Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Titus Welliver

Transcript

Titus Welliver · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: My guest today is actor Titus Willober Tightest. Good to
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: have you. Thank you for having me, Bob. I'm a
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: big fan. Okay, good we're Are you located right this
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: very second in the era of the pandemic? I'm in Venice, California,
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: a k a. The Andromeda Straine set. And how are
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: you coping with self quarantining? You know what I have
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: to say, Um, it's it's I'm not losing my mind.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Two of my kids are home doing their school work,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: and it's just sort of become the new norm. I
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: venture out and uh walk around and do things. But
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: you know, a lot of reading, a lot of watching
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: tons of television old new, uh yet to come, and
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: and lots of films. So I'm trying to utilize this
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: to my best ability. And it's it's not so bad. Okay,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: So you're not really paranoid about getting it now. I've
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: been really hyper vigilant since it first kind of was
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: creeping into the into my news feed. UM and my
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: girlfriend had lived in Hong Kong at one point and
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: had gone through stars and so she um, we sort
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: of immediately disimplemented all the the you know, the cautionary behavior,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: and it's it seems to serve as well. I mean,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: we venture out to go to the grocery store, and
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: that's really the extent of it. But you know it is,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: you know, you mask up and glove up and go
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: in and and that's all we can really do. So
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: what do you reading? Oh my god, I've just finished
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: reading a great book about Sam Peck and Paw who
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: was one of my eric directors, called it they moved
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: of him, and uh it's been on my shelf. It
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: was given to me years ago and uh I cracked
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: it and quite fascinating. Um, you know, a bit of
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: an undignified end to a guy who who was a
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: game changer in the field, but fascinating, really quite fascinating.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: So what did you learn? Well, he he had been
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: in the Marine Corps and he was you know, he
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: was not unlike a lot of the characters that that
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: appeared in his films. I think that his the kinship
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: to the to the Pike character, to William Holding character
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: in The Wild Bunch. He was this sort of avid
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: outdoorsman hunter, um, you know, boozer, womanizer. It's interesting. I
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: told now, go back and look at his films. I
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: see a lot and hear a lot of of him.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Um in the characters in his films. Now he did
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: straw Dogs, didn't he he did? He did. That's the
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: only film I've ever seen where I said, wait a second,
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: this might be too violent, you know what. I saw
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: it at a drive in, completely inappropriate from my age
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: at the time to come out in theater as a
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: year before, and I ended up going to see it
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: get this double bill with Deliverance. So if you really
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: want to completely, you know, destroy your your teenage mind. Um,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: it was a game changer. But I remember being very
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: very disturbed, of course, drawn to it like a mop
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: to a flame, but then kind of realizing once I
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: was watching this film and I was a bit in
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: over my head, although it stayed with me, I have
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: to say, Um, but yeah, both of those films that
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: I was shaken for quite a while after that. The
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: only film that I've really been scared at, and I
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: was scared in the book too, was Angel Hart. Did
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: you ever see Angel Heart? Oh? Yeah, yeah, that's why
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I actually really really liked that film. In the book,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: is is really really fallen Angels a great book. I
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: thought the film was was quite good. I loved Mickey
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Rourke in it, and I thought de Niro, I mean,
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: Alan quintessential, kind of Alan Parker visually kind of stunning,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: and de Niro comes in and suitably menacing and charming
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: all at once. Now I'm I'm right there with you.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: I really enjoy that film. So what's next on your
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: reading list? Well, you know what, I'm just looking at
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: my bookshelves. There's uh. I have all the tash and
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: books that you know, the films of the sixties and
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: the seventies and the eighties, and so I thought what
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I would do is peruse those books and come up
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: with a with the greatest hits list of films that
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: my kids have probably not seen, and sitting down with them,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: we've been sort of going through some of the films
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: of Scorsese and and Peck and Paw and Trufou and Melville,
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: and I've got my own little film school going here.
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: How old are the kids that are bumping up with you?
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Eighteen and fourteen, My daughter's fourteen, my son is eighteen.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: Now they're used to me throwing um, you know, films
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: at them, But I'm trying to kind of I want
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: to expand it a little more. I mean, I don't
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: think I'm we're gonna, you know, sit through any bonwell
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: or anything like that. You know, I'll certainly try to
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I'll try to sweeten the deal with something. Although we
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: did do Polanski's The Tenant, which I that I find
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: that film very very scary, maybe more disturbing than anything.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: But that film really unnerved and are they receptive, very
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: much so, very much so. I think the Innocence, you know,
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the debor Caraclic has got to come next, because that's uh,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: for me, yet another film you know, still holds up,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: still quite quite spooky. I think it's time to to
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: break it. Of course, my kids want to jump right
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: to The Exorcist, which I say in my fourteen year
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: old you're not ready for that. You won't recover that
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: will take you years. Well, that was still in the
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: era of platform releases, and I remember people have seen
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: it over Christmas. I've been out of town and I
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: went to New York to see it, and I think
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: I was overhyped, you know, also being Jewish, maybe it
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: doesn't really connect. But uh, I wasn't frightened but the
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: fact that Max von Sita was in a genre pick
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it. Well, I know, you know, and
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: it's very funny because I remember there was an interview
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: with with him ben Cito, talking about it, and he said, well,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm Scandinavian and so we have lots of
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: folklore and everything, but the Devil for us really kind
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: of falls into the column of being sort of silly folklore.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: We don't really um, you know that it doesn't we
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: don't absorb that. UM. I just think that for me,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: and I was raised in an agnostic household slash probably
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: more of a Jewish household than anything. But it's still
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: scared to beat Jesus out of me. But I think
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: it was also because I never really considered I remember
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: kind of finding the paperback book at a friend's house
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: that I was having a sleepover, and and kind of
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: cracking it open and and reading it and thinking, I
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: don't I don't want to, I don't want to pursue
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: this any further. And then of course I saw the
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: film and it it just it really knocked me. I
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: didn't sleep solidly for for at least a month after that. Wow,
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: So what are your favorites if we had to boil
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: it down to a few from the late eighty Uh, Well,
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I love bullet Um and uh love Copolist films, Love
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the Conversation, love um and lament huge, Lament, fan Um,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Long Goodbye. I also love I love you talk about
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: the Long Goodbye with Ellie Gould, with Ellie Gould, Yes, yes,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: um uh friends of Eddie coil Um another I I
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: always have considered that sort of Mitcham's King Lear. I
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: mean as his performance in that film. There there there
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: are aspects of that film that feel like a movie
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: of the week, just in the way that it's shot,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: in the music yet the performances Richard Jordan, Peter Boyle
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and Alex rock Ohan's sort of amazing collection of actors.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Um the last detail which I just uh, that was
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: a great movie. So Brandy Quaid has kind of left
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the planet. Yeah but literally, Yeah, he's on space stations
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: qu Equaid right. The funny thing is the woman he's
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: involved with is the daughter of a professor was at
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: my college. I never took a course room, but he was.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: He taught Russian and he was an odd guy. So
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: reading about that story was a weird. You know, six
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Degrees of Separation. You know another one wages a Fear,
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: which I just check back into a couple of weeks ago.
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: I'd forgotten how much I love that film, and I
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: you know what, I have to say, the remake that
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: Friedkin did with Roy Scheiner Sorcerer has has got a
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: lot of merit great. So I agree. I told freaking
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: when I saw him a couple of years ago, because
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: that movie was really denigrated when it came out, but
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: I felt it had an amazing tension. I saw it
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: in the National, which was the theater in Westwood before
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: they tore it down, and probably five people in the theater,
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: but it really hit me. Oh no, it's it's it's great.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: And that you know that Tangerine Dream score is is fantastic.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I mean it's super solid. I think it's really good.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: In Scheider is great and all those other actors, um,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the foreign actors that that surround him, and I know
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: it's I think it's a very very underrated film and
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: kind of unappreciated, but you appreciate it. I do so.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: And where the two guys, based on this conversation, you
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: really seem like a Stu into the game very much.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: So my parents were both cinephiles. So the weekends were
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: and of course this is very you know, long before
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: we ever had VHS or any right. He actually went
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: to the theaters and then had the Great Revival theaters
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: all over New York, Cinema Village and the Waverley Twin
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: and UM and the Thalia on the Upper West Way
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: Upper My My weekends were spent seeing the films of
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Curasawa and Um and and Bent well Um. My father did,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: unfortunately take me to see Sorrow and the Pity when
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: I was entirely too young, which actually really really traumatized me.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: And I can remember waking up from this horrible nightmare.
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: I was little, I was a little boy, and my
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: mother said, well, you know, and I was sobbing, and
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: she said, what what do you What happened? I had
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: a bed a nightmare at a nightmare And she said, well,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: what was your nightmare about? And I said, the Nazis
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: were We're shooting people and pushing them into a ditch.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: And my mother went, why would you even think of
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: such a thing? And I said that movie that I
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: went to with dad. My parents were divorced. He said
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: what movie was that. She's trying to think of some
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: World War two maybe something with Burt Lancaster that she
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: was unaware of because my dad loved World War Two films.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: And I said it was The Sorrow something and she
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: said the Sorrow and the Pity and I my mother
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: literally going to her nightstand and picking up the phone
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: and it was probably one o'clock in the morning and
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: calling my father and just saying, what were you thinking,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: you know? And he said, it's a it's an important film,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: and she said, you know, I can hear them going
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: back and forth. I agree, but you know he's he's
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: too little, and he went, he's got to know. Uh,
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: he's that Max Offals, I believe. But what I remember
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: seeing and then he made one just after that was
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: like six and a half hours. I remember bringing a
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: sandwich to the movie. I don't remember my name right now.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: It's funny you talked about because I can remember my
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: dad taking my brother and I to see um, Lawrence
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: of Arabia and it was the first film I'd ever
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: seen and had an intermission, um but of Court yet again.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: You know, that was the Lean films when I was
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: a kid. They were the Greatest Adventures as absolutely loved
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: did Doctor Javaga. And I remember having a friend, uh
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: sort of a playmate friend of mine come along and
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: my dad took us to see Doctor Javago, and this
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: kid just it didn't land on him at all. He
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: kept staying this stupid and it's so long. And I
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: was because that was my life. I was looking at
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: him like, what a philistine. This kid hasn't been raised properly. Um, okay,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: but your father at the time was teaching at Yale. Yes, yes,
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: but you were living in Manhattan. No, we were living
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: in New Haven. I was born in New Haven, and
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: so the films that I saw, the very early films
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: that I saw, were shown at the co Op at Yale.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: So I can remember seeing Um Big Deal on Madonna
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: Street as a little boy there and and the Beatles
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: movie helped. And then he he left there. He was
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: snatched away from Yale by the University of Pennsylvania, where
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: he became the chairman of the Graduate School of Fine Arts,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and we then moved to West Philadelphia. I wish there
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: were a lot of UM great theaters, and in particular,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: there was the one down on South Street that showed
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: UM you know. Every time I turned around, we were
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: going to see a Kurasawa festival. I remember going for
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: one one afternoon and and starting with high and Low
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: and then it was you know, Jimbo, which is to
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: this day one of my all time favorite film Santuro
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: seven Samurai um, and I was. I was thrilled. I
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: was happy, happy to be there. It was good for
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: my reading skills too. I always maintained that I learned
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: how to read because my parents just for films. I
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: wasn't doing you know, green eggs and him, I was,
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: you know the city up there, you know, reading the subtitles.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: So I had knew what the hell was going on
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: in all the chaplain of course, and the Silent films
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: and Buster Keep films, UM and Harold Lloyd and those films.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: I just remember I went to hear John Simon speak,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: who recently died, of course, was the film critic for
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: multiple magazines. And I remember talking to him and he
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: was not a open guy, and I said, I, if
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: it's up on the screen, I can pretty much sit
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: through anything. I love the experiences. No, no, it's not good.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: I leave. But you know it's different because when I
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: first moved to l A in the mid seventies. And
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: the great thing about living in the l A because
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: movies at the time open in New York and l A.
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: You could literally see everything, whereas today that's literally an impossibility.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: I know, I agree, and and and it breaks my heart.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, we do have one in Brentwood on Montana
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: that that revival theater, and they and they throw up
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: some really substantial films and every now and then someone
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: connected to the film will actually be there for a
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: little comment afterwards. But uh, you know, because everyone has
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: blu ray players. Um, the a lot of those theaters
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: have have have gone away, which kind of breaks my
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: heart because there's really nothing better, even even watching the
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: krummy print of a great film. That it's that, you know,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: it's that tactile experience of being there, and um, it's
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: just it's entirely different. And I have a giant TV,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: a high def four K ultra gas powered turtlenext letter
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: to that's with a so no sound system and it's
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: amazing it. My popcorn isn't as good. And uh, and
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: I miss if someone should bottle that old cinema smell
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: like a room spray that you could just sort of
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: put on your couch before you tuck into a good film.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: I really missed that a lot, those great double features,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: things like you know, American Graffiti and the Wanderers, or
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: what a great double bill? Oh god, what did that
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: guy say when he was banging the bottles together? Wanderers?
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: That's the Waltering Warriors, Warriors, Wanderers. Brain said Wanderers, My
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: lip said warriors. But the Warriors was another one. But
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: you're talking about that experience. I remember I went to
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Hollywood Boulevard for a preview of Halloween and the squel
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: and the theater was full, and just at a tense moment,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: somebody yelled out, you deserve to die, and it was
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: like that really made the whole Well, that's the day.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: I mean those When I was a kid in New York,
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: we would go to the Times Square because you could
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: see a triple bill there for three bucks, and so
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: you would typically get two really awful films and one,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: you know, sort of substantive film that would kind of
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: make up for it. But we didn't care, you know,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: we would go and see a triple feature. You know,
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: kung fu movies that were you know, maybe they were
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: they were. They were not high art, but they were
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: you know, very very entertaining. Um. But you know, that's
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: where we lived. The popcorn was horrible. They smelled like
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: cat yearn because all of them had rodent infestations, so
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: they were just wildcats roaming inside. And you'd have you know,
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: emotionally disturbed people in the audience with you that would
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: live in the theater. It was kind of like Escape
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: from New York waiting for Ernie borg nine to come
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: strolling out. But the but there was you know, and
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: they would have these fantastic dialogues with the screen, these
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: these characters in the movie really and that was sort
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: of that was worth the price of admission, as it was,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: you know, he didn't even care necessarily what was happening.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: But they'd be yelling always, typically at the at the
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: victim who sprains their ankle when they're trying to run
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: away from you know, the Jason Borhees character. Right, Okay,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: we can't leave New Haven without asking you about Peppi's pizza.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: H that's you know, I I it's in my d
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: n A. I mean there any time my my eldest
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: son attended Choke Rosemary Hall and so when I go
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: to visit him. Uh, it was essential that we we
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: made our way into town. Uh, just to do that.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: I mean the really truly is There's lots of different pizza,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: but for me, when I eat that pizza, it's my
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: favorite movie, my favorite song, my my favorite pair of pajamas.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Everything is just rolled into one. Just can't beat it.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: It's it's something in that you know. Okay, So at
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: what age do you lead to Haven? I was about four, okay,
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: so very early. And how old were you when your
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: parents divorced? Well, I my I never knew my parents married.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: My my my mother got pregnant with me and my
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: dad uh split sky, So I never I never knew
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: them as a couple. Um and I didn't even really
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: technically meet my father until I was almost two years
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: old because he was um part of a h An
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: artist program that was sponsored by the State Department in
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: which American artists and artists from all over the world.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: It was like an exchange program. So my dad traveled
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: all over the globe for almost two years, living with UM,
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: you know, hosted by artists in in Vietnam, in France
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: and Italy. And so he was on and I you know,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: my first memory of him, I was about two years old.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: He had just come back and of course, you know,
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: there was no face time or anything like that or
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: and I kind of wandered downstairs to my bedroom and
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: there was this chap was asleep on on the couch.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: And I went back upstairs to my mother's bedroom and
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: I said, uh, Mommy, there's a there's a man sleeping
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: on the couch and she said, that's your dad. Wow. Yeah.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: I went down and I poked him a few times
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: and he sort of rolled over and looked at me,
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: and I said hi, and he said hi, and uh,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: he said, come here and give me a hug. And
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I said, there was two. I said, I don't know you. So,
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: um it was sort of crazy, crazy, uh memory. But yeah,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: I didn't really sense of of his his presence until
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: that age. Okay, so you were there to four and
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: then you moved to outside Philly. No, we we we
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: we moved right into the center of West Philadelphia and
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: my my my parents didn't live very far far apart
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: from each other, so you know that I had access
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: to both parents, could could walk, My brother and I
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: could walk to and from their places, and my dad was.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: My mother was a fashion illustrator, so she had a
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: studio at home where she did her work. As my
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: father also had his painting studio at his home, but
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: he was um, you know, nine of the time he
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: was down on the Penn campus. So I spent a
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: great deal of time down there. And so siblings, you're
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: talking about your brother, does he share the same mother? Yes,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: I have, Well, I have only one natural sibling, my
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: brother Silas, who passed away about eighteen years ago from
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: a pre existing um medical issue. He had a form
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: of my autonic muscular justtry feet which manifested in his
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: heart and and he passed away at forty five, sadly
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: ply um. But so we lived there and my father
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: remarried and he had three children, two of which passed away.
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: One was my infant sister. She died from what they
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: called then crib death now we call it a sudden
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: infant death syndrome, four months old. And then my other brother,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Eli was killed by misadventure in Thailand. He was in
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: a saloon and he went to use the bathroom and
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: while he was there, these guys sort of targeted him
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: for for a robbery and they put heroin in his
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: beer to incapacitate him. Beeknownst to him, he came back,
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: drank the beer and was uh, you know, losing it.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: But he was allergic to heroine and didn't know that
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: and went into anaphylaxic shock twenty one and died quite
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: quite tragic. Well, how does death in your feeling? Obviously
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: you missed these siblings, but how does it affect you
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: emotionally in terms of your viewpoint on the world. Well,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: I would say certainly, you know, being a father, um,
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: I have I might be a little bit. I don't
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: want to classify myself as a helicopter parent, but I'm
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: I'm one of those cautious parents who have you know,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: not not necessarily overprotective, but have really tried to raise
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: my kids with a sense of always being aware of
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: their surroundings, their environment, you know, having their head on
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: a swivel without being paranoid and and um because obviously
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I wanted my kids to have a normal childhood. Um
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: but but you know, awareness, great awareness. But it's certainly
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: you know, many many a sleepless night when they were
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: when they were little, for sure. Okay, so, oh, you
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: moved to Philly at age four. Do you stay there
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: through high school? No, stayed there until I was about eleven,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: and then my father decided to He had a summer
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: home in Maine, in a little town called Lincolnville, and
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: he decided he wanted to move there and live there
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: full time. That was where he painted. He painted the
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: landscapes of Maine, and he he wanted to kind of
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: he just said the city was too much. And you
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: know this is in in the at the very beginning
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: of the seventies and uh So he moved up there
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: into the summer home, which had no indoor plumbing, had
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: no electricity, it was gas lights. There was a privy
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: that was connected to the house. He ultimately, you know,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: brought electricity and um by way of having a windmill.
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: So he was really living off the grid. Um. And
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: so I was sort of thrust into the public school
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: system in rural Maine, which was, you know, very primitive
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: compared to So where is Lincolnville and Maine. It's between
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Camden and Belfast, Maine. So it's really central central Maine.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: It's about an hour northeast of Augusta, Maine, a couple
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: hours north of Portland. That's really deep beast I mean
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: main is its own mentality. They think it's like New
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Hampshire Vermont, but it's not. No, it's not. No, it's
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: not unlike Texas in that way. Right, it feels when
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: you're there, there is there are strong connections to the
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: other New England states, but it's still very much this
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: kind of autonomous um entity in that way. You know,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Manners are a very very different breed. Okay, so you
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: moved to Maine full time. What about your mother? She
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: stayed in Philadelphia and then ultimately moved up to Boston
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: so that she could be closer to my older brother
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and I And then I ended up going to boarding
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: school and stayed in Maine and went to a boarding
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: school in Basslborough, Maine, which is right next to Waterville
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: School called Oak Grove Coburn School. And it's now it
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: went belly up due to some financial issues in the
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: early eighties. I believe. Um. It's now the main State
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Police Academy. The state came bought it. It's a beautiful
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: old set of buildings, you know, it looks like a
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: giant castle on the hill. And I got a fantastic
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: education there, top notch teachers and students that i'm you know,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: friends with to this day. So that's one thing that
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: people don't realize about prep schools, the level of education
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: you get. I remember going to college and there were
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: people were prep school students and it was just astounding
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: what they knew irrelevant of their intelligence. Yeah, well, it's definitely,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, there is a reason they call it prep
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: school because it you know, I I felt very much um,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: you know, I felt not necessarily ahead of the curve,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: but I was not UM. I would say that I
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: was very aware that what the way I was being educated, UM,
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: which worked very well for me, UM, was was kind
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: of exceptional or that at least that the teachers that
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: I had, for the most part were people that really
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: inspired me to want to learn. But however, when you're
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: at prep school usually there's a big us versus them.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: That's when you really you know, experience and learn the
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: hi jinks, etcetera. In the dorms completely and you really
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: separate from your parents have become your own identity. That's
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: been my experience with the prep school kids anyway. Well, yeah,
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: but the other thing is that then there's a kind
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: of in house process of discipline when you when you
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: break the rules, and uh, they were very creative with
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: those with with certain types of punishments that they would
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: they would administer to kids who like myself. But I
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: mean I was I was far from an angel. I
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: was into mischief all the time. So well, just you
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: gotta give me one, give me one of the creative punishments. Well,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: I um, it wasn't just me, but my this, this
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: friend and I we we discovered that if we could
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: push snow up against the side of the backside of
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the girls dormitory and create footholds that we could climb
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: up in through one of the rear windows and gain
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: access into the girl's dorm to see our girlfriends. And
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: it didn't take them long to figure it out. And uh,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: we had done such a good job taking watering cans
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: and covering it so it was a solid block of ice.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: Then we had to go out there and break it
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: apart with sledgehammers, and it took a hell of a
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: lot longer to take that thing about. Okay, so you
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: have this somewhat peripatetic upbringing. What kind of kid are you?
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: The kind of as friends, you're the outsider? How do
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: you fit in? You know what I had a lot
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: of friends. I was. I was very social, gregarious kid.
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: But I was also a kid who my dad nicknamed me,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: used to call me lone wolf. Because I also was
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: very comfortable being by myself. I would frequently go and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: camp um on his property, um on my own, and
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: would kind of disappear, even as a kid of twelve
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: years old. I would just go and at the middle
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: of nowhere, out in the woods and and live out there.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: But I was, I had a lot of friends. I
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: had a lot of friends and um and was very
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: very very social and were a good student, bad student.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: I at first was kind of a mediocre student when
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: I first arrived at Oak Grove and then through just
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: having very very good teachers. There was the ratio, the
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: student teacher ratio was it was kind of perfect. Um
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: I had. I had dyslexia, which manifested in my ability
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: to do mathematics. Had no problems at all with reading
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: or writing or anything, but I really really struggled terribly
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: with math. So that was my big bugaboo to overcome.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: So I started out as a as a mediocre student
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: and ultimately became actually a good student with the with
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: the help of Um, really good teachers and tutors and things,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: and and embraced and really enjoyed school. I have to
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: ask with a name like Titus growing up to get
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: shipped from the kids or they accept you now? And
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: and I mean when I was a little kid. I
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: mean I still to this day, I'll meet adults and
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: you know, they they'll say, oh, tight ass, and god,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: I haven't heard that since kindergarten. That's that's great. I
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: took a lot of ship from my name. And you know,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: as a kid, I hated my name. Uh, But as
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I got older, I appreciate it certainly when they would,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: you know, call out names and um, I was the
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: only the only Titus in my class. But yeah, it's
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: a it's a heavy one to hang on a kid.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: But but as an adult, I'm okay with it. Is
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: there a backstory with why your name Titus? I was
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: named after Rembrandt's son. Both of my parents I loved
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Rembrandt and uh, and they they just really liked the name,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: and so they they gave their name. It's not a
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: family name or anything like that, which I would chide
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: my father later in life. I would say, I guess
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: you really really thought a lot of yourself. You graduate
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: from high school, what's your next direction? Well, then I
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: went to I did a year of of art school
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: because I originally my my career path was gonna I
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: was gonna be a fine artist like my father. And
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: I went to Bennington College and I, um just um
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: screwed around. I just never went to class. I was
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: majoring in in pot smoking and carousing and beer drinking
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: and just kind of up to nonsense. That being said,
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: it was one of the one of the most interesting
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: years of my early days. Um. But after an uneventful year,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: my father just said to me, you know, what are
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: you thinking you're going to do with your life, to
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: which you know, when I was eighteen, I said, I'm
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: going to join the Marine Corps. But my father just
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: spent a shipload of money for me to go to Bennington.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: He was quite quite cross with me, so he sort
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: of installed me at our family compound and and uh
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: sort of put me. We we called it inward Bound,
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: in which my I was sequestered in in a guesthouse,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: an old cape house and my father's property, no visitors,
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: no girlfriends, no phone, no anything. And one day a
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: truck came along a flatbed that had massive moving boxes
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: and they were filled with books. And my father said,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: here's how this is gonna go. And he basically said,
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: you're gonna read these books, and I'll give you the option.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: You can either do an oral presentation or you can
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: write a paper. And knowing you, you're probably gonna wanna
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: chat about it because you're too goddamn lazy to write
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: about it, which is fine, um. And you're gonna you're
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: gonna live in that in that house, and you're gonna
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: you're gonna cut to cut firewood, which I was fine with. Um,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: But you know, when you read Crime and Punishment and
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: sit down and basically regurgitate all of that over the
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: course of almost four hours, and just to have my
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: father turned to me and said, yeah, you're gonna have
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: to do that one again. There's a lot you missed. Uh.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: That part of it was brutal. But I must say
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: by the time that time period had I've read all
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: those books and gone through it, I realized many years
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: later and I went back to school. I went eventually
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: went back to school. I went to n y U
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: did my undergrad and graduate work there that I a
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: large part of my education had occurred in that period
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: of time. And how long it was almost a year? Wow?
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: And just before we leave Bennington, did you read the
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: Secret History? Yes? Yeah I did. I mean, yeah, if
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: those walls could talk, I mean, there's a lot to
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: be said. And I think it's a it's a very
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: very different school and it was when I was there. Um,
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: there were really no checks and balances. So unless you
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: were a seriously self disciplined kid, um, it was it
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: was not a good fit. And I was not. I
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: was not self disciplined, not certainly, not in that way.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: There were too many distractions, and there was you know,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: you you were kind of isolated, but you know the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: fact that the the ratio was, you know, there were
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: twelve girls to every guy. I just lost my mind.
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: And and so how had you end up? How'd you
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: end up at n y u? Um? I then what
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: my I said? My father said to me, so, what
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: are you gonna do? I mean, clearly, you know painting
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: is not what you really want to do? And I said, no,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: it's not. And he said, well, what is it gets
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: you up in the morning when when when you're not
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: thinking about drinking beer and and and girls? What do
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: you think about And I said, acting anyone, Well, then
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: that's what you should do, because if you're any any
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: pursuit in the arts, be it writing, you know, or
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: or being a musician or or a painter or an actor,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: in order to have a modicum of success and I'm
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: not talking about um financial success, We'll just say intellectual
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: sustenance for for oneself. You have to it has to
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: be a quasi obsession. Otherwise there's no point in doing
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: it because it's it's that's true. Did you learn that
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: from experience or did your father tell you? It was both?
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: It was I mean that that was sort of you know,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: he forewarned me. And so he said, and you know,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: obviously you can't do that here in Maine. You're gonna
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: have to go back home to New York. So I
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: packed it up. I got on a Greyhound bus with
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: an army Duffel bag full of my belongings and and
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: crashed on people's sofas until I had enough jobs to
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: be able to get my own apartment and pay my rent.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: And did that for years, and then um I decided
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: that I wanted to go back to school, and of
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: course I had applied. UM an auditioned and was accepted
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: at Juilliard and at the Neighborhood playoffs. But when I
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: sort of sat back for a second looking at my options,
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: I decided to go to n y U. Because for me,
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: despite the fact that I knew I wanted to be
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: an actor, I wanted to investigate um other areas of interest,
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: and so I that was so rather than doing a
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: straight conservatory, I decided to go to n y U.
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: And I really got the you know, I got to
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: have my cake and eat it too. It was a
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. Once again. So you said,
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: your father, in this inward value, you wanted to an actor.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: There must be a backstory there. Well, I had been.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: I had acted in high school production, always been interested
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: in that, and of course, growing up seeing so many films,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: I was always pulled in in that direction to a
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: certain degree. Um and then it it really kind of
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: turned a page. My mother was living in Boston, and
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: because I didn't live there full time and didn't go
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: to school there or anything, I had no friends, there
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: were no kids. She was living right in the center
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: of Boston, and so I was kind of hanging out
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: at the house a lot, and you know, reading comic
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: books and kind of screwing off going to the cineplex
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: that was a couple of blocks away. But there's only
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: so many times you could see the same films over
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: and over again. And I think that the three films
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: were walking tall uh Buford. Yeah, it was the second
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: one with both vents and not that not the first
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: one was better, Yeah, much better. And then Beyond the Door,
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: which was which was a low grade attempt to try
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: to remake The Exorcist with Juliette Mills and Um and
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: the Return of the Pink Panther U And that was
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: the only theater that was close. And my mother just
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: came one day and she said, I've signed you up
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: at this place called Actor's Workshop. And I went, wait,
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: what do you mean, I'm not going to a camp.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: She said, it's not a camp. It's it's an acting program.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: It's a summer acting program. You can walk there, it's
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: four blocks away, and you're gonna go give it a shot.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: And that was the beginning of it for me. Um.
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: I walked in there and within you know, several hours
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: of being in the company of a lot of these
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: kids were really there studying seriously who wanted to you know,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: and we're already working here and you know, doing commercials
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: and things like that. Um, I got I got bitten
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: by the bug and it carried me through. So I always,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: you know, interestingly enough. Cut to many, many many moons later,
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: I'm shooting the first UM film that I did with
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: Ben Affleck, Gone, Baby, Gone, and back in Boston. And
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: we had a whole conversation because he said he started.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: We were just having a you know, passing conversation. When
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: did you decide you wanted to be an actor? And
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I told him and he said, I never went there,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: He said, but I knew people that went there. And
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: he said that's interesting, and I said, yep, here we are.
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: So it's all come full circle. Okay. How long were
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: you in New York before you went to n y U?
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: About three years? Okay, so when you went to n YU,
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: you were older than most of the students. I was
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: a transfer student UM. And part of that was that
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: I was working all these jobs and I wasn't really
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: acting all that much because everything that I was doing
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: was to pay my rent. My father said to me,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: I thought you were going to be an actor. I
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: remember I had gotten a job. Um, I was working construction,
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: and UM the foreman said, hey, I'll put you in
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: an apprenticeship UM at the tin Knockers Union. You can
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: go there, you'll learn the trade, and you'll get health
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: benefits and all these things. And I was excited by
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: that because I knew I was going to get a
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: substantial pay raise. And I called my father and told him,
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: and that's when he said, but I thought you were
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: going to be an actor. But I suppose if you
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: want to be a tin knocker, go be a tin
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: knocker that you know you can make a good he said,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: But but stop telling people that you're an actor. And
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: that kind of shook me up a little bit. I
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: kind of thought, no, no, no no, he's actually right, and
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I thought, I really need to get my ass back
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: to school. I want to complete my education. You know,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: this isn't what I want to do. So I was
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: very poor. I mean I still even when I was
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: going to school full time, I had to work multiple
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: jobs to pay my rent things. But I was I
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: was a full time student as well, and it was
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: n YU was an amazing experience, but you were, uh,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: focusing on acting at n y U. That was your
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: number one, your major, so to speaking, that was my
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: that was my major. So where were you in the
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: hierarchy of students? Were you one of the people they said, Oh,
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: we give him the roles, he's gonna make it. Just
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: one of the troop. I was one of the troop.
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: I mean there was there were definitely some some favorites there.
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: But um, the the student productions, the the level of professionalism.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: I had to say, some of the best directors that
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: I have worked with were some guys that we were
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: doing theater, they were directing. They were in their twenties. Smart,
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: smart guys. The playwright Frank bulliais being one of them
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: who's gone on to have great success as a screenwriter. Also,
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: um uh drawing a blank right now. On the show
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: um House of Cards, it was was one of them. Um.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: And a lot of people my class mates that came
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: out of there are people actors of note, Clark, Greg J's, Alexander,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Felicity Huffman, UM, A lot of really substantial people. And
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: we did, you know, little student productions together. Um. But
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: you had you had access to people at n y
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: U who were who were actually working in in the
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: business I mean, you know, we had people like Hulu
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: gross Bard and um, you know, Kevin Klein and and
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Fred Zolo and Wendy Wasserstein. We got to interact with
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: these people who who were really in it. Ma'am. That
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: was one of my teachers. I eventually left Circle in
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: the Square and went to study with W. H. Macy
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: and David Mammot that had started their own little studio
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: from a summer program in Vermont into a full blown
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: UM studio that was part of the n y U
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: system called the Practical Ascetics Workshop, which eventually became the
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: Atlantic Theater Company School. And those are all my classmates
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: from that time that that formed that you know, very
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: successful UM prolific theater company. So why did you go
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: to graduate school? What was that about? Well? I got
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: offered a gig. I had a professor he passed away
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: a couple of years ago, Mel Gordon, and he taught
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: this this class. It was an academic class, but it
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: was called character development. And he had come out of
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: the check off UM school that's where he had trained
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: that but he was now living a life of being
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: really an academic UM. And so what you ostensibly did
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: was you would create a character. You would have a whole,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: an entire semester to create a character from the ground up,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: and he didn't care what the character was. And then
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: you had to write your own monologue. UM. So it
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: was all ground up stuff. And I really found that
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: class to be invaluable. What it did was it really
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: sharpened my ability to observe people, because you know, I
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: was sort of looking around going what am I? What
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: am I going to create a character? You know what,
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: who's what's the character going to be? And you know,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: one week it was all it'll be you know, the
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: bartender at this saloon. You know, mcsorley's sort of based
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: on that, or this this the schizophrenic homeless guy that
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: I come into contact with. Um And after a year,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: um Mel said to me, look, you know, I've been
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: teaching this class here for a million years, and UM,
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: I'm kind of I just feel like I don't have
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: anything else to do with it. But you've got an
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: interesting and fresh perspective on it. You could teach this class.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: And I went, well, I don't know anyone. Yeah, you're
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: gonna just do it. You're gonna teach. You're just gonna
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: teach this class and I'm going to arrange it so
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: that so that the credits work towards a graduate degree
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: for you, so you get to So it was it
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun.
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: And he um, I know, I know, I really didn't
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: see very much of him. He just kind of he said,
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: I have fun. But it was it was very interesting,
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: um to take something over. Of course, the immediate thought
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: on a lot of my classmates was oh, well, I'm
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: going to take his class, because that's gonna be But
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: I made everybody audition for the class, and that was
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: my way of weeding out people who thought they were
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: just going to show up and get a get a
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: pass grade. Um. But also because I only wanted serious
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: people in there, you know, I wanted I wanted to
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: people that really came there, that wanted to do that work,
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: to do the work. I didn't want to have the
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: babysit people and or listen to bullshit excuses with that
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: I had used a thousand times. So I weeded them
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: out and it became a substantially smaller class when I
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: was teaching it. But they were all really top shelf people.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: So how many years did you did it take for
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: you to get that graduate degree, or you were doing
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: that program, yeah, for two hours, doing that for two years?
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: And then were you taking any other courses or your
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: only gig was too No, No, I was doing I
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: was taking classes in cultural anthropology, UM to a couple
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: of pre law classes. I mean therese are just things
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: that I thought. I thought pre law. I felt it
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: would be inevitable that I was going to play a
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: lawyer at some point in my career. And I had
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: a couple of friends that were in the law school
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: and when they would do their mock trials, UM, they
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: would come to me and they would say, I, you
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: know you're an actor. I want you to to teach
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: me how to do opening and closing statements. Here here's
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: my opening statement, and UM, I want you to kind
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: of coach me through this. How am I gonna? And
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: so I was. I went to a few of them
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: just to observe these guys doing their things, to see
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: if they actually had listened to anything that I had
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: told them, and was kind of pulled into it, and uh,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I very quickly realized that that was not what I
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: want to do. And my father was very very disappointed.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: And I remember at one point he said, so what
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: are you taking that? I said, oh, I've got these
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: pre law classes. And he said, well what do you
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: why what are you? What are you taking pre law for?
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: I said, well, you know, you never know. He's the tightest.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: You know, when you're an artist, there's no such thing
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: as a fallback. And I went, well, yeah, I know,
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: and and he was. He was really irritate, and he said,
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: why would you? He said, anybody can do that. Anyone
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: can become a lawyer. You you just gotta you just
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: have to put in the time and put in the work.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: But not everyone can be an artist. I thought you
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: wanted to be something substantial and that's not And my
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: father had many friends who were lawyers. I don't think
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: that he had any lack of respect for them, but
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: he for me. He took umbrage to the idea, you know,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: as if you were raised in this fucking environment, and
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: how could you not absorb all this stuff and now
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: you're gonna go and do a regular job. Um, well,
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: that does beg the question that it is certainly hard
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: to make it financially as an actor. So you're done
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: with your schooling, what's the next step. Yeah, I've done
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: with schooling and I'm out in the world and and
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: it's you know, the crickets are chirping. I mean, there's
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: just it was the endless backstage um submissions, showing up
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: at theaters with headshots and resumes and you know, and
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: I had, I had a large resume. I had done
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: a lot of work. Um there and then at n
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: y U and and off off and off off off,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: you know, other Planet Broadway stuff. Um. But it was,
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: it was, it was really really tough. And so there
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: I was, again, you know, sort of working multiple jobs
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: to be able to you know, just to pay my rent.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: And you know, it would would come into contact with
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: people who would say that they were managers or agents,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: and you know, at the time it was some sort
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: of come on or or bullshit story. And um. And
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: I was working at a at a saloon called The Edge,
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: and that guy who frequented the place had I had
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: just done a production of American Buffalo and he had
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: seen it. And uh, He's sitting at the bar one
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: night he said, I just realized I saw you an
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: American Buffalo. He said, oh, yes, yes, I didn't play.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: So what are you doing behind the stick? And I said, well,
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm trying to make a living. He said, well,
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: are your agents not doing a good job? And I said,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: I don't have an agent. He said, I'm an agent.
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: I thought. I said, oh boy, okay, here we go.
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: But he seemed like a straight shooter to me. Um
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: gave me his card and I didn't. I think it
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: went to my pocket and I kind of forgot about it.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: And then about ten days later he came in and
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: he said, hey, man, I haven't I haven't heard from you,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: and I didn't have a number on and I didn't
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: know how to how to contact you. Are are you
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: do you want to take a meeting or not? He
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: said it's not you know, I'm not I'm not gonna
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: chase you. I said sure and and sure enough he
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: had a legit agency represented some super solid actors, not
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: a big agency, and it had a large modeling age
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: and see very successful modeling agency. And he started sending
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: me out and after a couple of weeks of working
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: with him, I landed my first role, which was kind
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: of a walk on in a movie called Navy Seals,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: where I played this this um, you know, redneck who
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: starts a fight with Charlie sheen, and Charlie beats me
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: up and uh, and then things just kind of kept going.
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: But you know, so for me, it's always been um,
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: more of a slow burn, you know. Um, I've it's
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: been the journeyman path. For me. It's always been you know,
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: work to work, to work to work, um, and which
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: is good because I think, honestly, if I had, if
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: I had had success when I was younger in my twenties,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: like a lot of my friends did, I would have,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: you know, I had ended up like one of those
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: monks and Saigon, you know, with a Jerry can of gasoline.
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's a weird analogy, but there was definitely
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: a part of me that was kind of wild, maybe
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: a bit self destructive. And I don't think that having
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: access to money and and uh then other things would
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: have been would have been necessarily good for me. My
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: journey in that way was very, very humble, and I
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: think it kept me very grounded and kept me very focused.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: I I would see people around me that were, you know,
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: always talking about getting new headshots and trying to go
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: to this party or to this nightclub because X hung
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: out there, and I thought, what's that you know, this
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: isn't schwabs. I mean, it's You're not going to walk
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: into a nightclub in New York and unless you're a
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: beautiful woman and someone's gonna walk up to you and say,
• 53:49
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna make you. You know, I'm gonna give you
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: every opportunity you could ever dream of to achieve a
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: monicum of successes as an actor. So in that way,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: it was it was uphill and it is truly navigating
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: the sea of heartbreak. But as things started to become
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: more and more consistent, um as far as getting work,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: and it's also it's a process of learning, you know.
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I I learned what worked um in in the business
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: as far as um the auditioning process and things stuff
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: that they don't teach you. They don't teach you how
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: to act in front of a camera. Um. You know,
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: my background was purely in the theater, and so jumping
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: to film and television it was a massive learning curve.
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: I've learned a lot from watching some of my favorite
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: actors on screen. But then it becomes a technical thing.
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: I didn't know the difference between an eighty millimeter and
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: a hundred fifty millimeter lens and what my field of
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: play was and how I was going to do that,
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: and finding my light and all those all those things
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: that you really learn are on the job training. Okay,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: so the agent you meet in the bar, he sends
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: you out on gigs. You're auditioning. Usually many people are auditioning.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: What was it about you? What was the way you
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: audition that would seal the deal for you? I was prepared, um. I.
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: I had a a big belief in not to half acid.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: And one of the things that I learned is that
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: I couldn't really act with a paper in my hand.
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: So um, I would spend a lot of time memorizing
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: the material for an audition, and it always sort of
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: vexed me because I would go to No, that's not
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: to say I've never gone into an audition holding a
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: holding the script in my hand. You know, certainly during
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: pilot season, um, when you've got seven eight meetings in
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: one day, you you have to kind of cherry pick.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: And that's what I would do. I would go, Okay,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: this is the one that I think I can I have,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: I have a good chance of getting this. It's in
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: my wheelhouse, so I'm going to put all of my
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: energy into memorizing this material and then the rest, you know,
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: would I would do the best that I could possibly do.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: But for me, I think, um, it was the investment
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: of time and focused that um that kind of won
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: the day for me. And I was also very UM,
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: I didn't really fall necessarily into any category. You know,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: I wasn't Brad Pitt cute, and I wasn't you know,
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: John Casali character actor. I was sort of what they
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: would call an off leading man. And so you know,
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: the beauty of that was I did get to play
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: and have been been privileged to play lots of different
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: types of characters. The other hard part is that you play,
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: you know, if you do a heavy which I did
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: quite a few heavies, UM, they the temptation or the
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: you know, the term pigeonholed, it tends to kind of
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: carry over to a certain point. So there at one
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: point I did I was getting offered a lot of
• 57:16
  Speaker 1: sort of the same type of roles, and despite the
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: fact that you know, for the sake of commerce and
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: and looking after myself, UM that I had to turn
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: stuff down, which I really was not in a financial
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: position to do. But I thought, if I don't set
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: the President. Now by not doing this, I'm gonna forever,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna get locked into doing this, and I don't
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: want to do it. And just as I made that decision,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: I got a call to go and read for a
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: role on NYPD Blue, to read for Mark Tinker and
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: Steven Bocho and David Milch. And I thought, of course
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: when I got the call, oh, it's a it's a cop,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: it'll be a cople And he said, no, actually this
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: guy is. He's a Trump the surgeon in in the
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: er and Nick Deturro's character gets shot and shootout, and
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: you're the guy that that patches him up. And they're
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: not going to cast me as the doctor. They never
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: will see me as as a hard guy of Hollywood
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: thinks that I'm Italian and I'm actually English and Irish,
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: you know. So I don't want to waste anybody's time.
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: I'd rather wait until a coprole comes along, because that'll
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: be something i'll get. And they said, well, they know
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: who you are and they want to see you for this.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: And went in and I kind of pulled myself together
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: and I read and and and they cast me on
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: the spot, and that character ended up kind of recurring
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: over the years on NYPD Blue. But he was a doctor.
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: He was a very kind of um. He was unlike
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: any character that I had played before, certainly on on screen,
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: is sort of soft spoken, you know. He was the
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: he was the doctor that if one had a doctor,
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: he had, you know, impeccable bedside manner. He's a guy
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: you would want to treat you, who wouldn't treat you
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: like an idiot um um, but also wasn't perfunctory and
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: in the handing off of bad medical news and that
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: kind of uh. That opened up my relationship with David
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: Milt and Stephen Bosco. I then went on to do
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: Brooklyn South with them and then Big Apple. After that
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: with with David Milton went on to do Deadwood with
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: David milchon so that collaboration lasted over several shows, and
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: I did some other work with Steven Bochco. But that
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: was for me a major turning point and how I
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: was I was perceived. I mean, I think casting directors
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: and other people in the business sort of said, oh,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: he can, he can do this other thing and I
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: and I owe that to Botch going to Tinker and
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: into Milch to sort of say we're going to give
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: you this shot to do this thing. It was a
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: game changer for me. And at what point after you
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: get the gig and Navy Seals do you stop having
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: to have a day job. Oh I I'm trying to
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: think I stopped having a day job. So let's for arguments,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: I did Navy Seals. I. Yeah, I didn't go back
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: to like, I don't No, I don't don't think I
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: ever did go back to a day job after that. Okay,
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: And you talked about the heartbreak, and you tell us
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: a little bit more about the heartbreak of being an
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: actor and auditioning, etcetera. Yeah, Well, it's it is that
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: it's so personal and you have to learn or to
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: not be personal because there's so much there is so
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: much rejection, and particularly when you put in a considerable
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: amount of time into an audition and you go in
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: and you do really well, um, and it's evident that
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: you've done well, and you're being um sort of not
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: necessarily pat on the back, but you know, and you've
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: made your casting director friend very happy that they've brought
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: you in. Um. Only two then find out that they've
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: cast someone who is not only not physically right for
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: the role, but not a very good actor. Um those things.
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 1: That's that's a hard Pilba swallow. But I kind of
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: learned pretty quickly to remove my ego from it and
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 1: to just focus on what it was that I could do,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: so that if I didn't get something, I would say, oh,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: there was something that if I had done something differently,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: or and also to listen to the notes that were
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: being given by directors and certain things. Um, yeah, there's
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: always gonna be I mean, I think even at the
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: highest level there there will always be roles and an
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: actor might want that they're not going to get just
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: because you know, the time they want the guy or
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: the gal to walk in the door. Then they go eureka,
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: you're you're precisely you know what I'm looking for with
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: a character. Now, if you can act, that's gonna be
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: even better. But the physicality, the physicality is all there. Um.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: But that's what it was for me. I learned to
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: not take it personally, and I think it helped me
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: because I would I think, you know, and I've been
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: on the other side of the table when people have
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: come in and auditioned for for things that I've been
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: a part of that um when you when when you
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: carry that that anxiety, it's it's it carries an odor,
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: you know that that that that it's not necessarily ambition,
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: but it's it's it's the anxiousness. I want to you know, I,
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: I want to do well I And you can't charm
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: your way into a into a part. You have to
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: come in and do the work. And once I realized
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: that it wasn't about the small talk and the bullshit
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: that occurred, you know before and after the audition, or
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: you know, how your kid was doing in school. It
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: was really my only job was to do the best
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: possible job that I auditioned that I could do, and
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: that was it. And then I had to just and
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: either they were going to get it or they didn't
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: get it. And once I got to that place and
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: it wasn't it was arduous. That was a conversation I
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: had with myself that went on for a minute. It
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: was liberating, and then I was was truly able to
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: just go in, do that, finish it, walk out and
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: be okay. Okay. Now, beginning, you were a stage performer,
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: and you're mostly known as someone who's on screen, So
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: have you acted on stage? Or is that something that
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: you want to do or where does that leave you? Yeah?
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: I mean all of all of the beginning work that
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: I ever did was on the stage and I have
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: not been on stage in in many, many years, and
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: I miss it and I would really like to find, um,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: the right play to do. I mean a couple of
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: things have come across my desk. That's also been a
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: timing issue, um, and a commitment thing because of my
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: shooting schedule with Bosh and or other other projects that
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: I've been involved with. Because it's it's a big commitment.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: I would nothing would make me happier than to find
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: the right play and to go do you know a
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: four or a six month run of a play? I
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: think every actor worked or saw or at least who
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: is who comes from the theater is that's always where
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: you want to get back to you. You know, there's
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: there's nothing like performing in front of a live audience.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: It's it's you fire on all cylinders as an actor
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: when you're doing that. So how did you get Bosh? Well?
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: I got the script, and um, who's your agent? Is
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: you is the same agent from when you got Bosh? Yeah,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: I've had the I've been with the same agent for
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: Why Something Ears, and that agent is in works where
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: at Paradigm Chris Shman at Paradigm Agency. Um, and she's
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, she's not she's like a member of my family.
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, so she's we've we've we've been through it
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: all together. So I got the script. Wait, did well?
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: How did you get the script? Did you say, I
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: have something perfect for you. Hey, we're emailing you the script.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: It's a it's a it's a pilot for Amazon. It's
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: called BOSH. I said, okay, great. Um, And interestingly enough,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: I had just written a pilot from myself. I've gotten
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: to a. UM. My late wife had been ill with
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: cancer and that had been obviously my primary focus was
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: looking after her, but also having to work at the
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: same time to be able to pay for medical bills
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: and to take care of the family. So in the
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 1: last couple of years of her life. I would show
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: her script. So it's again, look at this pilot, read
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: this thing. She would go, God, it's direct, that's direct.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: You don't want to do that. Don't you don't want
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: to do that? You don't want to do that. Um.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: And so she said, why don't you you're a writer,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: why don't you write something for yourself, something that And
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: I thought, okay, sure, that's a good challenge. So I
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: wrote something for myself and was literally getting ready to
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: go to the next phase, which would be to go
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: out with my manager and my agent and take meetings
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: to see if someone wanted to do this as a show.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: Just to stop for a second, you have a manager
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: in an agent. Can you explain the roles of each
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: from my audience? Yeah, one, Well, my manager sort of
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: is the keeper of the castle, and um, the sort
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 1: of trajectory and and the brand, the you know, the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: and he navigates different things with the you know, with
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: the agents. Silan, how long have you been with the manager?
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: For fourteen years? Okay, so you're a loyal guy. I'm
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: a loyal guy. Um. So, so you were writing this
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: thing that your late wife inspired you to do. Yeah,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: so I wrote it and and um I was able.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: I'm I'm lucky because I have lots of very very strong,
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: successful writer friends that I was able to send it to.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: And of course, you know, I would say I want
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: to hear everything. I don't you know, don't don't don't
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: soft sell it back and so uh. The responses were
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: very very positive. People were saying, you should, you should
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: do this. I I struggled with it because I felt like, um,
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: it's actually about a painter. And I thought, Okay, the
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: dialogue is solid, the idea is very very solid, but
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: what's going to sustain an audience interest in this guy's
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: who's having a kind of existential midlife crisis. Anyway, cut too,
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: I'm doing sort of some final tweaks before we're going
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: to head out with it, and I get bosh and
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: I read it, and I mean I read it very fast.
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: It was the pilot script was a page turner, and
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: I went to myself, oh wait, I read one of
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: these Harry Bosch novels years ago. Oh marvelous. But everything
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: was on the page, so it wasn't you know, even
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: if I hadn't read one of the books many many
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: years prior to that. It you know, it was Eric
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: Overmeyer and Connolly had had written this together, and it
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: was really strong. The character was clear, and I thought, ship,
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: you see, now I'm in trouble because this is I
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: couldn't write a better, you know, role for myself. I
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: understood the character immediately. Um, I knew how I would
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 1: want to play this character, but I also felt like
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: it wasn't broke, so there was no need to fix it.
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: I mean that was was on the page, was was
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: really clear. Through a series of mishaps, I was supposed
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: to meet with Overmyer and Connolly and with the producer
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: Peter Young Brug and Henrick Baston while I was hopping
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: the train. I was at my farmhouse in Connecticut. I
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: was going to hop on the train and go to
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: New York to meet them, and my cell phone got stolen,
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: and my kids were little, and I didn't you know,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: they were with friends, but I didn't want to not
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: be able to communicate with them, so I jumped off
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: the train and went, not, I'll have to reschedule it.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: And I was shooting one of the Transformers films at
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: the same time, which when I was in Chicago, I
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: was in Michigan, Hong Kong. It was all over the place,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: um And so the meetings kept getting pushed and pushed
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: and pushed, And a couple of months later I got
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: a call again from my manager and he said, look,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: you got a little window. You're gonna be in l
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: A for a couple of days. So, um, we're you're
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: gonna have the meeting. You're gonna meet Michael Connolly and company.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: And I went, wait, wait, wait for bosh and yeah,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: so I thought that boats sailed. That's been months. He said, no,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: they can't find Harry. It's a big problem. They're actually
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: even considering sort of shutting down for a minute and
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: regrouping because there they can't find Arry. So lo and behold.
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: I went back, looked at the material, got tight with
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: the material, went in, met Michael and Jim McKay, who directed,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: the director who did the pilot, and Henry Computer yawn,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: and once again it was sort of it wasn't that thing.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't want to want it too much because I realized, hey,
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: it's a great character be it shoots in Los Angeles, um,
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: and it's this brave new world of streaming content from
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: the ground up. This is a really really interesting place
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: to be. And I got a call not long after
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: the meeting from my manager, Um, and uh, he said
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: you're the guy. And I was thrilled. And I literally
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: had to pull the car over because I thought I might,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: you know, crash the car. I was so excited and
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: and it's just been it, and I knew after meeting
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: with them, and certainly I knew on the first day
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: that we were on the set shooting the pilot that
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: I was a part of something that was. It's not
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: we didn't reinvent the wheel, we just it was. It
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: was a great character, it was a great environment, and
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: the source material of Michael's books was substantial, really interesting,
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: and we hadn't seen anything like that, um, certainly not
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: within this format. Right, rather than being the typical sort
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: of standard fare of police procedural television show, we were
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: going to take ten episodes to work one case. Rather
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: than Bosh coming in, catching the call and getting of it.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: Then the middle of the show is him working the case,
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: and then he's got the bad guy Embracelet's book him Dano.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: By the end of the show, things were going to
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: carry through, and so it was much more an established framework. Two,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: the experience of of actually reading one of Michael's books
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: and and also having Mike there, the cast, quality of
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: the writing and and the cinematography, I mean everything. I
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: remember watching the first pass at at the pilot and
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: I went ship, you know, if this doesn't go, um,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: it's gonna take me It's gonna take me a long
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: time to get over this, because this is something that
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: I think, um has more weight than anything I've ever done,
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: you know, And and that was that's a tall that's
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: a tall order considering that, you know, obviously having done
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: shows like The Good Wife and Sons of Anarchy and
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: and the work that I've done with David Milch, Um,
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: this this one was was kind of perfect. And you know,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: fortunately Amazon I saw, found their way too to make
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: the show. And I think the show honestly has has
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: consistently gotten better each season that we've we've we've gone on.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: I certainly agree, not that it wasn't good to begin with.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: Did Amazon hesitate or were they immediately in? I think
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: that they were immediately and you know not just because
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: of the the massive fan base for lack of a
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: better term, that Michael's books have. I mean, Jesus, the
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: you know, the people that read his books are deeply dedicated,
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: um and and those books are you know, incredibly successful globally,
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: and we're you know, having Michael there. I think if
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: you took this material, if you built this from the
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: ground up, um, it would it would be different. But
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: it resonates the way Mike spins spins the case and
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: the tail is what makes it exceptional. But once again,
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: you know what we've seen. We've seen many cops shows,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: and I've done many of the Cops shows. It's it's
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: not new, but it's um. I think it's it's a
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: revisitation to films of this genre of the sixties and
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: the seventies or something that feels older, and that's comforting.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: But it's kind of older. It's something familiar to us,
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't feel um. We're not constantly pushing the
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: what my grandmother would have called the blood and thunder envelope.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's really about a guy who's relentless and
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: he's very good at his job. Um, and he's a
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: grinder and he's but he's flawed. He's human. I think
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: that's what I think pulls the audience. They kind of
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: that that humanity of him. He's you know, he's fallible,
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: he's vulnerable, he's he can be a cranky prick. Um.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: He doesn't subscribe to this sort of societal norms that
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: most people do of coming into a room and saying, Hi,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: how are you nice to meet you? Though you know
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: he Harry comes in, he's got something to do, and
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: he doesn't wanna He's not a small talk guy, you know,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: and you kind of have to. You have to support
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: and dig a character that has that kind of UM
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: has a sense of direction and commitment. There's nothing wishy
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: watching about him at all. He's you know, he's got
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: he is that forward speed. Well, it's just funny talking
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: to you now. It really poses to character because you're
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: in by minute personality outside the role. He's not the same, No, No,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: we're very very do We share some similarities, certainly, and
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: I've tried to but once again, you know, there was
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: only so much I could necessarily bring to this character
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: because Mike had created such a strong, strong character, and
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: there were things that we had to change. Obviously, we
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: didn't follow the books chronologically, and we weren't going to
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: do a period piece and set it back so that
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: we could would be Harry's military service in Vietnam, so
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: we updated it. But I always felt that it was
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: very important for that Harry's military service be central to
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: a certain degree as to who who he was. You know,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 1: a lot of the cops have said to me, who
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: enjoy watching the show, Um, you know, it's interesting when
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: I watch you move and the tactics that you employ
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 1: in your weapons handling, it's hut, that's not cops stuff.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 1: That's that's that's military. And I said, no, I wanted that.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: That was something that was important to me. Is that
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: that muscle memory, that he not moved like a cop,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: that he moved like an operator, like a former SF operator.
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: So all those little things, and and Mike was um
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: and and Eric were very open to those, to those ideas. UM.
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: So that was your idea to make it a military style, well,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: to make yeah, to give him that physicality. And how
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: did you achieve that? I mean you to hire a
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: trainer or someone with insight. Well, I've trained many times
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: over the years, not only with law enforcement, but with
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 1: military guys. UM, just for my own for my own
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: pleasure and my own education and also for roles. And
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: prior to doing BOSH, I was with a group of
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 1: UM former Navy Seals. When I did that, I can
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: did with when I did Transformers, they they did a
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: training program as well as if you see that film,
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: all the guys that are with my character, those are
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: all real seal guys. There's there there are none of
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: them are well, they're some of them are actors. Seal
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: former seals slashed and they become actors and stuntmen and
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: technical advisors. UM. So I had just gone through a
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: hole a series of weapons handling with them, and I thought,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: this is a great way to kind of move that.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: Even though Harry wasn't um, he wasn't a Navy seal.
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: So when I went back to was to look at
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: the weapons handling techniques of a special forces guy, army
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: guy that would be match with Harry's age. So the
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: way that the way that Harry holds his weapon is
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: is very kind of old school. Um. And that stuff
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: gets picked up on by by military and law enforcement guys. Um.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: But it's sort of my way of you know, I
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: and I get that. I mean, if I watch a
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: film and there's weapons handling and it's badly done, it
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: will it will literally take me out of the movie, um,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: because I just say to myself, wait a minute, it
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: had time. It's not brain surgery, it's it's muscle memory.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: Do the goddamn work. Um. So there's little little things
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: like that about Harry that Okay, So we live in
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: the air of peak TV four d scripted series whatever
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 1: per year. Bosh comes out, it's on Amazon. At the time,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: people are not quite as accepting of streaming media as
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: they are today. First season comes out, What does it
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: feel like on your ind I mean, if you look
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: at Breaking Bad, Breaking Bad was on TV. Wasn't on
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 1: until it was on Netflix a couple of years later
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: that people even caught on. Yeah, well, I it was
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: interesting to see um, and I kind of gauged it
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: basedly Amazon at that time they didn't really well and
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: a lot of a lot of networks don't either share
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 1: a lot of that data. So you know, the process
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: of trying to figure the numbers was was a process
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: of kind of extrapolation. UM. So we had a sense
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: that the show had done well. UM. Just in now,
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: I've never read been one to read reviews um of
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: my work. And it sort of goes back to something
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: that my father said to me when I was a kid,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: when I called him up to congratulate him on this
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: love letter that John Ashbury had written to him in
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: Time magazine and I and I said, oh, you know,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: that's so great that you you got from Ashbury. He said,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: I've not read it, And well, you've got to run
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: out and get it that it's really it's quite it's amazing,
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: it's beautiful. Said no, no, no, have you ever have
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: I ever read a review of my work to you
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: will know? Have you ever seen me or even discussed
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: a review of my work with anyone? He said, right?
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: And I said, why is that? And he said, you
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: either get a swollen head or a broken heart, and
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: neither neither stayed as desirable. And that resonated with me,
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: and so I carried it through. UM. And so there
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 1: were all these online reviews on the Amazon website that
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: they were encouraging us to read. Oh, you know, five
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: stars people are rating this thing. So it was the
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: Brave New World UM. And as I said, I think
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: if this was a purely original show that someone had
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: just written the pilot, UM, it could have been. It
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: could have been a tougher road. But I think because
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: of the success of Michael's books, that people were invested
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: in wanting this to succeed because they were finally going
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: to get to see the kind of physical embodiment of
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: this character that they dedicated, you know, hours and hours
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: of their time reading the books. And suddenly Harry was here.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: So there's been six seasons already. How has it changed
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: your life playing the role of Harry Bosh. Well, certainly, Um,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: you know, my my anonymity is um pretty much shot now.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: I I don't. I don't. My life is not like
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: Bruce Willis or Brad Pitt. You know, I can walk
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: into a store and not and not have to be
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: swarmed by by crazed fans. But um no, I you know,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: the people people come up to me quite often and
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: and talk about about the show. I'm recognized a lot
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: for for the character. And the sweet thing is that,
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: um people people like they really like Harry. So it's
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: there's a tremendous amount of goodwill that comes when someone
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: will approach me. Um. And it's different than you know,
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: the Lost. These we would call them when I was
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: doing Lost, and it would come at me with these
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: technical questions about the story and and the mythology, and
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: and I would say, look, you know, sometimes for me,
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: ignorance is bliss. I just kind of showed up and
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: did did my job. I didn't didn't know a lot
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: and I certainly didn't. Um. I had nothing to do
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: with the writing and the way that that story was
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: tied up and that series was tied up. Did you
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: enjoy it? Um? Whereas Box it's kind of all over
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: the place. I've got military people, law enforcement people, UM,
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: people who are in in the literary world, and they
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: all the consistent thing is they all they like Harry.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: They say, you know, you've got a root for him,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: and he kind of because he says and does the
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: things that a lot of people would like to do,
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: but they don't want to lose their jobs. Um. And
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: so he kind of because he has a bit of
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: that everyman thing, and I think that's what makes him accessible,
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: you know. And he's not it's not that kind of
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: toxic masculinity that we that we see. You know, he's
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: not a misogynist, he's not a he's not an asshole.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: He could be an asshole sometimes he can. He can
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: be really abrupt, But then that's the thing that kind
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: of makes him interesting because you kind of go, well, yeah,
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: and when he's contrite, he's contrite certainly is he you know,
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: his relationship to his daughter, um, and he and he's
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: capable of apologizing when he's wrong. So that that's what
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: I think makes him accessible to people and endearing to
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: people and certainly if one was a victim of a
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: violent crime, you would want someone like Harry who is
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: not going to necessarily break the law, um, but would
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: definitely circuitously move around you know, the bureaucratic uh, you know,
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: blocks to to to you know, obtain justice for for
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: the victims. Because this Harry says, you know, the closure
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: is a myth. All that I can agree in real
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: life it's a myth I do too. So a couple
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: of elements about the show. Are you a jazz fan personally?
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: I am very much So. I don't have the encyclopedic
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: knowledge um or the record collection that Harry has, but
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: I've I've grown up listening to all different kinds of music,
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: but I've always loved jazz. Um because both of my
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: parents loved. My dad, I knew quite a few Um,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: he knew a lot of those guys. He knew Coltrane,
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: and he knew Miles, Miles, Davison, Monk and Um was
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: was friendly with them. So the that his his turntable
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 1: had had a lot of jazz piled up on it, um,
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 1: And that's such a central part of who Harry is,
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: you know, his his love for that, And I always
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: kind of you know that it was mentioned in one
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: of the books, And I said to Connelly, I think
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: it was a year ago. There's that there's that marvelous
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: bit and I can't remember the name of the book
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: right now where we find out where Harry first heard jazz,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: And I said, and it would be a flashback. It's
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: when he's a teenager. He takes a young black woman too.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: He's going to take her to the school prom, and
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: through a series of mishaps, he's he gets kind of
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: beaten up, and then the girl misconstrues his desire to
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: take her to the prom as um being some sort
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: of a weird um token movements, and so she rejects Harry.
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: So the girl's father ends up driving Harry back to
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: the house that he's staying with his foster family, and
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: when they're in the car, Harry here's his first taste
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: of jazz, and and it it's a lifelong love affair.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: Another thing people mentioned constantly about the show is the house. Yeah,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: now did you did they find the house? Do you
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: have any specific feelings about the house? Yeah. Peter Young Bruga,
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: who's one of our producers, Um worked with Michael Mann
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 1: Um over the years had done several films with Michael Mann,
• 1:28:52
  Speaker 1: and in the film Heat, that house is Amy Brennaman's
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: house and Heat, and there's a scene with Bob de
• 1:29:01
  Speaker 1: Niro and Amy Brennaman that where they shot it right
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: there in in that in that great room. But what
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 1: Peteron told us interesting enough later a little trivia was
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: that Michael Man set up green plates so rather than
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: just shooting it in real time, which is what we do,
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: whatever is in the background going on. Helicopters are planes,
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: we don't sweat it. It happens. It happens. He shot
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: plates so that he could actually control visually what was
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: behind them. And despite the fact that some of that
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: technology was somewhat new, Um it may have been cleaned up.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: I haven't seen the latest blue ray cut of Heat,
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: but I can remember seeing and thinking that's CG or
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: there's some sort of an effect there because you could
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: see a little weird kind of halo around their heads. Um.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: That house is amazing. It's it's the best views of
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: in l A. It's a colossal pain in the ask
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: to shoot up there because those streets are all you know,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 1: they're they're like their horse paths. You know, they're so
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: in order to um, we can't bring our big trucks
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: up there. So they've got a truck and the equipment
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: offloaded and you know, we've got a large crew, but
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: you can't. It's close. It's a it's not a big house.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's that one kind of big great room
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: that Harry looks out onto the city and you have
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: his patio which is there. But it's a tiny, tiny house.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: The rooms are really quite small. But it's you know,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 1: it's Harry's nest. I mean, he's the eagle looking above
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: his his city and Peter Yon just it's snapped two.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: It's a different location than it is in the books
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: because it faces out on the other side where it's
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: Harry's house in the books looks over over a studio
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 1: city and in the one on one, well, speaking of
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: studio city in the one on one, that's sort of
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: amazing that the city itself is a character in the story.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: And for those of us who live here, it's nailed
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: so right. I mean, like watching the sixth season, it
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: seemed like you shot in the summer into the full
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: just based on the light. Yeah. Absolutely, yeah, we start
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: at the end of July and we finish up usually
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 1: the last week of November, so we're really in the
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: thick of it. August is probably the hardest. The end
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: of August is the hardest month, just because the heat.
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: And in this past season, we shot a lot in
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 1: the Valley. You know, the three oh eight's, the you know,
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: the kind of crazy alt right group. All right, they're
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: actually they're they're for real. First, didn't we get that
• 1:31:50
  Speaker 1: story with a football player just this week to follow that? Yeah, yeah,
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: and he had it was three oh eight that was
• 1:31:57
  Speaker 1: tattooed on his arm, right, I think so. But but
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: that whole you know, those guys actually showed up on
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: our set, the real guys, and got into a whole
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: confrontation with our cops, because that's what they do. They
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: get in the cops spaces they had. They showed up
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: with video cameras. They were, you know, insulting the police,
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: calling them gestapo's, and um. It was interesting because it
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 1: wasn't It didn't feel to me that they were trying
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: to make trouble for us the production, but it was
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: more an opportunity for them to confront the cops, and
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: the cops were I have to say. They exercised tremendous patients.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: I had to walk away. I mean they didn't. One
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: of the guys asked me for an autograph, which I
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: thought was really funny, and if I would take a
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: picture with him. Um, And I said, you know, normally
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: I would, but you're you know, you're really screwing us up.
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: You know you've already cost us an hour of time.
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: And you know I come to do my job. I
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: want to get home and have dinner with my kids.
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: I don't want to stand around and waste time while
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: you have some piss out with the police. I respect
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: your you know, your belief system and your right too
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 1: to act as such. But you know you're showing up
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: at my job and don't inflict yourself. Um. So he
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: didn't let was his response. He said, well, it's a
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: it's a it's a it's a bigger thing than just
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: your television show. And I said for you, I said
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: for you, and I'm showing you that respect. I'm not
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: telling you you're full of ship or you're wrong. Um.
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 1: You have every right to live the way you want
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: to live, as long as you're not hurting people. I
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: don't have a problem with it, I said, but you're
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: you're hurting me and all these people that you know,
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 1: this is our job so frequently, uh, contracts or TV
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: shows or five or seven seasons. Is that why you're
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: ending it after the than the season? What's going on there? No,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: that's that played out a bit on social media where
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 1: people the immediate lea was that it must be some
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: sort of a contractual negotiation and that there is. There's
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: not one bit of truth to that whatsoever. This is
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: a decision that's above my pay grade. Um, that was
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: made by Amazon to have season seven B the last season.
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: And uh, and while I'm while I'm you know, disappointed,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: there's nothing I can do about that. So I myself
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: and the producers and the writers, we've we've all sort
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 1: of agreed that, you know, our job is just to
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: make the season seven, um, you know, our best season
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: and see it as the glass half full rather than half.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: So nobody on the creative team decided to blow the
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 1: whistle now. And if for some reason Amazon change their
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: mind or assuming the legalities where in order you could
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: shift to a different platform, could that happen or is
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: this definitely the end? I don't I don't know the
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: answer to that question. Honestly, I I don't know how
• 1:35:14
  Speaker 1: you can. Sometimes there is an ability to take a
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: show from one network or or producing entity and move
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: it elsewhere. I don't know that that's possible to do
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: with vosh Um. There there's certainly no lack of willingness
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: for the show to continue. I mean, Amazon, stranger things
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: have happened. They might they could peasibly change their mind
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: that they could. Season seven could be the last seven,
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: and then a couple of years could pass and they
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: may say, hey, you know what we're gonna we want
• 1:35:46
  Speaker 1: to bring this guy back. And and I you know,
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: I speak for myself and the rest of the cast
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: and certainly the producers and the writers that everyone would
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: would would be on board to do that absolutely. Okay.
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: One of the things someone watches notices when watching Bosh
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: is the tattoos. So some people might think it was
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: the character, but in reality those that is your body
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 1: with the tattoos. That's true. And yeah, no, that was
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 1: a discussion when we first came together because Harry has
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: these scars on his knuckles or when he was a
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: kid living down on the docks of San Pedro, as
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: a runaway he had to hold fast tattooed onto his
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: to his knuckles. And then when Harry and listened in
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: the army, one of the first things that happened was
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: his drill instructor basically came out and said he no,
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: no, no no, that's a sailor tattoo and that's not going
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: to cut it. Takes him behind the barracks and makes
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: him punch a brick wall until his hands look like hamburger,
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 1: and then when it heals, he makes Bosh go back
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: and do it all over again. So we every day
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: when I go to work, they pay on these little scars.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 1: And I actually we addressed it in the second or
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: third season. Um Harry tells the story. Tells that story
• 1:37:10
  Speaker 1: now knowing that when I first before we started shooting
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: the pilot, I had a tattoo discussion with Eric Obermeyer
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 1: and with Connelly. I said, look, I have tattoos and
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: I continue to get tattoos, So we can do this
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: one of two ways. And I said, I'm aware that
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: he's removed this tattoos, these tattoos from his from his
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 1: hands when he was a kid. Um, so it works
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 1: either way. Either we just have my tattoos. We never
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: come in close on them. Um. Or I if I
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 1: ever have to wear a short sleeve shirt, it's a
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: couple of hours in the chair because they're going to
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: have to come in. They're gonna have to um air brush,
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 1: you know, with this shull kind of pigment to cover
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 1: the tattoos, and they're gonna have to flock hair on
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 1: my arms. That it's a process and it's going to
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: take a long time. Or I can just never wear
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 1: a short sleeve shirt and always where and and actually
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: I said, but I'm I'm actually fine, which was showing
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: my tattoos, and Connolly said, yeah, people, it's people are
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 1: no longer stigmatized by having tattoos. It's not a it's
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: not a taboo thing. It's not indicative of your you're
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 1: standing in society. Um. So Mike said, let's just let's
• 1:38:37
  Speaker 1: just go with the tattoos. What I will say is
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: I have significantly more tattoos now than I did in
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: the first season. So I would usually get a call
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: from my manager at some point and he would say,
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: I just got a call from Henrik. There's one. Hendrick
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: Basting is one of our producers. Hendricks is he said,
• 1:39:00
  Speaker 1: did you get some new ink? And I go, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: He said, you you posted some pictures on Instagram with
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: some new tattoos. Um, what are you doing? And I
• 1:39:10
  Speaker 1: just said it's it's just me, I know. But anyway,
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: they've become a part of Harry. I mean unless someone
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: freezes a frame or certain certain shots you can see.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: But we never talked about them. There was only one
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: time where uh, Brooke Smith was playing a captain at
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: at the Hollywood Station and it was a funny exchange
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 1: where Bosh walks by her and and Harry's got his
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: sleeves up and she says, roll down those sleeves, detective,
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: and he kind of comes back to says what she said,
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: unless you're gonna get a wire brush and take those
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 1: things off. No ink in my house. Um. And it
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: was how old were you when you got your first tattoo?
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: I was a teenager, okay. And we see the tattoos
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: on your arms. Do you have tattoos on other places
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: in your body? On your body? I just have to tattoos.
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: Tattoos on my rib cageum, which are which are two
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: lovely things that my my girlfriend wrote to me, And
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: so I was so touched, I thought I would just Okay,
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: So when you when you continue to get these tattoos,
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: do you think that this might impinge on your ability
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: to get roles in the future. Well, it would be
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: the same sort of thing. I could say, well, you
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: know what, this character doesn't have tattoos, so let's cover
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: my tattoos, or let's dress me in wardrobe where you
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 1: never where you never see them. Um, I don't think
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: that you know, I've been doing this long enough now,
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 1: and people know that I have tattoos, and I think
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: they're gonna they're gonna cast me. They're gonna cast me
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: from the neck up to begin with, and then we
• 1:41:02
  Speaker 1: can know what we can do deal with the tattoos. Um.
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 1: Remember my aunt saying, well, you know, you'll never be
• 1:41:10
  Speaker 1: buried in a Jewish graveyard. And I said, well, I know,
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: but I'm not. We're not Jewish, and she she said,
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: oh that's right, I forgotten. Um, I'm the only I'm
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: the only guy you'll ever meet who had a going mitzvah.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: But that's a whole Um. Well, is there a story there? Yeah,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: there actually is. When I was all of my extended
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: family as a kid, Um, we're Jewish. So I went
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: to temple. My parents were is your mother Jewish? No,
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: not at all. I don't have I don't have any
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: background at all. These were all extended family or as
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: people who were I called aunts and uncles who I
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: was very very very close to my family. And so
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: I'm getting ready and I uh from my birthday and
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: I say to my father, uh, so what are we
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: gonna do from my bar Mitzvah? And my father just
• 1:42:04
  Speaker 1: looks at me and said, what are you talking about
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: to my bar mitzvah? You're not having a bar mits?
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: So what do you mean? I'm not having environments? Of
• 1:42:11
  Speaker 1: course I am Danny Goldstein at Enviarnments. But David Wiseman
• 1:42:14
  Speaker 1: had apartment trying to seemed to understand. I said, why
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: am I not having the word mits and me? He said,
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: you're not Jewish. I said, yeah, I am, and he
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: said no, no no, no, being Jewish is a religion. It's
• 1:42:25
  Speaker 1: not just the state of mind. And so this got
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: back to my aunt, who was so sort of touched
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: and thought it rather hilarious the whole thing that she
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 1: came to me and said, I don't need to worry
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: about this. I'm gonna handle it, which I said what
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: she said just so it was a gathering and you know,
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: I read a little read a little text and uh
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: and and she said, it's a going mitzvah. So and
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: it was you know, and I and I, uh, it
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: was it was kind of a lovely, you know, coming
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: of age experience for me. In my hand. My father said, well,
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: you know what, you can say whatever you are now. Um.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: But I just I think it was just because I
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 1: was immersed in that culture. Um and uh. That was
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: the only sense of spirituality and religion that I had,
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: was going to temple and observing observing the holidays, both holidays.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: I mean we we would go to my aunt's for
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: Passover and and and uh and celebrate Hanukah at her house.
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: But then also they would come and you know and
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 1: have Christmas with us. So it was it made kind
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: of perfect sense. But I never went to I didn't
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: go to church. My parents would. My dad said to me,
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: you will never go to church with me. I wore
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: the seat of my pants out on a on a
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: psychotic you know, irish him in Catholic church bench. So
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not doing that to you guys. So we went
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: to Episcopalian schools and uh and and I and also
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: I was at the went to school with the Child
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: Studies Center, learned how to swim with the Jewish Community
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: Center and the New Haven. So did you go to
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: Episcopalion in Philly? Yeah? Yeah, I went to the St.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: Peter's School down on Lombard Street. Right, Okay, you're so
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: well adjusted. Have you ever been in psychotherapy? Yeah? You
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: better believe in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis? Yeah? Is that in
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: the rear view mirror? You still practicing? No? I like
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: to I like to say I'm a work in progress.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: I said, I've said to my to my kids. One
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 1: at one point when they one of them said to me, oh,
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: you had years and years and years of he was
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 1: pissed at me and he was sort of about my
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: um sometimes impatient and cantankerous nature, and and uh, yeah,
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: you did all these years of psychoanalysis and you're still
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: you're you're still half crazy. And I said, yes, and
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: well that's that's all that it is. It's it's you
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: learn to analyze. It doesn't mean you're necessarily out of
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: that which, but yeah, tons of it, tons tons of
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: psychotherapy and and and I will maintain that I'm I'm
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: as batshit crazy as I've ever been. I'm just a
• 1:45:28
  Speaker 1: little bit better at at navigating it and not inflicting
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: myself on people. I would say, I'm I'm I'm a
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: much more centered and well adjusted creature than I was
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: in the past. So, Bosh, you have all this notoriety
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: that this series has built. Where does this leave you
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: going forward? Well, I'm you know, I'm definitely utilizing this
• 1:45:56
  Speaker 1: this lockdown period. I've had a lot of ideas that
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: have kind of been percolating, and um, it becomes that
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: thing of I gotta you know, I gotta fix that
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: hinge and I really want to reseal my driveway kind
• 1:46:09
  Speaker 1: of thing, but of writing, and so I'm, um, I'm
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 1: putting together some ideas that have been floating around, and
• 1:46:18
  Speaker 1: the post post Bosh life will be, um, you know,
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: hopefully realizing those things. But you never know, because um,
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: I think once well, one can only hope that I'm
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 1: become a free agent again, that there will be you know,
• 1:46:34
  Speaker 1: other opportunities. It may be that thing right where I
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: go to somebody and I had them say, here's the
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: here's the show that I wrote that I wanted for
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: myself that I want to do and they'll go, that's great.
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: So I have this one that the studio has already
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: committed to, and if you want to do it, we
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: can start shooting this next month. I think it'll be
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: it'll be interesting. I'm not one. I'm you know, sedentary
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: is not my nature. So whether I'm putting it down
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: on a piece of paper immediately, or if I'm um
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: letting the idea just date and the idea has just
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: stated enough to the point now where I can actually
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: sit down and start to to write an outline, and
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 1: I think it's a I think it's good. It's very
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: different than than Bosh, but um, I think it's a
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: solid idea. So hopefully, UM, the next time I talked
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: to you, we can be talking about that. Or we
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: could also be having that conversation where you could say,
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: remember when I said to you when you're on the show, Hey,
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: what if decides they want to do this, Well here
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: we are, We're back and we're still doing it. Um,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 1: you know that's a look. I I just love to work.
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: I'm very very fortunate that I can make a pretty
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: damn good living doing what I love. To do and
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 1: and and I love to work. I'm like, so let's
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: just say for the thirty years, will give you thirty
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: years on this planet if you just continue to work.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: Is that satisfying? Men try to tend to think of
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: a totem pole. Is there some specific goal that you
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: want to reach or a conceptual level. I would like
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: to um begin to direct certainly. Uh that had been
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: a consideration on bosh. Uh. It just the schedule and
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: how it works just for me seemed to make it
• 1:48:39
  Speaker 1: too daunting. And then when I realized it was going
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: to be our last season, UM, I said, you know what,
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: I kind of pulled my hat out of the ring
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: because that's what we were gonna do. I was going
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: to come in and direct in the seventh season. And
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 1: then I just said, you know, I really want to
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: focus on doing the show. If that boomerangs back at
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: another time, if there is life elsewhere or something, yeah, sure,
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: but that's something I'd like to do. And I would
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: also like to um develop other things as a writer,
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: not just for myself but for for other actors, and
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: to direct and produce those those projects. And and as
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: always continue uh my career as a painter which is
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: something that's that's important to me. How often do you paint? Well,
• 1:49:26
  Speaker 1: right now, I'm not painting at all because my studios
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 1: back east. I typically paint when I'm back at the
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: at my farm during the summertime. I take that that
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 1: solid month and get up and paint every single day
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: because I painted acrylics and I paint very quickly. I
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: will typically paint for a solid six to seven hours
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: and in a day to complete a painting. So have
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: these representational or abstract? Yeah, they're a I mean it
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 1: definitely falls into the column of abstract expressionism, not dissimilar
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: from from my father, but also very very different than this.
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: But I paint landscapes, their landscapes. But there and are
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 1: these paintings shown and for sale? Yes? They are? Yeah,
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: um they I had a show actually here in Los
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: Angeles at the at the Home Gallery at Bergamont Station. Um,
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: and I'm I'm looking to uh actually had a print
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: that was purchased by the Museum Modern Art in New York. Congratulations,
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you. I know, I'm um. I wish
• 1:50:37
  Speaker 1: my old man could be alive to see that, because
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: he would uh, I know that would that would please him. Okay,
• 1:50:43
  Speaker 1: this has been wonderful, Titus. Really, as I say, you're
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: quite The conversation was rock and tour and we could
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: go on forever, but I think we've come to the
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: end of the feeling we've known today. Thanks so much
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: for doing this, Thank you much for having me, and
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: I just want to tell you what a great crib
• 1:51:00
  Speaker 1: as it is to to be able to talk to
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: you one on one. I'm a I'm a longtime fan,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 1: and um, I have to say, for one who doesn't
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 1: read reviews, I was so um pounded and pounded by friends,
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: family and representation to read the beautiful things that you wrote.
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: So you're the first my friend, and I have to
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 1: say I read it very quickly and I went but um,
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 1: but thank you. Although that reminds me of a couple
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: of things on James Taylor's Guerrilla album from it was
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: a great song called Lighthouse, and he goes, just because
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: I might be standing here, that doesn't mean I won't
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: be wrong this time where by And the other thing,
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: that's what people do when people say, oh, you're so
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: right on whatever, I give him that back because I
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: can't hold that. The other thing I tell people is
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: every day I hear people email me that I'm God,
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 1: and people email me that I'm a ship head. So
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: you know nature of the Internet. If you get that
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: instant response, it's beautiful read it. You know, on some
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 1: levels level of inoculation. Although there's people you know me
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: every day to tell me that I'm a ship heead
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: so a couple of those people I don't read anymore.
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: But thanks again, thank you so much. So next time,
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: this is Bob left Sense