Name: Rainn Wilson Talks Punk Rock + Code 3
Uploaded: 2025-09-22T13:01:47.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Rainn Wilson Talks Punk Rock + Code 3' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Rainn Wilson Talks Punk Rock + Code 3' from TAFS Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-09-22. Transcript available.

You're a blazer or no?
I used to be.
You used to be.
You're a sober gentleman.
I'm sober.
Yeah.
I'm a sober gentleman.
What was your vice back in the day?
Mostly alcohol.
Booze.
Yeah.
Yeah.
During your New York days?
But yeah.
And I had some drug phases.
I dated a coke dealer for a while that was not...
A girl coke dealer?
Yeah.
Down on Wall Street.
Cool.
Yeah.
Oh, to like Wall Street guys?
Yeah.
She had a leather satchel and she would open up.
Wow.
She's cool.
What's she up to now?
She works in the Jewish community?
She's running JP Morgan.
She is?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
That's a really cool kind of girlfriend.
She definitely fucked your life up.
That was definitely like a...
It didn't help.
Yeah.
Well, no.
Just in like a high fidelity sense.
Like remembering all the girls of the past.
Right.
You were like along for the ride.
This was for a nerdy Baha'i boy from suburban Seattle.
That was a sharp left turn.
Oh my God.
Like 21 New York City.
Exactly.
Oh my God.
23 and a half.
24.
Yeah.
We're talking about the film.
Okay.
Stop it.
No, it's not that good.
It's really...
Some of them are...
The Vince team wanted me to pass along the message.
He's totally fine to talk about The Office.
But he doesn't want it to be a main focus in the interview and appreciate...
It's not a main focus.
We're talking about...
Keeping that topic to more of a minimum.
We're talking about the Baga David.
That's pretty true.
Yeah.
I think that's pretty true.
You said that to them, but they...
They glean that.
But I'm happy to talk about The Office.
We've got to call you fast.
Well, no.
I want to talk about your new film, Code 3.
You want to tell us a little bit about who you play, what it's about, and then
we can
kind of get into...
You know how you talked about the Midwestern person saying thank you and not
really meaning
it?
I'm so interested in hearing about your new movie.
Tell us about your movie.
Is it a little bit of bringing out the dead?
A little bit?
No.
It's not as artsy and dark as that.
It's more funny.
It's more funny.
Yeah.
You did a ride-along with Real Paramedics.
How long did you do that for?
Like six or eight hours in South Central.
No big.
Well, that's like kind of...
There's a real intimacy in doing that job because you enter people's homes.
You see people's lives.
Yeah.
And you see people's...
And you're riding with them in the back of an ambulance to a hospital for half
an hour.
Right.
In moments of crisis.
Yeah.
Right?
You see like a son become the man of the house.
You see people in their...
Yeah.
The worst moments of their lives.
They've pissed their pants or they've got vomit on them.
Yeah.
And then you also see the different ways that people live.
Right?
Yeah.
And you see like...
You see like...
And I did...
I was in Israel for a year doing it and I really saw the difference in like the
way Arabs and
Jews lived and the way that Orthodox and secular lived and it was intense.
I mean it was...
There were a couple of funny parts of it but like there was a hypochondriac
like a Russian
lady and me and my friend she would call like every three days and she was just
a liar.
And then...
Yeah.
Another time we had to go to a funeral and because they were afraid that it was
like a big tragedy
that like a police officer was killed in the line of duty and they were afraid
of like
people passing out because of the local tragedy.
And we didn't speak like...
Our Hebrew was pretty bad.
Yeah.
And there was this woman in like...
So you were just there just in case?
There was this...
Just in case.
And there was this woman like who had like smelling salts and she's like...
She was walking around like...
They were crying women like...
Like...
And she'd make them smell it and slap them across the face.
And they had me and my friend Matt behind the rabbi giving the eulogy and we
were just
watching this lady just slapping other women in the face.
That's insane.
And we were trying as hard as we could not to laugh.
Oh my God.
It was the hardest I've ever...
Like...
I was like about to pee my pants at a funeral.
But you know what?
They should have every 19 year old be a paramedic for a while.
No, it's not.
It's...
Well, it's...
Yeah, they should.
You really see...
Yeah.
I mean like you really see people in moments of extreme crisis.
Yeah.
And...
Mostly at their worst and occasionally at their best I imagine.
Yeah.
And you see...
You see humanity rising through the ashes.
Exactly.
You see how families are immediately reshuffled and reorganized and like...
Wow.
It's...
A doctor sees the end result.
This is like a very...
There's an...
Yeah.
There's a real personal intimate aspect to it.
And yeah.
I think I was maybe a little too young.
I think it was like a little bit like intense and I think like...
Well, this is what Code 3 deals with is kind of the mental health ramifications
of these
frontline workers and EMS workers who are paid essentially minimum wage, maybe
a little bit
more, that we entrust to save our lives.
You know, in the movie we tried to make it a comedy.
It is a comedy.
It's very funny.
It's a very good movie.
I hope you'll see it.
Yeah.
And I really do mean that.
Audiences are loving it.
The EMS frontline worker community are loving this movie.
They feel like they're like...
This is like their story.
Yeah.
But it's so...
It deals with that.
It's so rare to do a movie that's like funny, entertaining.
If you want to just go watch an action comedy and eat popcorn, that's great.
But it also is like about something.
And it really is about looking at the underbelly of the American healthcare
system.
Yeah.
And how these poor people were paying essentially minimum wage and we entrusting
them to save
our lives.
And also it costs like $8,000.
Yeah.
And then you get your bill from the hospital for 10 or 20 grand.
And it's just all...
It's all fucked up.
But I did ride-alongs with the fire department in South Central LA.
And that was fascinating because down there, there's no healthcare.
I mean, they've shut down all the hospitals.
Yeah.
Because all the hospitals are owned by conglomerates.
And they're like, this South Central hospital is not making us any money.
They shut it all down.
There's no walk-in clinics.
There's no like...
It's like a food desert for medical care.
Yeah, for healthcare.
And there's barely any doctors.
It's fucked up.
So they call 911 for everything, the people down there.
Oh my God.
Because they kind of have to.
And the firemen are the heroes down there.
The cops are kind of, obviously, there's some issues there.
But the firemen are the heroes.
The firemen are getting their locked keys out of the car, you know, breaking
down bathroom
doors, getting a guy some diabetes medicine, taking someone to the hospital
because they
can't get an Uber.
Yeah.
And these guys, these are the most like white bread dudes you could imagine.
All these firemen down there.
But they're cheered wherever they go in South Central.
You don't hear that story.
It was really interesting.
But one of the darkest call we went on that night was, and this happens
occasionally, this
woman had fallen out of bed and needed the firemen to bring straps and get her
back up on the
bed because she weighed about 500 pounds.
Oh.
So they needed like four hearty men to kind of get her back up on the bed.
Yeah.
The family couldn't do it.
That was really intense.
Yeah.
But that's the kind of work that they were doing.
But you're right.
You're going into people's homes.
You're doing it every day, too.
It's your job.
You're doing it 12 hour shifts, you know, three or four days a week.
There were laughs, though.
You're saying that it was a comedy.
But I remember they just like play, we like play Black Eyed Peas or like LMFA
or like pumping
on the way to like.
Yeah.
Because there's just like a sense of humor.
Because these people are like about to deal with some fucked up shit.
Yeah.
And I'm like, you know, goofy like.
No.
No industry has a more gallows sense of humor than that.
These people are seeing just fentanyl overdose.
Yeah.
Gunshot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I.
Yeah.
Telling that story, I think, is very worthwhile.
I haven't really seen that story told very much.
Yeah.
And like from my experience, it's like that seems like an incredibly like
worthwhile, like
and noble like thing to depict.
And with that, my job here is done.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Is that what I sound like?
No, that's your imitation of like a Jew circa 1000 B.C.
Like Moses, what do you go up to the mountain for?
And then I went to bed with her.
She was a fabulous woman and I went to bed with her and she was my analyst.
How do you, how do you deal with the Woody Allen of it all?
Do you still watch Woody Allen movies?
100%.
Yeah.
It's the best.
The best.
One of the best ever.
Even the bad ones?
You watch them all?
I watch every single one.
Yeah.
What's your favorite?
Danny Hall is my favorite.
But there's so many great ones.
I re-watched this weekend.
You did this weekend?
I'm going back to my old friends.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now what about the cancellation and the thing and the whole thing?
I don't know.
I mean like it's a movie.
I don't know.
I mean it's a movie right?
I'm asking you if generationally.
Cause I don't know.
Like I know, I stand on it.
Which I'm the same way.
I'm like.
It sounds like.
Listen if we're going to separate the art from the artist.
Like we're not going to listen to Beethoven cause he fucked his seventh
daughter.
We're not going to listen to.
He did.
I don't know.
Chopin because he was a racist and we're not going to.
Caravaggio is a murderer.
Yeah.
How are you.
How do you differentiate that?
It's a really tricky moral argument.
It's really tough.
It's also just seems like it's like this horrific thing that I don't know.
Like I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And it's also very he said she said and it's not.
Doesn't seem like there's like damning evidence of like.
Am I the one to adjudicate it?
I mean I think that we have this notion of like.
Well Roman Polanski was adjudicated.
Would you watch Chinatown?
I watched Bitter Moon the other day.
So good.
Have you seen it?
No.
What's it called?
It's so horny.
Bitter Moon?
Yeah.
The one where they're on a cruise ship.
Yeah.
No.
There's a milk scene.
It's one of the sexiest scenes I've ever seen.
Sign me up.
Bitter Moon.
I just want to watch it.
How do you adjudicate it then?
I watch the art because I just feel like we're going to get in a bunch of
trouble if we're
going to try and like cancel the art made by people who are racist, sexist, you
know,
abusive, whatever.
I'm not sure how to play that one out.
And maybe we'd love to hear from you in the comments section if you have ideas
about.
What's your favorite Wagner?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
De Guvenden.
Yeah.
I like the Tannhauser.
Tannhauser?
Yeah.
The what do you call it?
The...
Epic.
The epic one.
Yeah.
What's it called?
The Flight of the Valkyries?
No.
That's played out, dude.
Yeah.
That's hack.
So 1979.
I'm over it, dude.
No.
The Tannhauser, whatever.
The...
There's one part of it that's stunning.
But like, yeah.
He hated Jewish people.
I don't know.
But I love...
I love the Looney Tunes where they do the Wagner opera.
Obwumhilde, you are so wovey.
Yeah.
Yes, I know it.
I can't help it.
I mean, Hitler had a lot of great paintings.
I mean, let's just be honest though.
Do you play music?
Yeah.
What do you play?
Seattle Grunge.
I play the skin flute and I play the...
No, you don't.
Yeah.
Do you guys catch that?
I also play...
Do you guys catch that?
A little guitar and drums.
Really?
Yeah.
And I played the bassoon in college.
In a high school.
What is a bassoon?
Fuck you.
In my mind, I think kazoon.
Fuck you.
What is a bassoon?
You know what a bassoon is.
It's not a kazoo.
A bassoon sounds like a...
You shit.
It sounds like an antiquated racial slur.
Like in the 1800s.
A bunch of bassoons came down to my world.
I don't want my daughter with no bassoon.
What is a bassoon?
You know what a bassoon is.
You don't claim ignorance.
In my mind, it's kazoo.
You don't really believe that.
I only know rock, bro.
Rayne Wilson, everyone.
Hollywood legend.
Thank you.

Rainn Wilson Talks Punk Rock + Code 3

You're a blazer or no?
I used to be.
You used to be.
You're a sober gentleman.
I'm sober.
Yeah.
I'm a sober gentleman.
What was your vice back in the day?
Mostly alcohol.
Booze.
Yeah.
Yeah.
During your New York days?
But yeah.
And I had some drug phases.
I dated a coke dealer for a while that was not...
A girl coke dealer?
Yeah.
Down on Wall Street.
Cool.
Yeah.
Oh, to like Wall Street guys?
Yeah.
She had a leather satchel and she would open up.
Wow.
She's cool.
What's she up to now?
She works in the Jewish community?
She's running JP Morgan.
She is?
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
Wow.
That's a really cool kind of girlfriend.
She definitely fucked your life up.
That was definitely like a...
It didn't help.
Yeah.
Well, no.
Just in like a high fidelity sense.
Like remembering all the girls of the past.
Right.
You were like along for the ride.
This was for a nerdy Baha'i boy from suburban Seattle.
That was a sharp left turn.
Oh my God.
Like 21 New York City.
Exactly.
Oh my God.
23 and a half.
24.
Yeah.
We're talking about the film.
Okay.
Stop it.
No, it's not that good.
It's really...
Some of them are...
The Vince team wanted me to pass along the message.
He's totally fine to talk about The Office.
But he doesn't want it to be a main focus in the interview and appreciate...
It's not a main focus.
We're talking about...
Keeping that topic to more of a minimum.
We're talking about the Baga David.
That's pretty true.
Yeah.
I think that's pretty true.
You said that to them, but they...
They glean that.
But I'm happy to talk about The Office.
We've got to call you fast.
Well, no.
I want to talk about your new film, Code 3.
You want to tell us a little bit about who you play, what it's about, and then
we can
kind of get into...
You know how you talked about the Midwestern person saying thank you and not
really meaning
it?
I'm so interested in hearing about your new movie.
Tell us about your movie.
Is it a little bit of bringing out the dead?
A little bit?
No.
It's not as artsy and dark as that.
It's more funny.
It's more funny.
Yeah.
You did a ride-along with Real Paramedics.
How long did you do that for?
Like six or eight hours in South Central.
No big.
Well, that's like kind of...
There's a real intimacy in doing that job because you enter people's homes.
You see people's lives.
Yeah.
And you see people's...
And you're riding with them in the back of an ambulance to a hospital for half
an hour.
Right.
In moments of crisis.
Yeah.
Right?
You see like a son become the man of the house.
You see people in their...
Yeah.
The worst moments of their lives.
They've pissed their pants or they've got vomit on them.
Yeah.
And then you also see the different ways that people live.
Right?
Yeah.
And you see like...
You see like...
And I did...
I was in Israel for a year doing it and I really saw the difference in like the
way Arabs and
Jews lived and the way that Orthodox and secular lived and it was intense.
I mean it was...
There were a couple of funny parts of it but like there was a hypochondriac
like a Russian
lady and me and my friend she would call like every three days and she was just
a liar.
And then...
Yeah.
Another time we had to go to a funeral and because they were afraid that it was
like a big tragedy
that like a police officer was killed in the line of duty and they were afraid
of like
people passing out because of the local tragedy.
And we didn't speak like...
Our Hebrew was pretty bad.
Yeah.
And there was this woman in like...
So you were just there just in case?
There was this...
Just in case.
And there was this woman like who had like smelling salts and she's like...
She was walking around like...
They were crying women like...
Like...
And she'd make them smell it and slap them across the face.
And they had me and my friend Matt behind the rabbi giving the eulogy and we
were just
watching this lady just slapping other women in the face.
That's insane.
And we were trying as hard as we could not to laugh.
Oh my God.
It was the hardest I've ever...
Like...
I was like about to pee my pants at a funeral.
But you know what?
They should have every 19 year old be a paramedic for a while.
No, it's not.
It's...
Well, it's...
Yeah, they should.
You really see...
Yeah.
I mean like you really see people in moments of extreme crisis.
Yeah.
And...
Mostly at their worst and occasionally at their best I imagine.
Yeah.
And you see...
You see humanity rising through the ashes.
Exactly.
You see how families are immediately reshuffled and reorganized and like...
Wow.
It's...
A doctor sees the end result.
This is like a very...
There's an...
Yeah.
There's a real personal intimate aspect to it.
And yeah.
I think I was maybe a little too young.
I think it was like a little bit like intense and I think like...
Well, this is what Code 3 deals with is kind of the mental health ramifications
of these
frontline workers and EMS workers who are paid essentially minimum wage, maybe
a little bit
more, that we entrust to save our lives.
You know, in the movie we tried to make it a comedy.
It is a comedy.
It's very funny.
It's a very good movie.
I hope you'll see it.
Yeah.
And I really do mean that.
Audiences are loving it.
The EMS frontline worker community are loving this movie.
They feel like they're like...
This is like their story.
Yeah.
But it's so...
It deals with that.
It's so rare to do a movie that's like funny, entertaining.
If you want to just go watch an action comedy and eat popcorn, that's great.
But it also is like about something.
And it really is about looking at the underbelly of the American healthcare
system.
Yeah.
And how these poor people were paying essentially minimum wage and we entrusting
them to save
our lives.
And also it costs like $8,000.
Yeah.
And then you get your bill from the hospital for 10 or 20 grand.
And it's just all...
It's all fucked up.
But I did ride-alongs with the fire department in South Central LA.
And that was fascinating because down there, there's no healthcare.
I mean, they've shut down all the hospitals.
Yeah.
Because all the hospitals are owned by conglomerates.
And they're like, this South Central hospital is not making us any money.
They shut it all down.
There's no walk-in clinics.
There's no like...
It's like a food desert for medical care.
Yeah, for healthcare.
And there's barely any doctors.
It's fucked up.
So they call 911 for everything, the people down there.
Oh my God.
Because they kind of have to.
And the firemen are the heroes down there.
The cops are kind of, obviously, there's some issues there.
But the firemen are the heroes.
The firemen are getting their locked keys out of the car, you know, breaking
down bathroom
doors, getting a guy some diabetes medicine, taking someone to the hospital
because they
can't get an Uber.
Yeah.
And these guys, these are the most like white bread dudes you could imagine.
All these firemen down there.
But they're cheered wherever they go in South Central.
You don't hear that story.
It was really interesting.
But one of the darkest call we went on that night was, and this happens
occasionally, this
woman had fallen out of bed and needed the firemen to bring straps and get her
back up on the
bed because she weighed about 500 pounds.
Oh.
So they needed like four hearty men to kind of get her back up on the bed.
Yeah.
The family couldn't do it.
That was really intense.
Yeah.
But that's the kind of work that they were doing.
But you're right.
You're going into people's homes.
You're doing it every day, too.
It's your job.
You're doing it 12 hour shifts, you know, three or four days a week.
There were laughs, though.
You're saying that it was a comedy.
But I remember they just like play, we like play Black Eyed Peas or like LMFA
or like pumping
on the way to like.
Yeah.
Because there's just like a sense of humor.
Because these people are like about to deal with some fucked up shit.
Yeah.
And I'm like, you know, goofy like.
No.
No industry has a more gallows sense of humor than that.
These people are seeing just fentanyl overdose.
Yeah.
Gunshot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I.
Yeah.
Telling that story, I think, is very worthwhile.
I haven't really seen that story told very much.
Yeah.
And like from my experience, it's like that seems like an incredibly like
worthwhile, like
and noble like thing to depict.
And with that, my job here is done.
Bye.
Bye.
Bye.
Is that what I sound like?
No, that's your imitation of like a Jew circa 1000 B.C.
Like Moses, what do you go up to the mountain for?
And then I went to bed with her.
She was a fabulous woman and I went to bed with her and she was my analyst.
How do you, how do you deal with the Woody Allen of it all?
Do you still watch Woody Allen movies?
100%.
Yeah.
It's the best.
The best.
One of the best ever.
Even the bad ones?
You watch them all?
I watch every single one.
Yeah.
What's your favorite?
Danny Hall is my favorite.
But there's so many great ones.
I re-watched this weekend.
You did this weekend?
I'm going back to my old friends.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now what about the cancellation and the thing and the whole thing?
I don't know.
I mean like it's a movie.
I don't know.
I mean it's a movie right?
I'm asking you if generationally.
Cause I don't know.
Like I know, I stand on it.
Which I'm the same way.
I'm like.
It sounds like.
Listen if we're going to separate the art from the artist.
Like we're not going to listen to Beethoven cause he fucked his seventh
daughter.
We're not going to listen to.
He did.
I don't know.
Chopin because he was a racist and we're not going to.
Caravaggio is a murderer.
Yeah.
How are you.
How do you differentiate that?
It's a really tricky moral argument.
It's really tough.
It's also just seems like it's like this horrific thing that I don't know.
Like I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah.
And it's also very he said she said and it's not.
Doesn't seem like there's like damning evidence of like.
Am I the one to adjudicate it?
I mean I think that we have this notion of like.
Well Roman Polanski was adjudicated.
Would you watch Chinatown?
I watched Bitter Moon the other day.
So good.
Have you seen it?
No.
What's it called?
It's so horny.
Bitter Moon?
Yeah.
The one where they're on a cruise ship.
Yeah.
No.
There's a milk scene.
It's one of the sexiest scenes I've ever seen.
Sign me up.
Bitter Moon.
I just want to watch it.
How do you adjudicate it then?
I watch the art because I just feel like we're going to get in a bunch of
trouble if we're
going to try and like cancel the art made by people who are racist, sexist, you
know,
abusive, whatever.
I'm not sure how to play that one out.
And maybe we'd love to hear from you in the comments section if you have ideas
about.
What's your favorite Wagner?
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
De Guvenden.
Yeah.
I like the Tannhauser.
Tannhauser?
Yeah.
The what do you call it?
The...
Epic.
The epic one.
Yeah.
What's it called?
The Flight of the Valkyries?
No.
That's played out, dude.
Yeah.
That's hack.
So 1979.
I'm over it, dude.
No.
The Tannhauser, whatever.
The...
There's one part of it that's stunning.
But like, yeah.
He hated Jewish people.
I don't know.
But I love...
I love the Looney Tunes where they do the Wagner opera.
Obwumhilde, you are so wovey.
Yeah.
Yes, I know it.
I can't help it.
I mean, Hitler had a lot of great paintings.
I mean, let's just be honest though.
Do you play music?
Yeah.
What do you play?
Seattle Grunge.
I play the skin flute and I play the...
No, you don't.
Yeah.
Do you guys catch that?
I also play...
Do you guys catch that?
A little guitar and drums.
Really?
Yeah.
And I played the bassoon in college.
In a high school.
What is a bassoon?
Fuck you.
In my mind, I think kazoon.
Fuck you.
What is a bassoon?
You know what a bassoon is.
It's not a kazoo.
A bassoon sounds like a...
You shit.
It sounds like an antiquated racial slur.
Like in the 1800s.
A bunch of bassoons came down to my world.
I don't want my daughter with no bassoon.
What is a bassoon?
You know what a bassoon is.
You don't claim ignorance.
In my mind, it's kazoo