Live From The 405 Podcast · Luke Allen, Stand Up Comic & Comedy Writer

Live From The 405, Episode 528 (Part 1)

·1 hr 10 min·4 clips

A stunt fire scene reportedly took 40 takes and left the crew choking on smoke.

1. Live From The 405 Podcast episode 528 follows Duke Allen through a cold, a film documentary, and a visit to a David Fincher set for the Cliff Booth sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. 2. Duke Allen hosts the episode, and he mentions Uncle Luke too on Instagram while describing his own production-world connections and weekend schedule. 3. The episode is built around a personal question: whether he can finish a chaotic workday, get to the set, and still make Sunday prep. 4. Duke says he has had a cold every other month since the end of May and calls this his fourth cold of fiscal year 2025. 5. He compares his throat to Gavin Newsom’s voice and says he sounds nasally enough that he might need a cough drop during recording. 6. He watches Michael Madsen, American Bad-Ass on Amazon Prime after Netflix runs out, then bails after about 25 minutes because the documentary sounds echoey and poorly produced. 7. He notices Peter Bishop, Chuck Zito, Daryl Hannah, and Paul Sorvino among the talking heads, and he questions when the project was shot because Paul Sorvino had already died. 8. He says Virginia Madsen looks fantastic in the documentary and adds that he did not know she and Michael Madsen are from Chicago. 9. Duke says he had teased another episode of Behind the Cork with Eric Rocha and Mitch Verzi, but he could not get the group back together. 10. He says an Instagram clip of their Christmas-music riff, including an I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus joke and a Goodfellas reference, drew a big response. 11. Duke talks through his view that he, Eric Rocha, and Mitch Verzi have a strong three-person comedy dynamic, with Eric as host, Mitch as straight man, and him as the sniper. 12. He compares their chemistry to a SWAT team and says he thinks they can do both stand-up energy and conversational podcasting. 13. Friday becomes the main pressure point because he has to leave work by 4:30 to reach the set, while technical problems and lens calibration issues keep piling up. 14. He says the whole lens set kept coming up long at five feet and that he had to take lenses apart upstairs and bring them back down for more adjustment. 15. He calls the day a rare chance to step onto a major film set and says the opportunity felt like something he might never get again. 16. At Red Studios, he meets a longtime camera-industry relative who has worked on Fight Club, Netflix’s Dahmer project, and the new David Fincher shoot. 17. That relative walks him through the recreated bar set, the process-shot soundstage, and a fish tank that Duke says he touched while standing in the spot where the scene happens. 18. Duke says the set was empty except for Fincher and Brad Pitt, and he describes the car sequence being shot with LED walls, air-bubble motion rigs, and huge fans. 19. He says the crew is near the end of principal photography, that Brad Pitt reportedly pushed back on endless takes, and that the longest example he heard about was 40 takes on a fire stunt. 20. Listeners who like Hollywood production details, camera tech, and set stories will get the most from this episode, while people wanting a tight topic-focused interview may skip it.

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