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A Life In Movies: James Woods · All The Right Movies

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  All rent movies. Hi everyone, welcome to a Life
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  and Movies, the interview show from All the Right Movies.
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  My name is Luke. On the show, we talk to people
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  in the industry about their career in movies and today we're
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  talking to a movie legends, a man with over 50 years
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  experience in the game, a Golden Globe, an Emmy winner and two
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  time Oscar nominee. It can only be James Woods.
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  Thanks very much for joining. James, great to have you on the
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  show. You're in LA right now, but
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  you're originally from Utah. Is that right?
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  I was actually. Born in Utah, but I grew up.
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  I was an Army brat. So I, I lived on Guam, I lived
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  in Virginia, I lived in Milwaukee.
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  I mean, I lived everywhere, but I primarily grew up in Rhode
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  Island, so I think of myself cool more as a New Englander.
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  And I went to school in Cambridge, MA, which is right
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  over the state line. So I've, you know, either been
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  in Massachusetts or Rhode Island from my early life.
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  I then went to New York. I just loved doing theater.
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  I'd done some summer stock. And actually my history of
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  getting involved in the movies was that I was at MIT.
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  We had a thing called the MIT Drama Shop and we used to do 2
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  one act plays, many of them British, by British writers, by
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  the way, NF Simpson, Harold Pinter, you know, you know, a
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  lot of great, great British writers.
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  And then we do what we called a major play, you know, it would
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  be a, a Bertol Brecht play or And, and we had this wonderful
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  professor who had been a director at the Bristol Old
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  Victoria in England. And he said, look, we're not
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  going to do the typical plays that colleges put on.
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  We're going to do some really offbeat stuff.
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  So like, we did a radio play of Harold Pinter's.
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  He'd done other famous plays, of course, The Basement and all
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  these other play, but he did a thing called A Night Out, which
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  was a radio play that was just done as a radio play on the
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  like, that's the BBC, and we staged it.
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  Yeah. So it's kind of interesting to
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  do all that stuff. And I was enamored of a local
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  theatre called the Theatre Company of Boston.
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  And the guy who ran it named David Wheeler.
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  I can't remember believe I remember his name all these
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  years later, had all these wonderful New York stage actors
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  who were kind of breakout about stage actors who would come and
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  act. And in two seasons, Dustin
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  Hoffman and Robert Duvall did Waiting for Godot, Jon Voight
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  and DJ Jeremiah. DJ Sullivan did local stigmatic,
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  Bob De Niro did The Basement, the Harold Pinter play, and Al
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  Pacino did a play. I can't remember which one he
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  did. And so I'm watching all these
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  great actors and, you know, I'm college kid.
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  So I auditioned to become an apprentice to work with them
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  when they were in residence at the University, Rhode Island for
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  the summer. I got to work with all these.
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  I mean, I was a spear carrier. I didn't have any lines or
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  anything, but JG Walsh, that wonderful actor.
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  Yeah, spear carrier. We were in this program.
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  So I got to know Jon Voight and some others, and I was doing The
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  Zoo Story by Edward Albee at the MIT drama show.
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  Jon Voight came and some other actors.
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  It was really nice from the county of Boston.
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  So what, Gee, what are you guys doing here?
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  Because it came before the show said, well, we're going to come
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  start with see your, your work. And I went, wow.
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  I mean, it was so moving to me that these very successful young
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  professional actors are kind of interested in this college kid
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  who wanted to act. They don't know they're good or
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  not, you know? So how?
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  How did they know of your reputation?
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  Because I was The Apprentice at the theatre where they were
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  actor. I mean, they were really just
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  nice enough to see, hey, would you guys come see my play?
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  And it's like, OK, it was a fork in the road for me.
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  It was a turning point in my life.
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  So John Voight, he came in the dressing room after and John
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  said, you've got to come to New York.
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  I said, oh, yeah, I'd like to come up someday.
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  He said, no, no, you've got to move to New York and become a
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  professional actor. I said, I'm, I'm in, I'm in
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  college. He said, you got to quit
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  college, you got to come to New York.
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  He said, listen, hop in the car, let's go over to Tim's house.
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  Tim was the stage manager of the Theater Company of Boston.
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  This I'm going to wrap this up because it has a pretty cool
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  ending. OK, so we go over to Tim's
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  apartment and Tim and John and I drink coffee.
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  Tim was a recovering alcoholic. I can say that because he's a he
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  became a drug and alcohol counselor.
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  The famous story about him, wonderful guy.
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  And he and John convinced me by Daybreak to quit school, which I
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  did go to New York City to become an actor.
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  Years later, my agent called me up and said, I have two
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  wonderful young actors in my office named Matt Damon and Ben
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  Affleck. They just said.
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  I said, oh, yeah, good. While hunting those guys wrote
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  that, yeah, they're great. So we're there.
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  And halfway through the meeting, Ben Young Ben Affleck.
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  Then he said to me, he said, you know, Mr. Woods, I said, James,
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  please. He said, you know, my my dad
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  always used to say, you know, I'm the reason James Woods
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  became an actor. He said, you know, my dad was,
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  you know, he became an an alcoholic and drug counselor.
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  But, you know, he himself had been a gambler and kind of a
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  wild guy when I was young. And I thought it was another one
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  of his stories and so on. And I was always kind of
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  embarrassed by that. Just kind of a funny thing.
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  I thought you'd like to know. I said, do you have your you
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  have your dad's number, obviously, Yeah.
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  I said, would you dial him on your cell phone?
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  He said, I said, just do it. You dial.
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  He said, hey, Dad, I said, come in the phone.
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  I said Tim, Jimmy Woods. Hey, I said, how are you, buddy?
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  He said, great. I said you you might want to
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  give your dad an apology. And I have to say to Ben's
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  credit, he he was speechless and he got on the phone with his
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  dad. He was in tears and he was
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  literally in tears to me. He said, my God, I never.
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  I said, yeah, your dad. I'm telling you, Jon Voight and
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  your father, without the two of them, I would be an engineer or
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  working for Rand Corporation as a whatever and so on.
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  And Jon Voight always supported my career.
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  He was always pushing, you know, giving me opportunities and so
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  on. And a lot of wonderful actors
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  are like that. Bob De Niro's like that, Al
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  Pacino's like that. I am very proud that I'm like
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  that. I'm always trying to get my
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  friends jobs if they're they're good actors.
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  I think it's one of the best things you can do if you're in
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  the film business to spread the wealth and spread the joy and
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  not be competitive. John Travolta said something
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  interesting once. He said when I was doing Faces
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  with, with Nick Cage, you know, we're acting.
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  And Nick said, you know, John, actors can do one of two things
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  when they work together. They can compete or they can
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  cooperate. And he said, what should we do
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  on this one? And I learned that lesson really
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  early to be as generous as you can to other artists.
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  And if you do good things happen.
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  And man, I'm telling you, my whole life is in built on that
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  premise. And Bob De Niro is like that.
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  He's incredible like that. All the all the good actors are.
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  I mean, they're just amazing. You know, Meryl Streep, she's
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  fantastic. You know, Anthony Hopkins, the
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  greatest actor that ever lived. And I had such a great time with
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  JT Walsh and when we did Nixon, for example, and we just hit it
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  off, we're laughing all the time and so on.
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  But man, there was always conversations about how could we
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  achieve this, what should we do? Time to give a moment to that
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  other actor, now it's your moment and so on.
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  And I had a lot of scenes with Tony.
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  We just saw the 30th anniversary.
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  Oliver had the 30th anniversary screening of Nixon.
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  And I was watching all the scenes with Tony I'd forgotten
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  about. And I just thought, man, this
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  was like melted butter. It was just like on a sweet
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  English muffin, you know, it was just so easy to do because he
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  was so brilliant and so rich and, and so committed to what he
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  did, as am I when I work. I'm I'm a very, I'm a big
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  believer in free form perfection.
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  Just reminded me of a quote that I think Gene Wilder said about
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  Richard Pryor. Richard Pryor one of the
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  greatest, But Gene Wallace says he never tried to upstage you if
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  you if you got a joke. He never tried to build on that
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  joke and take the limelight. He always just let you take the
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  limelight and that's always stuck with me.
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  Someday I'll do the show again and we'll talk about Betty
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  Davis, Miss Davis, Miss D We used to go Betty Davis and Faye
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  Dunaway. Faye Dunaway used to try to
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  bully Betty Davis ad nauseam. And Betty Davis, I thought, man,
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  you are bringing a knife to a gunfight.
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  Lady, this is Betty Davis. She'll roll over you like
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  Sherman marching into Atlanta. That's wonderful.
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  Yeah. So you you were on Broadway and
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  then I believe your first movie role was in The Visitors.
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  Right. Elia Kazan.
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  Yeah. And, and he he had this story
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  that would actually have been the sequel to the movie that
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  Sean Penn and Michael J Fox did. The Depalma War Casualties of
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  war. Casualties of war, if you
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  imagine what would have happened if they had that character then
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  testified and then gone to live and the guys get out of prison
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  and come to visit him. And that's what it's about.
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  We shot it on 16 Super 16mm. I mean, Lyric Kazan was my
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  childhood directing hero and he did On the Waterfront, to this
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  day, my favorite movie. And I thought, I'm going to get
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  to work with him. And I was in shock, but he did
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  that thing where he tried to, if you were the guy who was going
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  to be the victim, he tried to make you feel like shit through
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  the whole experience, you know, as a method experience.
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  And I didn't really need that. By the time I worked Elia Kazan,
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  I'd done over 34 plays in my life, you know, what was summer
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  stock and college and so on. So I felt it was unnecessary.
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  And I didn't feel that he gave me a chance to, you know, let me
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  just say that one of my icons turned out to be one of the most
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  bitter disappointments of, really my movie life.
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  I'm sorry that it's true. That could have could have
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  started well. It started you off on a bad foot
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  as well, because that was your acting debut, Is that right
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  movie? Yeah, on film, but I have to
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  say, I mean, nobody ever thought.
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  Listen, they screened it at the they screened at the Carnegie
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  Cinema during the Vietnam War. People were booing at the end,
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  standing up. A guy literally threw his shoe
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  at the screen. I'd invited my whole family down
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  for this, you know, a chance to see this movie.
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  Now we're over at the Carnegie Deli afterwards and I've got
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  like 12 of my family members and my poor mom, my poor widow mom
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  is there. And my mom just was God rest was
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  all incredibly smart person, but she's a mother and she just
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  watched her son go through the worst torture A performer can
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  never go through. And she very quietly said, you
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  know, I, I think they liked it. I feel my guy threw his shoe.
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  Like there's an odor reader stuck to the screen from the guy
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  throwing his shoe. I, I don't think we're going to,
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  I don't think we're going to pray our way around this one.
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  It was a disaster. But you know what?
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  If you're going to start in this business, you might as well get
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  the crap beaten out of you right away because it's never going to
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  hand you a bowl of cherries. Underneath the cherries is a
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  bowl of razors just waiting to catch you by the tongue and
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  slice your heart out. You know, this is, it's a tough
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  business and nobody's on your side, believe me.
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  So you in the 70s, you build up your reputation from there.
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  You start in a number of films. The Onion field got a lot of
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  praise. See, I think you were Golden
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  Globe nominated as well. And then that leads us to our
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  kind of first film that I wanted to kind of really delve into
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  with that video drone, right? David Cronenberg's Videodrome
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  The Visitors didn't shy away from controversial themes, and I
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  think the same can be said for this film as well.
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  Here's what's interesting about Videodrome.
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  David Cronenberg wasn't David Cronenberg at that point.
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  He'd done the brood, I think. Yeah.
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  And and what he got, his attention was with scanners.
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  You know where the guy? Yeah.
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  Through telepathy also knew the guys had exposed and it was so
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  shocking that it got people's attention.
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  And I thought, wow, this guy's intriguing director.
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  And you know, one thing I learned from the music I'm doing
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  now because I created my own label and did it.
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  And I'm not going to veer into that.
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  But I just want to say one of the things that I learned from
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  it is how important it is to be the master of your own destiny
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  in in the art world. These agents, they're like
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  politicians. They don't do what's in our
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  case, good for America. They do what's good for their
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  party and for their pockets. And that's it.
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  I'm sorry, but it's true. And I think one of the things
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  that that happens is that they'll make decisions of what
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  what you should do because it's good for their agency or it'll
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  make you a commercial star and they'll put money in their
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  pocket. But if you're an artist, you
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  might say, well, I want to do these different kinds of movies.
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  Well, right away I thought, great, I'm going to do, I'm
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  going to work with David Cronenberg.
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  This guy is really interesting. So when I met David, he goes,
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  you know, I don't have like the third act of this script.
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  I go, fine, let's take a risk together.
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  And he loved that, that I was willing to do that.
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  And we started working with a 74 pages of script and we just
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  started making this insane movie.
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  And I thought, man, this thing is so crazy.
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  And we started making it started making.
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  We finished the movie and he called me up.
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  I was in New York at the time, living in New York.
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  And he said, hey, what do you think about the end of the
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  movie? I said I can honestly say it
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  didn't strike me. It doesn't feel like it
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  completes. I don't know.
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  He said, what do you have in mind?
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  I said I was thinking about I don't know what?
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  What if we did this? So yeah, I said, well, why don't
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  I come up and we'll shoot it? He said, well, I have to call
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  your agent. We got to the union.
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  We got to renew. I said, I'll just pop up there.
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  Well, I did that three times and, you know, we just kind of
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  all work for free and probably shouldn't say that, but we did
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  and we made the the movie that we wanted to make.
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  What was the original end? I can't remember what the
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  original ending was, but this 1 ended with me in the in
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  Videodrome. You know, these layers of
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  reality. But what was really important
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  about that movie is how prescient it was because I
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  thought this was such a weird story and the movie was a
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  complete flop by the way. Nobody wants to see it now.
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  It's like a cult masterpiece. And it was ironic that it was
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  made with with me. It was kind of iconic
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  independent actor, not a mainstream star or anything like
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  that, with a truly icon kind of classic Co star, the fabulous
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  Debbie Harry. I love working with her so much.
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  She was such a sweet person, completely the opposite of what
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  you'd expect. The nicest, really sweetest,
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  most innocent girl. And I say that because she was
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  so girlish. And I thought, aren't you
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  supposed to be like this? While, you know, Yeah.
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  I mean, she loved her boy. And Chris, who was, you know,
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  leader abandoned, you know, she was just nicest person.
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  I just, I loved working with her.
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  Loved it, Loved it. And there we were, these two
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  kind of Renegades making this story that it was time wasn't
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  born yet. It hadn't come yet.
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  Not at all. That was the first impulse that
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  I had when I was watching it. I watched rewatched it last week
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  and I thought this really was well ahead of its time.
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  Oh, wait, was it ever? Yeah.
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  And you've got Rick Baker on special effects work as well.
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  What was that like? Well, Rick's a great guy and
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  they do great work, but back then, man, the scenes where I
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  had to pull the flesh gun out of my stomach, I was built into a
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  torso with legs removed by puppeteers sitting on the couch.
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  I was standing on an apple box and it was an elevated stage.
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  So it was really just my head and my arms working with this
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  rubber torso. I had to stand without moving
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  for 17 straight hours and I had to do that like 5 times.
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  And I'm telling you, I got literally physically I'll once I
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  I just, I mean, try standing still in one spot for 17
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  straight hours, man. It's not easy.
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  And David knew that I like hated put nothing and they'd say,
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  well, could you we we've decided we're going to have you just
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  slip into your slit. If you want to go, David, I
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  don't mind doing it one more time.
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  But if you say slip into your slit one more time, slap you
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  around the room. And you know, I can say this now
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  because I I admire Jeff Goldblum so much.
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  David said, Hey, I'd like you to do my next movie.
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  Oh, wow, which is the fly. And I went, is this a joke?
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  He said no, I, I, I know I said I'd be like in that crap all day
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  every day for like how many weeks?
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  He goes like probably like 5 weeks every day.
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  I said, David, I, I just can't do it.
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  I can't do it. I just can't do I mean I just
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  can't do it. I really love, I wish I'd become
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  kind of David's guy. I would have, but the special
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  effects make up stuff was just got to the point where I don't
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  know. I'm, I'm a very impatient person
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  and standing there all the damn and, you know, like with these
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  little sponges, you know, for hours.
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  And there was no other way to do it then it's, it's tough.
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  It's not easy. Yeah.
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  I did a movie called Goes to Mississippi.
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  Oh yeah. With Alec Baldwin and Whoopi
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  Goldberg, both of whom had done characters with special effects
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  makeup before. I had to wear all the special
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  effects makeup to play Byron De La Beckwith.
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  And, you know, we're filming in like 80° heat and we were using
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  a special new stuff that melted at 82°.
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  And if you did, you had to do it all over again.
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  And it took four hours. Rob Reiner, God rest his soul
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  for Rob. What was wonderful to me, I'd
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  love working with him. We're good friends.
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  He would always say, OK, we're going to do like, you're a big
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  scene to Alec, you know, to the jury and Whoopi, you know, you
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  got this. And, and they'll always say, is
• 18:00
  Jimmy in the scene? They go, yeah, they go shoot him
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  first. You can shoot around him after
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  that, right? I mean, they would always be
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  careful enough to ask the director.
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  They're the two stars of the movie.
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  I'm the third lead. I'm not that that means
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  anything. But they, they have their big
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  scenes. Let shoot him first so he can
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  get out of the scene and and get that makeup because, man, we've
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  been there and we know how miserable it is.
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  And anybody who's not in the business go, oh, you know,
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  you're whining about the makeup. This man, come over here.
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  Let me glue this crap to your eyelids and see it, see how you
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  like it for, you know, 14, 50 hours a day.
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  Yeah, I mean, I know that they're countless, Jimmy.
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  They're countless films that we could have talked about.
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  But Videodrome, an incredible start and thank you.
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  And it's not just your movie work.
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  You know for as well, you worked on a number of like prestige TV
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  projects, including you won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for
• 18:51
  Promise in 86. Yes, and I won.
• 18:54
  Yeah. And, and with the same group of
• 18:56
  people two years later for My Name is Bill W That's right.
• 19:00
  Yeah. But with Jim Garner, I have to
• 19:02
  say James Garner, because he was my spirit guy, you know, all
• 19:05
  through my career. He just was.
• 19:07
  I love Jim with all my art. So what's the difference for you
• 19:11
  between working in TV and film? Do you see it as kind of like
• 19:15
  step down or was it just a different arena to play in?
• 19:18
  Well, that's a really smart question, and I'll tell you why.
• 19:20
  The business used to look at it as a step down.
• 19:24
  I looked at it as an artist. Here's a beautiful script.
• 19:29
  I'm working with great actors by Gloria and James Garner.
• 19:33
  A magnificent screenplay in the case of Promise.
• 19:36
  Still, it's actually my favorite thing I ever did.
• 19:38
  Really an important story. That TV movie won more of the
• 19:43
  Central Awards, was the most awarded television movie
• 19:47
  probably in movie history. It was for decades.
• 19:49
  I know that because it won everything.
• 19:51
  Best actor, best picture, best director, best right screenplay,
• 19:53
  best reporting, everything. We won the Peabody Award.
• 19:56
  We won, you know, you know, all that stuff.
• 19:58
  And and it was like, oh wow, it was really about something.
• 20:02
  I think you can't let your life be dictated by the framework by
• 20:07
  which others judge your value, OK.
• 20:11
  I mean, I've never won an Academy Award.
• 20:14
  I've been nominated a few times, so on.
• 20:16
  There are other people who've won Academy Awards, and I always
• 20:19
  say, you know, God bless them, man.
• 20:20
  They did a great job. And people say, well, I'm not as
• 20:23
  good as you. I'm not in the comparison race.
• 20:26
  I'm really not sure I'd love to have won an Oscar.
• 20:29
  I never did, but I'm thrilled with the work I did.
• 20:31
  I, I don't, there's almost nothing I've ever done that I
• 20:34
  would change in any way. I really am proud of the
• 20:37
  diligence with which I approach my work.
• 20:40
  So was it a step down? Some people might think so.
• 20:44
  I think it was a step up because it was the best work I ever did.
• 20:46
  So. Incredible material.
• 20:48
  I'm proud of it. Yeah, proud of it.
• 20:50
  Thank you. Thank you for saying that.
• 20:51
  But. It's a pleasure.
• 20:53
  And I do also have to mention Entourage, just because I really
• 20:57
  love your your small part in it. Is there a freedom in playing an
• 21:01
  exaggerated version of Jimmy Ward's?
• 21:03
  How? What do you mean exaggerating?
• 21:07
  Yeah, it was. It was just fun to do.
• 21:10
  I mean, The thing is, I don't get to do comedy very much.
• 21:12
  Yeah, but when I do it every other.
• 21:14
  You should be doing comedy more often.
• 21:15
  I go hire me for it, for crying out loud.
• 21:18
  That's how I ended up doing Family Guy.
• 21:20
  Ben Stiller. You know, I love Ben Stiller's
• 21:22
  stuff. So funny.
• 21:24
  I mean, I think he's so funny. And Ben Stiller asked me to do.
• 21:27
  We do these things in Hollywood called table reads.
• 21:31
  And, and often they'll be like a maybe a screenplay that a
• 21:34
  wonderful director has gotten a hold of or written.
• 21:37
  And they'll invite actors to come just do the table read and
• 21:40
  do the table read because you just want to help out.
• 21:42
  A director says, hey, would you play this part?
• 21:44
  Yeah. And of course, you're thinking,
• 21:47
  you know, maybe if I really do this pretty well, No, Who knows,
• 21:51
  He might invite me. Whatever.
• 21:52
  We were doing a table read of this.
• 21:54
  He never made this into a movie. It was called Confederate Land.
• 21:58
  It was a Confederate amusement park.
• 22:00
  It was already funny, Funny idea.
• 22:02
  And Nick Nolte was reading stuff, and there was a fellow
• 22:05
  there named Danny Smith, one of the top writers on Family Guy.
• 22:09
  And he came up to me later, and he goes, hey, you know, I'm
• 22:11
  Danny. I'm one of the writer of the
• 22:12
  Family Guy. So you named the high school out
• 22:14
  to me. He said, yeah.
• 22:15
  I said I should sue you guys. I'm kidding, of course.
• 22:18
  Oh, no, what can we do? I said, well, put me on the
• 22:20
  show, Maybe I'll think it over. He goes, Oh my God, would you do
• 22:24
  something on the show? I said, yeah, play me.
• 22:26
  I'm, you know, he goes, Oh my God, that is such A and I
• 22:30
  thought bullshit talking. And then three or four weeks
• 22:33
  later, they sent me the script and it was the Oh piece of Candy
• 22:36
  episode. And yeah.
• 22:39
  And it was like, I thought, this is so ridiculous and so funny.
• 22:44
  And I became kind of a regular. And anyway, I ended up doing
• 22:48
  that for years. And then they offered me one
• 22:52
  script that was like all kind of political stuff.
• 22:55
  And it was like, I called up and I said, hey, guys, you know,
• 22:58
  this, this kind of wasn't what we were having fun doing.
• 23:01
  You know, make I I like making fun of myself, but this is just
• 23:04
  politics. And you know, it's like track
• 23:07
  politics is boring enough. But I said, you know, I don't
• 23:10
  bring it into, you know, we're having fun doing what we're
• 23:12
  doing. And they that was it.
• 23:14
  You got all crunchy about it. And they decided to change the
• 23:18
  name of the high school test. It was like so silly.
• 23:21
  That'll that'll teach me anyway. So your next project after video
• 23:30
  drama, your next big project certainly was Once Upon a Time
• 23:34
  in America, Sergio Leone, a huge piece of work.
• 23:37
  The greatest film experience of my life.
• 23:39
  Wow. Unequivocally the greatest
• 23:42
  heartbreak when it was released by a vindictive studio chief.
• 23:48
  I got to work in five different countries with the greatest film
• 23:53
  actor of our time. At that time, Bob De Niro had
• 23:56
  just come off Raging Bull. I got to play a toe to toe part
• 24:01
  with him. The two brothers who loved each
• 24:04
  other competed with each other, who then had to face the
• 24:09
  unbearable belief that one had completely betrayed the other.
• 24:14
  And I mean, it was an epic, epic, operatic, unbelievable
• 24:19
  movie and I still think one of the greatest movies ever made in
• 24:22
  the history of cinema by the greatest director ever, Sergio
• 24:26
  Leone. I mean, and Sergio Leone was
• 24:29
  really interesting. He loved actors.
• 24:31
  He just loved actors. He loved them.
• 24:34
  His parents were their Italian equivalent of the vaudeville
• 24:37
  actors. Vaudeville, their version of
• 24:40
  vaudeville comedia, whatever they call in Italy, but was a
• 24:43
  more respected version that than what we would call vaudeville in
• 24:47
  America. Anyway, they auditioned
• 24:49
  everybody in the world for those parts.
• 24:52
  The the character was described as a blonde Superman.
• 24:55
  So, you know, I come in with my little skinny arms.
• 24:58
  But I did the auditions and Bob did the auditions with the
• 25:01
  actors. Bob De Niro, another example of
• 25:04
  his generosity. And he did it with me.
• 25:08
  And I could see Bob kind of awakened inside to the idea, you
• 25:13
  know, and I knew his judgment and choice was going to be
• 25:16
  incredibly important. Yeah, Sergio was kind of cool.
• 25:19
  So Sergio would keep inviting me out to dinner.
• 25:22
  And you know, in Italians invite you to dinner, It's like it's 20
• 25:25
  people and at a big table and wine or steaks and you're eating
• 25:30
  some. So we're we're talking and
• 25:32
  talking, man, I'm getting exhausted.
• 25:33
  I'm thinking, man, do I have a shot at this?
• 25:34
  It's like he's inviting me, but I'm sure he's inviting Pacino
• 25:37
  and the other guy, Bill, all these people, you know, I'm sure
• 25:40
  they're they're getting invited to dinner too.
• 25:42
  But you know, I'm at the dinner phase.
• 25:44
  So I guess that's a good thing because I was a nobody.
• 25:47
  These are all big stars. Bill heard it just one.
• 25:51
  He was huge and he was one of the contenders, right?
• 25:54
  And we're sitting having dinner one night and he had this first
• 25:59
  AD. He was kind of a jerk.
• 26:02
  And that guy ended up getting fired for on charges of
• 26:06
  embezzling money. Whatever.
• 26:07
  I don't know. But anyway, they got right now
• 26:08
  it was, I don't know if his ID, he was a production guy.
• 26:12
  I shouldn't say he was the AD because the AD actually was a
• 26:13
  good guy. Sorry, that was wrong.
• 26:15
  Yeah. But yeah, this guy who was some
• 26:17
  production guy, he's sitting on the other end of the table and
• 26:20
  Sergio's talking. And Sergio pretended he didn't
• 26:23
  speak English, which is bullshit.
• 26:24
  He spoke English. I had that figured out pretty
• 26:26
  quickly. A lot of people didn't, but you
• 26:28
  know, Bob and he would speak Italian and you know what, they
• 26:31
  had an interpreter and all this and he said, Jimmy, you know,
• 26:34
  you don't speak Italian. And I said, no, I, I don't, I, I
• 26:37
  speak French. But you know, and from down at
• 26:39
  the end, this parrot, Vincenzo, whatever the fuck it was, and
• 26:45
  they he goes, you don't speak French.
• 26:48
  So now I RIP one off like it and perfect Academy Francaise French
• 26:53
  perfect accent. And I bury this guy in about 15
• 26:57
  sentences long, you know? And I start, I lay into him.
• 27:03
  And after it's all over, this table is silent and Sergio's
• 27:06
  twirling his spaghetti and he goes, bravo, Jimmy bravo.
• 27:12
  And I go, Sergio, Sergio, this is this is the moment.
• 27:16
  This is the moment. You know what I mean?
• 27:18
  The moment Tito or whatever, that's how you say in Italian.
• 27:21
  I said, is this my job or not? Am I Max?
• 27:25
  Because you know, I am. Yes or no.
• 27:28
  See, Uno we Uno, Mon ami. And he said bravo, Jimmy
• 27:35
  wouldn't answer. And the next day I got the
• 27:38
  offer. Brilliant.
• 27:40
  Yeah, That was great. That was great.
• 27:43
  And throughout the movie, I was going through a divorce.
• 27:45
  So, you know, I was a little bruised.
• 27:48
  Now I'm over in Rome, you know, but in those days you couldn't
• 27:51
  make a phone call. It cost you like $1000 for 10
• 27:53
  minutes, you know, And so I'm, I'm staying in this little place
• 27:57
  called the Hotel Dingle Terre, a little tiny.
• 27:59
  And you get home after 15 hours of work.
• 28:01
  The guy would make me like a cheese sandwich on a glass of
• 28:04
  Sambuca in the toaster oven. And I go to bed there.
• 28:06
  There was no place to go to the movies.
• 28:08
  Nothing was in English. I think there was a tourist
• 28:11
  bookstore. You'd buy a bunch of old Agatha
• 28:12
  Christie paperbacks. And television was just all in
• 28:15
  Italian. And I was the only American who
• 28:17
  was there the whole time, except for Bob.
• 28:19
  But Bob would jump on a plane. Bob would fly anywhere and go to
• 28:22
  Paris and see all his friends in Paris and do everything else.
• 28:25
  So I just kind of sit there, but I was working all the time.
• 28:28
  And then Treat Williams would come over and do the Jimmy
• 28:31
  O'Connell part, O'Donnell part. And then Danny Ailer would come
• 28:34
  over and do his part. And then Elizabeth would come
• 28:36
  over. Elizabeth, the government then
• 28:38
  do her part and then they'd leave and then they'd come back
• 28:40
  and then they'd come back. And but I was just there the
• 28:42
  whole time, immersed in it all. And I have to say, Sergio
• 28:48
  treated me like like a son. I mean, he was I, I just loved
• 28:53
  Sergio Leone. He would always go, Jimmy,
• 28:57
  you're my guy. You know, he says that's it.
• 29:00
  Thank you, Sergio. He goes, no, you, you are, you
• 29:03
  know, Bob has a the quiet part and and he's great at the way he
• 29:07
  thinks, but you're the driving force.
• 29:09
  You have to be the driving force and you're doing it.
• 29:12
  And he said, I love it. I love.
• 29:13
  And he, he would always make me feel good about what I was
• 29:16
  doing. And and so did Bob, by the way.
• 29:19
  And now we get to the true story, you know, the end of the
• 29:24
  end of Once Upon a Time. I'm in America, another one with
• 29:26
  the make up and all this stuff. So now we're doing the end and
• 29:30
  it's Bob and I, as you know, in the end of the movie, Bob has
• 29:35
  been in exile thinking that we were all burned to death during
• 29:40
  the big famous robbery. But I actually had a substitute
• 29:43
  of burnt corpse and I had taken on a new persona as now the
• 29:47
  secretary of commerce. And of course the secretary is
• 29:51
  in cahoots with organized crime, you know, basically based on
• 29:54
  Jimmy Hoffa, the allegations of the back then about the unions
• 29:58
  and all that stuff. You know, usually a scene like
• 30:00
  that, be like, you know, 4 page scene, be like a day, you know,
• 30:03
  So we were shooting for a month. There was a scene, there was a
• 30:06
  scene that was never used in the movie with Trevor Williams, but
• 30:09
  with Bob and I. And we were shooting at least 10
• 30:11
  days straight, you know, 4 hours of makeup and all that stuff.
• 30:15
  Sergio said to me, you know, the, the Italians used to make
• 30:18
  movies without live sounds. So the crew would always talk
• 30:20
  during the scenes and stuff like this.
• 30:22
  Then they'd dub it and it was always crappy.
• 30:24
  We were doing live sound. It was really hard for the crew
• 30:26
  to get used to it. Guys, you can't talk.
• 30:27
  We're this being recorded. And they got it.
• 30:29
  I mean, they were wonderful. They were wonderful people.
• 30:31
  I love the Italian crews. Anyway, so now we're doing this
• 30:34
  big scene and Sergio said, Jimmy, we don't usually do this.
• 30:39
  I know in American movie, he said, but I had Eno, Eno, Eno
• 30:45
  Marconi. I go, yeah, Eno, yeah.
• 30:47
  And Eno was around a lot, so we got to know him and I loved the
• 30:50
  guy. And of course, he's like, it was
• 30:52
  Eno Marconi, you know, John Williams, you know, Marconi, I
• 30:55
  think we're good. You know, we got them both
• 30:57
  right. That's it.
• 30:58
  We got it all covered. You know, I mean, Marconi was
• 31:00
  just, and he was amazing. And he, he said, you know, I had
• 31:04
  Eno go over to London with our London Philharmonic.
• 31:07
  I said yeah. And he said he recorded the
• 31:10
  final music for the scene. And I said, oh, great, he said,
• 31:14
  and you know, there's not a lot of talk in the scene.
• 31:16
  So for the master shot, I'm going to play the final music
• 31:20
  for you and Bob. And he had speakers up and all
• 31:23
  the production team as well, like 300 people up in the
• 31:27
  balconies and all the sound stage.
• 31:29
  And they're playing that music from Once Upon a Time in
• 31:33
  America. And if you've never heard it,
• 31:35
  just go on Apple or Spotify, whatever, and listen to that
• 31:39
  entire, it's the greatest music, moving music.
• 31:42
  There's just nothing like it. And they play that during the
• 31:45
  scene. And all of a sudden I thought,
• 31:47
  Oh my God, I'm in the greatest movies ever made.
• 31:51
  Whether, you know, they ended up destroying it later, but it's
• 31:54
  now intact with the original director's cut and so on, which
• 31:57
  I appreciate. So we did it all.
• 31:59
  So now we get to my close up and in order to see that as horrible
• 32:04
  as my character was to have betrayed his two friends and
• 32:08
  sent his true brother into exile, we see how broken hearted
• 32:13
  he is about the mistake he has made and the way Bob punishes
• 32:18
  him. Bob's character Noodles punishes
• 32:19
  Max is basically to say I, I, I don't know what you're talking
• 32:23
  about, basically leaves leaves him because basically I've
• 32:26
  invited him to come there and to assassinate me.
• 32:28
  So before the the mob does it. So now there's a Sergio coming
• 32:32
  in. He goes, Jimmy, you got the
• 32:34
  watch, which was the significant thing between us because it's
• 32:36
  stolen the watch when we were a kid.
• 32:38
  He said, I'm going to have, well, this wasn't his name, but
• 32:40
  Fredo. He was the Dolly operator.
• 32:42
  And I'll say, let's say his name was Fredo.
• 32:44
  I wish I can remember. I'm sorry, I shouldn't remember
• 32:47
  it, but it was 40 years ago. So I'm going to have the Dolly
• 32:49
  operator. He said, I'm going to have him
• 32:51
  come up. He's going to ease up with the
• 32:53
  Dolly and look at the watch. We're going to come up on the
• 32:57
  watch. We come up to you.
• 33:00
  We have this big anamorphic lens and we're going to come in to
• 33:03
  you. And as the camera stops, a tear
• 33:07
  spills from your eye. Oh, OK.
• 33:10
  Do you think you can do that? I'm glad it wasn't my audition
• 33:15
  scene, but OK, let's see. Let's see what we can do.
• 33:18
  So our thing is Rosilio. Rosilio.
• 33:21
  So Rosilio is a little guy who's always helpful.
• 33:24
  The camera guys are so great. You know, they're right.
• 33:27
  And now he's there and I can't see him because he's the
• 33:30
  camera's blocking him. He said I'm going to play the
• 33:32
  music and the music's playing and 200 people are watching and
• 33:36
  the camera's coming in. And I'm thinking this is in like
• 33:38
  cinema scope my moment, you know?
• 33:41
  And he gets up and the camera comes up and it comes up to me.
• 33:45
  And as I'm supposed to, I'm ready.
• 33:47
  That tears in my eyes and I look and I burst out laughing because
• 33:52
  Rogelio, so that he won't distract me, has decided to put
• 33:55
  a pillowcase over his head, cut eye holes in it, and tie off the
• 34:00
  top to hold it on like little rabbit ears.
• 34:02
  And I look at him. What?
• 34:05
  Are you doing? And we all started laughing.
• 34:10
  It took like, literally another three hours for me to get back
• 34:13
  to. It was just.
• 34:15
  Yeah. But it was just, I mean, he was
• 34:17
  being a sweetheart. So I couldn't.
• 34:18
  Yeah, I just laughed at such, you know?
• 34:20
  OK. Wow.
• 34:22
  God, those are the days. Were you able to nail that to
• 34:24
  you though? You know, I, I think I did, it
• 34:27
  was a tear adjacent because I really felt that it was like you
• 34:31
  see men actors crying and they do it in every movie.
• 34:34
  You know, they're all crying because, you know, I think this
• 34:38
  is a man, if you can't see into his my eyes at that moment,
• 34:43
  because man, I was 100% committed to that moment.
• 34:46
  It doesn't need the artifice of oh, here's the part where you're
• 34:51
  supposed to feel sad. It's, you know, this is I can't
• 34:55
  remember whether I did or not, to be honest.
• 34:56
  I know the scene worked. One of my proudest moments in
• 35:02
  cinema history from my personal cinema history, I should say,
• 35:06
  You know, at the end of East of Eden, when James Dean finally
• 35:10
  and Raymond Massey have their moment of father, son
• 35:12
  reconciliation and Julie Harris is there, she turns away and
• 35:17
  weeps. She doesn't weep.
• 35:18
  You know, you only see her back and you see her shoulders, kind
• 35:21
  of. And I asked Elia Kazanda about
• 35:23
  it. He said if she wept on camera,
• 35:26
  they all didn't say, well, you're doing it for me, I don't
• 35:28
  have to do it. But when she turns away, we feel
• 35:31
  it too. So, you know, and I said that,
• 35:33
  Sergio. And he goes, you know, you, you,
• 35:35
  you're probably all right. What?
• 35:36
  What? One quick little Sergio thing.
• 35:38
  One day I go out, We're at Cini Chitta outside of Rome.
• 35:40
  We're shooting at the they're they're like the big Warner
• 35:42
  Brothers Universal, you know, the big sound stage.
• 35:44
  And we had built the entire city there.
• 35:47
  Oh, that was in pH a lot, actually.
• 35:48
  But, you know, we're, we're shooting in the sound stages,
• 35:50
  walking in the hallway. And whenever the talents say
• 35:52
  come here, they do it this way. Jimmy.
• 35:53
  Veniqua. Veniqua, come here.
• 35:55
  Come here. Veniqua.
• 35:56
  Yeah, So I come and he's walking with this other guy and he goes,
• 35:59
  Jimmy, you know Freddie. I go, no, hi, Freddie, how you
• 36:02
  doing? And he says, you know, we're
• 36:03
  talking. They're chatting back and forth
• 36:05
  and then looking over at Freddie, and I'm going, Freddie,
• 36:08
  is your name Frederico? He goes, see, see, Jimmy.
• 36:11
  Frederico. I said Fellini.
• 36:14
  Wow. I said Frederico Fellini, Sergio
• 36:18
  Leone, and nobody has a camera. All I wanted was that moment,
• 36:22
  put that on my wall and retire, you know?
• 36:25
  I mean, so I remember the moment that I walked down the hallways
• 36:28
  of one of the great world cinema studios between Sergio Leone and
• 36:33
  Federico Fellini, and remember that, you know, it's always
• 36:37
  possible to have one moment in your life where everything is
• 36:40
  perfect. Yeah, wow.
• 36:43
  Incredible. So overflowing with incredible
• 36:45
  stories here. Jimmy working on incredible
• 36:48
  projects as well with huge directors and another huge
• 36:52
  director that you worked on not long after that, Oliver Stone,
• 36:55
  Salvador in 1986. I mean a powerful, a very
• 36:59
  powerful film. Right.
• 37:00
  And, you know, Oliver had done the hand first, a little kind of
• 37:04
  a horror movie with Michael Caine.
• 37:06
  Michael Caine? Yeah.
• 37:08
  But his first real Oliver Stone movie was Salvador.
• 37:13
  And when I was going to do it, he had already won the Oscar for
• 37:15
  writing Midnight Express. But when I was going to do
• 37:17
  Salvador, it's originally called South of the Border.
• 37:21
  People are saying you're going to worry about Oliver Stone.
• 37:22
  That guy's nuts. And I said, well, you know, he's
• 37:25
  won the Oscar for Midnight Express and you know, this is
• 37:28
  really great material. I go, he's nuts.
• 37:30
  I go, how do you know he's nuts? They go, he's, everybody knows
• 37:33
  he's well, I said everybody knows.
• 37:34
  Everybody knows everything, everybody knows everything.
• 37:37
  But the few people admit they don't know too much.
• 37:39
  And I'm one of them, by the way. I really don't.
• 37:41
  But I'm always curious to find out.
• 37:43
  Let me tell you this, I'm curious to find out what it's
• 37:46
  like to work with the guy who wrote Midnight Express and who
• 37:49
  wrote the script. And we had legendary battles
• 37:52
  making that movie. And I think they were kind of
• 37:54
  promoted by Oliver as a way of directing.
• 37:57
  And I was feeling my oats, but it was also kind of part of what
• 38:01
  made that dynamic work. And Oliver and I are still best
• 38:04
  friends. We talk all the time.
• 38:06
  I had dinner at his house a couple of weeks ago.
• 38:09
  He's asked me to to help produce his new movie that we've been
• 38:13
  trying to get, get get up along with with Chuck Rovin and and
• 38:16
  Fernandez Village and, and, and, but that's on the shelf just for
• 38:19
  the time being. But my point being is that he
• 38:22
  was clearly a guy who was up to something.
• 38:25
  He was political. Some of the politics were worth
• 38:29
  challenging him on, but on the other hand, the villains in it
• 38:32
  were major we call a Major Max, his major Bob Dabi son was the
• 38:37
  murderer in El Salvador is responsible for such heinous
• 38:41
  crimes against the populace, many of whom are called it those
• 38:45
  desperesitos that disappeared. And you know, Richard Boyle is
• 38:50
  this like I portrayed him as this kind of half assed drunk
• 38:53
  and a guy, but he really was fundamentally kind of interested
• 38:57
  in finding the truth, but also a Rascal, A rascalion, A renegade.
• 39:02
  And it was fun to play that kind of character.
• 39:06
  It became a real trademark for me in a way to play skewed
• 39:11
  characters who actually had a center, a moral center, an
• 39:16
  emotional center, a romantic center, whatever poetic center
• 39:20
  that was grounded in good. But a lot of his behavior was
• 39:25
  kind of bad. And it was I love playing those
• 39:27
  kinds of characters, you know, And we had wonderful actors, you
• 39:31
  know, Jim Belushi and the PDF Carrillo was just great as
• 39:34
  Maria. She was so good.
• 39:36
  And we had Juan Fernandez played Smiling Death, one of the most
• 39:40
  evil performances by the nicest guy.
• 39:43
  Oh really you could ever meet. You know, Valerie Wildman,
• 39:46
  Cynthia Gibb. We had all these wonderful
• 39:47
  actors, you know, great Michael Murphy, just just great, great
• 39:50
  people. Did you meet the real Richard
• 39:52
  Boyle? Oh, we spent the whole time with
• 39:54
  him. We were supposed to shoot in El
• 39:56
  Salvador and somebody killed our technical advisor down there.
• 40:01
  And they, it was the rebels, actually.
• 40:03
  And they left him on a tennis court and they took the rebel
• 40:06
  flag and nailed it through his forehead with a nail gun after
• 40:09
  they killed him. And Oliver said, I want you and
• 40:11
  Boyle to go down to Salvador and feel your way around.
• 40:13
  I go Oliver. Are you on your mind?
• 40:16
  Hey, well, I went down there. I go.
• 40:17
  Nobody knows who you are, bud. They don't know who you are down
• 40:20
  there. And they give a shit who you
• 40:20
  are. But I'm, you know, an actor.
• 40:22
  They, they've seen me on the screen.
• 40:23
  It's like, oh God, let's cut his head off.
• 40:25
  You know, it's like they have a different view of things than
• 40:28
  you do, you know? And, you know, I had to kind of
• 40:31
  keep them in line once in a while, you know, like, you want
• 40:34
  to shoot the scene where all the bodies, the disparacetos were
• 40:37
  left on the garbage dump, and he wanted to shoot it in the Mexico
• 40:39
  City garbage dump. And all the crew guys are going
• 40:42
  senior woods. I go, yeah, they go.
• 40:45
  I said bubonic plague. They go, yeah, yes, bubonic
• 40:48
  plague. OK, good.
• 40:51
  Oliver, we're not shooting in the Mexico City garbage dump.
• 40:53
  Are you fucking crazy? You know, So yeah, we had that.
• 40:57
  But Oliver was great at inspiring improvisation.
• 41:02
  And I truly believe I got my first Academy Award nomination
• 41:06
  because of the confessional scene.
• 41:08
  Oliver said, well, you know, you're you should do a
• 41:10
  confession. And I said, well, Oliver, we're
• 41:12
  doing the, we're doing a scene. There was with a scene where
• 41:15
  Archbishop of America's assassinate.
• 41:16
  He said, we're doing the scene on a Sunday.
• 41:19
  And usually Catholics go to confession the day before he
• 41:21
  goes off. I said, yeah, you're right.
• 41:23
  OK. So I did it.
• 41:24
  And I said, OK, but I don't want you there, he said.
• 41:26
  I said, we're just kind of improvise, right?
• 41:28
  He said, yeah. I said, well, get Ramon.
• 41:29
  Ramon Menendez took over as our first AD.
• 41:32
  He later became a good director himself, by the way.
• 41:35
  Terrific guy. And I said, Ramon, just ask me
• 41:38
  questions. And then they cut away to an
• 41:40
  extra, a background actor, I should say, like the word extra
• 41:43
  background actor who played the priest and was actually very
• 41:47
  funny. It's a really funny thing.
• 41:48
  He would ask me questions and I'd improvise all the stuff
• 41:51
  about, you know, can have a little token and and I had so
• 41:55
  much fun doing it. And and Oliver would just pipe
• 41:57
  in once a while. Yeah, do the thing about you're
• 41:59
  a weasel. And I go OK.
• 42:01
  And then I'd I'd improvise her about being a weasel and about
• 42:03
  and you know, but if I could have this woman and.
• 42:06
  And so. So we got to do it and it it was
• 42:09
  I I still I I still laugh watching a scene I'm in which I
• 42:13
  I'm not. I don't usually like to watch
• 42:15
  the stuff I'm in, but you know, it feels egotistical.
• 42:18
  But that was so funny that professional.
• 42:20
  It's a great thing was kind of appropriate and a fan right away
• 42:23
  this horrible assassination and they hired the Mexican army to
• 42:28
  come in with like their real rifles.
• 42:29
  Thank God they they had blank ammunition.
• 42:32
  I said stop the rioters. Well, one guy, LP the career is
• 42:36
  running and boom, he hits her across the jaw with the butt of
• 42:40
  his rifle and knocked her out. And it was like, Oliver, you
• 42:43
  know, you got to be a little careful about this.
• 42:46
  Wow. I mean, but I think I don't
• 42:48
  think this was the same in say the 90s of the and the 2000s.
• 42:51
  But right now I think Oliver Stone is a little bit too under
• 42:54
  appreciated for my tastes because he's.
• 42:56
  Under appreciated. He's a man, he's a genius,
• 42:59
  incredible. He has, he has made some of the
• 43:02
  greatest movies. And by the way, people forget
• 43:06
  that a lot of the style of movie making was innovative by him.
• 43:10
  And if you look at Natural Born Killers, it has that fast
• 43:13
  cutting. Strange, you know, neo noir,
• 43:16
  weird cinematic and art direction of going into that
• 43:21
  drug store with all the, you know, that had that kind of MTV
• 43:24
  effect. A lot of people weren't using
• 43:26
  that yet. Oliver Stone was a visual
• 43:28
  genius. He's an incredible screenwriter.
• 43:32
  Oliver Stone, this is one of American histories greatest film
• 43:35
  makers period. I don't care what anybody said.
• 43:37
  I agree. And by the way, so you know, I
• 43:39
  wrote a book and it crapped all over me making celebrate.
• 43:42
  I said, Oliver, what people, Everybody knows I'm kidding.
• 43:45
  They know that I like to tease you.
• 43:46
  I go no, they actually don't know that, but okay, fine.
• 43:50
  I don't care if I give a shit. But he thinks.
• 43:52
  But you know, he's an amazing filmmaker.
• 43:55
  Obviously you love working with You worked him again on a Nixon
• 43:58
  like we talked about. You worked with him again on any
• 44:00
  given Sunday. And, and he also produced
• 44:02
  Indictment about the Mcmartin case.
• 44:05
  Oh yeah. And he produced a movie I did
• 44:07
  called Killer Journal of Murder, which was a small movie that
• 44:10
  kind of never did anything. A young writer directed a first
• 44:14
  time director and it was just didn't have enough budget to do
• 44:17
  it the way we wanted to. But Indictment won the Emmy for
• 44:20
  best best movie and I was nominated.
• 44:23
  You know, Oliver was and so so it was nice and he offered me a
• 44:26
  lot of other movies. He offered me Platoon.
• 44:28
  He offered me really a part in JFKI mean.
• 44:32
  Which part? Which part in JFK?
• 44:34
  Oh, it was a It was a It was actually, I can usually don't
• 44:38
  say, hey, I was over the part. Another actor did it.
• 44:40
  He wanted me to do it. And I just, I think I was doing
• 44:42
  something else. And it was the part David Ferrie
• 44:45
  that that that Joe Pesci played. And I said, it's kind of a small
• 44:49
  part. I don't get me doing it.
• 44:50
  And Joe did it and it's, it's been on record that he should
• 44:54
  not have a good time, you know, doing it.
• 44:57
  And it's hard for some actors working with Oliver because he
• 44:59
  can be very hard on actors as a way to provoke performance.
• 45:03
  And a lot of actors just don't like that.
• 45:05
  I kind of know how to do it because I provoked him first.
• 45:10
  But to his credit, I was supposed to play Powers Booth's
• 45:13
  part in in Nixon. I was supposed to play Alexander
• 45:17
  Haig. And it was a good part.
• 45:18
  But among Ruth Haldeman, because it was the the second lead, he
• 45:24
  said, no, Jimmy, you can't do it because you're too animated.
• 45:26
  And I said, Oliver, I'm an actor.
• 45:29
  You may have noticed and and I said, look, I'll read for you.
• 45:33
  Read for me, for crying out loud.
• 45:35
  I said, yes, I am. I am.
• 45:37
  I'm going to read for you. And I read And he said, try it
• 45:40
  this way. Then he said, you know what, I'm
• 45:42
  going to go with this. Don't let me down.
• 45:43
  And he wrote me the most beautiful letter afterwards
• 45:46
  said, man, I was so wrong. It was one of my favorite
• 45:50
  performances of any actor in any movie I've done.
• 45:53
  I was so proud of it. And I want you to know, you
• 45:55
  know, but every once in a while he'll stop with we, we just, we
• 45:59
  just shadow box all the time. But you know, he said, man, you,
• 46:02
  you know, you, you, you really with Tony and JT, you, you
• 46:05
  really, really made the movie. You know, I said, wow, you know,
• 46:08
  and Joan Allen, of course. And if you talk about making the
• 46:11
  move, what a performance, man, what an actor she is.
• 46:14
  So Jimmy, you alluded to it a little bit earlier, but you've
• 46:17
  never shield away from, shall we say, morally ambiguous roles.
• 46:21
  Let's say that that you made your play in those kind of roles
• 46:25
  the majority of your career, never frightened to take risks,
• 46:28
  it seemed to me. I think the risks are what are
• 46:30
  what's interesting about drama. So was that a conscious decision
• 46:34
  on your part to to focus on not the kind of like sunshiny good
• 46:38
  guy in the box office hit? Was it always your conscious
• 46:42
  decision to delve deeper into character?
• 46:45
  Well, that's a really good question.
• 46:46
  The answer is, of course I would play a big lead commercial
• 46:53
  guaranteed to make a billion dollar.
• 46:56
  I mean, you'd be insane not to. I'm just not that guy.
• 47:00
  You know, I'm I mean, I'm a character actor.
• 47:04
  You know, I'm, I'm a character actor.
• 47:06
  And people say, well, you, you know, you started.
• 47:08
  And I said I was, I was never a movie star, even though I was
• 47:12
  regarded as such by the press. And in terms of the salary and
• 47:17
  the billing, I once was at the corner of Laurel Canyon and
• 47:21
  Sunset. I had two TV movies that were
• 47:23
  out at the same time and two other movies.
• 47:26
  And my picture was on three billboards.
• 47:28
  And I should have gotten a picture of it, but I didn't at
• 47:30
  the time. And I thought, wow, this is
• 47:32
  great, thinking that it would go on forever.
• 47:34
  But of course, yeah, it never does.
• 47:36
  But the bottom line is I don't, I wouldn't make a judgement.
• 47:39
  Look, Robert Redford played a lot of those parts.
• 47:41
  Red Pit plays a lot of those parts and so on, and they make
• 47:44
  them eminently watchable and exciting.
• 47:46
  I look, I'm a movie lover. I'm fine with big leading men
• 47:50
  doing big leading men stuff, man.
• 47:52
  That's, that's what the movies are all about.
• 47:54
  I wish I could have done more of that stuff, but it's not really.
• 47:57
  But I did it a few times and had kind of a nice success with it.
• 48:00
  I mean, I did, you know, straight talk with Dolly Parton
• 48:03
  and we had fun. Yeah.
• 48:04
  You know, it came about because it was Dolly's 80th birthday
• 48:06
  last week and, you know, people were talking about it on social
• 48:09
  media and, you know, it's fun or, you know, doing something
• 48:12
  like immediate family and so on. I've played those kinds of part.
• 48:16
  I certainly did it with my TV series Shark.
• 48:19
  You know, I played when I played lawyers that played those kinds
• 48:22
  of part. You know, Robert Redford played
• 48:25
  Robert Redford roles, and Brad Pitt plays those.
• 48:27
  That's movie stardom of the NTH degree.
• 48:31
  If I were a movie, I'd be an independent movie.
• 48:35
  You know, Robert Redford's a movie.
• 48:37
  He's a big studio movie. Yeah, You know what I mean?
• 48:39
  I would love to have played those parts.
• 48:41
  They didn't always come my way, but if I had a choice between
• 48:45
  playing the lead in Salvador or a lot of the parts that I did
• 48:49
  play, Bestseller, you mentioned all those kinds.
• 48:52
  You know, the boost, those kinds of parts.
• 48:54
  Are you kidding, man? I'd always take those.
• 48:56
  Parts. Yeah.
• 48:56
  Great. So moving a little bit forward
• 48:59
  from Salvador and the departure in Torn, your role as John Moss
• 49:03
  in the hardware now, Jimmy, this is an absolute favorite of mine.
• 49:08
  I've loved this film for 30 years.
• 49:09
  It was my gateway to your work as an actor, a joy from start to
• 49:13
  finish. Thank you, man.
• 49:15
  You know, we had so much fun doing that.
• 49:17
  First of all, Michael J Fox. You know, I like to say this
• 49:20
  about certain actors, about almost everybody I've worked
• 49:22
  with, by the way, I've had good fortune.
• 49:25
  But Michael in particular is one of those people that you just
• 49:30
  hope, you know, please don't be a jerk.
• 49:31
  And he's just the opposite in every way possible.
• 49:34
  He's just 10. Michael J Fox has poured into
• 49:36
  one. It's like so much fun to be
• 49:39
  around him. He's just such a sweet guy.
• 49:42
  He's just a great guy. And we don't even John Badham
• 49:45
  and I would I I'd say, how do you think I should do this?
• 49:47
  He's like, where's our comedy expert?
• 49:49
  Get my and we literally come pull Michael from his trailer.
• 49:52
  Michael, come here. How would you do this gag?
• 49:54
  I'm doing the thing. But what do you think is funnier
• 49:57
  if I do? You all know you got to do it
• 49:58
  this way. And he'd he'd give us like
• 50:00
  comedy lessons, you know, and and it was just natural.
• 50:04
  We we just worked hand in glove together.
• 50:06
  It was immediate, immediate. And I got to play Mike Cantank
• 50:09
  herself. I got to do a comedy.
• 50:11
  It was, you know, the movie would have been successful.
• 50:13
  We happened to open the day that the United States started
• 50:17
  bombing Kuwait. And so it was like people
• 50:20
  weren't really interested in going to the movie theater that
• 50:21
  night. I've had some bad luck in when
• 50:24
  it comes to the timing of releases.
• 50:26
  But the great thing about getting olds, you look back and
• 50:29
  you have a lot of people go. I love that movie, man.
• 50:31
  I met, you know, they, they just loved it And that, you know, to
• 50:33
  this day, people, you know, the hot dogs, what do they call them
• 50:36
  the. Oh, the frog dogs.
• 50:38
  Oh, the frog dogs. Yeah, that's frog dogs.
• 50:40
  I forgot. And then I had to do a thing,
• 50:42
  which I did. I practiced 1000 times.
• 50:45
  I did a whole monologue and in the middle of it flipped a
• 50:47
  cigarette in my mouth and lit it.
• 50:48
  And John and the producers all go.
• 50:51
  You know, you're doing a whole monologue and it's like 4
• 50:53
  minutes long, and now you're flipping the thing.
• 50:54
  And if you miss, we got to do it over.
• 50:56
  Yeah, I go. I'm not going to miss, but
• 50:59
  you're going to miss. I mean, you can't help but miss
• 51:01
  it. I know you would miss because
• 51:02
  you're not a professional, but I'm a professional.
• 51:04
  Of course, total baloney. But but in fact, I didn't miss
• 51:08
  and it just made it so much more compelling.
• 51:10
  I'm yapping away to flip it in there and light it.
• 51:12
  And some people, Oh my gosh, you know, are you, were you like a
• 51:15
  juggler? I pick up the soda bottle and
• 51:19
  take a sip and I drop it. You know, you're kidding.
• 51:21
  No, but for some reason, the acting God smiled on us that day
• 51:25
  and we got a really funny shake. It's beautiful.
• 51:27
  It was so much fun, so much fun doing that movie.
• 51:29
  Yeah, and not just, I mean, great chemistry with Michael J
• 51:32
  Fox, but the rest of the cast of Magic as well.
• 51:34
  Dale, Roy. Lindell, Luis Guzman, Alabel,
• 51:36
  Shiora. All of them.
• 51:38
  And by the way, LL Cool J, whose real name, by the way, is Todd
• 51:41
  Smith. He's a such a nice guy talk.
• 51:44
  He was what is this huge rapper icon.
• 51:48
  Yeah. And you know, Michaels big and,
• 51:50
  and I'm, I was never sort of like it was like Bob De Niro and
• 51:54
  James Wood, you know, Michael J Fox and James Wood.
• 51:57
  And then I kind of started getting my own kind of James
• 52:00
  Wood and whoever, you know. But Michael and I were we were
• 52:03
  doing one of the cop scenes in Bedford Stuyvesant.
• 52:07
  Yeah, in Brooklyn. And kind of a rough
• 52:09
  neighborhood. And I think, yeah, I don't know
• 52:12
  if Delroy was with us. Also a fabulous guy, Delroy.
• 52:15
  I think Todd was LL Cool J was with us.
• 52:18
  And Michael, of course, was at the peak of his comedy career in
• 52:22
  just back to a few. So, you know, it's used to being
• 52:25
  mob and, you know, the security and all this stuff.
• 52:27
  But I had a pretty big following too.
• 52:29
  So it's kind of, you know, sort of walking all these kids that
• 52:33
  come screaming towards it. And Michael goes out of young, I
• 52:36
  think, I think I think this groups mine.
• 52:39
  I go, well, I don't know. You never know, said mine,
• 52:41
  yours. What do you think?
• 52:42
  I go, I'm going to say maybe yours, but I'm going to say
• 52:44
  maybe mine. They go running right past this
• 52:48
  LL Cool J standing, you know, half a block away.
• 52:54
  LL Cool J, And he always called me Mr. Woods.
• 52:57
  I got Todd, for crying out loud. Come on, man.
• 52:59
  We're equals. We're all actors.
• 53:01
  Here he goes. OK.
• 53:02
  He was such a gentleman and such a sweetheart.
• 53:05
  And then we got to work together again in any given Sunday and
• 53:10
  Jamie Foxx in Any Given Sunday. I worked with Jamie Foxx later
• 53:12
  in the White House Down and you know, your your paths crossed
• 53:16
  with all these people. I was looking at the list of
• 53:18
  boxers in Dickstown. It was like, you know, Josh
• 53:21
  Brolin, Barry Pepper and I go, Oh my God, all these great
• 53:25
  actors are these, you know, these supporting parts.
• 53:28
  It's amazing. I was at the SAG actor, see
• 53:32
  Green Actors Gold Awards 1, and I'm sitting there with my date.
• 53:35
  At the time, she was actually my assistant.
• 53:36
  I didn't have a date. So hey, you want to go and show?
• 53:38
  Oh, yeah, I'd love to go. She got all dolled up when we
• 53:40
  went. We're sitting there, she goes,
• 53:41
  Oh my God. And I said what?
• 53:43
  And Morgan Freeman stood up, and he's walking across the room.
• 53:46
  Now, when Morgan Freeman stands up, no matter who you are, I
• 53:50
  don't care what your billing is or how much you get paid, you're
• 53:52
  hoping he's walking towards your table.
• 53:55
  Yeah. OK.
• 53:55
  It's Morgan Free. Morgan Freeman is kind of like,
• 53:58
  you know, he's in the pantheon of the gods.
• 54:00
  Among the actors, he's just the greatest guy.
• 54:03
  And I'm looking and I'm saying, well, there's De Niro, you know,
• 54:04
  he's working, you know, And he keeps walking, and he's calling
• 54:08
  me hard way. And I go, who's wrong here?
• 54:10
  This is great. And he walks over and goes, hey,
• 54:11
  Jimmy, how you doing? I go, hey, Morgan.
• 54:15
  And I almost said, have we met? And I remembered as I said it,
• 54:21
  Oh my God, I did this movie with Bill Hurt and Sigourney Weaver.
• 54:25
  Call Eyewitness. Eyewitness.
• 54:27
  I get picked up as a as the character and get a, a ride in a
• 54:32
  patrol car for something I did and it and it was a plot point.
• 54:36
  It's why Bill Hurt didn't get to do something in the crime.
• 54:39
  And you know, I got behind or whatever.
• 54:42
  And because I got picked up and one of the cops and if you had
• 54:45
  like 3 lines, yeah, was Morgan Freeman, except that I was in
• 54:49
  the back seat and they had, and we got it this quick because
• 54:52
  they almost launched. I said, OK, hey guys.
• 54:53
  Hi. Hi.
• 54:54
  How you doing this before? He was really famous and I'm
• 54:56
  doing the thing and I'm talking to the driver.
• 54:58
  And so I played the entire scene to the back of Morgan Freeman's
• 55:01
  head and kind of realized at that point, Oh my God.
• 55:05
  He said, yeah, eyewitness. I went, that was your head.
• 55:10
  And he laughed and he said, that's right.
• 55:11
  We didn't have much time to rehearse him.
• 55:13
  I said we shot it one take, you go, Oh my God, that's right.
• 55:16
  It was like one of those things, you think this has got to be the
• 55:19
  quirkiest thing that's ever happened to me.
• 55:21
  I'm embarrassed to say. But anyway, he was gracious and
• 55:24
  wonderful about. It he's a wonderful.
• 55:25
  He's just a wonderful guy. So just to go back to the hard
• 55:29
  way for a moment, you mentioned you, you shot in Bedford Stye,
• 55:32
  was that all on location in New York?
• 55:34
  Yeah, it was all on location and we shot in Times Square the
• 55:39
  scene where, you know, there's a anybody hasn't seen the movie.
• 55:42
  Michael J Fox plays this spoiled Hollywood actor who decides he's
• 55:47
  going to play a tough cop, so he wants to be around a real cop
• 55:50
  and go on. You know, Dr. Alongs, you know,
• 55:53
  these Dr. Alongs they have where an actor drives, of course they
• 55:56
  drive it just, you know, some guy parking ticket.
• 55:59
  I'm going to see the real stuff, you know, so and he's an
• 56:02
  obnoxious, you know, Hollywood jerk is the whole is the joke.
• 56:05
  And I'm I can't stand him and there's a serial killer I'll
• 56:09
  call a party crasher. Well, it turns out that Michael
• 56:12
  J Fox's character, Nick Lang, you know, heartthrob, he his
• 56:18
  head with this hat playing a detective is atop A10 story
• 56:23
  building in Times Square. And they built this big head on
• 56:28
  top of this 10 story building and they're shooting on it with
• 56:31
  stunt double S where they wouldn't you know, I mean, we
• 56:34
  went up there stood some places where it was safe, but getting
• 56:37
  out on the hat and all the chase, it all takes space in
• 56:39
  that. That was shot in an Armory in
• 56:41
  Queens, right? And it was three stories high.
• 56:44
  So it was still if you fell you you could get killed.
• 56:46
  But you know, at least you know, we're in harness as a but my sun
• 56:49
  devil was running around on the thing.
• 56:51
  It was like, jeez, man, how do you do it?
• 56:53
  Anyway, There's this big head in the middle of Times Square and
• 56:57
  all the chase scenes were in the middle of Times Square.
• 56:59
  It's funny. You think, oh, comedy, that's
• 57:01
  easy. I never was more injured doing a
• 57:04
  movie. I broke my finger in a scene
• 57:06
  where I'm I threw him through a popcorn machine through Michael,
• 57:10
  through a popcorn machine. I broke my finger, now my
• 57:12
  fingers broken, got a cast on it and we're shooting the next
• 57:15
  night with the backup crew became and I'm on the truck.
• 57:20
  I'm holding on, but I'm holding on with a broken hand and I'm
• 57:24
  trying to break the window or something with a club and
• 57:27
  there's a cop car behind us. And the stunt coordinator said
• 57:30
  to me, OK, listen, we're going to be going on about 2530.
• 57:34
  Maybe we might get up to 40. Yeah.
• 57:36
  Said you're sure you want to do this because you can't be
• 57:37
  chained in because if you do and we had an accident you couldn't
• 57:41
  escape, don't fall off on the road because you could get hurt.
• 57:44
  I said, so when I fall off, I don't want to fall off.
• 57:49
  But if you do follow, go through the windshield, the car behind
• 57:52
  that, that's the safest place to go.
• 57:54
  OK, let's go. Go through the windshield.
• 57:57
  That's the that's the best you have to offer.
• 58:00
  Go through the windshield. OK, thanks.
• 58:03
  Well, as it turned out, we slowed down.
• 58:04
  And as we did, I tumbled off and I tore my rotator cuff on this
• 58:08
  shoulder. But we still were able to work.
• 58:11
  But it was in a sling through a lot of the movie and so on.
• 58:15
  And, you know, you those comedy things, man, the stunt guys
• 58:19
  really go through. No, I mean, I say this and Tom
• 58:21
  Cruise is, you know, leaping across the Grand Canyon, you
• 58:24
  know, but every little stunt can be dangerous.
• 58:27
  Yeah. You know, And when actors choose
• 58:28
  to do it, I go, you know, you got to really make sure that,
• 58:30
  you know what you're doing here. He says.
• 58:33
  Yeah, Yeah. I can't stress enough.
• 58:36
  An incredible film. I love it.
• 58:37
  I'll watch it again and again. I love it.
• 58:39
  Thanks man, I appreciate it. But not just in front of the
• 58:42
  camera as well. You've also got, and we've
• 58:44
  talked about it briefly, but an exec producer credit for
• 58:47
  Oppenheimer, Chris Nolans, Oscar winner.
• 58:49
  How did that come about? As I said earlier, when I was in
• 58:52
  school, I went to MIT and Guy turned out to be my partner.
• 58:56
  David Wargo went to MIT. He was not in the movie business
• 58:59
  in any way, shape or form. He'd bought a book called
• 59:01
  American Prometheus, and he wanted to do the story of J
• 59:03
  Robert Oppenheimer. And I had done a voice.
• 59:07
  He contacted me saying, you went to MIT, and I said, yeah.
• 59:09
  He said I'm a movie buff. And he said, would you do the
• 59:11
  voice over for the sesquicentennial for MIT?
• 59:15
  And I said sure. And he paid me.
• 59:17
  I said I'm gonna be paid. I'm, you know, I'm gonna tell
• 59:19
  him I'll be happy. And he said no, no, no, no.
• 59:21
  Paid, paid. They said, well, they liked it
• 59:22
  so much, would you do it on camera?
• 59:23
  OK, fine. So we became buddies.
• 59:25
  And whenever we come out, we're talking.
• 59:26
  Next thing I know, he said, you know, I've got this project
• 59:29
  about J Robert Oppenheimer. And I said, OK, And whenever
• 59:33
  anybody goes, oh, I got this project, they go, my eyes roll
• 59:35
  up in my head, but I go, OK, Scorsese read it, but he wasn't
• 59:39
  interested. Spielberg wasn't interested.
• 59:41
  And I go, who? Who told you that these
• 59:42
  directors read the book? He said, well, this guy's trying
• 59:45
  to help me, these people trying to help me.
• 59:47
  And I said, let me just say this in general.
• 59:50
  In general, I think it's fair to say a lot of times people say no
• 59:55
  to something and have never even heard about it.
• 59:58
  Their minions speak for them because they don't want to be
• 1:00:00
  bothered. They developed their own stuff.
• 1:00:02
  Yeah, I'll try to help you. Well, it was during COVID and 40
• 1:00:07
  years ago, a friend of mine was in the music business.
• 1:00:09
  Said she said I'd love to get into the movie business.
• 1:00:13
  I said, OK, how do you you know? He said.
• 1:00:15
  I've actually got the money to buy a script and then I could go
• 1:00:18
  from there and see if I can wrestle up, you know?
• 1:00:21
  I said, OK, I said, I have a friend who's a writer with this
• 1:00:23
  kind of cool script called The Booster, not the Boost, the
• 1:00:26
  movie I did. It was about a guy who was a
• 1:00:28
  robber. And it was a good script, but it
• 1:00:30
  never got made. And they became friends.
• 1:00:32
  And he said, hey, I'm going to ask Kenny, Kenny Friedman and
• 1:00:34
  this guy, I recommended him to to write another screenplay for
• 1:00:38
  me. Did you want to be involved?
• 1:00:39
  And I said, well, I'm not really a producer at that stage.
• 1:00:41
  I just want to be an actor. I said, but you know, you have
• 1:00:44
  my blessing, but thanks for asking.
• 1:00:46
  He wrote and he wrote a movie called Heart Like a Wheel.
• 1:00:48
  And it was Charles Rovin, Chuck Rovin.
• 1:00:50
  And they did Heart Like a Wheel deal with my pedelia.
• 1:00:52
  And he never looked back. And we say friends forever.
• 1:00:54
  But you know, he went on to produce and he loves business.
• 1:00:56
  He's always producing. He's doing stuff.
• 1:00:59
  And I said to my friend in the middle of I said, I have a
• 1:01:03
  friend, Chuck Row, and I've never asked him in 40 years to
• 1:01:06
  kind of return the favor. And I told him the story and I
• 1:01:09
  said, so let me see if I can get him to read this book.
• 1:01:11
  And, you know, because he has worked with Christopher Nolan,
• 1:01:15
  and Christopher Nolan right now has left Warner Brothers and is
• 1:01:19
  looking to make a connection with a studio.
• 1:01:23
  And everybody's on this guy. But my friend Chuck may have a
• 1:01:27
  way to, you know, get a hold of him.
• 1:01:29
  And that's the way to do it. He'll listen to Chuck.
• 1:01:31
  So I called Chuck. Well, Chuck called me back and
• 1:01:33
  said, I'm in Germany and I'm doing a film.
• 1:01:35
  But, you know, it's COVID wearing masks, What's up?
• 1:01:38
  And I said, well, I got this project.
• 1:01:39
  He said, I'm going to be home next Wednesday.
• 1:01:42
  I'll meet you at the office. Bring your friend.
• 1:01:44
  Well, it's at a time you, my friend had to rent a private jet
• 1:01:47
  to get there and everybody's wearing masks and and he's he
• 1:01:50
  came back, he's exhausted. Worst time to pitch a project.
• 1:01:54
  We sit down, I go, Chuck, we got to take the masks off.
• 1:01:56
  So we're sitting way down. He's at the top of this
• 1:01:59
  conference table. We're down here and I started to
• 1:02:02
  pitch the project and and I'm pretty good at pitching project.
• 1:02:05
  And there was that moment and I've known Chuck forever where I
• 1:02:08
  see his wheels turning and he says, I'm leaning into this, OK,
• 1:02:13
  whatever that means. I think that's a good thing.
• 1:02:16
  And I said, well, here's what we were thinking.
• 1:02:18
  Christopher Nolan, he goes, ah, Chris and I don't work together
• 1:02:22
  when I work together in eight years.
• 1:02:23
  It turns out his wife, Emma Thomas, fantastic producer.
• 1:02:27
  You know, she's a great producer.
• 1:02:28
  And he basically just said, Chuck, like, we're great
• 1:02:30
  friends. I appreciate everything we've
• 1:02:31
  done. They did all the Batman, you
• 1:02:32
  know, franchise together, said, you know, I love you, but you
• 1:02:35
  know, I I I just don't need you. And he said, yeah, I, I
• 1:02:39
  understand. So that was that.
• 1:02:43
  And I said, look, Oliver Stone has been great to me.
• 1:02:45
  I'd like to, I'd like to offer this project to Oliver Stone.
• 1:02:49
  And Oliver and I had been talking about this a little bit
• 1:02:52
  unbeknownst to everybody else. And Oliver said, you know, we
• 1:02:56
  have a different view of what the land invasion of Japan would
• 1:02:59
  be about. The the losses would only have
• 1:03:01
  been maybe 30,000 people. And I said this is absolutely
• 1:03:04
  not true. However, the Department of War
• 1:03:05
  made a million Purple hearts in preparation for that terrible
• 1:03:09
  war and a lot of Japanese civilians are being killed.
• 1:03:11
  You know, I said, but you gotta we're at odds here.
• 1:03:14
  It's a Long story short. Oliver accepted the fact that we
• 1:03:17
  were kind of not thinking in the same wheelhouse and he was very
• 1:03:20
  gracious about it. I, you know, Chuck said, look,
• 1:03:23
  if we're not going to do this because Chuck.
• 1:03:25
  Oliver also said, look, I'm 74 years old at the time.
• 1:03:28
  I don't want to freelance writing for a year and then shop
• 1:03:32
  a project. He said, you know, get somebody
• 1:03:33
  to do the screenplay. I'll maybe do a pass on it and
• 1:03:35
  then you can hire me as a director.
• 1:03:37
  And I said, we really want to get an auteur from beginning to
• 1:03:39
  end, writer, director. So we were kind of stuck in the
• 1:03:43
  middle of all this COVID. Chris Nolan calls Chuck out of
• 1:03:46
  nowhere and Chuck has a a ranch in another state.
• 1:03:51
  Chris said, look, everybody found him.
• 1:03:52
  I don't want to talk to show business.
• 1:03:54
  Just want to come with my kids and maybe ride horses and hang
• 1:03:56
  out with you and your wife. He's got a great wife.
• 1:03:58
  I love her. And he said great.
• 1:04:00
  So they're there. They're they're just not talking
• 1:04:02
  about anything. Chuck told me the story.
• 1:04:05
  I don't know how much of it actually, but the image is so
• 1:04:07
  great. So let's pretend that this
• 1:04:09
  probably is a bit hypocrifal, but maybe not.
• 1:04:13
  You know, after a few days, they're there.
• 1:04:15
  The housekeeper catches COVID. Now they're doing the dishes.
• 1:04:18
  So Chuck and Chris, no one supposedly are doing the dishes
• 1:04:22
  together. It's too good not to be.
• 1:04:26
  Real, but it has to be true. And I don't know where Chris
• 1:04:29
  says, So what are you working on these days?
• 1:04:31
  And of course, if you're around Chris Nolan and you're a film
• 1:04:33
  maker and he goes, what are you working on these days?
• 1:04:35
  And, you know, he's shopping for a project.
• 1:04:37
  And here's the thing about Chris Nolan.
• 1:04:39
  He's famous. He does not develop anything.
• 1:04:40
  He said, this is what I'm going to do and he does it.
• 1:04:43
  He's a very decisive man. I really like him a lot, Chuck.
• 1:04:47
  So I'm doing this thing. Barbarians.
• 1:04:48
  He goes, no, just like that. No, like, and he said, do do you
• 1:04:53
  know James Woods, the actor? And he goes, oh, yeah, yeah, I
• 1:04:56
  like that guy. Yeah, I know.
• 1:04:57
  Yeah, I know him. I said that's nice.
• 1:04:58
  You like that's that's good. That's the story, of course.
• 1:05:00
  And he says, and and he said he's got this project about J
• 1:05:04
  Robert Oppenheimer. And they chat a bit and he goes,
• 1:05:07
  you know, and when I was doing Tennant was a Tennant.
• 1:05:10
  Yeah. I had a thing with Robert
• 1:05:12
  Pattinson. We were talking about
• 1:05:13
  Oppenheimer, about a Long story short.
• 1:05:16
  He said give me the book, I'll read it and I'll give you an
• 1:05:20
  answer in three days. You got to stay here though,
• 1:05:22
  because I want to. He said I just got back from
• 1:05:24
  Germany. You know my wife, you know, she
• 1:05:27
  she kind of needs my attention. You know, not she's not needy,
• 1:05:31
  but I mean I've got to be a devoted husband.
• 1:05:33
  He said, Chuck, just give me 3 days.
• 1:05:35
  So three days. The prints like this small and
• 1:05:37
  it's a 700 page book and it's all science.
• 1:05:40
  And of course, he read it in three days and he called him and
• 1:05:43
  I'll never forget, supposed to call him on a Tuesday morning,
• 1:05:46
  called him Monday night and he said Oppenheimer is my next
• 1:05:48
  project. Wow, just like that.
• 1:05:50
  And I said to Chuck, I've got to be a producer.
• 1:05:52
  I put this together, you know, I've got to win the Oscar.
• 1:05:55
  And he goes, there's only three people that can qualify for an
• 1:05:57
  Oscar. It's not quite true.
• 1:05:58
  But. And he said, he won't let you be
• 1:06:00
  because you don't have enough experience, but he will let me
• 1:06:03
  be. And I said, Chuck, he said,
• 1:06:05
  Jimmy, I know that's painful to you.
• 1:06:08
  If it's too much to bear, I will say to Chris that we're not
• 1:06:12
  going to do the project and I will honor my word and we'll go
• 1:06:16
  shopping the project, which I knew was never going to.
• 1:06:18
  Nobody else was going to be able to do it and nobody else is
• 1:06:20
  going to be able to get set up. And he said, give me an answer
• 1:06:23
  tomorrow morning, think this over and decide I'm with you no
• 1:06:26
  matter what. It's nice.
• 1:06:27
  So I'm agonizing over it. And I said to Sarah, oh man, I
• 1:06:31
  don't know what to do. He said, however, two things,
• 1:06:34
  you will be an executive producer.
• 1:06:36
  And as you know, Chris Nolan almost never has executive
• 1:06:39
  producers. Thomas Hayslip, who's his
• 1:06:41
  production manner, that's it. So it's a big deal in this case.
• 1:06:45
  And the second thing is if we were to win the Academy Award, I
• 1:06:49
  promise you your name will be the first name that I will thank
• 1:06:53
  and, you know, make a good deal, of course.
• 1:06:56
  So I'm thinking about it. I said to Sir, I don't know what
• 1:06:58
  to do. And she said, Jimmy, caviar in
• 1:07:00
  the balcony or tacos in the parking lot, Pick up the phone
• 1:07:04
  call Chuck, and say, let's make this mother.
• 1:07:06
  And that was it. And we made it.
• 1:07:08
  And we won the Academy Award. And that was the first person.
• 1:07:10
  Chuck, Thanks. And I got to be very close.
• 1:07:12
  And during the Palisades fires when all our houses were, you
• 1:07:16
  know, burning down. So I got, of course, from Chuck
• 1:07:18
  a call. But I got a call from Emma
• 1:07:20
  Thomas. And she said, Chris and I are
• 1:07:22
  really worried about you. Would you please come, you know,
• 1:07:24
  come stay in our house. We have a guest room, you know,
• 1:07:27
  until you get yourself sorted out and so on.
• 1:07:28
  Just wonderful people. They were a joy to work with.
• 1:07:32
  I mean, I didn't get to do much, you know, we got to visit the
• 1:07:35
  set and, you know, and so on. And that's fine because that's
• 1:07:38
  what but but Chris called me up one day and said, look, I'd like
• 1:07:41
  to screen the movie for you. And so it's 9:30 in the morning
• 1:07:44
  and, you know, he doesn't screen the movie for anybody.
• 1:07:45
  I don't even think exactly. Hey, well, let's see the movie.
• 1:07:47
  He said, great, come to the premiere.
• 1:07:49
  So now I go and we're in a big empty theater and they're doing
• 1:07:54
  a sound check. So the sound is blasting and
• 1:07:56
  it's, you know, 3 hours and 20 minutes, whatever it is.
• 1:07:59
  And I had been trying to make this movie for six years or
• 1:08:04
  something. And the movie finished and came
• 1:08:06
  in and I don't know what possessed me because Chris kind
• 1:08:09
  of set it back and I just, I literally started crying.
• 1:08:14
  I wish Sergio could have been there.
• 1:08:15
  There was some tears there. They were.
• 1:08:17
  I I and he reached for me and put his arm around me and we
• 1:08:21
  hugged each other and I said I the thing I'm most amazed by
• 1:08:24
  Chris not how brilliant the movie is.
• 1:08:27
  Killian and the actors, everybody you know, Emily,
• 1:08:30
  although just great acting, direction, cinema to all of it.
• 1:08:35
  I said the screenplay was not what I expected.
• 1:08:38
  Who would have the insight to do a movie about the making of the
• 1:08:43
  atomic bomb and not show the bombing of either Hiroshima or
• 1:08:46
  Nagasaki? Because that's not what the
• 1:08:48
  movie was about. It was about a man who needed to
• 1:08:51
  win a war in order to win the peace.
• 1:08:54
  And he understood that. And I'm telling you, it was one
• 1:08:57
  of the great honors to be finally peripheral to this great
• 1:09:01
  achievement. But a lot of people, including
• 1:09:05
  Emma and Chuck has said, you know, in many ways, if you
• 1:09:07
  hadn't brought this to Chuck, that this movie meant never have
• 1:09:09
  been made. And, you know, I don't know if
• 1:09:11
  that's true or not, but I think it is actually.
• 1:09:13
  And because it was kind of our idea and our project.
• 1:09:16
  And if it hadn't been for David Wargo, you know, this wonderful
• 1:09:20
  fellow from MIT is now become one of my best friends and
• 1:09:22
  Chuck's best friends. We still all great friends.
• 1:09:25
  I never would have been aboard. So I thank David and I thank
• 1:09:28
  Chuck, and they feel the same way.
• 1:09:30
  It was just a great experience. And of course, it was helmed by
• 1:09:34
  the greatest living writer, director Chris Nolan, and then
• 1:09:38
  everybody else you know. Incredible film and that is a
• 1:09:41
  great story. Well honoured to be a part of
• 1:09:43
  it. You know, I don't know if I'm
• 1:09:45
  sure they're I'm sure they're going to dispute the the dishes
• 1:09:48
  story, but man, I hope it's true because.
• 1:09:50
  It's such a great image. You know, stories become
• 1:09:54
  stories. You know, one thing I learned
• 1:09:56
  from Michael Caine, he said. You know, if you got to just
• 1:09:58
  brush it up a little bit, Polish it up, just, you know, just make
• 1:10:02
  it work. Make the story work OK.
• 1:10:06
  So the final film that I want to delve into, Jimmy, it's your
• 1:10:09
  part of Lester Diamond Casino, directed by another huge, huge,
• 1:10:14
  huge director, Martin Scorsese. Icon.
• 1:10:18
  Yeah, one of the greats. One of the absolute greats.
• 1:10:20
  I mean, your part, it's, it's pivotal to the story you play
• 1:10:24
  such a, for lack of a better term, such a sleazy, slippery
• 1:10:28
  character. Thank you.
• 1:10:30
  What was the idea? You know, it was funny.
• 1:10:32
  I, I'd always wanted to work with him and I wasn't able to.
• 1:10:36
  I think he had reached out about playing a part to one of my
• 1:10:40
  favorite actors, Harvey Keitel ended up playing in The Last
• 1:10:44
  Invitation of Christ. And I was doing another movie.
• 1:10:45
  I went, Oh my God, he's, you know, maybe playing Judas
• 1:10:48
  because, you know, I was playing villains in those days.
• 1:10:50
  So, you know, it was at least having a conversation.
• 1:10:53
  I wasn't able to do it and always regretted it, but he said
• 1:10:55
  I wasn't. But, and of course, Harvey's
• 1:10:57
  brilliant in everything he does. So that worked out.
• 1:10:59
  You know, it's interchangeable. We all actors, we all know that.
• 1:11:03
  You know what people don't realize?
• 1:11:04
  Every time you see an actor, it's like 5 other people were
• 1:11:07
  offered it ahead of time. For whatever reason, the studio
• 1:11:09
  wanted them or the agency pushed them or whatever.
• 1:11:12
  Said to my agent, I said I'd love to be in Casino.
• 1:11:14
  She goes there's no parts in Casino, there's no part for you.
• 1:11:17
  I said, well could you call Marty and just get me a meeting?
• 1:11:19
  She goes, there's nothing for you, forget it.
• 1:11:20
  I said OK, So I called the casting office.
• 1:11:23
  They got the number. So could I have a message from
• 1:11:25
  Mr. Chris where he's in casting? He wasn't.
• 1:11:27
  So James Woods, she said, I'm sorry, you know, he's in
• 1:11:29
  casting. I said just do me a favor.
• 1:11:31
  Just give him a note. It'll take 10 seconds of your
• 1:11:34
  time. It's going to be from James
• 1:11:36
  Woods and it's going to be 8 words, any part, anytime,
• 1:11:42
  anywhere, any price. Amazing magic words.
• 1:11:46
  Magic words. Any price.
• 1:11:48
  So they paid me $7500. My fee at the time is like a
• 1:11:51
  million and a half, you know, $7500.
• 1:11:54
  And I was doing another movie at the time and we need you on
• 1:11:56
  these two days. And it has to be these two days.
• 1:11:58
  And there happened to be two days I was going to have off
• 1:12:00
  from it. Was Mcmartin the Mcmartin Trump
• 1:12:03
  thing? We filmed my entire part in two
• 1:12:05
  days. Wow, really?
• 1:12:06
  And I had five lines. Now you'll notice that the part
• 1:12:10
  was way bigger than that. And Nick Pledge, he's a
• 1:12:13
  wonderful friend of mine and he wrote it with Marty, of course,
• 1:12:16
  one of the great screenwriters and a great rock on tour.
• 1:12:19
  And we're at dinner once he goes.
• 1:12:20
  I always say this to my friend, Never happier to take credit to
• 1:12:24
  for another guy's writing, another guy's improvisation.
• 1:12:28
  Then Jimmy Woods and Casino. He said, you know, and it was
• 1:12:31
  like it was funny because it wasn't meant to be that I was
• 1:12:34
  saying all this stuff. What happened was there's a
• 1:12:37
  scene in Casino where at their wedding, Bob catches Sharon on a
• 1:12:42
  pay phone. And he walks up and he grabs it
• 1:12:45
  and he listens and it's empty. And he hangs it up and he says
• 1:12:48
  it was him, right? He's talking to him.
• 1:12:50
  Is that what it was? You know, it's him.
• 1:12:52
  And it's very ominous. And I, you know, on my end and I
• 1:12:57
  said to Marty, hey, what would you think if I were like a
• 1:12:59
  little Speedo and like a silk robe and I'm with a showgirl and
• 1:13:02
  she's, you know, doing a little something and she's topless or
• 1:13:05
  doing coke. And he said, look, this isn't a
• 1:13:08
  porno. I said, I know, but but you
• 1:13:11
  know, I mean, Lester, you know, So what do you be doing?
• 1:13:14
  Well, he said it is kind of captivating to imagine that he's
• 1:13:17
  doing all this horrible stuff while he's talking to her.
• 1:13:20
  He said, he said to the AD, said get Sharon on the phone.
• 1:13:23
  Sharon was like on her day off. And he said, I want to do an
• 1:13:26
  improv with Jimmy. We did 5 reels of film.
• 1:13:28
  We did all this improv. Yeah.
• 1:13:29
  And I did all that, you know, can you see me?
• 1:13:32
  Are you there for me? You know, this sleazy Barry
• 1:13:35
  White, the white Barry White. Yeah.
• 1:13:37
  So sleazeball. And it was so, I mean, honest to
• 1:13:40
  God, we were, we were, we had I had more fun making that movie.
• 1:13:43
  It was a comedy character. So we did it.
• 1:13:45
  And I thought I didn't ever going to use this.
• 1:13:47
  A year or two later, Thelma Schoenmacher, who's his great
• 1:13:51
  editor, Marty Scorsese's great editor, she was awarded the
• 1:13:55
  Lifetime Achievement Award for editing at the Hollywood Film
• 1:13:58
  Festival. And she asked if I would present
• 1:14:01
  her with the award. Very nice.
• 1:14:03
  That's what I said. I mean, why wouldn't it be, you
• 1:14:06
  know, And she talked about the great scene with Joe Pesci and
• 1:14:09
  and Goodfellas where, you know, you, you you think I'm funny.
• 1:14:12
  You know, the whole thing. You think I'm funny.
• 1:14:15
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:14:16
  So anyway, she had me do it. And I was like, I'm honored.
• 1:14:18
  I'm dazzled. I'm not sure why I'm here.
• 1:14:20
  But thank you so much for everything you do.
• 1:14:22
  Because even if I'm not the guy who should be giving you this
• 1:14:25
  reward, I'm the guy should be because I so admire what you do.
• 1:14:28
  And she said, well, I'm going to answer why I asked your mum to
• 1:14:31
  do this. And she told a story about how
• 1:14:33
  we did the improvisation. And she said Marty and I were
• 1:14:37
  trying to figure out the music that would go over her sneaking
• 1:14:41
  off to the cloakroom to get on the pay phone to call me right
• 1:14:47
  after marrying Bob and him finding it.
• 1:14:49
  And she said we just couldn't come up with music.
• 1:14:51
  And she said, hey, instead of music, you remember that improv
• 1:14:54
  that Jimmy and Sharon did with the showgirl and the cocaine and
• 1:14:58
  all that stuff, you know? And he said, yeah, he said,
• 1:15:01
  let's use that as the voice over, and then we'll go right
• 1:15:04
  into Jimmy still talking. And then as he grabs it, I think
• 1:15:07
  there was one where Jimmy stopped and we'll cut there.
• 1:15:10
  And he's a great idea. And that's why I got all that
• 1:15:13
  dialogue in because. Thelma.
• 1:15:15
  Scoot Marker. Thank you.
• 1:15:16
  Thelma was, you know, great enough to have seen its
• 1:15:20
  potential. The other.
• 1:15:21
  And I have to give her the the little girl.
• 1:15:23
  Oh, my God. I always can't forget her name.
• 1:15:25
  She played Sharon's daughter. Yeah, we, we worked up in the
• 1:15:29
  improvisation, us bickering with each other and the image of
• 1:15:33
  master bickering with this. And I mean, there were takes.
• 1:15:38
  There was one take. I'm chasing her on the car.
• 1:15:40
  I literally said to her, I said, you know, you have that little
• 1:15:42
  purse that you have and you're in your little cowgirl outfit.
• 1:15:45
  You know what you're talking. Could you maybe just kind of
• 1:15:48
  swing the purse and hit me? You know, she said in the nuts.
• 1:15:51
  And I went and Marty went anyway.
• 1:15:55
  It was like there were takes, Marty said.
• 1:15:58
  Honestly, if I put in the stuff that has me literally on the
• 1:16:02
  ground laughing, the movie would stop.
• 1:16:04
  It was just we, it got so ridiculous.
• 1:16:07
  But but then we toned it back and got the right things.
• 1:16:10
  And, and that's why he's such a brilliant director, you know?
• 1:16:15
  And, and I got to give Joe Pesci credit.
• 1:16:17
  Joe Pesci and her playing golf once we pull into the same
• 1:16:19
  Country Club. And he said, so here you're
• 1:16:20
  doing that, You're doing casino. And I said, yeah, I'm going to
• 1:16:23
  be doing just two days. He said, yeah, have you got to
• 1:16:26
  walk yet? I said, Joe, what?
• 1:16:28
  I'm terrible at Joe Pesci. I'm terrible at invitations.
• 1:16:31
  But I said I got to walk. What are you?
• 1:16:33
  What are you like an actor? He goes, yeah, believe it or
• 1:16:34
  not, I actually think about this.
• 1:16:36
  I said, OK, He said, yeah, you should walk like maybe like like
• 1:16:40
  a pimp, you know, do like a pimp roll, you know, all these guys
• 1:16:43
  on Broadway and, you know, walking down to this pimp roll.
• 1:16:46
  So when I walked out, I mentioned it to Smarty.
• 1:16:49
  So we did the scene at the booth and then I go to walk out and I
• 1:16:53
  say, Marty, here's me telling Marty just goes in.
• 1:16:56
  I said, if you follow me, could you stay on me until I go out
• 1:16:58
  the door and go sure. He does it.
• 1:17:00
  And I do the pimp roll on the way out.
• 1:17:02
  I turn back. He's so he's like he said,
• 1:17:06
  anytime you want to direct me, just let me know.
• 1:17:08
  I go, OK. But I just because Joe suggested
• 1:17:11
  he goes. No, it's Gray, yellow.
• 1:17:12
  And he kept it in And people always say to me that walk, it's
• 1:17:18
  great. It's all Joe Pesci.
• 1:17:19
  You know, I'm telling you if other actors give you an idea,
• 1:17:22
  you know, don't be afraid to go with it because, you know, I
• 1:17:24
  mean, you know, Joe Pesci is just probably the greatest
• 1:17:28
  natural actor you'd ever meet. I mean, they're actors have all
• 1:17:31
  different skills when it comes to being pure.
• 1:17:34
  Joe has just, people say, well, that's Joe Pesci.
• 1:17:36
  I mean, he's the sweetest. I just love Joe.
• 1:17:40
  It's hard to believe how authentic he is.
• 1:17:43
  He's just, he's the, he's the guy, man.
• 1:17:45
  He's the guy. He comes up with a brilliant
• 1:17:47
  idea. You know, he's a singer and A
• 1:17:49
  and a, and a guitar player. We were once at Penny Marshall's
• 1:17:52
  house and it was like Christmas Eve and she would invite over
• 1:17:54
  all the strays. Like I didn't have a girlfriend.
• 1:17:56
  He didn't have the time. So Joe's there and I'm there,
• 1:17:59
  and we're all Joe Pesci and I sit next to you playing the
• 1:18:02
  guitar and we're all singing, you know, Silent Night together.
• 1:18:05
  Somebody had a video. Joe Pesci and Jimmy was yeah,
• 1:18:08
  yeah, two guys say silent. So what an image?
• 1:18:17
  So bring it back to the current Jimmy, you've been doing a
• 1:18:20
  number of music projects recently.
• 1:18:22
  Yes. I'd love to know more about
• 1:18:24
  that, it sounds absolutely intriguing.
• 1:18:26
  Well, here's what happened. I met, I've told the story quite
• 1:18:29
  a bit, and there's the actual YouTube video on it.
• 1:18:30
  So I'll give you the short version, which is that we were
• 1:18:33
  at my favorite restaurant, a fellow named Dantana, a really
• 1:18:35
  great guy. He owned the restaurant.
• 1:18:37
  We were golf buddy and everybody in Hollywood goes out, you know,
• 1:18:41
  late at night or you know, they have like Spanish hours.
• 1:18:43
  They want to be seen. We go there at like 5:00 and you
• 1:18:46
  know, the minute it opens, boom, Sir and I go there and we sit in
• 1:18:49
  the number one booth because we're the only ones there.
• 1:18:51
  We're there one night and there's the two most least
• 1:18:53
  likely people, this tattooed blonde bombshell and this guy
• 1:18:58
  with a sunglasses, tattooed leather jacket.
• 1:19:01
  And I go, man, these guys are they were so appealing as
• 1:19:05
  characters or like I got to make a movie about these two.
• 1:19:08
  And all of a sudden she goes and I look, I'm sure sorry.
• 1:19:11
  And then he gets up and comes over and they come on.
• 1:19:13
  They go, hey, sorry, we didn't need be staring.
• 1:19:15
  I said we were staring too. And he said, I'm just such a fan
• 1:19:17
  of yours. I love Videodrome, but I said
• 1:19:19
  I'm Jimmy Woods. He goes, I'm Shooter Jennings,
• 1:19:21
  my wife missing my my Sir. And I said, oh, Jennings.
• 1:19:24
  I said we were wondering movies and music, I guess music because
• 1:19:27
  like Jennings, that's a you know, there's a country.
• 1:19:29
  He said, yeah, he's he's my dad, Waylon Jennings and I went wow.
• 1:19:33
  Oh, so we become buddies and, you know, it's about everything.
• 1:19:37
  We we shared a love of old LA and and you know, John Fante
• 1:19:41
  and, you know, Charles Bukowski, the poet.
• 1:19:45
  You know, we, we liked all that vintage Hollywood and Sarah is a
• 1:19:48
  fanatic about, as is Missy Misty about true crime and the Manson
• 1:19:53
  and all that stuff. So we had a lot that we talked
• 1:19:55
  about. And it's always funny when
• 1:19:56
  people get together, use music on movies and we're not talking
• 1:19:58
  about any of it. And one night I snagged my
• 1:20:01
  sweater of cashmere sweater. And I saw, damn it, snagged my
• 1:20:05
  sweater and oh, shoot at this. Well, how'd you do that?
• 1:20:06
  And I said, you know my guitar. I got a callus.
• 1:20:08
  And he said, oh, do you play the guitar?
• 1:20:10
  And I said, here's one lesson I learned.
• 1:20:12
  Never tell a professional musician play an instrument when
• 1:20:16
  what you really do is you chunk 3 chords.
• 1:20:18
  If you're lucky, you're on the campfire.
• 1:20:20
  Yeah. No, I don't play the guitar.
• 1:20:23
  No. Oh, 'cause it's too bad, he
• 1:20:24
  said. Did you ever think of writing
• 1:20:25
  lyrics? And my entire life changed.
• 1:20:28
  And if you listen to my first album, which was called Hear the
• 1:20:30
  Thunder Crack, I do a little one minute spoken intro where I talk
• 1:20:34
  about something that that F Scott Fitzgerald said that there
• 1:20:37
  are no second acts in American lives.
• 1:20:39
  But in fact, music became the second act in in my life.
• 1:20:43
  So we did hear the Thunder Crack and we actually ended up all the
• 1:20:46
  way up to #7 on the country music chart, which was
• 1:20:49
  unimaginable. I'm a lyricist and Shooter did
• 1:20:52
  all the music and sang it. And it was kind of an
• 1:20:54
  autobiographical album, although I didn't realize that.
• 1:20:57
  And the prime song that appealed everybody's called the Road
• 1:20:59
  Back. So, you know, this is during
• 1:21:02
  COVID when he had time to write. But now he's he's a producer
• 1:21:05
  more and he loves producing. He doesn't want to be on the
• 1:21:07
  road anymore. So he took over Sunset Sound and
• 1:21:09
  he has, you know, the famous Studio 3 where, you know, they
• 1:21:12
  made Purple Rain and everything. So I he said, you know, I want
• 1:21:17
  to write more songs for you. But man, it took a couple of
• 1:21:19
  years to do the first album because he was so busy.
• 1:21:21
  He was on the road with Brandy. Carlisle won the Grammy, but it
• 1:21:24
  was still, you know, a lot of work.
• 1:21:26
  And I said, do you have anybody else?
• 1:21:27
  Since we made money, I formed my own label so that we wouldn't.
• 1:21:30
  It was like being, I learned this lesson as an actor, be in
• 1:21:33
  control of everything you do. And then if it fails, OK, it's
• 1:21:36
  my failure. And if it succeeds, I'm not
• 1:21:39
  going to be giving it all to the studio or to the label.
• 1:21:41
  I have my own label and all this stuff, and I pay for it myself,
• 1:21:44
  pay the musician. And I said, do you have any
• 1:21:46
  young singers, man or woman, I don't care.
• 1:21:49
  You know, who are also songwriters or composers?
• 1:21:53
  I'll write the lyrics, all the lyrics.
• 1:21:55
  And he said no, He said, But I have a guy named Bob Wayne who
• 1:21:58
  does this kind of trucker music. But he said he's actually a
• 1:22:01
  musical genius and really creative, but he's gotten pegged
• 1:22:04
  because that's his audience. And when he goes on the road,
• 1:22:07
  that's how these guys make their money, man.
• 1:22:08
  They can't make a living because the studio takes everything.
• 1:22:11
  The labels take everything. I said, OK, great, put us
• 1:22:14
  together. He said, by the way, we want to
• 1:22:16
  write a Western. I said, OK, well, now
• 1:22:19
  automatically I'm worried. And he said, yeah, Oh, and by
• 1:22:22
  the way, it's kind of like a neo noir we were thinking of doing.
• 1:22:25
  I said, OK, Now, as it turned out, Chuck Rovin and I were
• 1:22:29
  having dinner after Oppenheimer. He said, I got a great project
• 1:22:33
  about the Daltons. And it was the whole thing about
• 1:22:34
  the Dalton gang, very notorious gang.
• 1:22:37
  And one of them went on this famous robbery where they all
• 1:22:41
  got killed. But he survived being shot 26th
• 1:22:44
  time, believe it or not, and his lover, who was also an outlaw,
• 1:22:48
  left him and never to be seen again.
• 1:22:51
  I started writing some lyrics for that in my mind of a song
• 1:22:55
  called No Tomorrow Desperado, and I gave it to Bob and he
• 1:23:00
  wrote the music and he sang it and it was fantastic.
• 1:23:05
  We just went insane. We've written like 20 some songs
• 1:23:08
  now since then. We ended up making Tombstone
• 1:23:11
  Opera. I'm proud to say that it it made
• 1:23:14
  the top 20. But we have a big promotional
• 1:23:18
  thing we're doing with micro that should be on YouTube
• 1:23:20
  anytime now. And he talked a lot about the
• 1:23:23
  album. And you have to remember,
• 1:23:24
  Shooter said, look, I don't want to do publicity.
• 1:23:27
  I'm not going to do advertising. I just want people to get the
• 1:23:29
  music. It's an authentic.
• 1:23:31
  We don't use the auto tune. We don't use AI.
• 1:23:34
  It's musicians making music and a great lyricist.
• 1:23:37
  As we wrote, the song started to tell a story and it became
• 1:23:40
  literally out of nowhere should have said, what do you want to
• 1:23:42
  call the album? And I out of nowhere, I said
• 1:23:44
  Tombstone Opera. And he said, I love that title.
• 1:23:47
  And it's not about the city of Tombstone and it's not an opera,
• 1:23:50
  but it has that structure. And if you've heard it yet, I
• 1:23:53
  mean, I'm so proud of it. And we're going into the studio
• 1:23:55
  in a couple of weeks to do the next one called The Lonesome
• 1:23:58
  Incredible. Jimmy, I have heard it.
• 1:24:00
  I I've been listening to it all week.
• 1:24:01
  Love it. Oh, thank you, isn't it?
• 1:24:03
  I mean, don't you love that Beyond the door, which which Bob
• 1:24:07
  does? I mean, the music in that is so
• 1:24:09
  sensational. That was the last song I wrote.
• 1:24:12
  And I said to Bob we needed a big moment where they burned
• 1:24:15
  down the ranch and maybe they kill her.
• 1:24:17
  And and I'm so proud of how sophisticated it is.
• 1:24:21
  You know, they don't make concept albums anymore, but I
• 1:24:23
  try. I'm, we're trying to set a model
• 1:24:27
  for young musicians to do so. You know, I pay out of my pocket
• 1:24:30
  now and we're catching up. We're still in the red.
• 1:24:33
  But if you can do this where you can create your own label, you
• 1:24:36
  can hire your own musicians, you can mix it yourself and engineer
• 1:24:39
  it yourself and then go to a distributor.
• 1:24:42
  Like we use Selective Hits and you know, they're great.
• 1:24:44
  They take 10 or 15 or whatever it is percent, and then
• 1:24:47
  everything else is yours. You don't pay for the pressings
• 1:24:49
  and so on. You sell vinyl, you sell CDs,
• 1:24:52
  and you work with the streamers and with Amazon and all of them.
• 1:24:54
  If you can make enough of a living to pay the rent to feed
• 1:24:57
  yourself and keep making music, man, you're on your way.
• 1:25:01
  And I'd love that to be the model for the future.
• 1:25:03
  Incredible. Thank you.
• 1:25:05
  And thank you for your kind words about it.
• 1:25:07
  Thank you. My pleasure and it reminded me.
• 1:25:10
  I don't know if it was just in spirit.
• 1:25:11
  I don't know whether you were familiar with the album.
• 1:25:14
  Elton John's Tumbleweed Connection, early 70s.
• 1:25:17
  Of course, of course I know Bernie Talpin very well.
• 1:25:20
  And here's the thing, Bernie Talpin did what I'm doing in in
• 1:25:24
  my I'm producing. And every word that you will
• 1:25:26
  ever hear on any of my albums, every single word I wrote, every
• 1:25:29
  bit of music was either composed by Shooter or Bob in the in the
• 1:25:33
  case of these two albums and maybe another artist in the
• 1:25:35
  future, although I love working with Bob and shit, we're a great
• 1:25:38
  triumph and all the art directions done by Sir my wife,
• 1:25:40
  because she's a great photographer.
• 1:25:42
  She did that magnificent cover of tomb sun opera and and and
• 1:25:45
  the first one as well for the Thunder crack.
• 1:25:47
  I I think Nebraska, all of Paul Simon, his music, they they tell
• 1:25:54
  story. These are storytellers.
• 1:25:55
  And of course the king himself, Dylan.
• 1:26:00
  There's a concept and a story. Look, I, I am by heart and
• 1:26:05
  nature a storyteller. You know, I have on
• 1:26:08
  jameswoods.com, I have, I do these emails every week, you
• 1:26:11
  know, these newsletters and I tell these stories about stuff
• 1:26:14
  from my, my childhood and stuff, No politics, no spam, no
• 1:26:17
  advertising. I do it for free.
• 1:26:20
  You, you subscribe, that's it. You get the newsletter.
• 1:26:22
  And, you know, if you want to buy some T-shirts just for fun,
• 1:26:24
  they're there. But you don't have to just do it
• 1:26:26
  because sometimes people like this kind of stuff.
• 1:26:29
  And I love telling stories and I love telling stories through
• 1:26:32
  music. So you know, you know, you can
• 1:26:34
  do, you know the immortal words of John Lennon, You know, you
• 1:26:37
  make sure it rhymes, you put a backbeat to it and it's
• 1:26:40
  rock'n'roll. And I make the music exactly the
• 1:26:43
  way I tried to make the movies, but I didn't have as much
• 1:26:45
  control over the movies. But I make the the art exactly
• 1:26:49
  what I want. And Shooter, you know, he does
• 1:26:51
  when we talk about production, I do a lot of the business part
• 1:26:54
  and he does a lot of, but he listens to me.
• 1:26:56
  He's never not using a piece of my advice musically.
• 1:26:59
  And it'll be little things like, you know, when he said, you
• 1:27:02
  know, diamonds fall from the sky in the middle of the fires.
• 1:27:06
  And it was meant to be the Pleiades meteor shower because
• 1:27:09
  it mentioned in time for the gun as well.
• 1:27:11
  So what that tells you? What's a timestamp that tells
• 1:27:13
  you when the fires are going? He's strapping on the gun and
• 1:27:16
  he's going to take his revenge. But you got to kind of figure
• 1:27:19
  that out. I said the shooter, can you get
• 1:27:22
  on the piano? And and he said, OK, get on the
• 1:27:24
  board. And also, I'm sitting on the
• 1:27:25
  board and shooter's playing and I'm directing him and I'm
• 1:27:29
  thinking, this has got to be a moment.
• 1:27:31
  Luckily, Sir, I got a picture of it.
• 1:27:33
  I said, can it like diamonds? Like, I can't do the music part,
• 1:27:37
  but tinkling almost, you know, cascading from the sky.
• 1:27:40
  And of course, he did it. And he did it on the very piano
• 1:27:44
  where Prince used to to record Purple Rain.
• 1:27:48
  And I thought, man, you've got to grab the great moments in
• 1:27:50
  life. They are a few far between, but
• 1:27:52
  when they happen, they are there.
• 1:27:54
  They're etched in your heart forever.
• 1:27:56
  And that's why, you know the song I wrote dedicated to my
• 1:27:59
  wife, Whispers from the Heart. Those whispers from the heart,
• 1:28:02
  they're they're what we hear in a crowded room.
• 1:28:05
  You know, they're what we hear in a crowded room.
• 1:28:07
  You know those whispers from the heart?
• 1:28:08
  They're the ones. Beautiful Jimmy, I I could sit
• 1:28:11
  here and talk to you all day and it's been an absolute joy.
• 1:28:15
  Thank you. I really, really appreciate it.
• 1:28:17
  Luke, I really appreciate your kind words.
• 1:28:20
  You know, I'm, I'm enjoying going back and visiting that
• 1:28:23
  career and celebrating this career.
• 1:28:25
  And, you know, they're all mixed, mixed in together.
• 1:28:28
  You know these guys, Billy Bob Thornton, you know Bruce Willis,
• 1:28:31
  God bless him, you know Jeff Bridges, you know every, we're
• 1:28:35
  all like, you know, we all strum around and try to do our thing.
• 1:28:38
  They're all more talented than I am in music.
• 1:28:40
  Believe me. Don't ever ask me to face Shark
• 1:28:42
  as I can't, but I sit there and have fun.
• 1:28:44
  Yeah, well, I mean the the music is incredible, Jimmy and I wish
• 1:28:47
  you thank you more success for the the next project as well.
• 1:28:50
  Can't wait to hear it. Thank.
• 1:28:51
  You so much. Thanks for coming along.
• 1:28:53
  Much appreciate that. You bet.
• 1:29:02
  A huge thanks to Jimmy Woods for his time and coming on the show.
• 1:29:05
  What a career, what a guy. Be sure to check out his music
• 1:29:08
  whenever you can. His latest is called Tombstone
• 1:29:10
  Opera and you can stream that wherever you stream music.
• 1:29:13
  As for all the right movies, our latest podcast on classic and
• 1:29:16
  hit films was on The Maltese Falcon.
• 1:29:18
  That came out last week, so go back and listen if you haven't
• 1:29:21
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• 1:29:23
  later this week when John, Westie and Matt are deep diving
• 1:29:26
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• 1:29:28
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• 1:29:31
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• 1:29:42
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• 1:29:46
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• 1:30:33
  Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Come back later in the week for
• 1:30:35
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• 1:30:54
  Yeah.