Latest / NO FILTER / Joe Rogan Experience _2425 - Ethan Hawke(M4A_128K)

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Joe Rogan Experience _2425 - Ethan Hawke(M4A_128K) · NO FILTER

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: by night, all day.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Nice to meet you. Great to meet you, man. It's
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: weird when you see someone in so many fucking movies
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: and then you meet them in real life. Like, okay,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: just a regular person right there.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Staring me in the face. You just took a leak. Yeah.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: Um, dude, you've been in some fucking banger movies, man.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: It's like, You've had an incredible career.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Pull that sucker. Pull it towards me. Yeah.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: All right. Very good. Yeah. It's been a long, strange trip.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: It's been a wild one, huh?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: When did you start acting? How old were you?
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: All right. So I'm like 12 years old. I don't
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: have a winter sport. My mother doesn't know what to
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: do with me. And my next door neighbor, he lived
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: like four houses down. He took an acting class. Paul
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Robeson Center of Performing Arts. And so my mother signed
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: me up so that I could get picked up by
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: his mom, you know, taken to acting class in the
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: winter and get dropped off, you know, and be at home.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: And I went there and this head of a local
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: theater company came by to teach an improv seminar kind
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: of thing. I'm 12 years old. Right. And afterwards in
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: the parking lot, he said, Hey, you want to be
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: in a play? I said, what do you mean? He says,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: I got a part of a guy who's a knight.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: You get to have a sword. And I said, well,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: I have any lines? He said, you'll have one line.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: I said, all right, cool. And I asked my mom,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: and she said, do I have to pay? And I said,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think they're going to pay me.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: So I went and I did this play. And it
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: was George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan at the McCarter Theater
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: in New Jersey. That was a real play. Yeah, it
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: was a proper play. And it was an incredible play. experience,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to be honest with you, because my parents hated their jobs.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: You know, they would go to work and their life
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: happened on the periphery of their employment. You know, my
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: mom would take the train to New York and so
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: she wouldn't get home till 7.30, something she would leave
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: at dawn. And she was just miserable at work, I mean.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: And I went to this rehearsal and everyone was having,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: they were talking about whether or not God existed. They
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: were talking about what they believed in. They would dress
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: up in these crazy outfits. And then we did the
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: play and they got a standing ovation. And it was
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: so much fun. And it was the first time I said,
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: you could do this for a living? You know, a
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: lot of the actors aren't people you've heard of or
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: anything like that, but they were real actors and they
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: loved their job. And the rehearsal room was so kind
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: of thrilling, watching them figure out where people should stand
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: and went what was important and what was the scene
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: about and what was the theme of the play and
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: how could this scene fit in with the larger context?
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: And I just decided that's what I wanted to do.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: And a lot of kids want to act, so that
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean very much. But through this other friend of mine,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: I started hearing about open casting calls in New York.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And I asked my mom if I could go on
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: some of these big auditions. And again, she said, is
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: it going to cost me any money? She said, if
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: I paid for my own train fare, I could go
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: to these auditions. And so I I took some Polaroids
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: and went on a few of these big auditions and
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: I got one of them. And it was for this big,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: in 1984, it was a $ 30 million movie directed by
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: the guy who'd just done Gremlins, right? Joe Dante. And
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: I thought I was a made man. I mean, it
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: was just, it was absolutely incredible to be sucked out
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: of suburban America and and brought to LA. My first
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: scene partner was River Phoenix. And all of a sudden
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I'm in LA and you know, my mom couldn't quit
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: her job or anything. So my mom had a really
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: turbulent relationship with her mother, but her mother, her mother
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: and she didn't really know each other. And so her
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: mother said she'd be my guardian. And my mom designed
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: this as a way to maybe have a family healing.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: But my grandmother was, um.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: A piece of work.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: And we lived together in Koreatown. That's what they called it.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: And it was wild. And she, I remember we drove
• 4:27
  Speaker 1: into Paramount Studios. You know, you can picture it, the
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: image from The Godfather and you had the big gates.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: And my grandmother had always wanted to be a movie star.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: You know, and she had, she was from here. She's
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: from Austin, Texas. Well, really Fort Worth. But, you know,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: she would talk about going to see Gone with the
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: Wind at the Paramount here in Austin, you know, and
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: she would She would watch Gone with the Wind, you know,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: three times a week. And she had dreamed of being
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: a movie star. And I remember we were in a
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: big van driving me to set the first day. And
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: we went through the gates of Paramount opening up. And
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: she was smoking an Eve cigarette in the van, of course.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: It's 1984. And she's just like, my first time in
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: Hollywood as a fucking guardian. And so... The whole child
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: actor thing was a trip. And I finished the movie
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: and there's a lot of drama involved in that if
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: I was to complete that story. But I finished it.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: The movie was a big turkey.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: How old were you at the time?
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: 14. River and I were both 14. But see, we
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: look so young in that picture, right? But you got
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: to understand, you know, when you're that age, you think
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: you're dying to be 18, dying to be 16. We
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: went off, River and I, Stole a pack of Camel
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: cigarettes because we both wanted to be like James Dean.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And we had a lot of fun.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: That's the truth.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: But the movie came out, and I remember River and
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: I going to the bathroom at the premiere. And we'd
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: grown a lot from the time we shot the movie
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: to the time it came out. And nobody in the
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: bathroom really recognized us. And they were all talking about
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: what a turkey the movie was, how terrible it was.
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: And I remember just looking in the eyes and like,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: it wasn't the narrative we thought, you know, we, we'd
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: bought into the dream that, you know, we were going
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: to be whatever teen icon we were thinking of at
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: the time. And, and it died a quick and salty death,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: my dream. And I went back to high school and
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: put away my dream of being an actor. It seemed
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: like it was this isolated, almost like choose your own
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: adventure book or something where I, got to see what
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Hollywood was like, but then have it denied. And it
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: kind of like putting your hand on a flame. It
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: was not a good feeling when it was over. And then,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: you know, four years or so went by and I
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: graduated high school and I was off of college. And
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: I heard about these auditions for a movie called Dead
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Poets Society. And I hated college. I was miserable. And
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: I thought, I'll take the bus in and I'll go
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: on one of these open casting calls again. And, and
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: if I get the part, uh, this is what I decided.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: If I get the part, I'll, I'll do that. And
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: if I don't get the part, I'll join the merchant
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Marines and be like Jack London. That was my fantasy
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: at the time. I remember, I remember calling my sister
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: and saying, all right, there's seven parts. This is how
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: dumb I was. I was like, there's seven parts. If
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I don't get one of those, I must suck, you know?
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: So it's not true at all, but I ended up
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: getting one of And I dropped out of college, and
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: the success of Dead Poets Society sent me... You know,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: it was like a trajectory of... It shot me down
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a different course of water than I was on before.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: It's probably a much better path than the first film
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: being successful, and you become a child star.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how grateful I am for that
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: first experience. First of all, if for no other reason than...
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: in the success of Dead Poets Society, I didn't take
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: it seriously at all. I didn't even realize that the
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: movie was successful until a couple years later, because I
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: had so braced myself for failure. You know, perception of
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: failure anyway.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Because of the first experience?
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because everybody's saying, oh, the movie's so great. I'm like, yeah,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: they said this last time. It doesn't mean anything, you know?
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: And so it kind of taught me at a really
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: young age about to ask yourself why you're doing something.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: You know, like, are you doing it for the result
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: of what happens or are you doing it to do it?
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: And by coming back to acting a few years later,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: I was just fully braced for it not to go
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: well and it was still going to be worth it.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: And so I think it gave me a slight bit
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: of ballast to handle the success of Dead Boys.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: You went into it for the enjoyment of doing it
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: rather than thinking.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: You were going to be a star. I had no expectations.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: I was certain I wasn't going to be a star.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I was positive of it. I saw it as a
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: way to make some money and maybe learn about writing
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: and learn about film and a way to get out
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: of college. Now, what happened is when I got there,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: I met all these other young men who were in
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: love with acting. And I started watching movies with them
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: and talking about movies with them and seeing the light
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: in their eyes. And we'd go to set, and there
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: was Robin Williams. We had Peter Weir, who had just
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: directed Witness, one of my favorite movies of all time
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: at that point. And he was a master. I mean,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: he was not a lightweight human being. He was a
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: heavyweight human being. And he would lead rehearsals and he
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: would talk about acting and performance in a way that
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: I hadn't. Well, you know, I heard people talk about
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: it that way when we were doing St. Joan, when
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I was doing the, like, he talked about it like
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: we were making art and like we were on a
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: mission beyond success or failure. And it was, it was
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: an invitation to a lifestyle, a life commitment. And what
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize at the time, that's what that movie's
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: about too.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: You know, so.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: The movie itself is a guided meditation on carpe diem, right? It's,
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: it's a meditation on gather ye rosebuds while ye may
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: I sound my barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: You know, this is the kind of stuff that I
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: was getting inundated with in rehearsal. And so that was,
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: I didn't, I wouldn't have told you that on the
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: day I wrapped Dead Poets Society that my life had changed.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: But looking back, it had.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: It had planted the seeds. Yeah. I was thinking, I've
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: never met a person who became famous at 14 who
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: came out of it okay. I'm of yet to her
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: Jody Foster school, never met anybody that became famous very young.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: I read every interview she does for exactly that reason. Um,
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: I have, it's, it's so difficult. I tell parents all
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: the time, like children acting is a wonderful thing. Put
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: them in the school play. It's so good for them.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Get them singing lessons. It's so good for them singing
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: the church choir. It's so good for them. Um, But
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: to be a professional actor at a young age is
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: dangerous in extremely insidious ways that are very, very hard
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: to perceive when it's happening.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: That's a great way to put it. Yeah. I think
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: it completely impedes your developmental process. The way I liken
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: it to is like concrete. When you make concrete, there's
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: a bunch of very specific ingredients. You put them with
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: very specific mixtures. Like, you have to have this amount
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: of water, that amount of sand, this amount of rocks,
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: all this. If it's off, it's never fixed. You can't
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: add water after it's cured. It's done. It's fucked forever.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: This is bad concrete now. And this is what happens
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: to a lot of young human beings that become famous,
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: whether it's through acting or singing.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's not just fame. That analogy works for
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: all walks of life, really. You know, if you have
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: a really... Something... really traumatic happens in childhood. It's very
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: hard to recover. It's a tremendous amount of work to recover.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: And I agree with you. Like, I think celebrity is like,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: it's like a tiny drop of mercury or it's poison.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: It's poison for your brain. Now, if you're mature, you
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: can handle it. And if you get it in slow,
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: like I got it in slow increments, dead poet society happened.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: I had a little taste of fame, but I wasn't,
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: nobody knew my name I was you could go to
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: restaurants yeah I was that kid from Dead Poets Society
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: oh look at him and I got it in slow
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: I got to develop what do you call it when
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: you you get a little bit of like a resistance
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: yeah resistance to it and it came so slowly for
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: me I even think about people I remember the weekend
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Pretty Woman came out two days before no one had
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: ever heard of Julia Roberts two days afterwards she's the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: most famous woman in America I think that's a huge
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: thing to absorb. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. And
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: I know that my personality couldn't have handled it. I've
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: worked hard to handle it as poorly or well as
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: I have. Yeah.
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: I think you going back to school and living a
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: normal life for five, six years or whatever it was
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: before you left college, I just think that's critical. That's
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: the developmental process of the normal maturation of a person.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: When they go through adolescence, teenage years, into college, young adult,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: then you can kind of handle things. And then maybe
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: you're also fortunate that, like you said, Dead Poets Society,
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: you didn't get too huge from it. You just got
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: some juice. A little bit of juice.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: A little bit of confidence. Something's happening. Something's happening. But
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: then I had the years after that that... you know,
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: I have to give some, a shout out to my
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: mom who was just so devastated that I dropped out
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: of college. I mean, she just couldn't stop crying about it,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: you know? Um, and it filled me with, uh, desire
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: to show her that I was taking responsibility for my
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: own education, which is what I said I would do.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: And so I started a theater company and I, I
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: worked really hard at a lot of different things, writing
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: and reading and thinking and, mostly with this theater company
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: where I met a lot of young people who were
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: interested in what I was doing, but we weren't paid
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: any money and we worked our asses off and we
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: built sets and we, you know, it was fun. I
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: don't want to lie. We had a great time, but
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: it was a college experience that I gave myself through
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: this theater company. And that changed me because I met
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of people who were really excellent at what
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: I do that weren't making a lot of money and
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I met a lot of people who loved it as
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: much as I do, who weren't getting their picture taken,
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: who weren't being told they were special. I knew how
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: gifted they were. I could understand. I had a little
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: bit of balance and a little bit of humility to
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: go along with the superficial elements of my chosen field.
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Do you ever think about what would have happened if
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: that guy didn't invite you to do that play when
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: you were 12? It's kind of crazy how there's these
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: pivotal moments in your life.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: You know, he just died. Nagel Jackson was his name.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: And he was a great theater director. I mean, I
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: don't know if you feel this way. I don't know what.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: I have a sense often, and I know this sounds
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: really dopey to say, but I sometimes have a sense
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: of a guardian angel of some kind of, why did
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: this guy talk to me in the parking lot? And
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: why was he such a kind, decent human being? Throughout
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: my life, I have had opportunities presented to me and
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: I had enough intuition and enough, uh, intelligence maybe to
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: follow it. But I do think about, I think about
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: it all the time. Uh, all the ways that are
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: imperceptible in the Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday that they happen,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: but where your life is kind of guided. Um, and
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: it doesn't really feel by your own doing.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I know it sounds wacky to say, but I
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: believe it too. I mean, I don't publicly profess it
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: as the definite reason why everything happens, but there's a
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: bunch of, I think most people that have gotten anywhere
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: in life, there's moments in their life where they're like,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: how did that happen? Why did this feel like it
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: was a destined path? Why was I compelled to try this?
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: What was the thought behind that? Am I being guided?
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: Is fate real?
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: I wonder how other people feel, but I do think
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: one of the keys, I think that probably everybody has
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: a path that is there for them. And the trick
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: about knowing yourself, the value in taking time to like
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: be still with yourself and listen to yourself, you know
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: that there's an expression, the voice of our spirit is
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: extremely gentle. it's difficult to hear it. It's quiet. But
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: if you can hear it, that thing, intuition, that thing,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the path, idea of a guardian angel, you can see
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: what's happening around you if you're in touch with yourself.
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: And if you're not in touch with yourself, you keep
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: tripping on the same, you're not seeing the angles and
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: the roads that might be available to you. So I
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: do think that part of the trick It's taking time
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: to actually get to know yourself so that you can
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: see the light when it appears. Because I bet you
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: everybody has it.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: I bet they do, too. I bet there's also a
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: real factor in recognizing the misery of your mother's life,
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: what she was doing, where she didn't take these chances.
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: She had responsibility.
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but can I tell you something funny about that? Yeah. Yeah.
• 18:31
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• 20:03
  Speaker 1: So she was 18 when I was born, right? So that's,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: that's tough. You don't really have a childhood. Right.
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: And, but in her mid forties, she took it. She
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: joined the Peace Corps in her mid forties after, you know,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: once I was okay. And it was right around the
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: time my oldest Maya was born.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: She's a single, single child.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: And I think I was a big part of her
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: on her brain a lot worrying. It was a big,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: is this kid going to be all right? Is this
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: kid going to be all right? It makes a lot
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: of noise in your head, you know? And, um, and
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: I was all right. And she'd looked around and I
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: remember her saying that, you know, if, if an accident
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: happened today, when they do happen and I died, I
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: would be extremely disappointed in myself. She was probably, I
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: don't know, 46 or something when she said this younger
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: than I am now. And, um, and she said, I,
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: don't want to be disappointed in my life. So she
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: joined the Peace Corps, which she wasn't all that impressed with,
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: but they sent her to, uh, Romania and she fell
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: in love with Romania and she fell in love with, um,
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: the people there. And she got obsessed with the racism
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: against the gypsy culture. Um, the Roma culture, I'm supposed
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: to call it. Um, and it reminded her a lot
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: of growing up here in the sixties, um, in the
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: racism she saw as a young girl. And she just
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: decided to do something about it. She spent 25 years there,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: and she got thousands of kids into school who wouldn't
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: have gone to school. She just recently retired back to
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: Fort Worth. And she's a different woman than the woman
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I grew up with, which is, I think, a remarkable story.
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I love both the women, the woman now and the
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: woman I grew up with. I don't want to paint
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: some portrait that she was miserable. She had so much.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: She just was miserable at work. She was not a
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: miserable person to be with. The opposite. And she kept
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: that fire in herself alive enough to when the window
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: presented itself, she took it and she took it hard.
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, she disappeared for a quarter of a century
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: to Romania. It was a young woman born in Fort Worth, right?
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: And that's a wild thing to do. And she made
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: a huge impact. And I'm extremely proud of her and
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: proud of the work that she's done. And so is
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: everybody who knows her. And now she's in Fort Worth
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: doing her thing and has a different sense of herself
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: because she followed her own intuition and her own path.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: It just, she had to deal with the responsibility of
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: raising a child for a long time.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: Well, that, that develops a different kind of character too.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: You know, the, the character of a woman trying to
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: raise a child and also a boy, you know, I,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: I have all daughters.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: You do?
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: I have three daughters and one boy. Yeah.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: All my friends who have boys are like, dude, it
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: is so much harder. It's just that you're just trying
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: to keep them from burning the house down.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a pain.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: That was a huge pain. Of course.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: And if you're a single child, you know. But she
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: must have gotten some inspiration from your path, from your choices.
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I wonder.
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: The fact that you went for it.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: You'd have to ask her. I think she had in
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: her own way went for it because... Everybody told her
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: not to have a baby, and she wanted to. And
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: she didn't want to run with the pack. Now, she didn't.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: I don't think when you're 18, you don't understand the
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: ramifications of the decision of having a child. Right. You know, how,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: you know, permanent. You know, I remember she told me
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: when Maya was born, well, congratulations, you now have something
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: to worry about the rest of your life.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's a gift, though. I mean, I
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: certainly think it changes you as a human being. In
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: my case, the most positive ways possible. I can imagine
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: being a single mother, though, it's a much more difficult
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: position to be in.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: And there's a lot of pressure on women, you know.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Sure.
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: You know, if... If you work, you're a bad mother.
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: If you're just a stay-at-home mom, you're not a good,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: strong woman. They're damned if they do. They're damned if
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: they don't. That's the position they get put in.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All those experiences. As an actor, one
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: of the more fascinating things to me about watching people
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: is how they can assume different identities. And how critical
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: is it to have had so many different people in
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: your life and different life experiences to draw from, to
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: try to understand things through their eyes. If you're a
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: regular person running through, if you're a stockbroker, you're running
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: through the world thinking like a stockbroker. You're not thinking,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: what would it be like to be a janitor? What
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: is it like to be this guy who's trying to
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: raise a family and he's got a drug dealer in
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: his neighborhood that's causing problems and your life is this
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: constant state of drama? Like you're drawing from all these
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: different experiences. So having... had like not i mean i
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: wouldn't say it's your life was complicated but it sounds
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: like you have a really good mom but complicated like
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: and not necessarily that stable in that way you're young
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: and you're you know you're trying this thing out and
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: you're going off to hollywood and then you're coming back
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: and going to college like having all these different bizarre
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: interactions with people in life experience. How much do you
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: draw upon that when you're trying to create a character?
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Well, that's a really big question.
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Well, so I have to break it into parts.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: It started getting bigger as I was asking.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because it's kind of two parts. But the
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: first part about drawing on a character is touching on
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: my favorite aspect of my life and my job. Most people...
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: If you're an actuary, you're an actuary. You think in numbers,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: you think in this, this is, and it's your job.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: You have to, you know, you, I have, um, I
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: got to play a World War II vet. I got
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: taken out to basic training. I got to read World
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: War II veterans journals over and over again. I got
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: to wear the clothes they wore. Um, I was working
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: on that movie for a few months, reading all kinds
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: of books, watching documentaries about that. Then that movie's over.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: Moving on. Now I'm going to, get cast as a
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: LA cop, going to do ride-arounds through Los Angeles in
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: the backseat of a cop car, right when the crash
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: unit thing was happening. And I'm thinking like a cop.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: And I'm not, it's not, it's even, it's different than
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: being a journalist and writing about it. I'm really trying
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: to imagine being them. And I'm not looking at it
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: from a judgmental point of view, I don't have an
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: agenda about whether they're a good person or a bad
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: person or whether this army sergeant should have made that
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: decision or that one. I'm thinking, why did he make it?
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: Why did he make it? Why did he do that? Right.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: I play a jazz musician, a drug addict, right? I'm
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: not sitting there judging him over a bad person. You know,
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking, why did he do it? You know, it's,
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: it's a painkiller. Why is he taking it? Where's this
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: music come from? Why is it so important to him?
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Why does he practice 12 hours a day? What, what
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: is that about? You know, you, All these characters are
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: these invitations to, A, expand your own sense of what
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: identity means. Like, who is Joe Rogan? And who Joe
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: Rogan is with his mom is a little different than
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: he's watching the Super Bowl with his best friends. Who
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Joe Rogan is at 40 is different than he is
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: at 20. We have inside of us so many aspects
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: to ourselves. You know, when you're in love, you change.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: When you see your child for the first time, you change.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: Your biology, your chemicals start to shift a little bit.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: If you're in a violent situation, you know, your molecular
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: structure alters a little bit. And you start to realize
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: that that's not you and that's not you and that's
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: not you. They're all you. And that's what performing is like.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And you start to.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: See society and see yourself and see a continuity that
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: is really kind of exciting. I've had, if you don't
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: get ruined by, oh, breaking your arm, patting yourself on
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: the back or something like that, I've met a bunch
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: of older actors who've lived really interesting lives that I've learned.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: It's like, I once had dinner with Vanessa Redgrave, this
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: old English actress, and she'd spent her life doing Shakespeare
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: and Chekhov and Beckett And Tennessee Williams, she spent her
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: life with some of the greatest minds of the last
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: 50 years. And she carries that with her. She's powerfully intelligent,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: powerfully humble woman. And it's like being next to somebody
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: you really admire, you know, a master craftsman. It doesn't
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: matter what the craft is when you take it to
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: a high level. It has a lot to teach you.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: So anyway, that was a multi-part question. The other thing
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: that part of your question is how did I stay
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: balanced and a lot of it had to do with
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: my father who has he doesn't care about celebrity doesn't
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: particularly think it's very interesting and not in a judgmental
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: way really cares about integrity and whether you're a good
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: person and whether you tell the truth And it doesn't,
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: it's not interesting to him how much money you make.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: That's not where his value system is placed on whether
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: he's naturally suspicious of people who want too much attention,
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: naturally suspicious of that in me, which was good for me.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: It's a good suspicion.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: It's a healthy suspicion. He was very realistic about the
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: chances I had of making a profession out of this.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: That's not a bad thing. You know, everybody says, so
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: great to tell people to follow your dreams and it
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: is important to follow your dreams, but it's also important
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: to be realistic and have a plan and take care
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: of yourself. And, and, um, when you say you're going
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: to do something to do it, to show up when
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: you're asked to tell the truth, all these things that,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: so whenever things would start to go well, I had
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: this person in my life that's very important to me
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: who doesn't place a value on anything superficial. And, and,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: when we talked about why it's so hard to meet
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: young people in this profession who make it, what starts
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: to happen, regardless of how good or not good your
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: parents are or something, your circle can get infiltrated with
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: a lot of people trying to make money off you.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: And that's dangerous. Because they don't care about you. Yeah,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: that is an issue.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: There's an issue of people trying to get you to
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: take work that you really shouldn't take just because they're
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: going to get a percentage of it.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: It's going to be good for you in the next
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: three years, but they don't have your long-term, you know,
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: what is going to be good for the 65-year-old version
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: of you.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: You know, is this... Like you said, yeah, if I
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: could have decided my life, Explorers would have been a
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: huge hit. It would have been E.T. big. And you
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: know what? I wouldn't be here on this talk show today.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: You know, so I don't want to be in charge
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: of my whole life in that way.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe you would, but it would be different. You'd be
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: coming out of rehab.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, for sure.
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: It'd be a Charlie Sheen story. Yeah, dude, I'd be on.
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: Marriage 18.
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: Who, by the way, was a fantastic guy to talk to.
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: I bet he was. Yeah, I listened to it. It
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: was fantastic.
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: Wonderful guy. Like a sweetheart of a guy. A guy
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: who went through the exact opposite of what I'm saying
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: is good for you.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: If you survive, anything is a learning tool.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I mean, you must have this. Some of the wisest
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: people I know have been through the 12-step program.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: And so addiction... And misery can be an unbelievable teacher
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: if you can, if you pull yourself out of it.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: If you survive.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: If you survive. It's not, I wouldn't wish it for
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: my children. It's not a dare I want them to take. Oh, hey,
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: one path to wisdom is terrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. A
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: lot of my friends died from it, but a couple
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: of them are really wise from it. Read a book, okay?
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I remember, it's funny, even as you said, I remember
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: when I was about 24, starting to get successful, I
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: met my friend Richard Linkletter. And we were hanging out
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: in New York, and we met this really cool, this
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: guy we really admired, fancy pants writer, really badass, you know.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: You kind of just, and we were smoking cigarettes. Well,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: Rick wasn't, of course. But we were shooting pool, and
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: this guy said to me, you know what, you're almost interesting.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: He said to me, you know, what you got to
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: do is, you got to go down to Mexico and
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: disappear for a couple years. You know, live life a
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: little bit. then you'll be somebody. And the guy finally,
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: when the night we're walking home with Rick and Rick said,
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: let me tell you what you don't need to do.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: Read some William Burroughs. That might be a good idea.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Read some Hunter S. Thompson, skip the addiction path. Yeah.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: You know, learn what you don't have to, you don't
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: have to do it. You know, you don't need to, that's,
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: that's not the path to wisdom.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: You know, it has worked for a handful of people,
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: but most of us, you know, I keep coming back
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: to this conversation with Jodie Foster. I read her interviews
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: because I admire her because I know what she survived.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: But she's wicked smart.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: You don't want to place your bet that you're as
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: smart as she is.
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, she's smart and also wise. That's the odd thing
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: of someone who's in, like, how old was she in
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Taxi Driver?
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: I don't know, 12, 14.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: Crazy.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: Crazy. Crazy. And it's a very bizarre movie for a
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: young child to be sexualized in this very weird, psychotic movie.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: But what she took from it was this great mentor
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: in Martin Scorsese. And she kind of understood she was
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: making art. That's where the wisdom comes in. She's just naturally,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: precociously wise that way. That she didn't get hung up
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: on the seedy aspects, the sexuality aspects of it. She
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: got hung up on, who's this guy Martin Scorsese? What
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: is he doing? What is this movie saying? How could
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: I be a part of that? And that's how I
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: think she survived. But I don't know the woman, so
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't speak.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know her either, but I do admire
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: her when I hear her talk. Yeah, me too. And
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: that's why I always bring her up as the lone
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: example that I've ever come across of someone who's been
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: through childhood stardom that seems to be very well put together.
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and she's still really good at her job. Yeah.
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: It's like, that to me is really exciting. You know, see,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: if you're me, you're like, I look at Jeff Bridges
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: a lot too. So like when Dead Poets Society came out,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: I went, I remember I went on this long talk
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: with myself. I was like, it was like sunrise and
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: I'd been up all night and it was New York
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: and I was about 19 or something. And I was
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: just thinking about who had gone through this that I
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: actually admire when I look at them and I admire.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And I'm, Jeff Bridges had starred in The Last Picture Show,
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: which was one of my favorite movies, and he was
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: amazing in it. And he just slowly got better and
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: better and better and better. And I was like, all right,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: so it can be done. You know, he's got an
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: amazing wife. He's really super into Buddhism. I started getting like,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: what is it? He's really into photography. I don't know
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: him either, right? So I'm talking like a fan here.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know these people. But I watched him from afar.
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, this race can be won. And
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: I've always thought, I remember I was so happy he
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: won the Academy Award for True Grit, I guess it was.
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: And I was like, damn, what a long, slow burn
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: he had. And just keeps getting better and more interesting.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: He comes out with these weird little books I love
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: and I read them.
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: He writes books?
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he has this book with his, like, he has
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: a mentor in Buddhism called, And they kind of wrote
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: a book together about the Tao of the Dude or
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: something like that. But it's actually, you know, I don't
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: know if you've read the Tao of Willie. I love
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: all these kind of to the left versions of, sometimes
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: I find it hard to read the, I want to
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: read what Willie thinks about the Dampada more than I
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: want to read the Dampada myself.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there it is.
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah. The Dude and the Zen Master. It's a great book,
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: by the way. Here's a mantra in it that I
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: just love, which is, uh, Row, row, row your boat
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: a dream. And he talks about how valuable that song
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: has been to him. I'm probably misquoting, but it meant
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: a lot to me. And it's just like, one step
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: at a time. One step at a time. Keep a
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: smile on your face. Don't forget it's all a dream.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: It's a great mantra.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: It is, and it's always... great to have someone who
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: has gone through it all and has come out fascinating, interesting,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: and wise. So you go, Oh, it can be, it
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: can be done.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Did you ever meet Chris Christopherson? No. He was cool.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I, I, my secret fantasy is, is your job.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: You know, I, I, I wrote a profile on Chris, um,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know, 15 years ago now for Rolling Stone magazine.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: And I, I made a documentary about Paul Newman and
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Joanne Woodward. And I just finished a documentary about Merle Haggard. And, um,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: I really enjoy studying other people. And, um, but Chris,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: you know, his, his life stories, you know what I mean?
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: He was in the military and then he gave up everything,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: became a songwriter. And it's kind of like, imagine if
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: You know, the equivalent is like the point of height
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: of his career. It's like imagining if Brad Pitt had
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: also written a number one single for Amy Winehouse.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, he wrote me and Bobby McGee
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: for Janis Joplin.
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: He did? Yeah.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: And he was, you know, a helicopter pilot and he
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: wrote songs for Johnny Cash. And he was acting in
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Sam Peckinpah movies. He was in Blade. Yeah, he was
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: in Blade. But he was a real, he's a Rhodes
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Scholar and a boxer. You would like this guy. He
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: would be right up your alley. A real free thinker
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: and didn't trap himself in any way of thinking and
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: really fought for individual rights. And he was a great,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: great guy. I got to interview him in this. He
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: actually starred in my first movie I directed too. So
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: I got to know him a little bit. What was that?
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: It's a movie called Chelsea Wall. I don't necessarily recommend
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: you watch it. You can if you want to. I
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: learned a lot making it. I like it a lot.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: But I was learning a lot. But Chris was in it,
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: and he was amazing.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, having... But knowing people like that is so beneficial
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: in your life. They're not just like inspirational. It's like
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: a mental fuel, a type of nutrient almost. It's like
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: having a person that you know exists that's been through something,
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: has come out amazing, and is so not tied down
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: to anyone's specific identity, has varied interests, pursues them all
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: with passion.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Having mentors. Yes.
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: It's like, you know, how are you going to be
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: a samurai if you don't know a samurai? Right. You know,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: you got to see the way they tie their shoes.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: You got to see the way they make dinner. You
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: don't just get to see the fancy sword play. That
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: stuff is hard earned. And so I'm not scared of that.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: You know, you don't have to hero worship people. You
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: don't have to turn them into deities. They're human beings.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: But when you get to experience and see that people like, oh,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: you don't have to lie. I knew a guy once
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: who didn't lie, you know. You don't have to back
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: down when somebody says that. I watched a person not
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: back down. You can be a good parent. You can
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: have your children say, I love my dad. It's not
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: going to come easy, but it can be done. And
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: so I like heroes. I have no, I like, I
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: also like seeing older people, you know, not the fixation
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: on the 23-year-old James Dean, you know, But a fixation on,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: you know, the 72 year old Chris Christopherson, you know,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: you know, pick whoever yours are. There's, you know, Muhammad Ali.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many amazing people that you can
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: say like, wow, life was not always a picnic for them.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: How did they handle it? And then you cannot be,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: you know, too upset when life's not a picnic for you.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: You can just ask yourself, how did you handle it?
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think there's anything wrong with really appreciating people.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: That concern of hero worship is legitimate because I think
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: there are some people that will take a person and
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: change who they are and make them not just extraordinary
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: but not even human.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a mistake.
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: It is a mistake, but it doesn't mean you can't
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: love and deeply appreciate who they actually are, flaws and all.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Because that's what we all are. And when someone is
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: extraordinary and they have gone through so much or they
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: have expressed so much and they do resonate with you
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: so much, that's a valuable person. And you should treat
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: them like they're a valuable person. It's not necessarily hero worship.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: It's just appreciation.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like I'll tell you, I don't know why I
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: just flashed through my brain. When I was making this film,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Chelsea Wallace, you have to understand like digital video, it
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: just came out. This movie, The Celebration, this Danish film,
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: amazing movie. Thomas Vinterberg directed it. And it just kind
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: of changed the rules. The camera was cheap. Movies were
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: always so expensive to make. And now you could just...
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: I was like, all right, I made this movie for $ 100, 000
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: in 2000. And I was like, all right, we're just
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: going to play with this new camera. And I talked
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Chris Christopherson into being it. He was my hero. And
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: he agreed to do it. I couldn't believe it. He
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: shows up on the set. And I had this elaborate
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: shot I had planned. I'd found this apartment.
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: That was amazing.
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: I hope this isn't boring, but I think it's a
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: funny story. So it's my first day with Chris and
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: I'm really trying to impress him. Like I've, I've ripped
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: this shot off from this French film I've seen.
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: It's amazing.
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: You're going to come into, you're going to, he, his
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: character orders a bottle of whiskey and the guy delivers
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: a bottle of whiskey to the room. And in my
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: idea from this apartment, you could walk from the living
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: room into the bedroom and from the bedroom to the bathroom.
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: and then out of the bathroom into the kitchen, and
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: the kitchen opened back up into the living room. It
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: was one of those New York City square apartments in
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: the Chelsea Hotel, right? And I showed him this path
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: I wanted him to take, and he was going to
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: turn on the lights in this room, and he was
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: going to put on a cowboy hat while he's talking.
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: On the phone.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: He's going to look in the mirror and point the thing,
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: and he's going to walk in the bathroom and flick
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: that light on and then slam the mirror shut and
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: then walk out and then sit down in the kitchen
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: right where he was, pop open the whiskey, and pour
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: himself a glass right as he says the last line
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: of the monologue. And he looks at me and he goes,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: are you an alcoholic? And I was like, uh, no, no,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: not really, no. He goes, I'm an alcoholic. I said, oh, okay.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: His character's name was Bud. He says, Bud's an alcoholic.
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah. He goes, so you mean to tell
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: me I order a bottle of whiskey, I'm about to
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: fall off the wagon, and I don't open the fucker
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: until I walk through this room, turn on a light,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: try on a cowboy hat, flip on a light, slam
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: a mirror, and then sit down. I was like, well,
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: I think it would be a great shot. And he's like, Ethan,
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: there is no way in hell that I can remember
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: all those lines and do all that that you're asking me.
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: That shot will never work. So what I think is
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: Bud's an alcoholic, and he's going to get his bottle.
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: He's going to open it, and I'm going to sit down,
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: say my monologue, and drink my whiskey. Okay, great. Let's
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: do that.
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: There's also the terror of someone you deeply admire not
• 45:02
  Speaker 2: liking your idea.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is your whole body just shrivels up. You
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: didn't see the Godard film. I don't give a shit
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: about the Godard film. There's no way I'm going to
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: remember those lines. But then to finish it, I'll say
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: when he wrapped the movie, he was getting... He said
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: his goodbyes and everything. He was getting in the elevator
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: to leave, and I ran out, and I said to him,
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: I said, hey, listen, you've given so much to this
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: whole project, and I know that, but this whole crew's
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: working for free, right? And could I beg you, would
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: you come in and sing one song for us, just
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: for the crew, for me? Is there any way you'd
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: do that? And he said, yeah, you got a guitar?
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I said, I do, I do. So he sat down,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: and he proceeded to tell this elaborate story that I'm
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: sure he's told a thousand times, but it was such
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: a gift. The room, he sat and told a story
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: about how he met Janis Joplin in the elevator of
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: this very building. And we, and she fucked me about
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: four minutes later. I played her this song and he's playing,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: you know, busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: I was feeling by his feet, right? In the whole crew,
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: everybody's crying. Everybody's so happy. I mean, he was just,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: he was that giving. to everybody and understood what it
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: would mean to this group of young artists. But he
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: wasn't perfect. He was a real dude with real issues, and.
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: I loved him. Yeah, he was... I mean, you think
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: about what he did and all the different songs that
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: he performed and movies he was in and different things
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: that he did. That was an extraordinary life.
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'll stop in one second, but for some of you, yeah,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: I think you'll love this. Apparently, the legend Johnny Cash
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: used to say that, you know that song, Sunday Morning
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: Coming Down? I woke up Sunday morning with no way
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: to hold my head that didn't hurt, and the beer
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: I had for breakfast wasn't bad, so I had one
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: more for dessert. Great song. Okay, so Johnny Cash had
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: a number one single out of this song, and Johnny
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: Cash would tell the story how Chris was flying helicopters
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: offshore oil, and he landed in Johnny Cash's front yard
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: with a beer in one hand and the song in
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: the other on his helicopter and said, damn it, you
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: got to listen to my song. And I listened to
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: it and went straight to number one. That's the story that,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: you know, cash would tell. And I asked Chris about
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: it and he said, have you ever flown a such
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: and such chopper? And I said, no, I haven't. He goes,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: there ain't no way in hell you can fly that
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: thing with beer in one hand and a cassette in
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: the other. That story, I don't know where he came
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: up with that story. He's just trying to help out
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: my career and make a legend out of me too.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: But no, no, I just sent it to him via airmail.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: For a person that watches movies, I've done a small
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: amount of acting, but I'm not good at it. For
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: a person who watches movies, there's a thing that happens
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: like a hypnosis when someone is a really good actor.
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: where they become that person. And even though I know
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: it's Ethan Hawke, I know it's fill in the blank,
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Daniel Day-Lewis. I know who it is, but it's not
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: them at this moment. They're so good that they've convinced
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: me that they're this other person.
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: What is that?
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: Because there's moments where I see a good actor and
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: I say, I don't believe them. I think they're phoning
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: it in They're saying it the right way, but there's
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: just something in the air. There's a missing connection. And
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: it is the key to a great movie. The key
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: to a great movie is everybody has to be in
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: that fucking weird zone. That weird zone where you become
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: a different person.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: You used the essential word in your first sentence, which
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: is hypnosis. I've spent my life studying what you just
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: talked about. And when you're acting with Denzel Washington, the
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: power and strength and completeness of his imagination is hypnotizing.
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: And it's an invitation to join him. And a great
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: film is a collective imaginative experience when you watch The
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: Godfather you're not fucking thinking about Al Pacino or James
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Caan or you think about Michael and Sonny and Tom
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: and you know Vito I remember I watched The Godfather
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: I felt like I'd see those guys at the Knick
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: game tomorrow that's how much you're not thinking about the
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: music you're not thinking about the shots it's all one
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: thing all these disparate elements turn into one fist you
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: cannot do it alone Right. But the best people I've
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: worked with, it's like the easiest example to show, like
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: for anybody, when you go to a concert, every now
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: and then it happens. The performer hypnotizes you and you disappear.
• 50:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: You're inside those songs.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: You know, you're not talking about those songs. You're not
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: looking at them. You're not listening. You are inside the song.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: You're inside a dream. And bad acting for me is glib.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Bad acting is commenting on the song. Bad acting is slightly...
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: The feeling you're talking about is when somebody's slightly outside
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: of it. It's very, very hard to do. And a
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: lot of people study it and work on it. And
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: voice and speech is a huge... I mean, this stuff
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: is very... It's way more interesting to me than it
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: would be to our audience here today. But it's like
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: all these elements of what creates hypnosis.
• 51:05
  Speaker 2: If I.
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: If you were, if we're talking about the violin, there
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: are ways to practice the violin. And I'm not going
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: to make somebody a virtuoso, but I can, if I'm
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: an expert violin, help you be better. And I think
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: the same is true for acting. Acting is an art form.
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: It's beautiful. It's some weird collage of where performance and
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: writing and all these elements, music, it's all a part
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: of it. And when it's happening, it's all effortless. And
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of work you can do to inch
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: it to being easier and to inch your scene partner
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: to being easier and there are ways that they can
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: help you and there's ways that they can ruin it.
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: They can break the dream. But when it's good, it
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: is like diving into a dream. And it's a feeling
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: that I got for the first time when I was
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: 18 years old acting in Dead Poets Society, and it
• 52:05
  Speaker 1: was a feeling. It was seconds long. I mean, it
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: was not much, but a feeling of disappearing. And that's
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: the irony I always feel about acting, is that people
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: think about actors and they see these pictures on the
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: red carpet or something, and they think that's what acting is.
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: What it really is, it's a life that's completely antithetical
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: to that of trying to disappear. It feels like the
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: celebration of the self, the celebration of the personality. But
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: when you're doing a scene with Philip Seymour Hoffman, it's
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: not Phil that's talking to you. It's like in the
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: cartoon when the eyes go all squirrely. And then all
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, I'm not me. And if I've done
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: my work right, All of a sudden I'm saying what's
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: coming out of my mouth is what I prepared. What's
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: coming out of my pocket is what I prepared. The
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: way I'm moving is what I'm prepared. And I'm not
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: thinking about it. It's like watching a great athlete. When
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: a great athlete makes a behind-the-back pass to the guy
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: at the perfect second, he's not thinking, oh, I've got
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: a cool idea. I'm going to throw it behind my
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: back and I'll catch him right as he's in stride.
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: It's years of practice that have let them know that
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: I know where he is. Because where else would he be? Right.
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: You know, and things that are at first difficult become easy.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: And then you can even get better from there and
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: get better from there. But that's the difference. People talk about,
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: you know, I love Daniel Day-Lewis, too. I think he's
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: kind of the high watermark of my trade. And, you know,
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: you hear these stories about what he does and people say, well,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: is that what you're supposed to do? And the thing
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: about when people say method acting is they really don't
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: fundamentally understand what the method is. The method is an
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: invitation to find out for yourself what will unlock your imagination.
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: And that might be going hungry for two weeks. That
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: might be sleeping in a jail cell. It might be
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: reading 25 books about it. It might be wearing a
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: weird headpiece. It's not a rule. It's about how to unlock...
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: what's in here and bring it forward. That's what the
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: greats do.
• 54:30
  Speaker 2: And find that zone. This episode is brought to you
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  Speaker 2: by Uber Eats. Every football season, the same thing happens.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: The game somehow makes everyone really hungry. Quarterback scrambles, clearly
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  Speaker 2: Uber Eats. And when you're watching a movie, It does
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  Speaker 2: the exact same feeling like I'm there with you. Whatever
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: you're experiencing when you are in that zone and you
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: really are that person, I am not just saying, oh,
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: he really is that person. I'm with you. I'm with
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: you in the moment. I feel your anxiety. The scene
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: in the– goddammit, I forgot the name of it. The
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: film you did with Julia Roberts, the dystopian end of
• 55:47
  Speaker 2: civilization movie. Yeah, exactly.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: Now that you said it, it went out of my head, too.
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: It's a great movie. All the Teslas crash.
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, with Mahershala Ali and I. Leave the world behind.
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: Leave the world behind.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: That's embarrassing for me. I'm supposed to know. But when
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: you said you could remember it, then all of a
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: sudden it went out of my head.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: It's less embarrassing for me now that you didn't remember it.
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: Because I was like, shit, I've got to remember that.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: The scene where you go up to the guy's house
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: and he pulls a gun on you.
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: I'm right there with you. I'm like, oh, shit. It
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: was a great scene.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: It was a Kevin Bacon, yeah.
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: Phenomenal performance because I fucking believed you. I believed him.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: I believed you. I believed it was happening. And I
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: was like, oh, shit. It was, oh, shit. It wasn't like, oh,
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: these guys are acting.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: That scene is exactly what I'm talking about. Because that's
• 56:35
  Speaker 1: Mahershala Ali, Kevin Bacon, and myself in a very well-written scene.
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: And those two guys are so easy to act with.
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: they are so, they are, it is so easy to
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: disappear with them. We did that scene over and over
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: and over again, 15,000 different ways, and it was always,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: I always loved it. And, you know, I did, I
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: had a temper tantrum that day on set, but I,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: because your body, you're winding your body up in such
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: a way that it's like a, Emotional currency or something.
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: You have this thing you're going to spend, but your
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: body doesn't know it's fake. And if you do it right,
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: you trick your body into believing that I'm begging for
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: my child's life. I'm not acting. I'm begging Kevin Bacon
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: for my child's life. And he's going to decide whether
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: or not my child gets to live. And if you
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: can get that going, shit starts to happen to you.
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: Things you don't plan. And if Kevin is good, which
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: he is, if Mahershala is good, then they're doing the
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: same thing, right? If he gives me this thing that
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: I need, he's putting his wife at risk. You're not
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: going to do it. I don't care about your kid,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: you know? And then Mahershala's got his character in his head.
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden, people are actually behaving.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: They're not reciting lines. They're not. It's like I did
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: one of my earlier movies with Wolf, right? It was
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: best acting teacher I ever had, this Wolf. because there
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: was this movie called White Fang, right? Little Disney kids movie, right?
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: But it was a great teacher because I had to
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: do these scenes with this half, half breed wolf. And
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: if I'm, if you're the wolf, all right, and we're
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: doing a scene together and what I'm really thinking about
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: is the camera, you know, the wolf turns around and
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: looks at the camera. You know, you know, when you
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: meet somebody and you know, they're self-conscious, right? You know,
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: why she's, why she's so tense that you don't, You just,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: we're nonverbal. We can communicate with each other. Animals pick
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: up on it instantly. If I'm actually talking to the dog,
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: the wolf, if I'm actually in, if I'm present with
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: this animal, the animal interacts with me.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: Especially a wolf.
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: Especially a wolf. Damn thing bit me. Bit me that day.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: Did it really?
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: Hard?
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Why'd it bite you?
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: All right. This is one of the best days of
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: filming in my life. No kidding. All right. Which is
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: an amazing animal trainer. Clint Rau was his name. And
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: we wanted to, it was a scene where I'm getting
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: the wolf to trust me. And it's going to eat
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: out of my hand for the first time. And so
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Clint had this amazing idea. It's like, what if you
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: could see for, even from that shot, how far that's
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: a long lens, that thing. They put me on a
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: little tiny island where two, you know, like some two
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: rivers fork. And so there's a little island of land
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: right there. And so we put, I see this wolf
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: surrounded by water. Right. And, and I, this is flame.
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: This isn't the, the animal that I knew really well. Um,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: But the way to get it to look like this,
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: we have to not know each other. And I spent
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: all day out there with this wolf. And whenever the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: camera started thinking I might have a chance of getting
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: to pet him, they would start rolling. And I just
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: talked to the wolf and I'd walk around and play.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: And I just had to try to be real with him.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: And he started to like me. It's not boring. And
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: I'm getting close because he's starting to like me. We've
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: been playing a lot. And he comes over and, okay,
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: you'll see, he You'll see him bite me if you want.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: But amazing, amazing animal. But the point I'm trying to
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: say is I sat out there for 11 hours with
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: this starving wolf, right? Trying to get him to eat.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: Ready, ready, and.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: Ouch!
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: Okay. That wasn't that bad.
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: Wasn't that bad. Well, it bled, Joe.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: Did it really?
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Sharp teeth. But it didn't look like he was trying
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: to hurt you.
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: No, no, he wasn't. That's what I mean. He wasn't.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: He was....
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: And so, and by the end of the day, check
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: this out, man. I mean, it was one of the
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: most incredible experiences of my life. I know it's a
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: corny kid's movie or whatever, but.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: But it's a real wolf and he doesn't know he's acting.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and he doesn't know he's acting.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Right? And so I got to be real. And I mean,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: I wept when that dog died, you know, because and
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: I think about that scene when I'm doing anything, you know,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: about being present.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: And that's if I'm trying to get the shot, the
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: dog is not going to eat out of my hand.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: If I actually want to say, hey, you can trust me.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: You know, I'd have to give up for hours, you know,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: and just sit there and We didn't have a phone.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: I'd just sit there and whittle or something and walk
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: over there, toss rocks for a little bit until he got...
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: It was such a fascinating experience.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: Wow. Well, that's... Yeah, you can't act, right?
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: And you never can. You never can.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: You never can.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: You never can. And one of the things about... There's
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: a handful. Laurie Metcalf comes to the line, Denzel Washington,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: Sally Hawkins, Laura Linney. There's a handful.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, I could.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: a bunch of them, Philip Seymour. There's a lot of
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: great actors I've worked with in my life. And what's
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: so wonderful about them is if you start acting, what.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: Are you doing?
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: Just this kind of sense. Yeah. Something smells weird.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: Phil was the best at it because it wasn't, it
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: wouldn't just be about you. Phil was amazing. You'd sit
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: down to do a scene with him and he'd be
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: running it and stuff and he just, what is it?
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: Something smells bad. What is it? Is it you or
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: is it me? I don't know, man. Is the cup wrong?
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: Should I be sitting over there? What smells wrong? Something's fake.
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: What is it? What's fake?
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: Pace it up.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Let's try pacing it up. No, that's not it. It's
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: still bad. All right. Let me try this. And then, boom,
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: the next day we'd scream at you or something. And
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: everything would shift and you know, the smell would change
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: in the room.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: And it was like, it's like we're just shaking out
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: what is self-conscious. Something is self-conscious here. Somebody's posing.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: Is it me? Is it you?
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: Is it the fucking prop? Is the table wrong? I
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: don't believe this scene. And what it means is when
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: you're watching the movie, you, the paying audience, aren't going
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: to be able to disappear. You know, haven't you ever
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: seen a movie sometime and you're like, why is she
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: wearing that red jacket? Who thought that was a good idea?
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: And all you're thinking about is a red jacket. It's
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: just wrong. I don't know why it's wrong, but everybody
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: knows it. It's like hitting a wrong note.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 2: I don't necessarily notice with clothes because I'm not very
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: clothes conscious, but I do notice what you're saying about self-consciousness,
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: and I don't understand what it is. It's like this untouchable, unweighable,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: unmeasurable element that just exists, and we know it. We
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: know it's real.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: Don't you feel it in here?
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: When somebody's being funny with you?
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: If somebody has a big agenda about what they want
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 1: to accomplish in your show or something like that.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: Oh, for sure. Especially political people or people that have
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: some sort of a controversial technology that really probably should
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: be regulated. I think what we're going to be able
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: to do is amazing things for humanity.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: And they get that tone in their voice. That Charlie Brown, wah, wah,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: wah voice.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: Well, there's just an air of bullshit. And I don't
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: know what that is. And it's... But it exists in acting.
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: It certainly exists in comedy, too. I always say that
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: when I watch a great comic on stage, they take
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: me on a ride. Like, I let them think for me.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: I'm sitting down. Think for me. You're thinking for me.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: And when someone's thinking for you, it's just like you're
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: free to explore their mind. And it's... If they're self-conscious,
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: you'll feel it. Like, I see someone tense. Like, I
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: have a club, a comedy club in town, and when
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: new people... audition there, perform there, you fucking feel the nerves.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: You feel the nerves. And I'm always like, just give
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: him a few minutes. Let him shake it out. Just
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: let him shake that. It's so hard when so much
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: is on the line to not be self-conscious, to be present.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: But you're smart to give him space. That's always what
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: I feel. Just give me space. Give me space. Give
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: me space to be bad. I need space to be bad.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: And it's kind of like in basketball. You've got to
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: touch the ball.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: Let me touch the ball.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 1: Let me make the lift of it.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: Well, we've all been bad, so it doesn't mean he
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 2: can't be good. When I see someone on stage and
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: they're self-conscious and clunky, I'm like, this is a process.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: This is not like a rocket that when you screw
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: in the last rivets, you're ready to light the fuse.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: I love watching an actor I admire be bad.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: I love it because it's not a science thing.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: Right. It's not a science.
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: Sometimes you got to take a shot and sometimes you miss.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: Well, and sometimes you're going through a divorce or you
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: got a fucking drug problem.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: Or the director's an asshole. Or they changed the script
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: the other day.
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 2: Or you hate the DP. The producer's a douchebag.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: But what I always tell my kids who are really
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: interested in my profession or any young actor is like,
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: I call that permission to fail. I don't give anybody,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: I don't have permission to fail. you know, you, I
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: don't care if you don't like the first AD, I
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: don't care if you don't like this, this cannot give
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: them that, uh, ability. I still fail. I'm not saying that,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: but I, I don't want to seed it, you know, then. And, um,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: but that takes time. I spent the first 15 years
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: of my career saying I didn't do a good job
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: because that guy was a jerk or I didn't do
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: a good job because they changed the script or I
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: didn't do a good job because of this, that, and
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: the other thing. And, Then you see people, like back
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: to our hero thing, you know, and then you see
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: people who are really good and they don't, they don't,
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: Robert De Niro doesn't give somebody the ability to screw
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: up his work day. They don't have that power. He
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: takes responsibility for that power.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: Is that a learned thing? Or is, you could certainly
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: learn some of it from watching other people, but is
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: that just an experience thing?
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: I think it's, it's the right manifestation of confidence, right?
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: Young people have to fake confidence. They just have to.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: When you watch a young person in your club, they've
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: got to fake it. Of course, they're going to have
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: to burn through their nerves. They're going to have to.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: But once you have experience, you can have real confidence
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: because you've fought this battle before. I know I have
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: a certain, if I'm overwhelmed, if my nervous system is
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: at war with myself, I have a certain process. I've
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: walked these woods before. You know, I know why I'm
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: lost and I know what I need to do. And
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: it doesn't mean I'll always work through it, but I'm
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: much more likely to than I was 20 years ago.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's knowing that it's this process when you watch
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 2: younger people do it. Do you ever like are you
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: ever working with a young person and it's not? clicking
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: somehow and you're trying to figure out how to help them? Like,
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: is there a thing you could say to them? Is there,
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: can you just do it by example only?
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: Well, example's the best. The best teacher's example. Unasked for
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: advice is never heard from. The problem with young people
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: is they don't often ask for advice.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: They think they're trying so hard to pretend like they
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: know everything that they feel like to ask advice.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: I kind of feel like that's a generalization, though, because
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: I do know a lot of young people that do
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 2: ask advice. All right.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Well, my thing is I cannot believe the amount of
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: young people who show up on set with their phone.
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: And what you were saying about hypnosis, let me tell
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: you what's a destroyer of collective imagination. Yeah. Is our phones.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: I was reading an article today, and I think it
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: was Psychology Today, about a study that they've done recently
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: on the impact of social media on cognitive function for children.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: And that it's just fucking nuking their brain.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: How old are your kids?
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: I have a 15-year-old and a 17-year-old and a 28-year-old.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: So what is your, like, because my wife and I
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: go through this all the time. They want it so bad.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: And as a parent, you want them to be happy.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: And all their friends have Instagram. I know it destroys
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: my brain. How could it not hurt theirs? I find
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: my own powers of concentration are suffering. I'll be reading
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: a book, which I used to do all the time,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: and every 10 pages I take a break to look
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: at my phone. What's happening? Why am I doing this?
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: But they want it so bad. And I want them
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: to be happy. How do you handle that?
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: I do not put restrictions on my children's use of
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: social media, but we do have discussions about it because
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: I think it is an inexorable part of modern society.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: And I think there is a social ostracization that comes
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 2: from eliminating social media, telling your kid they can't have
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: a phone. I see it in other kids. I don't
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: think that's the solution.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: My daughter. is loving you right now. She is just like, see,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: because she says, let me be, teach me to be
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: responsible for it myself. Help me do that.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: That's what I believe.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: And, you know, when we were thinking about what restrictions
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: we were going to do, we went on this walk
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: with this really good friend of mine. Richard Linklater is
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: an amazing person. And they tried to, my daughters hit
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: him up of what he thinks. He said, I don't know.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: All I know is that the most important thing is
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: to be your own best friend. And that this is
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: a slight obstacle to it. That boredom, boredom and sitting
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: still with yourself is a membrane you kind of have
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: to pass through. And if you can make best friends
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: with yourself, then your best friend is always with you.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: And so that's been my solution too, is to say,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: all right, let's all, there aren't limitations, but let's all
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: sit down and look at, I'll show you how much
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: I looked at it. How much did you look at it?
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: How are we doing? Do you feel, is it helping?
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: Is it hurting?
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: Because what you're a thousand percent right about is it's
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: part of the social structure of their lives.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: And to isolate them from it is to, you can't
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: pretend that doesn't have negative side effects.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: Well, one of my children, well, both of my children,
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: my young children are very disciplined and one of them
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: just opted out. just decided she's not going to get
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: on social media anymore. And she got this app and
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: this is, nobody forced her to do this. She got
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: this app that locks you out and it shows you
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: how many days you've been off of Instagram. Sort of,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 2: sort of incentivize you, you know, to stay off of it.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: You know, the last time she checked, she'd been off
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 2: like 99 days or something like that. No Instagram, no nothing. Um,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 2: but it is addictive and, but, There's a lot of
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: things in life that are addictive. And so the question
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: is like how addictive is it? Like what is calling
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 2: you to get nothing? Because that's what you get. You
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: get nothing. You get these like tiny dopamine hits like
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: staring at something for a few seconds like that's provocative
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 2: or that's crazy. Like why is he saying that or
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: why is that happening? Oh, my God. They're going to die.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: I have this terrible text thread between me and my
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 2: friend Tom Segura. where we send each other the absolute
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: worst things that we find online every day. Like every
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: day it's a guy getting run over by a train,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: car accidents, gunshots, South American assassinations. It's just all– every day.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: It's all the worst things you could possibly find on
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: the internet. There's no good in that. We do that
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: to fuck with each other because it's kind of funny
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: because he's a comedian too and we just fuck with
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: each other. It's just like silly. Like, oh, boy. Like
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: he sends me things and I send him things. But
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: for the most part, I get nothing. it's mostly nothing
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: occasionally I say it's like as a I make this
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: excuse like as a comic oh I need to be
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 2: up on the zeitgeist need to be paying attention to
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: what people are paying attention to but you kind of
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: get it anyway you kind of get it anyway just
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: through life and it's better that way because then you
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: only get the real significant things you don't get the
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: you don't have to sift through everything it's like you
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: have a you have a filter society acts as your
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: filter to get you the most pertinent information um But
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 2: I think leading by example with kids is the best
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: way with everything. My kids are both very disciplined. They
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: get a lot of things done and they work really hard,
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 2: which I'm very proud of. They're also really nice, which
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: I'm also very proud of. I think that's like the
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 2: hardest fucking thing to do is just be nice, to
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: be a kind person. The worst thing for kindness is
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: social media. Children in particular– are so fucking mean to
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: each other on social media. They're so mean to each
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: other in comments and they talk about how one of
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: their friends is getting bullied and this person is doing
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: this and they're leaving comments on this and from a
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: rival high school and this and that. But I also
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: think that that process of understanding that there is this
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 2: bizarre social interaction that's not real, that is a part
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: of life. And that you have to develop a resilience
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 2: to this.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: Getting tough is important. I think one of the things
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: kids are experiencing now is what I experienced with the
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: first blush of celebrity. I mean, you want to talk
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: about negative comments, try being an actor. Everybody's got an
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: opinion about what a fake you are, what a phony
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: you are. This sucks about you. This is dumb. This
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: is what you're like. I have lost... unbelievable ridiculous amount
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: of hours to my mother will send me a really
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: nice review of something something positive about me right I'll
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: look at it and my brain goes what are the
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: comments nasty I mean just the nastiest things you can't
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: believe that some but I don't want to you know
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: give it too much time but I actually think it
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: really makes you stronger to realize of course people don't
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: like you.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: Over time it will make you stronger.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: It's fine they don't like you guess what Half the
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: people every party you went to didn't like you, okay?
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: But they're also not thinking very much about you. They're
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: thinking about themselves. And you start to realize that this
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: is just people talking at the barbershop. People have been
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: gossiping throughout the history of mankind. Now you can read
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: it if you want, but it has no venom in it.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: It's not real. And the sooner you learn that other
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: people's opinions don't have to affect you, I think the
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: better off you are. So in that way.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: It hurt me.
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 1: I've seen it happen to actors, especially if you're doing stage.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sure with comics, when you're doing a play and
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: you have to do it every night and you start
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: reading a lot of bad things that people say about you,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: it is demolishing to your confidence. You know, I mean,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: I had this actor friend of mine. We shared a
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: dressing room and one day he came in and he
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: was great in the show and he came in and
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: just his whole energy It was dark, it was like Yardies.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: I went down the rabbit hole last night. I just
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: read what people are saying about me on the internet
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: and everybody thinks I'm terrible in this play. And I'm like,
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: they don't like your character. People are not so brilliant,
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: you know? There's no geniuses out there chiming in on
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: what a jerk you are at three in the morning, okay?
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: So you don't have to take it seriously. But it
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: took him weeks to get his mojo back. Because he
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: would step out on stage just imagining this chorus of hate.
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: I had the exact same conversation last night with a
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 2: famous comedian friend of mine.
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 2: I won't say his name, but he went down a
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 2: Reddit rabbit hole the other night. I don't do it anymore.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 2: I don't do it. He goes, I fucked up and
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: I went down this rabbit hole.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: Don't do it.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: Don't do it.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: No good comes from it.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: And he was like, they fucking hate me. I go, no, no, no.
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: They hate themselves. They hate everything. Michael Jordan's not leaving
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: Reddit comments. You know what I'm saying? These aren't winners.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 2: These are fucking people that are not doing what they
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: want to be doing. And they want to hate on
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: everybody that's out there, that's out there in the public eye.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: And some of it is valid. You know, really, the
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: scary hate is when you get hate, like, from Quentin Tarantino,
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: where he's going off on that guy from There Will
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 2: Be Blood.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: But, you know, that's a great lesson. It is, actually.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: There's a great lesson. You know what? I don't think
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: Paul Dano ever knew that so many people loved him.
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Out of nowhere. Yeah. Right.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: Out of nowhere. Paul Dano is just going about his life.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: He's got to wake up one morning and find out
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: this director's just went off on him and saying this
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: hateful things. But anybody that knows Quentin knows he just talks, talks, talks, talks, talks, talks. Right.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: Anybody that knows Paul knows he's a great world class
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: human being. And, you know, and all this love for
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: Paul's coming out. And it's a great lesson in that,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: that you don't have to worry about the negativity that
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: people send your way. You don't have to worry about
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: it at all.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: Even from one of the greatest actors or one of
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 2: the greatest directors of all time. Yeah, yeah, it's okay.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: And guess what? Every, you know, I'm positive, positive. There
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: are great directors that think I suck. I'm positive. Quintin
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: Lee says, you know, he just says whatever comes into
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: his mind. I remember once I met some director, and
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: I won't say his name. at a bar, it was
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: a dive bar in New York. He's a really famous
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: big shot director, he's sitting there. And he'd just seen
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: my most recent movie. He's like, you know, you were
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: pretty good in that one. And in the comment was,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: the subtitle underneath it was, I have hated you for
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: 27 years. It was so clear, you know? The hypnosis
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: came through. Yeah, I mean, it was so clear. I
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: was like, wow, wow, well, no wonder you've never offered
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: me a movie. And directors have opinions, right? They have
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: super strong opinions. What do they have strong opinions about? Acting, right? And,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: you know, he's talking about the movie he would have directed, okay?
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: He's not talking about Paul Dano. He's talking about something else.
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: Like you said about the thing, they're talking about themselves, right? Obviously,
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 1: whenever anybody says something hateful, they're talking about themselves.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: 100%.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: That's who they're talking about. And the punchline to this
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: whole thing is, you know, I've worked with Paul a
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: couple different times, and I love the guy. And I'm
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: so happy for him. Every other comment everywhere is somebody
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: saying something great about Paul Dano.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: The majority, the vast majority of comments were really positive
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: about him. And I went and rewatched the scene because
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: of it. And he was fucking great in it. Oh,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: he's a great actor. I thought he played a great–
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 2: like that guy.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: It's not up for debate. It's not up for debate.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: I'm sure if you were alone drinking with Steven Spielberg,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: he'd shock you with some opinion. He hates Orson Welles
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: or something like that.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean? Right, right, right.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: We wouldn't be a good director if he wasn't opinionated.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: It doesn't mean he's the truth.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 2: Of course. It's just the– opening up your vulnerability to
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 2: the masses in the most trivial and flippant ways of
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 2: commenting which is like leaving a comment on a youtube
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 2: video or something like that it's just not wise it's
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: not it's not good especially if you actually let it
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: get into your psyche and you take it in as
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: real because we are designed to recognize threats danger the
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: negativity because it's important like.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: Sorry to cut you off, but that's the truth. The
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: reason why it hurts me when it comes is exactly
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: what you... I'm worried they're going to take my career away.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: I love what I do. If I do a big
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: movie and I really work hard, and the New York
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: Times or the LA Times says that he sucks, I
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: don't really care about that critic's opinion. I care, is
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: this going to stop me from doing what I love?
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 1: Because I know it's fragile. I know that There are
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: a million talented people, right? I know that. I know
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: that I'm lucky. I know that I'm fortunate. So it
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: is scary. It is a threat, right? I mean, but
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: it is.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: But you got to get tough. I'm sorry I cut
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: you off and I didn't really have a good point.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: No, no, it's fine.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean?
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you do. I mean, I don't want to be cruel,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: but also this is how I feel. Critics, in particular...
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: I do not think they want to be critics. And
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: I feel like most people who become critics become critics
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: because they don't have anything to contribute. They're not great
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: writers or they never developed the ability to be a
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 2: great writer or they never pursued it or whatever it is.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: They're not great actors. They're just criticizing. Criticizing from Quentin
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: Tarantino is a very different thing than a criticism that
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 2: comes from a person that's just a critic. And I
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: remember I had this, there was this moment when a
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: fear factor came out. Like fear factor is a fucking
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: completely idiotic show. It's just, that's all it is, is
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: just escapism. It's chaos. People doing stupid shit for money.
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: This is crazy. This is nuts. Oh my God. Are
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: they really going to do this?
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: Ah.
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: And maybe you get something out of the end. Like
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: that guy pulled it out or she did it. She
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: didn't want to do it.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: She faced the snakes.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But it's really usually like the end thing is
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: like something physical, but, um, Fear Factor came out right
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: after 9-11. That's when it came out. And one of
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: the criticisms was, do you really think America needs to
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: be facing fear after we just experienced September 11th' s terrorist attack?
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: And I got this question in an interview. And, you know,
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: my perspective on Fear Factor in the beginning was, I'm
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: only doing this because I think it's going to get canceled.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: I'm like, I'll get some material out of this. I'm like,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: they're going to stick dogs on people and make them
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: eat animal dicks. I'm in. I'm like, this is going
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: to get canceled in like fucking three weeks. And I'm
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: going to have a bit on how fucking stupid this
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: show was. And it wound up doing like 168 episodes.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: It was ridiculous. And I said, and I got upset
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: in this interview. I go, that's ridiculous. Like they were
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: questioning me whether or not America needs to be scared
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: after 9-11. I'm like, it's not fucking scary. And I'm like,
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: what are you talking? You're making something into something it's
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: not just so that you can write an article. This
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 2: is nonsense. And I go, that kind of criticism is
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: the type of criticism from a person where I'm not
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 2: interested in your opinion. I don't think you're a particularly
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 2: unique thinker. And you're saying something that's nonsense. It's nonsense.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: It's a stupid show. I'll tell you it's a stupid show.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: And it's my fucking show. I don't care. It's just entertainment.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: That's all it is. And I think the people that
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: write this are writing this in that way because you
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 2: don't have anything to contribute. And I met that person
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: at a party. There was one of those– If you're
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: on a television show, they have those NBC things where
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: you go and it's like there's all these different reporters
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: and all the actors from all the shows are there.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: And the guy was like, you know, I got to
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: tell you, that really pissed me off. I go, why?
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: Because it's accurate? I go, what pissed you off? I go,
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: you say horrible, hurtful things about all these different people.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: And the course of their career is dependent upon your
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: opinions to a certain extent. You could shape other people's
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 2: narratives about who this actor is, about who this person is.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 2: And you just do it because you don't have anything
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: else to contribute. And so when I said you don't
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 2: have anything else to contribute, that hurt your feelings. That's
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: why it pissed you off. It didn't piss you off
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 2: because it wasn't accurate. And we had this like weird moment,
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 2: you know, where he was like taking into consideration what
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: I was saying. And he was like, OK. And I go,
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 2: I'm not a bad guy. I don't think you're a
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: bad guy. But you have to realize this weight to
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: your words. And I realize there's weight to my words.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: That's why I lashed out like that. I think this
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: is stupid. I'll tell you this show's stupid. It's a
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: stupid show. We're not making fucking Shakespeare in the Park, bro.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: We're making people, like, line up, cough and fill with rats.
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: It's retarded. But it's okay. It's okay to have dumb shit.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: It's okay to have burgers. It's okay to have, you know,
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: filet mignon at a fine restaurant.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: All these things are okay. But call it what it is.
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: If you want to say it's a dumb show, I'm
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: right there with you. But if you want to say, like,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: this is bad for America because America just got attacked
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: by it and it's called fear factor. Like, shut up.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 2: Just shut up. And I just think he didn't like
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 2: the fact that I was.
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: That you were criticizing him?
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, well- I was willing to do what he
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: does to him without fear. Because I had already checked
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: out of acting. I did five years on news radio
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: and I decided I'm done acting. I was like, I
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: don't want to do this anymore. I only did it
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 2: for money in the first place. I never wanted to
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: be an actor. The only reason why I ever got
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: on a- I got on a sitcom- With zero acting experience. Zero.
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, I had none.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: How did it go?
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 2: I did MTV Half Hour Comedy Hour, which was this
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: comedy show that used to be on MTV. I did
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: like a 10-minute set, and I got a development deal.
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: I was like, what? Like all of a sudden they
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: gave me money. I was poor my whole life. And
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: then all of a sudden I had $ 150, 000. I'm like,
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: this is crazy. I have money? Like it was nuts.
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: And my manager actually thought I had a gambling problem
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: because I was spending so much money. And he was like,
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: what are you spending money on? I'm like, eating lobster
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: every night. I was so dumb. I thought I was
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: just going to run out, and then I'd go back
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: to being poor again. But all of a sudden, I'm
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 2: on this show, and I'm acting. And I realized at
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: the end of five years, it was a wonderful job
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: with an amazing, incredible group of talented people, but I
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: don't want to do it again. It's not my thing.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: I don't like it. So when Fear Factor came up,
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: I'm like, ooh, this is a way to make a
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: lot of money without doing anything that's acting. Okay, I'll
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: do it. And so... Dealing with these people that I'd
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: seen the impact of their words on all the people
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: that I worked with. Like we used to sit around,
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 2: you know, you have the table reads and then people
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: would start reading Variety and they'd start reading The Hollywood
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: Reporter and all those different things. And they would all
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 2: be super bummed out. And I would call it the
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 2: devil's rag. So I'd go there, oh, you guys are
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: reading the devil's rag again? I'd go, fucking throw that away.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: It was like the early versions of don't read the comments.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 2: I'd go, you guys are reading the devil's rag. Don't
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 2: fucking read that. Because then they would be all bummed out. Like, oh,
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 2: they think we suck. No, they suck. We're trying to
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 2: make a good sitcom. Let's just try harder. The best
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: way to not make a good sitcom is to read
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 2: shitty things about you. Definitely. You're going to go in
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: and be really bummed out. And this constant process of
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 2: dealing with other people's opinions and especially negative opinions from
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 2: people that you don't really like in the first place.
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: They're not happy people. It's such a poison for your mind.
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: Well, and that's why we're talking about the same thing
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: with the Internet is figuring out a way to give
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: it no space in your mind. Because, you know, people
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 1: are going to do what they're going to do and
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: you're not in charge of them. That's what I feel like.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: When you absorb too much of that hate and take
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: it on yourself, you're forgetting that somebody writes something hateful
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: about somebody else, whether it's Quentin or whether it's this
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: person or that person or whatever. Most people hear it
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 1: and think, Wow, I wonder why he said that. What's
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: wrong with him? They don't think something. So a lot
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: of times I might take really personally something that somebody
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: hateful writes about me. But it's not like the world
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: believes it. The world has people. Michael Jordan, who's not
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: writing comments, might come across that and think, God, that
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: writer's an asshole. He's not thinking you're an asshole. If
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: you're not saying something substantive, other people have a brain
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: in their head and they know it. And so you
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: can just ignore it. I feel you can just ignore it.
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: I've never gained anything except perhaps the value of a
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: thick skin from all that.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 2: The value of a thick skin is important though. And
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 2: there's some, there's some value to, to being hurt, to
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 2: taking it in and then realize it's dangerous to take
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 2: it in.
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: And you must know, like with your show, I imagine,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: I don't really understand really how this works, but there's
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: people who finance it and distribute it. There's people you
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: have to work with and they all have opinions. And,
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: like I'm doing this show right now, the lowdown with FX, right?
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: It's the first time I've ever done a television show
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: and I'm having a great experience with it, but you
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: have to figure out you're working with a lot of
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: different people. You got FX has got their opinions about
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 1: how the show is, and they're going to be distributed
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: on Hulu and they're owned by Disney and everybody. And
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: you have to learn how to take criticism.
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 2: Go. All right.
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: And also how to stand up for yourself when you
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: know what, you know your aim is true, and you
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 1: have to be humble enough to tell the difference, because
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: anybody who thinks they're always right is an asshole.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 2: Right. Right?
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: So sometimes you need their help.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: And you have things to be taught. Yeah. And sometimes
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: you have to stand up for yourself and say, this
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: is the kind of art I want to make, and
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: I'm living and dying on this. But actually, what you're
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 1: saying actually could help me do what I'm doing. The
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: same thing with directors. If you can't, when you were
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: talking about advice for young people, The first thing that
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: popped in my head is something one of my first
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: directors said to me, which was, he said, I was 21.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 1: I was doing my first, I was making my Broadway debut.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: And this director said, what have you done? And I said, well,
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: I did Explorers, you know, when I was a kid.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: And I did this movie, Dead Poets Society. And I
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: acted in this school play. I played Tom in Glass
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: Menagerie my senior year. And, you know, and this director
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: looked at me and said, so you've done nothing. And
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: I took offense at that. I said, I have done
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 1: some things. He said, I need you to say, I've
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 1: done nothing. I need you to say, I don't know.
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: And if you can say, I don't know, I can
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: teach you. And if you can't say, I don't know,
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: then I really can't teach you. And my 21-year-old ego
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: was just buckling. I do know what I do. Do
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm doing? And he said, you've never
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: been on Broadway before. You've never done Chekhov before. And
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: you can't say, I don't know what I'm doing. I said,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: I can't say that. I don't know what I'm doing. See,
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: it's not that hard. Because if you can say that.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: I remember this like the first time going out surfing.
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: Somebody's trying to teach me how to surf. And I
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: was like 16. I kept saying, I know how to
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 1: do it. I know how to do it. I didn't
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: know how to do it. But I couldn't. My ego
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: couldn't buck. And if you can get to that Zen
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: tabula rasa's no place, the beginner's mind. See, now at 55,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: I always say I don't know what I'm doing. It's
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: so easy for me to say it. You know, it
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: is so easy. You know, one lifetime is not enough
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: to know what you're doing. There's so many more rooms.
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: There's so many more layers, you know. And so that's
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: the advice I have for young people is to be humble.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: And admit because you've done a handful of things doesn't
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: mean you know what you're doing. And even though I
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: might have even had some success, I didn't know why
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: it was successful.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 2: Right. You know? That's a great, the beginner's mind is
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 2: a great point to start because even if you're really
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: good at something, like say you're a good piano player
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 2: and you want to learn how to play tennis, you
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 2: start from a beginner's mind. You have to. And if
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: you go into that tennis lesson going, do you know
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: how fucking good I am at piano? Like, don't talk
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: to me like that. Like, no, you don't know how
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 2: to play tennis. Let me show you how to play tennis. Like,
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: everyone is a beginner at a thing they don't know.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: And to take on as many things as you don't
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: know as possible to keep that beginner's mind is actually
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: immensely beneficial for your ego, for your objectivity, for everything.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: For everything. With somebody like you, who's had a lot
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: of transitions in your life about different career paths and
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: different things that you're, that's always beneficial. forcing you into
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: a beginner's mind. And that's, I think I've done the
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: same thing to myself. You know, like what keeps me
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: excited is like, all right, God, I don't know. I'm
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: going to write a graphic novel. I'm going to work
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: with this guy, Greg Ruth. He's a brilliant illustrator. I'm
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: going to make a graphic novel. Now I've never done
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: that before. I have no idea how a graphic novel works.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 1: I know I've loved them my whole life, but I've
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: never made one. Greg has, right? We work together. He
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: teach him Sterling Harjo with the show, The Lowdown. Boom.
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: I've never done a show. He made Reservation Dogs. He's
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: done this. I don't know this landscape and I love
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: that feeling because I don't lose all the value of
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: the things I do know about. It's all there for me.
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: It's all there for me. I don't have to announce
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: it all for everybody. It's not going anywhere. But if
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: I can orient myself into learning, I like making these
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: documentaries because I'm not a professional documentarian. But what's weird
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: about it is if I do that and I get
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: in this real kind of open space and then I
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: come back to acting, that beginner's mind channel is open
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: and i'm available to learn something from somebody else that
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: maybe i might because one of the things i thought
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: when i was young is i thought there was a
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: right way to be an actor and i was obsessed
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: with somebody doing it wrong this director is a fucking
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: moron and he's ruining my work you know and then
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: slowly i really realized it's so obvious there isn't a
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: right way to make art There are successful ways and
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: unsuccessful ways. But I wanted everybody to be Peter Weir.
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: That's what I wanted. Peter Weir had made Dead Poets Society.
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: And that's what rehearsal is supposed to be like. That's
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: what the set is supposed to be like. That's how
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to talk to other people. I didn't know
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: my mentor was a card-carrying, awesome human being. And I
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: was having unrealistic expectations about other people on their path.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 1: They haven't done all that Peter's done. They don't know
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: it all. and I just, it would anger me that
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: they weren't, you know, and, and then if you can
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 1: get in a kind of a, a more open mind,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: then you can really listen to people and, and absorb
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: where they're at in their journey. And you're not going
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 1: to change them. You know, you're not this idea that,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: you know, especially in a film shoot three, you're not
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: going to change the way they think, you know, you
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: got to try to do your thing, lead by example,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: you know, and, and, Try to let them not negatively
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: impact you, but maybe you can be open and learn
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: something from them.
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 2: And that whole beginner's mindset is just immensely beneficial. Like
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: you were saying, how you carry it over to your acting.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: I would recommend that with anybody who does anything. Find
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: another thing that you're not good at at all and
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 2: get into that because that will help you with the
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: thing that you're good at.
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 1: And Evan, it happens so often that it's funny. Like
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: I take my son out to teach him how to shoot, right?
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: First ski thing, you just blast it right out of
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: the air. Second one, blast it right out of the air.
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: You teach somebody to shoot a bow or something. First
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: air they fly.
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: Hits the target.
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: Then they don't hit the target again. You start thinking
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: too much. I don't know anything about golf, but I
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: hear the same thing that's true with golf. Young people
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: are often great actors. It's adolescence and life that makes
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: it harder to get back to that childlike place. I
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: think I've even been talking to my wife a lot
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: about it. I want to start trying to take piano
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: lessons just to do something I've never done because I
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: know it rattles my brain and makes my brain see
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 1: things differently.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: Take a new language on, learn how to play chess,
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 2: do something. Yeah. It's hugely beneficial to be a beginner.
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: I think a person that only does one thing, there's
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: something very valuable in that too. But do one thing,
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: immerse yourself in that one thing and do it the
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 2: best you can. It's true.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 1: It's true.
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 2: The term Kaizen. It's a Japanese term for refining something
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: over and over and over and over again for decades
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: until you absolutely have it perfected.
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: And I believe in that entirely, but I also believe
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: that to master a craft, you have to apprentice three
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: or four. That it's good for, like, I'm an actor,
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm going to die an actor, and this is
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: what I'm going to do. And I have met older
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: actors who are amazing who I know I'm not as
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: good as. And it kind of thrills me. It thrills me.
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: There's little nuances of conversation that I don't quite understand yet,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: but I know that they do, and I know that
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: they're right, and I want to understand more deeply.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: And I.
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: Just feel that....
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: I lost my train of thought about that. I don't know.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: My computer just shut down. I forgot what I was
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: talking about.
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: It's okay. It's... I think more people need... I think
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 2: the problem is when you're really good at something, you
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: find identity in it.
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's what I was saying. I know I want
• 1:38:57
  Speaker 1: to excel at this one craft, but I know that
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: when I direct something, when I write something, if I
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: make a graphic novel, a documentary, I'm learning about things
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: that are adjacent to my specialty. And by doing that,
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: when I go to set and I'm talking to a writer...
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: I know how hard he worked on the script.
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to willy-nilly change his lines because I'm
• 1:39:21
  Speaker 1: not in the mood or I don't like the way
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: my hair looks or something like that. I'm not going
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: to do that. I have respect for what he did.
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 1: And because I have that respect, I can offer him
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: my thoughts. And we can probably get involved in a
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: really mutually beneficial conversation because I've directed. I don't look
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: at some direct or And think, well, like I did
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: when I was younger, he's stopping me. I'm thinking, I
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: know this guy's sweat this. I know this guy picked
• 1:39:48
  Speaker 1: this location for a reason. I know this guy has
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: a tenuous relationship with a cinematographer. I know the producers
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: are breathing down his neck. I know he's got a
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: lot of headaches. I'm going to help him. And I'm
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: going to try to find an app.
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean?
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: So these ancillary, I do want to have a specialty.
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: But I do think learning the piano might help me
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: be a better actor. Like, I don't know why. I don't.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: I don't know the logic behind it.
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: I think in particular in acting that would be true
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 2: because acting is you becoming someone else who's in life.
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: And life involves a lot of different aspects. There's a
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 2: lot of different things that go on in a human
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: being's mind. The more you can introduce to your mind,
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: the more that would help you become a variety of
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: different people that you're performing as.
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: See, I mean, wouldn't it be phenomenal? It'd be very weird. But, like,
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 1: so you and I have been talking. And I would
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: venture to say we're doing pretty well. Three-quarters of the time,
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 1: we're completely immersed in what we're talking about. And then
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: my brain, why my computer shut down, is I start
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: thinking about this actor that I love, Richard Easton, and
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 1: I start thinking about how I'm still not as good
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 1: as he is. He's not even famous, right? And then
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: I couldn't remember what I was going to say. And
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: you're talking to me about your kids. There's no way
• 1:41:07
  Speaker 1: your mind doesn't drift to something going on in your life.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: And mine does too. And so that's what real life
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: is like. And the actor's job is to figure out
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: the text and have the text be so clear and
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: in there that then you can figure out all the
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: other wavelengths. When you're watching somebody great, there's all these
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: other wavelengths that are happening. They have nothing.
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: It's not that they have nothing to do with the script,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: but it's like the difference between a sketch and an
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: oil painting. You know, the script is kind of a
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: beautiful sketch, and the actor's job, director's job, production designer's job,
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: we're turning that into an oil painting. And so anyway,
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying, wouldn't it... if I could put a
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: subtitle under everything we're really thinking while we're talking, how
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: different would it be? And how much more would I
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: learn about you? If I knew what, you know, what
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: your guy's relationship is really like, does he get on
• 1:42:01
  Speaker 1: your nerves? Do you hate it? You know, that he
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: wears a black cap. Do you wish you'd wear the
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: red one? Uh, just, do you know, you know, you know,
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying? I got, there's so much
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: about when I'm in your space, so much, I don't
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: know about what's going on today and what you guys
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: are doing later today or how you cut the show
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: or what's important to you about the show or, Well.
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: I forget about things I'm talking about all the time
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 2: because I'm trying to lock into the other person's brain.
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 2: And sometimes I forget what I want to say because
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 2: I'm trying to think like you. I'm trying to completely
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: be in the moment and think like you. That's what
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: I try to do. When I'm having a conversation with
• 1:42:38
  Speaker 2: a person, I try to be as completely locked in
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 2: as possible. So much so that sometimes I forget people's
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 2: names that I know really well. I forget all kinds
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: of things.
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 1: That's cool.
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 2: Because I'm not thinking about anything else other than what
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: that person's thinking and saying and trying to decipher it
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: and trying to guide the conversation in some sort of
• 1:43:03
  Speaker 2: an interesting way. But I forget all kinds of things.
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 2: I'll forget important people's phone numbers, birthdays. I don't remember anything.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 2: So many times I'll ask Jamie a question like, who's
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 2: that fucking guy? What? What is this fucking name? And
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 2: then I can't believe I can't remember. It's because I'm
• 1:43:21
  Speaker 2: not there. I'm lost in what this person is saying.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 2: So I have to like sit down and open up
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 2: my files and go, oh, there's all the information again.
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 2: But I'm not there. So I can't do that. So
• 1:43:34
  Speaker 2: I got to go, let me go back to my
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: desk and I'll open up my files and now I
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 2: have my information. But when I'm talking to you, I'm
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: not at my desk.
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: That's what it's like for me to have a great role.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: My brain.
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: disappears yeah into that other psyche and I can kind
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: of do some of the normal stuff of life drive
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 1: my kids to school and do some things but this
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 1: part of me is floating over here imagining was this
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: the right way to how should I wear the jacket
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: oh would he drive a car what kind of car
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 1: would he drive is that the right car is that
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: the right like you know and just my imagination when
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: it's really cooking um It takes me away. One of
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: my favorite things about it is I don't think about
• 1:44:19
  Speaker 1: my phone. I don't think about the emails I didn't return.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: I didn't think about whether I forgot so-and-so's birthday. For
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: this period of time, this job is so important to
• 1:44:30
  Speaker 1: me that I'm willing to say nothing else matters. But
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: doing as good as I can in this moment. Obviously,
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: it's going to matter again. when I leave the dressing
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: room and when I do this, obviously I'm trying to
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 1: be a good adult and father and husband and citizen
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff. But it gives me a space
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: where everything else can disappear. Everything else. And that's what's
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 1: so fun about a big ensemble movie. People may like
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: the movie or not like the movie, but I did
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: this remake of Magnificent Seven, right? And when you have
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: a big cast and everybody's in period costumes You know,
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: and everybody's on their horse and your jacket's from 1876
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: and their shirt is from, you know, from the Civil
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: War or something like that. And it's all real. And
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: there's these old taverns built and there's dogs on the
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: set and horses peeing. And you know what I mean?
• 1:45:30
  Speaker 1: It's all so real. And my life is gone.
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:45:35
  Speaker 1: And I'm just goodnight Robichaux. and I've got to worry
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: about how many bullets I have left in my thing
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: and it's back to hypnosis and it's a wonderful relaxation
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: and that's the strange thing about it is it's like
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 1: you know when you're a kid and you first look
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 1: at the stars or the ocean or something and you
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: feel powerfully your own insignificance and your intellectual brain would
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: think that that would feel bad if somebody told you
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: hey you're insignificant that feels bad But when you look
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: at the stars, it feels great.
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: And it's the same feeling of, like, why would disappearing
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 1: feel so good? I did, when I was young, I
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 1: did this play with Steve Zahn, great actor. Have you
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: had Steve on your show?
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 2: No.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: Oh, he's a genius, and he's so funny. We were
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: doing a play together, and I would say to him,
• 1:46:30
  Speaker 1: I said, tonight's show went really good. Do you think
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: it went well? He'd go, yeah, I thought it went
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: really well.
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 2: He goes, all right.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: And then the next night I come back, it sucked
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: and it sucked. I thought it went really well. You know,
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: you always think it goes really well. He goes, I
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 1: never remember. And the truth is he's so Zen. He's
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: so in the moment. What you're talking about when you
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: do comedy or when you do your interviews, he is
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: so in, he's so present that he honestly doesn't remember.
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: And that's the trick is he doesn't have this huge opinion.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: Cause the opinion gets in your way all the time.
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, it really can. Yeah. And I think the ultimate
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: in the moment for a person that doesn't have a
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: craft or a thing is staring at the stars because
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: you realize you are a part of everything and you
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: are in this infinite soup of existence that all of
• 1:47:26
  Speaker 2: your troubles and your, it seems so insignificant in comparison
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 2: to the vastness of what's in front of you.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: And that lets your shoulders lighten up. Yeah. And then
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: you can handle what you can handle.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 2: I've talked about this before, but I'll tell you. When
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 2: I was younger, when my oldest daughter was, I think
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: she was only like five or six, we went to
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 2: the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. And I don't know if
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: you've ever been there. It's on the Big Island. But
• 1:47:54
  Speaker 2: they told us, it's like an hour and a half drive.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: They told us, when you're driving up there, you're going
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 2: to go to the top and hopefully there won't be
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 2: any clouds. So you get a clear vision of the sky.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: So as we're driving up, there's all these fucking clouds.
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, this sucks. This is going to suck.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: We're driving all this. We're not going to see any stars.
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 2: We drive through the clouds because it's really high. And
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: you get up to the top and you're above the clouds.
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 2: And we got out of the car and my fucking
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 2: jaw dropped.
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 1: It was nuts.
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 2: It was the craziest image. And I've been there three
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: times since, never recreated it. There's always been cloud cover
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 2: that's higher up. I just caught it the first time
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 2: I went there at the absolute perfect– It changed my life.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 2: It changed my perspective on the universe itself. Because it
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 2: felt like I was, it felt psychedelic. It felt like
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 2: I was in a spaceship. Like a convertible spaceship. And
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 2: I was looking through the windshield. And we were flying
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 2: through the cosmos. And there was an impossible amount of
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: stars in the sky. There wasn't a spot in the
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 2: sky that wasn't filled with stars. The Milky Way was
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 2: clear as day. It was fucking bananas. That's what it
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: looked like.
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: You didn't feel like you were on a spaceship. You
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: are on one.
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 2: And you realized it.
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 1: Look at that. That's it?
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what it kind of looks like, but it's
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 2: actually even more profound than that. But that is the
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: Keck Observatory.
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: You know when I was telling you about White Fang,
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: my experience with it? So I was out there. So
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: this is 1989, right? I'm in Haines, Alaska. It's about
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: 100 miles north of Juneau. There's no internet. The mail
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: comes once a week on Monday. If it's bad weather,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 1: the mail doesn't come until the next week. I'm there
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: for six months. I'm 19 years old. There's nobody to
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: talk to. I mean, there's no co-star.
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: Wait, the only 19-year-old there?
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: Listen, the guy who was the production manager or whatever,
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 1: he was hyper AA. And there's one bar in town.
• 1:49:59
  Speaker 1: And he told the manager if I was seen in there,
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: he would shut it down. There was nowhere else to go.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 2: What a dick.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: I told the guy, I said, look, I'm not going
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: to drink. The stuntmen are hanging in there. All the
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: other actors are hanging out in there. And I had
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: nothing to do because I couldn't go in the one
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: freaking bar. And for the first three months I was there,
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: it was always dark. And then the second three months,
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: it was always light. But anyway, the point is, I
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: went on this long walk, and I saw the Aurora
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: Borealis by myself. And I'd see it night after night.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: So I just see the sky rippling. And it was
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: like what you're talking about. It was like, it actually
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: made me laugh.
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 1: You know, it just seemed, it was funny. It was
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: like the cosmos was teasing you going, oh, you think
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: all this is real?
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 1: I was like, I do. I do think it matters
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: whether White Fang is a good movie. And then I
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: just giggle, you know, and I was like, oh, you
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: have no idea what's going on. And It was like
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: you're taught, something you don't unsee. Yes. You know, I
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 1: still have over my desk, I have a little postcard
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: from Hanes, Alaska, and it still comes to me in
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: my dreams all the time.
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 2: I'm back there. Wow. I think we're being robbed of
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: that because of cities. Light pollution has robbed us of
• 1:51:23
  Speaker 2: what I think all of our ancestors always inherently observed.
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: When nighttime came around, everybody realized, well, you're a part
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 2: of the infinite cosmos and there's magic. to the universe,
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: which is why there were so many people, you know,
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 2: hundreds if not thousands of years ago that had these
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 2: whimsical tales and these ideas of the importance of life
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 2: and existence when they're in the most brutal moments of history.
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: They're in the most brutal moments of life, life or death, hunter-gatherers,
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 2: warring tribes, but yet at night you're presented with this
• 1:52:01
  Speaker 2: impossible majesty of the cosmos above your head every night.
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 2: Now today, we have fucking social media. This is your sun.
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 2: This is your star. You're staring at a stupid fucking screen.
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 2: And when you look up, you just see nothing but
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: blackness because there's all these city skyscrapers and all these streetlights.
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: So why wouldn't you look at your phone? Exactly.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: It's blinded out. The one thing that is like one
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 2: of the most important humbling things like grounding experiences, peering
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 2: at the cosmos.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: Isn't it weird? It's so hard to be in a
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: bad mood when you're looking at the stars. Right. It's
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: so hard to be in a bad mood when you're
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: riding a bicycle and you feel the wind.
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: It's funny. It's such a simple little thing, a stupid
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: little invention, this bicycle. But you get in and you
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: ride around. It's very hard to stay in a bad
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: mood if you spend two hours on a bicycle.
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:52:48
  Speaker 1: And there's so many things like that that we rob
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: ourselves of. Mm-hmm. You know, I don't know.
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 2: Even.
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: like I find when I'm in nature, exercise. When I
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: run outside and I'm running through the trees and I
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: see a hawk and I see the wind blowing through
• 1:53:05
  Speaker 1: and I pass a farm with sheep and I, it's
• 1:53:08
  Speaker 1: like I come back from a long run high and
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: I feel like I like myself. And in the city,
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: I go to the gym and I got on one thing,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: highlights of all my sports teams that I love and
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 1: they're blinking up and down and then I got the
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: world is ending on all the news channels blinking up
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 1: and down and I got guys who are in better
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: shape than me walking by and girls who are super
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: hot walking by that I'm trying not to look at
• 1:53:35
  Speaker 1: and be a good person and I walk out of
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: the damn gym and I hate myself uh you know
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: what I mean I mean I've got some exercise but
• 1:53:42
  Speaker 1: it wasn't I long for the country and I long
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: and like at But anyway.
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 2: It's certainly a different experience.
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 2: Doing it outside is certainly way better.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: Is that too much information?
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 2: No. That's us. That's me. That's everybody. And the thing is,
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: the gym wants to keep you occupied because then you'll
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: show up more often. It won't be incredibly boring. If
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 2: you go to a dank dungeon of a gym with
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: nothing on the walls other than a small mirror that's
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 2: covered with other people's spit. Do you think that's what
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: we all like to do? And Rocky when he goes out.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: To the barn.
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 2: Especially Rocky IV when he goes to Siberia. That's the
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: one I'm thinking of.
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: That's the one I'm thinking of when the barn is
• 1:54:18
  Speaker 1: freezing out and it's just him.
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 2: He's carrying the log. Yeah, it's hilarious. Yeah, well, we
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: like the idea. And I was going to bring that
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: up earlier when you were talking about immersing yourself in
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: a role and preparing for a thing. It's one of
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: the more romantic things to me about fighting. When I
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: know that like this past weekend there was a big
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: UFC– When a fighter goes into a camp, they go
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 2: off somewhere. They leave their family behind, often for like
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: two months at a time. And they just completely immerse
• 1:54:51
  Speaker 2: themselves in preparation for this one thing that's going to happen.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 2: And every little thing that distracts you, robs you away
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: from the potential of that one possible majestic performance. That
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: one career-defining performance, which they're all chasing after. And for
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: a championship level fighter, it's like the immense pressure and
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: then this thing, this, you call it romantic because it
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 2: is kind of romantic, this romantic task.
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: Oh, it's dedication to excellence. Yes.
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 2: Full dedication.
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: Full, complete dedication. The way that you're even talking about
• 1:55:35
  Speaker 1: trying to do your interviews or trying to do your comedy,
• 1:55:37
  Speaker 1: you're trying to be, but to have something so, I mean,
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: I envy that when I read about fighters and the dedication.
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 1: I really kind of long for that experience, that idea
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: of going away. And I think there's something about, I've always,
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you think this, but whenever I
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: pass by a monastery, a convent or something, these people
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: who are dedicated to their spiritual calling so completely that
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 1: they've isolated out all the noise of life. I'm like,
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 1: I'm really glad they exist. I'm glad in the same
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 1: way I feel about fighters. I feel like, I mean,
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 1: with the fighters, I really envy it. Cause I, we
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: all would like to test ourselves. How, how much could
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 1: I dedicate myself? How could I, could I go to
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 1: the next level?
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 2: How far can I go?
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: And, and I think that, um, Oh, just singularity of focus.
• 1:56:33
  Speaker 1: It feels really good. And there is something, I think
• 1:56:37
  Speaker 1: I love stories about fighters and, for just that, and
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: the fact that it all rests on these X amount
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: of minutes.
• 1:56:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and chaos. What was it like? Was it like watching?
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: Fighting.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, fighting? Terrifying.
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: Would you ever get to a place where you're walking
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: into the ring and you weren't afraid?
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 2: No. If I did, I didn't perform well. There was
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 2: a few times where I was overconfident and I didn't
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: perform well because I tricked myself into not being scared.
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: So because I wasn't scared, because I didn't like being nervous.
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 2: So I tricked myself into thinking I'm so good I
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: don't have to be nervous. And then I'd fought so
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 2: many times. Like the problem is complacency. So if I probably,
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 2: when I was competing, I probably had somewhere in the
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 2: neighborhood of 100 fights in martial arts. And so I
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 2: did nothing but that from age 15 to 21 just
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 2: traveling around the country. And there was times where I
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: did it so much. that I was not nervous and
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 2: that I would go there and I wouldn't fight well.
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 2: And then I would go, why is that? Why did
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 2: I missed opportunities? Even if I won, I was like hypercritical.
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 2: Even if I won, I just didn't like, I got
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 2: hit when I shouldn't have got hit. Like something was off.
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 2: I didn't perform that well. And I realized somewhere along
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: the line, I think right around, I was like probably
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: 19 or 20 when I really started to figure it out.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, you have to be scared. That
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 2: thing that you're, you don't like that's critical. It's critical
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 2: to your performance because it keeps you on edge. You
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 2: have to be nervous. You have to be. Mike Tyson
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 2: talked about it there's a fantastic video of Mike Tyson
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: from his documentary where he's talking about his mindset leading
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: to him getting into the ring and that you know
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 2: he he talks about see if you can find that
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 2: Jamie it's fucking excellent because this was Mike Tyson when
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 2: he was Mike Tyson, when he was the most terrifying
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: heavyweight boxer that ever walked the face of the earth.
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: There was a period of time over like two or
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 2: three years where I don't think anybody has ever come
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: close to Mike Tyson.
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: I know that's true.
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: He was just supreme. He was so good and so
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: different than anybody before him. But it was also his mindset.
• 1:58:52
  Speaker 2: He's a great scholar of history. You know, I had
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 2: a fantastic conversation with him about Genghis Khan. And when
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: we started talking about it, he knew Genghis Khan's real name.
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: His real name was Temujin. He knew his history. He's
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 2: such an interesting person. I love to watch all his interviews.
• 1:59:06
  Speaker 2: He knew that Genghis Khan's mother had been kidnapped on
• 1:59:11
  Speaker 2: her wedding day, been kidnapped by a rival man and
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 2: taken away and impregnated. And the man that she was
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: supposed to marry, she never saw again. And then that
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: Genghis Khan was born with a blood clot in his hand.
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 2: He was holding on to a blood clot as he
• 1:59:26
  Speaker 2: was a young boy. And it was like a sign
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 2: that he was going to be a great conqueror and
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 2: a warrior. But listen to this.
• 1:59:33
  Speaker 3: I'm going to have supreme confidence. I'm scared to death.
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 3: I'm totally afraid. I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of losing.
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 3: I'm afraid of being humiliated. The closer I get to
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 3: the ring, the more confidence I get. The closer, the
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 3: more confidence I get. All during my training, I've been
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 3: afraid of this man.
• 1:59:48
  Speaker 1: But the closer I get to the ring.
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 2: I'm more confident. Once I'm in the ring, I'm a god.
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 1: No one can beat me.
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 2: That's an abbreviated version of it. It's different in the film.
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: It's like a little bit more drawn out. Somebody edited
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 2: that down for Instagram. But it's this thing where you
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 2: would think, how could that guy be afraid? How is
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: he afraid? He's Mike Tyson. And this is Mike Tyson
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: in his prime. But you have to be afraid. You've
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 2: got to be nervous. If you're not nervous, you're not
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: going to perform well.
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: Well, it makes me think about earlier in our conversation
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 1: when I was talking about, oh, you know, when I
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: think about when I was young and I'd be really
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: nervous and pretending I wasn't nervous and that was the problem.
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: And that now I said to you, I still experience it.
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 1: I just know what to do.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: You remember like that? We were talking like that. What
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: I was, what I know what to do is not
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: to pretend that I'm not nervous.
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 1: That's, it's as simple as that. When he's saying, I'm afraid,
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: that's very powerful. It's kind of the same, a different
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: spin on what I'm saying about it. It's okay to say,
• 2:00:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know. You know, I am afraid. And there's
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: a great Sarah Bernhardt story about this young actress comes
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: up to Sarah Bernhardt. She's this great actress from the previous,
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: you know, a long time ago. But before Sarah Bernhardt
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: was about to go on stage, this young actress asked
• 2:01:11
  Speaker 1: her to sign her program. Sarah Bernhardt took it and
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 1: her hands were shaking. And this young actress said, why
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: are your hands shaking? I'm nervous. And the young person said,
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 1: I'm never nervous when I act. Sarah Burner says, when
• 2:01:25
  Speaker 1: you know what you're doing, you will be.
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 2: That's great.
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: And it's a part of like what you're talking about
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 1: with your fighting, knowing that there's nothing wrong with anxiety
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 1: and with nerves. They can be your friend. They are there.
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: They are here to warn you, prepare you, make you
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: train a little harder, make you think a little sharper.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:01:48
  Speaker 1: Treating it like I'm embarrassed. I'm ashamed. of being nervous.
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: You know, Bill Russell, apparently, would be sick to the
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: stomach before every game. This is the most winning basketball
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: player in history.
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 2: He was still.
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 1: And that's why he won so much.
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: You know, you have to care.
• 2:02:04
  Speaker 2: You have to care.
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: And then, strangely, what that Tyson clip gets at, if
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: you can say that, the closer you get to game moment,
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: now you're not pretending. And you realize, oh... For me,
• 2:02:19
  Speaker 1: it's just a scene. It's just a play. It's just
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: something I can handle. You remember that Jaguar paw in Apocalypto?
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: When he has that moment, he's running through the woods
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: and he's so afraid. And he realizes, this is my forest.
• 2:02:33
  Speaker 1: He's like, I don't have to be afraid in my forest.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: I'll fight these guys. I'm going to stop running. It's
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: a great moment in that movie. And I feel that way.
• 2:02:44
  Speaker 1: When before I'm doing something, This last movie I did,
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 1: Blue Moon, really, really challenging part. I had so much
• 2:02:51
  Speaker 1: confidence when we were talking about making the movie. Then
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden it was greenlit. But like when
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 1: I flew to the location and I saw the set,
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, it was the weekend before we started.
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: I got so nervous. I got sick. You know, I
• 2:03:08
  Speaker 1: woke up in the middle of the night just in
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: pools of sweat. And my body was just like going... Ethan,
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: this is going to, are you ready? Are you ready?
• 2:03:20
  Speaker 1: You know, and I would wake up, I had to
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: get up so early to go to work. I'd wake
• 2:03:23
  Speaker 1: up an hour and a half before. I was supposed, like,
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: I got to go over these lines again. I got
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: to go over this. How is this character walking?
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 2: What is he doing?
• 2:03:30
  Speaker 1: What is he saying? Is this part ready? Is this
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: thing ready? Do they know what they're doing in that shot?
• 2:03:35
  Speaker 1: Is the cigars ready? All the things, what are the
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: things that are going to be that screw today up?
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: How much can I see the day?
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: So that none of these things that might screw it
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: up are going to screw it up. And so I
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 1: kind of know what he means when it comes to...
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: You've passed through the fire. So when it comes to fighting, well,
• 2:03:53
  Speaker 1: he's either going to win or lose. It's going to
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: be okay. But, you know, there's something powerful. That anxiety
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: can be a great friend.
• 2:04:02
  Speaker 2: His mentor, Customato, who was also a hypnotist. Really? Yes.
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 2: He was a psychologist.
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: That I did not know.
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a... a completely fascinating guy. He started hypnotizing
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 2: Mike when he was 13. One of the things that
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 2: he told Mike, he said, fear is like a fire.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 2: It can cook your food or it can burn your
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: house down. It depends on how you control it.
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 1: I feel the same way about money. I feel the
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: same way about ego. It can be the fuel of
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: a healthy life, but it has to be... Has to
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: be managed. Has to be managed really well. And it's sadly... Daily.
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Daily.
• 2:04:43
  Speaker 1: It's not like you, I'm sure we're both old enough
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: to know. It's not like you have some breakthrough when
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 1: you're 33.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: I've had breakthroughs.
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: I feel like, oh, I get it. I get it.
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: I get it. And then the next day, it's gone.
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 1: You know, it happens to you over and over again. And,
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 1: and I, that's life, I think.
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: Yes, that is life.
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:05:02
  Speaker 2: And that's, that's great for young people to hear because
• 2:05:05
  Speaker 2: they think that there's going to come a point in
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 2: time where they made it, where there's no fear. And
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: I'm here to tell you, You don't want that. You
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: don't want it. It's never going to come. And even
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: if it did come, you don't want it. It'll rob
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 2: you of the exciting part of life.
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 1: You ever hear that Jim Carrey bit? It always makes
• 2:05:21
  Speaker 1: you laugh. He's like, he wins the Golden Globe and
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 1: he goes to bed at night. Gosh, I'm a Golden
• 2:05:25
  Speaker 1: Globe winner. What if I could be a two-time Golden
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: Globe winner? What if I could be a three?
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: You know, the brain.
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The brain always wants more.
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 2: Always.
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 1: It can't stop.
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 2: That's why billionaires still work. Yeah.
• 2:05:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Why are they so miserable?
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 2: Because it's just chasing numbers. You're chasing numbers all the time.
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: One of the things about in the rooms that I've
• 2:05:48
  Speaker 1: been in with a lot of money, compared to the
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: rooms I've been in where there isn't a lot of money,
• 2:05:55
  Speaker 1: if you compare the laughter.
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah. It's no contest.
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: Well, there's so much pressure involved in that.
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: Kind of way of life. So why would you want
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 1: a house with no laughter?
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: Right. I don't think they have options at that point.
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 2: I think they're so locked into what they do.
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 1: And it gets so competitive. I've seen guys like that
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: who get so happy about a deal gone right. It's
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: fascinating to me. I mean, it's like, wow. Because the
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 1: inverse is true. If that makes you so happy, what
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: happens if you lose that? Right.
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: Million to bucks or whatever, 20 million.
• 2:06:35
  Speaker 2: And it makes you happy for a brief amount of time.
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 2: Cause the reality is once you're wealthy, everything else is,
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 2: my friend Brian said something to me a long time ago.
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 2: So the only amount of money you want is where
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: you can go to a restaurant and not worry what
• 2:06:47
  Speaker 2: the bill costs. Everything else is bullshit.
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: Well, I liken it to what happens if you get
• 2:06:53
  Speaker 1: an offender bender, you know, I don't want to get
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: an offender bender and have a lot of trouble.
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: Like I wanted that to be taken care of.
• 2:07:00
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:07:01
  Speaker 1: You don't, you don't want to not be able to
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: pay your rent because you've got a fender bender. You
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 1: don't want your kid not to get their medicine because
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: you've got a fender bender. You know, like, you need
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: to have room, a little padding to, like, I've never,
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: there's no expense, vacation. An expensive vacation with my kids
• 2:07:21
  Speaker 1: is not better than any vacation with my kids.
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 2: Right, right, right, right.
• 2:07:27
  Speaker 1: Romance, same thing.
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: You know, you can spend a fortune on a romantic weekend.
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: It's not as, great as it is to get stuck
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: in a car when it's a blizzard out and you
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: listen to a great record and she looks beautiful and
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: says something funny and you both laugh. You can't buy that.
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: But there's this feeling like you could.
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 2: Well, our society puts so much emphasis on ultimate success. Like,
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 2: who's the richest man in the world? Well, do you
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: think the richest man in the world is happier than
• 2:07:59
  Speaker 2: the third richest man in the world? They're all rich
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 2: as fuck. Like, everything is available to them. It's all
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 2: nonsense after a certain point. Like, what are you doing?
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 2: Why are you still working? Why are you still chasing
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: zeros and ones? Like, what is the point?
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: What are you chasing? Me? Yeah.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think I'm chasing anything. I try
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: not to be, I just enjoy what I do.
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 1: I try to, I don't relate to it because that's,
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: that's what led me to that question. It's like, I'm like,
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 1: what am I chasing? You know what I'm chasing? What
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: I said earlier, like I, um, the last thing I shot,
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 1: we had a couple moments of grace, you know, just weird.
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 1: Like I can tell the crew's losing their lunch and,
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: everybody's so happy with the take that we got and
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: it's kind of moving and, Oh, it was perfect. And
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: the light came to the window at the right time.
• 2:08:52
  Speaker 1: And then Peter Dinklage said this hysterical thing and he
• 2:08:55
  Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to say it, but it worked out perfect.
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: Cause then the other actress, then she responded in that way.
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: And then my hat fell off and everybody's, and it's just,
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 1: it's high and I drive home and I want to
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 1: tell everybody and I can't wait for the world to
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 1: see it. You know, I am chasing that. Like, could
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 1: that happen again?
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: You know, but it's not something I control. It's not
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: something that, it's a feeling I'm chasing.
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 2: But it's a tangible thing. It's not status or money. It's,
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 2: you're chasing, you're doing, you know, for lack of a
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 2: better word, art. You know, and art has a sort
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 2: of a pretentious air to it. A lot of people,
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: you know, there's certain words that have been sort of co-opted.
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 2: But the art of creation.
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 1: The art of doing something. You would never. You would never.
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know you're exactly right. It happens to
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 1: me all the time and it bothers me that what
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: people think is pretentious. If I say to you, you know,
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 1: I really want to make $ 100 million, nobody says I'm pretentious. Right.
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 1: If I say, you know, I'd really like to make
• 2:09:58
  Speaker 1: something beautiful. It really moves people. What a pretentious ass.
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: Why is it? What I was going to say was, well,
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: you go first. It's sincerity.
• 2:10:07
  Speaker 2: It's sincerity because some people say that and they don't
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 2: mean it. And that's most of the people that say that.
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: And that's the problem.
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: What I was going to say is like, if you're,
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: you say 15, 14.
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 2: Your daughter, your youngest? 15.
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah. If you came home today and she had made
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: this crazy collage and it was combining pictures of her
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 1: friends from high school and this beautiful watercolor that she
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: did around it. And she sprinkled glue on it and
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: dropped sparkles on it and put it in a weird
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: wood frame that her mother had given her that she liked.
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: And she said, isn't it beautiful, Dad? Would you ever
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: say that's pretentious?
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 2: Of course not.
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: Of course not. But the goal, when somebody says the
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: word art to me, I don't hear pretentious. I hear
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 1: the solar system. I hear like human creativity inside of us, man.
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 1: It is inside me and it's inside you. And when
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: I see a great movie or when I hear Jimi
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: Hendrix rip a killer solo, then my whole body vibrates, oh, hey,
• 2:11:10
  Speaker 1: we're alive. You know, when Johnny Cash comes out with
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: a sound you've never heard before, when it's a great
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: rap song, you're like, I got to hear that again.
• 2:11:17
  Speaker 1: I feel my heartbeat with that. That's art. It's not pretentious.
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 2: It's real art.
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: And so I feel that way very strongly, and that
• 2:11:29
  Speaker 1: makes me want to go to set, and that makes
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 1: me not care whether the movie makes a billion dollars
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 1: or makes two cents. There's a great, one of the
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 1: great old English actor, Paul Schofield, I'm going to destroy
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: this quote, but it was in his obituary, and he
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 1: was in this great movie when I was a kid,
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: Man for All Seasons, and he was in Redford's Quiz Show,
• 2:11:48
  Speaker 1: and he was a great English actor. And when he
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: died in his obituary, there was an interview with him
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 1: He said, you were performing King Lear at your local church.
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: Why weren't you doing it on the West End? Because
• 2:12:01
  Speaker 1: you were healthy enough. They were asking, why are you
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 1: doing it? He was doing a play at a local
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 1: church near him. He said, I really like walking to work.
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: And I've realized that I really have always only performed
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: for whoever it is that made me. And I can
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 1: do that anywhere. I can do it on Broadway. I
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 1: can do it in a Robert Redford movie. And I
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 1: can do it. in my local theater. It's the same
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 1: action and it's taken me a lifetime to realize that
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: it doesn't, I just love to do it. And he's like,
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: and I'd like to walk to work. So I'm not
• 2:12:34
  Speaker 1: going to West End. And I thought, I love this guy.
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, that is real purity.
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 2: When you're not chasing any prestige, you're only doing it
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 2: for the thing.
• 2:12:46
  Speaker 1: And I bet there are people that he loved there.
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 2: Of course.
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: Other people you're doing it for.
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 1: Of course. Yeah.
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 2: And it's probably more purity to it, knowing that it's
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 2: not going to be reviewed in the New York Times.
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 2: It's like you're doing something that you're only doing it
• 2:13:04
  Speaker 2: for the love of it.
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: And if you want to be, if you want to
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: play pro ball, you know, there's certain things, you know,
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: if you're, you know, that Augie, the great, he used
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: to coach for UT baseball. His great thing that he'd
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 1: say that why he didn't coach the Yankees or the,
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: Red Sox because he won five NCAA championships. So the
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 1: problem is with pro ball, the object of the game
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 1: is to win. And in college sports, my job is
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 1: to develop young men. And if I do that right,
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: we will win. But it's... I like the priority. And
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: I feel like if the priority is my own development,
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 1: you know, then more times than not, something good will happen.
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 1: If my priority... is to win, make cash, be a
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: big shot, blah, blah, blah. I've kind of lost why
• 2:13:59
  Speaker 1: you should play the game. Yeah, 100%. And the trick
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: for me is, well, I do want to be a
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: professional actor. I like.
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 2: Being relevant.
• 2:14:08
  Speaker 1: I like making relevant art. I like talking to people
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: and communicating with people. So you have to figure out
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: that balance of like, all right, this is how I
• 2:14:16
  Speaker 1: pay my bills. This is, you know, what facilitates all
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: my whole life. So I have to Be a little
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: attentive to the professional part of my brain and not
• 2:14:28
  Speaker 1: let it diminish the kid in me.
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: You know? And to keep them both in some kind
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: of balance.
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 1: And that's, for me, been my adult life.
• 2:14:38
  Speaker 2: The term developing men or developing people, developing young people.
• 2:14:42
  Speaker 2: My martial arts instructor when I was a young boy,
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 2: there was like a pamphlet that they had released explaining
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 2: what the classes were all about. And in it, one
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 2: of the quotes that always stuck with me forever is,
• 2:14:56
  Speaker 2: martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential.
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 2: So is acting.
• 2:15:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 2: So is anything. So is playing chess. So is playing music.
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: So is carpentry, if you do it right.
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 2: Everything.
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: Everything.
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Miyamoto Musashi, the famous samurai, had a great quote.
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 2: Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 2: in all things. Yeah. I carry that around.
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, that's the same idea.
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The real beauty of it all is
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: concentrating on the development of the thing. And in that thing,
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 2: you will grow as a human.
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 1: And that's the thing where we're talking about boxing or
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: fighting or acting or whatever. The thing about the 100%
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 1: focus is it's kind of.
• 2:15:45
  Speaker 1: By shedding everything, there's a discipline to that about seeing
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: all the little details. I find... For example, in acting,
• 2:15:53
  Speaker 1: they always talk about this. Is he a good listener? Like,
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 1: one of the things, like, are you responding naturally like
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: a human being? Can you listen? And in the art
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: of teaching myself about acting, about how to be present
• 2:16:07
  Speaker 1: with my scene partner, I've learned how to be present
• 2:16:10
  Speaker 1: with you, with my kids, when I'm at a baseball
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 1: game with my friends.
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 2: Right, right.
• 2:16:17
  Speaker 1: It actually, like, it's meaning I'm taking the same idea that,
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: If you train to do a fight well and you
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: really feel what excellence at that level is like, you
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: can feel it in other things. It can translate. You
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: know what sloppy thinking is. If you've been relaxed while
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: you're doing something hard, you know what it's like when
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: you're tense because you're not having that feeling that you
• 2:16:42
  Speaker 1: had in that fight where you were really great. That's
• 2:16:45
  Speaker 1: the same with my... I've done performances where it goes
• 2:16:49
  Speaker 1: up all by itself. And it's an amazing feeling. And
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of work and preparation is to go into
• 2:16:54
  Speaker 1: that feeling of disappearing. But now I know when it's
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: not happening. And it doesn't mean I can make it happen.
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: But at least an awareness that it's not happening is
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: a great starting place to go, why is it not happening?
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 2: Right. Something smells.
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 1: Something smells, like Phil would say. Yeah.
• 2:17:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I want to talk to you about, because Jamie
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 2: brought this up yesterday, Denzel Washington, when you're doing training day,
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 2: like So much, apparently, Jamie was saying, of the dialogue
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 2: that you guys had was completely improvised by Denzel.
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 1: He is an astonishing... I.
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 2: Mean, it's like....
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, the short answer to your question is it was...
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: We would be doing ride-arounds, you know, in the back
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: of these cop cars, watching these arrests or talking to
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 1: some of these people who really lived the life that
• 2:17:44
  Speaker 1: we were doing.
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 2: And they would.
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: say something really funny, you know, and I would just see.
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 1: denzel like glance at me and i realized oh that
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: just went in the computer you know and then it
• 2:17:57
  Speaker 1: would come out you know in a scene two months
• 2:18:01
  Speaker 1: later that line that that guy said exactly it would
• 2:18:03
  Speaker 1: come out um It was a great script. I don't
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: want to, David Ayer wrote the script. It's a phenomenal script.
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, when I read that script, I wanted that
• 2:18:12
  Speaker 1: part so badly. Denzel's one of my favorite actors. He
• 2:18:16
  Speaker 1: is probably my favorite actor. I think, you know, Malcolm
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 1: X and Raging Bull are two towering, maybe Nicholson, One
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: Flew the Cuckoo's Nest, like Live is, like the three
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: great performances of my lifetime. But his... He's always listening,
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 1: always listening, talking, asking, thinking, curious, so present, so commanding.
• 2:18:46
  Speaker 1: And if you take responsibility for your own work, you
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: can have a great experience. And if you don't, he'll
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: run you over. Yeah.
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 2: Like I heard King Kong ain't got shit on me.
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 2: That was all just completely improvised.
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 1: So it's like towards the last day of the shoot.
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 1: And I had been, when people say improvised, they think, oh,
• 2:19:13
  Speaker 1: just some magic lightning bolt happened. It's months of work.
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 1: It was improvised. He's just supposed to yell, fuck you
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 1: or something as I'm walking away. And this monologue flew
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 1: out of his mouth. You know, y'all. going to be
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: playing for the Pelican Bay All-Stars. This is my neighborhood.
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 1: You all just live here. King Kong ain't got nothing
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: on me. Just all this stuff. And it was the
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 1: last day of shooting, or third to last day or something.
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 1: It was all his prep. Here's a line that didn't
• 2:19:47
  Speaker 1: make the movie. Here's another line that didn't make the movie.
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: Here's another thing I wanted to say. Here's another thing.
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 1: And he just started throwing them all out there. And
• 2:19:53
  Speaker 1: I shit you not, man. The shot's on me. I'm
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: walking out of the you know, walking away from me screaming,
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 1: all this stuff. And that's when I say I'm chasing
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: a feeling like that's one of the, I mean, to
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: just be there that day, you know, to watch, you know,
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 1: a great, somebody who's working on a different level than
• 2:20:14
  Speaker 1: everybody else, you know, he's, he, you know, he makes
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: all of us look like we're mastering checkers, you know, and,
• 2:20:20
  Speaker 1: and he's into, but to be there and be part
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: of the magic. And I knew where I'd heard him audition.
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: Some of those lines, other places, you know, we'd run
• 2:20:28
  Speaker 1: lines together and, He tried this. He was amazing.
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 2: Amazing.
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: That's what I mean about the power of his imagination.
• 2:20:36
  Speaker 1: He was Alonso. And anything that he would pick up
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 1: or hear would go into the computer. And then he
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 1: would look for the ways that he could help the script.
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: Look for ways. You know, he wasn't putting, selfishly tearing
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: the sale up to make it about him. He was
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: always looking to help. I even remember he came to
• 2:20:56
  Speaker 1: the set. I have this scene that he's not in
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 1: with the Cholo gang, you know, and we're playing cards and,
• 2:21:05
  Speaker 1: you know, you read your shit pushed in, that scene,
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: you know, where they put me in the bathtub. And
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: Denzel came to set and he watched the scene.
• 2:21:13
  Speaker 2: He was like, damn. I'm like, what?
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: This is going to be the best scene in the movie.
• 2:21:18
  Speaker 1: And I'm not in it. I hate this scene.
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 2: It was funny.
• 2:21:21
  Speaker 1: He walked away. But it was very gracious. I mean,
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 1: he was all in that movie. Yeah.
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 2: That's awesome. That's awesome. Ethan, thank you very much, man.
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 2: This was a really fun conversation. I really enjoyed it.
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: I'm really glad you had me.
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 2: Thank you. And thank you for all the movies, man.
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 2: I enjoyed the shit out of your career.
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: If you can't tell, it's been my pleasure.
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 2: Thank you. It's been mine as well. Thank you.
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: Bye, everybody.