Bad Dates with Jameela Jamil - Speed Dates: Al Pacino To My Chris O’Donnell (w/ Arturo Castro)

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

On this Speed Dates bonus episode, host Joel Kim Booster welcomes Arturo Castro to chat about his new podcast Greatest Escapes, the depiction of mentor/mentee love that inspired him to become an actor, and how intense situations can show you whole new sides to love about your partner. If you’ve had a bad date you’d like to tell us about, our number is 984-265-3283, and our email is [e-mail], we can’t wait to hear all about it! Subscribe to our YouTube Channel for video clips.Merch available at SiriusXMStore.com/BadDates. Joel Kim Booster: Psychosexual, Fire Island, Loot Season 2Arturo Castro: New podcast Greatest Escapes Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to ad-free new episodes.

Bad Dates. Speed Dates. Hello and welcome to another episode of Bad Dates Speed Dates edition. I'm your host Joel Kim Booster and Speed Dates is when Bad Dates slows down a little bit and gives you a little bit of a taste of a different kind of podcast. In between our full podcast, it's when I sit down with one on one with a very funny individual and boy, oh boy, do I have a real good guest today. He is a friend. He's a very funny actor, comedian, and now podcaster on top of

everything else. He's spitted a bunch of plates. You know him from Broad City, Narcos and Roadhouse. Give it up for Arturo Castro. You can't hear it, but the people at home are losing their minds. Dude, they are shitting themselves. Guatemala, as a nation, is stopping all traffic right now. All traffic. How are you doing, buddy? I'm good, man.

I'm in Budapest. It's really cold. It's pretty late. But I'm shooting this movie out here, and I'm doing great. How are you doing, man? It's so good that I'm just sit down I know I don't think we've ever talked with without 17 people around us Exactly at like some terrible industry event

It is so great to see you. You can't tell us what you're shooting. But can you tell us genre wise? Are you shooting an action thriller a comedy a wrong. I can tell you what I'm shooting. Oh, great. Yeah, yeah. I mean, the people from Apple will definitely kidnap my family after I tell you, but whatever. I'll tell you anyway. So it's called Matchbox. It's a live action story based around Matchbox cars.

Oh my God. Yeah, dude, it's crazy. They're getting the Barbie treatment. Yeah, it's the second movie after the next one after Barbie. So it's this incredible dude. We got Tiana Parrish. We got Sam Richardson, who is incredibly funny. Jessica Biel and John Cena, and they are sunshine.

They're just sunshine in a bottle. Now, which card do you play? No, it's not an animation. So we write some of them, maybe, maybe not. I can't tell you. But, you know, we're humans that have something to do with Matchbox cars. But it's like a childhood dream come true. I can't wait.

That sounds really fun. And I am so sold. Barbie really proved that it can be done, and it can be done well, and it can be done in a really super fun and original way. So congrats on that. I can't wait to proved that it can be done and it can be done well and it can be done in a really super fun and original way. So congrats on that. I can't wait to see that. I know. Let's talk a little bit before we jump into the questions though about I want to hear about this podcast.

What is this podcast that you're coming out with? You should check it out. It's called Greatest Escapes and it comes out every Tuesday. And basically I just talked to a guest like we're talking now, a very funny person, which we should have you on, which I'm gonna tell Film Nation that they really fucked up because they didn't have you on. But what? And then we just, I just tell them a story about the greatest escapes in history, right?

So be it a jailbreak or this woman that escaped two shipwrecks, one of them being the Titanic, we have music and comedy and, you know, it mixes two things that I really like, like true crime type of stuff with comedy, but I find sometimes when it's true crime and there's like victims involved, I find it hard to laugh, you know?

So I picked a subject that's more about sort of the ingenuity of people and an exciting, well, they won't they, but with an escape. I don't know if this fits into the purview, but have you heard of a man named Tsutomu Yamagachi in terms of escapes? I have not, tell me. He is, just as this is an elevator pitch, we don't have to go into the full story

because maybe we'll talk about it when I come on. But he was in Hiroshima when the bomb was dropped, survived Hiroshima. I know who he's Hiroshima, and then took a train home to recover from the burns that he had all over his body from Hiroshima. And where did he live? Nagasaki. And boy did he survive a second time.

Talk about some greatest escape shit. This man survived both atomic bombs. That is insane. And he lived until he was like in his 80s or 90s. Also, I can imagine the first person that you tell that to, like, would never believe you. Like a big part of his life was trying to convince people that it actually happened.

Well, my question is, is this man the luckiest man alive or the unluckiest man alive? Or the unluckiest man alive. Like, karmically, it does beg the question, like, was he a really, really good person who did one bad thing at the end? Or was he a really bad person who did one really good thing at the end?

In particular, I'm of the idea kind of that the good do that die young, or I guess karmically, the people that have learned what they have to learn. Usually, you know, we have some great older people, but like, in one among culture, a lot of it, we've lost a lot of people young, right? And they see the people around me that I've lost that were young, all were very, man, they just had this outlook on life that was so much more advanced than mine. They were, they died with no enemies. They went through life. I'm sure, you know, everybody dies at any given age, but yeah, I wonder, that begs the question, right?

Like, is it more to suffer? Is it worse to suffer for 80 years knowing what you know, or worse to just go with everybody else that you love? Yeah. Well, you heard it here first, guys. Arturo Castro says that there are no good old people. If you were good, you should have died young. So I'm a terrible person, is what I'm saying, at nearly 40.

I love it, I love it. Well, okay, so the topic of this podcast is not, believe it or not, whether or not somebody deserves to die young or not. It is actually about love. And Arturo, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, you are in a relationship now. You are very much married, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, you are in a relationship now, you are very much married, I believe, right?

No, no, no, no, no, no, we're three years. Still living in sin. Yes, we're still living in sin. I haven't told my, this is how my parents find out. This is how everybody finds out that I am going to hell, as I've stated as a terrible person. How long have you guys been together? Three years, we just celebrated three years.

We've been living together for two years. And what, you know. Wow. Are you in a relationship, may I ask? I am, I'm engaged. Oh, no way, congratulations. So you know, something that I found later in life really speaks to a successful relationship

is if you can travel well together. And among the things that. Say that. Right, like among the things that I love about her, we make each other laugh, et cetera, et cetera. But when it should get stressful on a trip, we put it on the stressful thing and not on each other. And it might be one of the first times

that it's happened for me. And that's when I was like, oh, this is a girl, this is the person I wanna spend time with. Wow, that is such a good way of putting it. It's like not making the travel problem your partner's problem, but just simply addressing the problem. Which is hard to do in a shitty situation of travel. But yeah's problem, but just simply do it

But yeah, oh I'm so happy for you when so yeah No I I completely agree and like this this was an early test of the relationship because you know I travel constantly for work and so I'm a very particular traveler and then to have Somebody else along for that like it can be really dicey. What do you do with like eye masks and? No, no, no. I mean, I guess for me it's just like security.

I'm like ready to go. I know where every gate is. I know I have a checklist of like everything I need to get done before the flight. And my partner is a little more loosey goosey about it. And we've had to kind of come find a compromise. But I think we do that thing that you just talked about, which is I think we're really good about not making any problem that pops up the other person's problem.

Which I think is such a wise thing. Dude, the last thing I'll say about travel is I come from a Latin household, right? So my mother would have us in the airport six hours, like five hours before that. I'm telling you, there is no way a Latin household, right? So my mother would have us in the airport six hours, like five hours before that. I'm telling you, like there is no way a Latin mother would ever miss a flight because they're expensive. Dude, I get panic, like total anxiety if I'm not there like three hours before. And some people are just like really great at being like, oh, I just run out of bed, grab my bag and go out. And that just like gives me panic attacks. You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm a, this might scare you.

I'm a 30 minutes before boarding kind of guy. Yeah, I just, that's all I need. I'm TSA pre-check, I'm clear, you know. It's easy breezy for me. I just don't like, I could never be the person that shows up. I am so chronically stressed about being late, but if I'm two hours early to the airport,

I will fling myself on the tarmac Something that I ask every guest that comes on speed dates though is you know, you you've been in love now for three years What is something? What is your favorite example of love that you've been in love now for three years. What is something, what is your favorite example of love that you have seen in the media? It can be um a song, it can be a couple from a television show or a movie, it can be really it's a freeform question, but what is something that you love from media that is about love? It's a movie called Scent of a Woman. And it's sort of like one thinks when one thinks of romantic love, because that's not what it is, right?

And the epic scene of the tango between Al Pacino and this girl at a restaurant is so touching and moving. And I didn't know people could do that. Like, you know, play that intensely. A role, you know, really inspired me to become an actor. But the love that they form, and it might lead back to my own sort of, like, sort of daddy issues, I guess,

but between a younger man and a mentor that's troubled and that is sort of a cold to him at first, and then they develop a relationship, I found it really impactful in my life when I watched it. You know, that sort of grudging love between mentor and protege. And then at the end of the day, I don't know if you remember the movie, but like he comes and stands up for him when they're going to kick him out of school. And that speech is so moving.

And you just, you know, I know it's not sort of the notebook, etc. But no, yeah, that that type of love that is quiet and it's steady and is shows up. God, it really moves me, you know, and platonic too. I mean, platonic love is so important. And I do think especially for straight men, there aren't a lot of examples of it, you know, like it's not like something that I think a lot of people find creatively interesting is to explore those kinds of relationships between straight men. Like there's always some weird thing that complicates it. It's a love triangle. It's a, you know, their rivals or something like that. But you just have like a relationship between two men that is not sexual, that it's not romantic, that's not,

you know, they're not competing over a woman, but is that mentor mentee relationship, is not something that you see, that at least not done well frequently on screen. That's one of the last examples that I saw. And it was really moving and sort of inspirational for me to then, when I did Narcos, I had a bunch of sort of Al Pacino characters to my Chris O'Donnell, you know?

And I learned to recognize what that was of like, oh, there's this person that's sort of teaching me the ropes with this love that is a love that's not really talked about or seen in movies that much, but is really sort of touching to the core of me, you know? Yeah, and I love it. And I know, listen, listener, I know that there are people stuck in traffic right now

screaming at their phones and their Apple Play saying, well, what about this movie with this relationship that's exactly as you described? I don't care. Okay, as far as I'm concerned today, talking to Arturo Castro, there is only one and it is Scent of a Woman. And Scent of a Woman.

And if you need to run, don't walk. That's such a classic and such a great movie that I do believe people have forgotten about. I know. There was also, you know, a bunch of stuff I grew up, you know, I grew up in a house of women, right? And so it was inspired, it was encouraged to be sensitive and to love things of all kinds, you know, particularly in a kind of macho country, like Guatemala is a patriarchal country.

I was lucky that I was in a household that was, dude, one time I watched Untamed Heart. I don't know if you remember that, but Untamed Heart is a crazy premise about Christian Slater having a baboon heart for some reason and in love with Marissa Tomei in Saves Her and whatever. I cried so hard for that movie for so many hours when I was like nine, then my dad literally took me around the block the next day of like, hey, what's going on in school? And I'm just like, nothing, it's really, I'm just like fucking heartbreaking that this baboon man is just in love with this woman. Marisa Tomei really got you good.

And then sometimes that's all it is. That's all it is. Well, that's amazing. And before I let you go Arturo on this mini episode, I ask the same question I ask every week to every guest, which is what is something that you have experienced or seen or listened to or just met this week that is making you believe in love? Not to bring it back sort of down to the beginning of the conversation, but the way that my the resilience and my girlfriend shown, through the fires, me not being there

and how she's opened up the house to people that needed to evacuate and how she's volunteered and how she, God, man, I just, I admire and love her generosity and how, oh God, she just hit the ground running for it. And I, you know, you love your partner in many different ways, you know? But after a while, you do get in a routine sometimes,

and you don't usually name the things that you love about them, because it doesn't come up in conversation with them. But God, discovering a new aspect that you love about them, holy moly, it really takes you, it knocks your socks off. It's unfortunate that it takes a disaster like the LA fires, but like, it's true you don't get to see your partner in crisis mode and thank God for that.

You know, like, thank God most people will never have to see their partner in that mode, but there is something comforting about seeing them in that mode and knowing that like, oh, OK, the next time this happens, something bad happens, you know, something, you know, unexpected or whatever. They got their shit together. they've got their shit down, and they will be able to handle it. And it's a rare thing to be able to experience your partner that way, and when they sort of step up

in that way, it's so, I mean, it's an extra layer that you've unlocked, you know? I don't know what you're like, are you, because for me, I think I have to fix everything, right? Like I think I've taken the role upon myself to like, if something goes bad, like I wanna do it, not that she doesn't contribute or want to contribute, but I've taken, I take pride in being the fix it guy, right?

And you can err on the side of sort of not seeing other people's agency when you're just sort of trying to fix everything around them all the time, right? And so, you know, it's one of those of like, oh God, yeah, I wasn't there. I knew she could handle, but like just, she's so much better and calmer than me at what happened that it's just, I'm like, oh, if I ever fucking fall, we have kids, I die for, like, you know, not to get, I'm like, she, if I ever fucking fall, we have kids, I die for like, you know, not to get it. I'm like, she's got it. She's knowing that she's got it. And even though you knew it in theory, it's just a really inspiring thing for this week for me.

Totally. That is beautiful. That is such a beautiful answer to this question. And boy, we get silly answers, we get real answers. And this was such a real answer and one that I hope, you know, people who are listening, you know, can both remind themselves how lucky they are that they may have not seen their partner in a crisis mode yet and also be on the lookout next time they are to see because I think that's the real test of compatibility. So tell us again, what is the name of your podcast? Where can people find it? Greatest Escapes, anywhere you find podcasts, every Tuesday it drops.

We have hilarious guests like Ed Helms and Joseph Gordon-Levitt is awesome. Billy Magnussen. We have just such great people. Well, no wonder you haven't had me on. You've had all these A-list stars. I'm a D-list podcaster at best. Of course, it all makes sense now, Arturo. I gotta say, what a fan I am of your show too, man.

Oh my god, your charisma shines through and I can't wait to have you on my show. Okay, well, cut this all out, everybody. Bleep everything we just said. Arturo, thank you so much for joining us on a speed date. This has been so great. Good luck out there in Budapest. I can't wait to see the movie and I can't wait to see what you have coming on next. Thank you so much for joining us on a speed date. This has been so great. Good luck out there in Budapest. I can't wait to see the movie and I can't wait to see what you have coming on next.

Thank you so much. Big kiss guys. Bye. Bad Dates is a production of Smartless Media created by Robert Cohen, executive producers are Richard Corson and Bernie Kaminsky. We will be back for more bad gates!