our appeal. Even now, about once per month, I will get an email from YouTube that they’ve pulled down an old show episode from 4 years ago because we discussed prohibited topics. 

Richlin: 4 years ago, there wasn’t any COVID-19 or election fraud.

Rosner: Okay, three years ago.

Richlin: The news station we’re on, we get more views. They let us say whatever we want. We haven’t had one word of caution. They, too, are pissed at what YouTube and other sites do. T.he guy who runs the network, Nick, who started it. He’s totally pissed at YouTube for censoring. That’s great. So, we kept doing it. I’m doing it because I think it is my patriotic duty. We don’t get anything out of it. We don’t get paid or anything. I am actually trying to show people that watch it. That they should vote for conservative politicians.

Rosner: I don’t know. I don’t think we’ve changed many minds one way or the other.

Richlin: I have. I have gotten some fan mail, where people say…

Rosner: They saw the light because they listened to you?

Richlin: I’ve gotten two letters that come to mind. One of them said they didn’t know there were actual, logical, compassionate reasons to believe conservative views to vote for Trump. The brainwashing is so thorough in the media. That they just assume: If you voted for Trump, you must be a cruel and stupid person. They said I’ve made a lot of compelling arguments, which they’ve never heard of. I got another fantastic letter from a Muslim. The letter was from the Arab world. It was somewhere in the Arab world. They said that I was the only Westerner they’d ever heard who actually understood Islam. 

Rosner: They said they were a Muslim. So, I have a question for Scott. Because, Scott, you have interviewed people from all major different religions and a lot of minor religions.

Jacobsen: Fake religions! The founder of the Church of the SubGenius! Rev. Ivan Stang, not his real name. He did it for 30 years and then gave up.

Rosner: That includes the Flying Spaghetti Monster, right?

Jacobsen: It is under a class of parody religions.

Rosner: Your experience with the Muslims who you have interacted with and interviewed. Do you have any idea about what the split is between Muslims?

Jacobsen: One Sufi imam who I interviewed, he would, basically, be a creationist on the biological sciences. He would be something like an Intelligent Design person, but from a bizarre perspective. I’ve interviewed another person who is a quantum cosmologist and string theorist. He is a professor at a university. He is more about reconciliation from a Quranist view. 

Rosner: Maybe, somebody who is a quantum physicist and string theorist, probably, I would say is unlikely to embrace some extreme form of Islam.

Jacobsen: He is cosmopolitan, basically.

Rosner: Maybe, you cannot really say, say for 1.4 billion people.

Jacobsen: There are a lot of trends. I have interviewed a lot of ex-Muslim leaders and councils around the world and people who have escaped. In general, there is a lot more freedom for men who are non-believers, but are living under a theocracy to get out because they have a lot more physical freedom to move around, to travel, especially in terms of finance to get out. Often, they will go to Western countries, secular democratic societies, whether North America or Western Europe. 

Rosner: If you had some time, would you go to a fundamentalist country like Pakistan?

Jacobsen: I’d double that bet, Regis, and go to Kashmir to a friend’s place. I haven’t, but the offer is on the table. The advisory from the Government of Canada, of all governments, is that it is not well-advised or safe for Canadians to go to Kashmir. As you all know, it is contested territory.

Rosner: Especially you, you look extremely Canadian.

Jacobsen: [Laughing]. 

Rosner: So, JD, thoughts on this whole thing? 

Mata: No, I just want to say: Having the tools, being a runner in thng gun, Indie geurilla filmmaker. It is a lot of fun filming the show because there are so many things that pop up in terms of head space, lighting. The guys when Lance is painting Rick. Lance is particular about the way the picture looks because he wants it to look grey. So, my experience in terms of lighting helped with that. I want to say: We were one of the pioneers in terms of long-form podcasts going on right now. They used to go 1, 2, 3, hours at a time.

Jacobsen: One or two final sentences.

Richlin: I’m really glad. JD was a little nervous about playing his music. I think his music has really added a lot. 

Rosner: It is the best part of the show. The second iteration, the PodTV version of the show ending each show with a song makes the show vastly better in this version. 

Richlin: It is a lot more entertaining and makes the show a lot richer. I am sorry that I am not doing a painting like I did on YouTube. The funny this is, we couldn’t find anyone to model for us because we are so offensive. I would like to start doing another painting. 

Rosner: We are going to have to work a little harder to have something come into the den to film with us.

Bibliography

None

Footnotes

None

Citations

American Medical Association (AMA 11th Edition): Jacobsen S. “Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director. June 2024; 12(3). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/naked-night

American Psychological Association (APA 7th Edition): Jacobsen, S. (2024, June 22). “Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director. In-Sight Publishing. 12(3).

Brazilian National Standards (ABNT): JACOBSEN, S. “Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director. In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, Fort Langley, v. 12, n. 3, 2024.

Chicago/Turabian, Author-Date (17th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. 2024. “”Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (Summer). http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/naked-night.

Chicago/Turabian, Notes & Bibliography (17th Edition): Jacobsen, S “”Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 12, no. 3 (June 2024).http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/naked-night.

Harvard: Jacobsen, S. (2024) ‘”Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, 12(3). <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/naked-night>.

Harvard (Australian): Jacobsen, S 2024, ‘”Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director’, In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vol. 12, no. 3, <http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/naked-night>.

Modern Language Association (MLA, 9th Edition): Jacobsen, Scott. “”Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director.” In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal, vo.12, no. 3, 2024, http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/naked-night.

Vancouver/ICMJE: Scott J. “Naked at Night”: The Liberal, the Conservative, and the Director [Internet]. 2024 Jun; 12(3). Available from: http://www.in-sightpublishing.com/naked-night.

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