Latest / Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps / Premium: When Josh Met Susan Sarandon

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Premium: When Josh Met Susan Sarandon · Uncomfortable Conversations with Josh Szeps

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G'day, this is an abridged version of the episode that you can hear in full by signing up
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at uncomfortableconversations.substact.com slash subscribe. Enjoy the freebie.
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G'day, humans. Welcome to Safe Space for Dangerous Ideas.
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There's another primo, premium episode from the vaults.
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And when I say from the vaults, there's been some misunderstanding through no fault of your own.
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If you're one of the misunderstanders, I don't judge you for it.
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Clearly, the fault is mine. I'm attributing this to human error.
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But sometimes some of you are under the laboring under the misapprehension
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that when there's a from the vault or from the archive's episode,
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that that means that we're just taking some random old episode
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that's already been released on this show and dump it back into the feed
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because we're being lazy. That's not what's happening.
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We never re-release old episodes as best of.
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What's happening here is that there are interviews that I've done
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on other platforms, other shows elsewhere in the ether,
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in the universe, in the cosmos, galaxies far far away,
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so on and so forth, et cetera.
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And there don't exist that you can't get anywhere
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and that have never been heard on this show before
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and can't be found even in the crazy bar in Star Wars
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in the galaxy far far away.
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And we're harvesting these things like you might harvest an organ
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from a small Chinese child if you're corrupt, for example,
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but we're harvesting them in a much more ethical manner than that
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and we're bringing them to your ear holes on this show.
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So I just want to make it clear, our premium episodes,
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which are for our premium sub-stack subscribers,
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and I'll get to that in just a second as well,
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I can hear you rolling your eyes internally,
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like I just can't bang on about a sub-stack.
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No, no, no, no, no, I'm not going to bang on about it,
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just a little bit, but it's only because I have to tell you
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something.
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Those premium episodes, these are all new,
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unavailable anywhere else, never before heard,
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completely fresh, Josh, unless you happened to be like attending
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some thing that I was doing 10 years ago
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with Susan Sarandon, who happens to be the guest today.
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Susan Sarandon's an incredible performer.
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I sometimes, when people sometimes ask me
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what the most difficult interview I've ever done is,
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I sometimes cite this one.
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And when I listen back to it, I'm not entirely sure why,
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but there's just something quite ethereal
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and uncooperative and otherworldly
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about an actress of the caliber of Susan Sarandon.
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I wonder if you will pick that up.
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Anyway, this is a super interesting and super wonderful interview,
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and this is just the kind of thing that you get.
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In full, if you are a subscriber on sub-stack,
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which brings me to my next point,
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if you're a free subscriber on sub-stack,
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and if you're not a subscriber at all
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and you're listening to this on just a regular podcast app,
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did you realize that you can be a free,
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there's a free tier on our subscription level.
3:01
And with the free tier, you get a weekly newsletter,
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or you haven't been lately,
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because my producer's been in South Africa
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and I've been in West Africa.
3:08
But you get a weekly newsletter,
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which gives you links to some of the best radio content
3:12
that I've done, little bits of whimsy.
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You'll get the first invitations
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to uncomfortable conversations, live events,
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when we launch those later in the year,
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you'll get access to community forums
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where you can discuss the episodes.
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And perhaps most importantly,
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I think you get to ask the questions
3:28
on the monthly, ask me anything episodes,
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which we release if you are a free tier subscriber.
3:34
Of course, you get a lot if you pay as well,
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but these are the benefits of even just being
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as being part of the community.
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You are, you're in the team, you're in the group,
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you're in the tent pissing out,
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instead of outside the tent pissing in,
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or whatever the saying is.
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So if you're not part of sub-stack,
3:48
you should go to uncomfortable conversations.substack.com,
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slash subscribe, and at least subscribe to the free tier.
3:54
Now, here's the thing.
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If you've done that already, but you've never paid,
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the moment of reckoning has arrived.
4:01
We originally said that we'd give you a month,
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I think of free premium content,
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and partly through our own generosity
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and partly through our own disorganization,
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we just never got around to depriving you
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of any of the paid content.
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So you basically had 23 weeks of content for free.
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As a reminder, if you're not a paid subscriber,
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the benefit of paying 699 a month US,
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or 69 bucks a year US,
4:28
is that you never get any ads.
4:30
At the end of every episode,
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you get to hear the inside internal
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worrings and machinery of the guest's brains
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as they try to grapple with my first date questions,
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which are these kind of random,
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rush up questions about something interesting.
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It's a lovely part of the show
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that I would never want to give up,
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and that's what you miss out on
4:49
if you don't get the paid version of the show
4:52
in it just having no ads.
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But you also get these primo episodes.
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So you're only hearing a small portion of these primos
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as I guess sort of tease episodes
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if you're not a paid subscriber.
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Up until now for the past 23 weeks on the free tier,
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you've been getting all of this,
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but I'm just telling you, you'll get this one,
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be free, but then as of next week,
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you're going to have to make a choice.
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You're going to either upgrade to a paid subscription
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or your podcast feed thingy that you get through
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substack is not going to keep refreshing with podcasts,
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and you'll have to go and get it through
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another regular podcast platform
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and you'll start hearing ads
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and you'll miss out on first date questions
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and you'll only get the teases for the primo episodes.
5:36
So the benefit of like primo episodes,
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just in terms of your self interest,
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and I'll give you the spiel about why it's a good thing
5:42
to do to subscribe in just a moment,
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but just like allow me to pray upon your own personal
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self interest because at the end of the day,
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we're all just damn primates and metals
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and we're all looking after new rower.
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No, I know that.
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So as a paid subscriber, you get to ask me anything,
6:00
which if I say so myself, reasonably entertaining,
6:03
and give you an insight into aspects of the Jarsip's
6:07
world view that you may not otherwise have.
6:09
You get things like those travel logs
6:12
that I did when I was in Africa.
6:14
Whimsical observations about my trip,
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banter with my travel companion.
6:20
We gave you a little bit of that if you weren't a subscriber,
6:22
but I know that a lot of people did end up subscribing
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because they wanted to hear just the
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bizarro world interpretation of that trip
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that my friend Dan and I had.
6:33
And we're also going to be having
6:34
these kind of round table live events
6:37
like these cocktail chattery type things
6:40
with friends of the show and celebrity guests.
6:43
That's all in addition to these archive
6:45
from the vault shows that we probably shouldn't brand
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as archived or from the vault
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because it makes it sound like we're feeding you yesterday's
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sloppy seconds or you're having sex with your girlfriend's
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sister who's a little bit of a, you know what?
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I'm just saying something like this is not that.
7:00
This is this is fresh, all new material
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that just happens to have been recorded in the past.
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So if you're on the free tier, go and upgrade.
7:09
If you don't want to upgrade and you can't afford it,
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then that's fine, that's understandable.
7:12
Just keep going, subscribe to a conventional podcast app.
7:16
If you're on a conventional podcast app
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and you've never thought you've always thought,
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oh, I should do that sub-stack thing sometimes.
7:21
It's very easy, you get your phone,
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you go to a web browser and you go
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uncomfortable conversations.substack.com.
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Slash, listen.
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And then that listen will, once you click a few buttons,
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take you through to your own personal podcast feed,
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which if you're paying you $6.99 a month or $69 a year,
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we'll give you all of those benefits
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of being part of the community.
7:45
Now let me also just mention the pulling out the harp
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and kind of plugging it your heart strings component
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in addition to the self-interested component.
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This whole thing is an experiment.
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It's a vote that you get for what kind of media you want.
8:05
If you think that there's any value in me having a forum
8:09
like this where I can say things like the joke about your sister
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who's a bit of a, you know what that I just said,
8:16
instead of remaining in the stuffy kind of box
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that I'm required to operate inside of
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when I'm in, for example, a forum like a public broadcaster.
8:25
If you think there's a value in having
8:27
an individually independent media that is not beholden
8:31
to either market forces or government forces
8:35
or to group think of other producers.
8:38
And if you think that might take on the world
8:40
is something that is better to have in existence than not,
8:45
then vote.
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And the way you vote is by subscribing.
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That is really the only metric that we have.
8:52
We have the big broad metric of how many people listen
8:54
to the podcast and that is fabulous.
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And I love the large number of you who do that.
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But ultimately, the rubber meets the road
9:02
where it actually becomes worth our time
9:06
to invest in additional production content
9:08
and invest in additional focus
9:10
with a limited number of hours in a day
9:12
and a massive opportunity cost to doing this show
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versus all of the other things that I could be pitching
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or shilling or selling or recording.
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You know,
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listening, subscribing on Substack is your way of voting
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for a more sane media environment.
9:30
And it's also your way selfishly
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of getting a whole bunch of great new stuff.
9:33
The first eight questions, no ads in episodes,
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special ask me anything episodes,
9:38
weird travel log, rambly episodes like when I was in Africa,
9:43
round table panels and all of these best-offs,
9:47
these, you know, not best-offs of this show,
9:49
but like from the archive, some of the great things,
9:51
I had a whole damn career, you know,
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before I started doing this show,
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I've worked at a whole bunch of places
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and a whole bunch of different podcasts
9:57
and there were great things like this season,
9:58
surrounding episode that you should be listening to.
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I'll just do a quick plug also for those of you
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who haven't chosen the very, very, very top tier,
10:07
which we call the Heroes of Sanity.
10:10
The Heroes of Sanity and I gather monthly,
10:14
we've had two so far, we've got another,
10:16
third one coming up and we have a video cocktail chatter
10:21
and we catch up and we talk and we shoot the breeze
10:23
and we talk about things that are going on in the world.
10:25
It's a fascinating, small group of people,
10:27
blessedly small, it's fantastic that it's so intimate.
10:31
I mean, a lot of people don't have the scheduling capacity
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to join us, so like it's actually an opportunity
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to literally get to know me
10:39
and an amazing bunch of just a few other people.
10:43
We have a great time on the weekends catching up.
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I'm really impressed by the folks who are our heroes
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of Sanity, that's 250 bucks US a year.
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So that's like if you're truly committed,
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but the benefit of that is yeah, once a month
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we'll just get to hang out online and super, super cool.
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So that's the other option that you have.
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Whatever you choose, just be aware
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if you're on the free tier of sub-stack
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and that's where you're getting this,
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then something's gonna change next week,
11:08
that's gonna stop working.
11:10
You're gonna have to either pay up
11:12
or just take the regular feed, which is also okay,
11:15
but it won't be coming through sub-stack anymore.
11:17
Ah, do that make sense?
11:19
I think that made sense.
11:20
That made sense, right?
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Oh, and I love the fact that like,
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you know, someone left us a one star review on iTunes
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because of the paywall, but there is no paywall.
11:30
There has been no paywall so far
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and now that the paywall is coming in,
11:35
it is only imposed on things
11:38
that have never existed until the sub-stack.
11:40
Everything that has ever existed in the show continues
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to be free and if you're consuming the free show,
11:46
enjoying the free show, you don't mind the ads,
11:48
you're supporting our sponsors,
11:50
you don't care about not getting the first eight questions,
11:52
you don't care about not hearing all of the episodes
11:55
like this, then that's great.
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God bless, enjoy.
11:59
We love having you as a listener as well.
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Enjoy me and from 10 years ago,
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the one and only Academy Award winner.
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Susan Sram.
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One of the great actresses of our time,
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Academy Award winner, Susan Sramden, is here.
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Thanks so much for being on the show.
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Thank you.
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One thing that I note, the Tribeca Film Festival
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is just about to start.
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You are one of a few New York actors
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who is actually from New York.
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You're born in Queens,
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raised in Jersey.
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Born in Manhattan, and I was raised in Jackson Heights
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and then New Jersey.
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Got it. Along with the De Niro,
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you are kind of New York icons.
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Oh, good.
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What was it like just De Niro?
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Just take it back to that.
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What was your childhood like?
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What was my childhood like?
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Happy.
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I'm the oldest of nine.
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Yeah.
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So chaotic, perfect preparation for this business.
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No privacy, lots of chaos.
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You know, in lower middle class,
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we had enough, but not too much.
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And who did you idolize as a kid?
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What, who did you look up to?
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You know, I don't remember idolizing anybody.
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I remember reading a lot.
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Reading a lot of biographies,
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but I didn't really, so I went through stages
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where I've thought different people's lives.
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I mean, did you have someone that you idolized?
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Yeah, I mean, I think people who did kind
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of the same sort of professional stuff that I do.
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I mean, I looked up to Kasa and Letterman
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and some of the great journalists and so on.
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I think that, I mean, where did you get the bug
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to be in the creative arts and to become an actor if?
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It was just a personality thing.
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I never really translated it.
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I never studied acting.
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I never thought I would be an actor.
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I just kind of wanted to leave New Jersey
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and see what the world was like.
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And I don't know.
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I just fell into it completely,
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like almost everything in my life
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has been very serendipitous and not at all planned.
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It's so refreshing.
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So many stars had a very, very focused, almost desperate
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kind of drive to succeed.
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That wasn't not this girl.
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I didn't even think about it at all.
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It just kind of happened to me.
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You got married young at 20.
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And at the end of that marriage, after more than 10 years,
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you told Cosmopolitan magazine,
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I don't think I believe in marriage.
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And you never got married again, despite having long and loving.
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Yeah, but even when I got married,
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we kind of every year just decided
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whether or not we were going to renew.
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It's not that I don't believe in it for other people.
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I just, for me, it never was significant.
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I felt that some kind of commitment was important,
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but the actual dream of a wedding with a dress
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and like this movie.
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Yeah, well, that's what I was getting to.
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So the big wedding now is for an agnostic
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on the issue of marriage.
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Well, my daughter was getting married that October.
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Oh, no.
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It was a good preparation of what not to do for a wedding.
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You know, I think it's great.
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Anybody wants to get married.
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I think it's fabulous.
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I think it's a challenge to be with another person.
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I think if you decide that you want to be intimate with another person,
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the rest is all details.
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The gender, the age, the color, the however you do it is just details.
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It's the biggest, hardest thing is really
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deciding if you want to be intimate with another human being.
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And I think it's a very hard job to do that.
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And then you throw in kids.
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It's even more difficult.
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But the wedding trip, I mean, this is kind of don't do this at home.
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It looks like a fun shoot.
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I mean, was it cool?
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Yeah, it was fun.
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I had pneumonia throughout the entire thing
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through the entire summer.
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So if you hear me sounding a little congested,
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it's because I was sick through the whole thing.
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So I don't know that I probably, I had a good time,
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but I probably would have had more fun if I could have breathed more.
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Yes, breathing helps.
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Yes.
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But it was a great cast.
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I knew Robin already.
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I knew Diane, I knew the Neural, but I'd never worked with them.
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And I knew Tofer, and I'd never worked with him.
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I just worked with him again, actually.
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And so it was fun to get everybody together.
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Like Ben, Catherine Hagel, I'd never met.
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So as a woman, get to be in films with too many women.
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And if you do, you hardly ever are in scenes together.
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You usually naturally pit it against each other, kind of.
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So it was fun to work with Diane.
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She's turned into a West Coast person,
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so I haven't run into her very often lately.
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Do you think there's a bias against putting strong female leads
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in movies?
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No, the good news and the bad news about Hollywood
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is that there is no political, anything.
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Anybody that makes money is fine.
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So I don't think one way or another,
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I think that they do tend to dumb down the audience
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and think that anything that's too complicated
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or isn't immediately grasped or is sad or leaves you,
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is ambiguous, maybe doesn't, won't make a lot of money.
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But other than that, really, as long as you don't get old
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and fat, they don't give me the ability to care about it all.
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So no, I think that they're thumb on the leaves
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made a lot of money.
17:29
Dead man want you made a lot of money.
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So the audience is smarter than people would have you believe.
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I was in a hotel room recently, and Dead man walking
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came on, and I had expected.
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I had anticipated to go out and explore the city that I was in.
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And it completely captivated me as it did the first time,
17:43
and I ended up falling out.
17:45
It's obviously your Academy Award winning performance.
17:49
In light of Boston, I just want to bring up a tweet
17:51
that I tweeted out on Monday evening, which I said,
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this is one of those days when I find it hardest
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to defend my opposition to capital punishment.
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What are your thoughts about capital punishment?
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Well, first of all, let me just say that, you know,
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with the violence that we had in New York City that actually,
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I think, the point.
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You're talking about 9-11.
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9-11, which I was in the middle of, yeah.
18:15
That it really, I hope that Boston has the experience
18:19
that we did where it brought the city together, where people
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were so generous in reaching out to each other,
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and we're there for each other, and we're shaken
18:27
from the tracks that people get on
18:30
and started talking to each other.
18:32
It was quite an amazing, amazing time in New York.
18:36
Capital punishment doesn't, I mean, the need for vengeance,
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the feeling of vengeance is a very primal, very normal thing,
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but that's different than having a society
18:48
that has capital punishment.
18:51
The problem with capital punishment, aside from where you stand
18:55
morally as it doesn't work, it is incredibly expensive,
18:59
so much more expensive than life in jail,
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and people that do something in this horrific aren't sane,
19:07
and so it doesn't deter them.
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So if it's not a deterrent, it's incredibly expensive,
19:12
and it doesn't bring back the people that you lost,
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it's hard to make an argument for it, really.
19:17
But the natural instinct of wanting to have some kind of revenge,
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I understand, the people having dealt with this subject a lot,
19:28
people who think that when they, in some way, punish someone
19:35
who's taken someone from them that they love,
19:40
are very disappointed at the end of the day
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when it still leaves that huge hole.
19:46
And so if you put all your chips on wanting that person to die,
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and they do, and you still don't have your loved one,
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it's really horrible.
19:55
The people who have, in the name of the person
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that they've lost, found a way to move through it,
20:01
have lived much healthier lives, and in the memory of that person.
20:05
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned the hope that tragedies
20:07
like this unify people.
20:09
In the past 48 hours, I've seen so much disunity,
20:12
especially online, on Twitter, so many accusations going back
20:15
and forth, I made the mistake of antagonizing a conservative talk show host
20:18
on Monday, and we're going to do a big Twitter battle.
20:20
What do you make of the political climate at the moment,
20:22
in light of the Tea Party, in light of, I don't know,
20:25
the national mood?
20:27
Well, I think democracy's messy.
20:29
I think that, you know, if you could remove it.