Fitzdog Radio - Eric Roth - Episode 1051

Episode Date: April 30, 2024

Oscar winning writer of Forrest Gump, A Star is Born, Dune and Killers of the Flower Moon somehow agreed to come on my podcast! Had a great long talk in his home and looked at where creativity comes from.   

Welcome to FitzDog Radio. What a show today. A guy who may be the most accomplished, I don't know, I've had Jed Apatow on, but this guy is up there in terms of the most accomplished But this guy is up there in terms of the most accomplished human beings I've had on the show. Eric Roth, who's been nominated for six Academy Awards as a writer. He's won one for Forrest Gump. And just an amazing, great guy. I talked to him a few weeks ago at his house, and we just kept going. We couldn't stop.

I had to stop because I didn't want to take his time i feel very self-conscious once i go past an hour with somebody who i know is uh you know got a lot going on i mean jesus christ when i've got uh you know jimmy pardo on we can we can cut a record we can go for a few hours neither one of us is going anywhere i'm'm kidding, Jimmy. I'm kidding. Stayed up late last night. We started binging the Jon Bon Jovi docuseries. I don't know if you've seen that, but it's like, you know, it reminds me of the old VH1 Behind the Music episodes where you get to see the band start out. He's 16.

And start out, he's 16. He's playing on fucking, on the Jersey Shore at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. And he's doing Bruce Springsteen covers. And who comes on stage and sings with him? The Juice, Bruce Springsteen. And was he The Juice? What did they call Bruce Spring springsteen maybe the juice anyway he comes up on just a crazy magical beginning where he's this good-looking guy who pulls together a bunch of uh

ragtag players and they become the biggest selling rock band in the world and he's very charming now he's 60 and he's walking you through his comeback and you get very caught up he's such a good guy and it is so much about what the rock and roll fantasy is and he's now 60 and he's doing vocal exercises and chiropractors and training and uh taking all kinds of homeopathic remedies to keep his voice strong because he had some voice issues and he's got the leather jacket and then they go on stage and it's a full arena and then they play the first song and then I go, oh yeah, these guys suck. Their music is garbage. Like, you know, Wanted Dead or Alive was okay. But the rest of it were just these fucking saccharine power ballads.

And, you know, good guitar playing. Richie Samborca, whatever his name is. He's a good guitar player. But not buying it. Never bought it. It didn't feel... I don't know if you'd call them a hair band, but definitely hair was heavily involved

in what made them successful. But God damn it, they got laid a lot. Holy shit. They went on the non-stop as the number one band in the world they were all good looking partying and i mean it was nuts i'd love to get the stories out of that guy howard stern's become very close to him i think they live near each other in the hamptons or something which which, you know, I don't know. I don't know what kind of stories you're going to get out of him in the Hamptons. He's probably, probably get their wives with them the whole time. I know Howard wants to pull him aside and go, tell me the, tell me about the five way in Japan.

Am I popping my peas? I think I noticed recently I'm popping my peas. So I'm going to turn up my, there it is. I'm turning up the mic and popping my peas. So I'm going to turn up my, there it is. I'm turning up the mic and pulling it away from my face a little bit. Um, what, and he just, you know, and he was just, he didn't stand for anything. He never taught, which I respect. I respect that he didn't talk about politics. I certainly don't. I'm a little tired of people speaking out. I don't know that they're always that informed. I don't know. I'm a little tired of people speaking out. I don't know that they're always that informed. I don't know. Should you use your platform?

If you're a diver, if you're a high altitude diver, should you use your platform? That was a stupid joke. But you know, it's like Israel and Palestine. I'm not going to sit here and talk about Israel and Palestine. What do I know? They're fucking, I, I've been reading about it since I read Leon Uris's book. Uh, what was it called? Um, whatever. I've been re I've read the New York times my entire life. They're so hyper-focused on the Middle East and Palestine and Israel. And the truth is, I don't know. I don't have a horse in the race.

And so it's like I can't hate one of those sides. I have enough hate for people in this country. I just hate local. That's country. I just hate local. That's my thing. Just hate local. Just look around. There's so much to hate. No matter what side you're on.

One side is overly sensitive and the other side is overreacting to it. That's what this country's become. There's no real platforms to talk about. Immigration, what? They're going to keep coming. There's nothing any politician's going to do to stop. You're going to stop. Do you know what the word stop means? As in zero? Are you fucking kidding me? Do you know what would happen? Whatever. I'm not going to get into it because I'm not talking politics, but there's no issues that are really that groundbreaking

abortion. All right. Are you a, are you a 16 year old girl? I don't know. It's the only ones that should be concerned about abortion. Everybody else is either hit menopause or they can afford to have somebody do it, or you're just, uh, you know, going to have to have a fucking baby and deal with it the way people have forever. I don't care. I think women should have a right to choose. But does it affect me? I don't know. I got a 20 year old daughter. Who knows if it comes up? We'll deal with it. But I'm not going to fucking obsess about it. My point is in a very existential way, what affects my day to day? And I don't mean in a selfish way. I mean, really in a harmonious community based way, what is affecting my day to day? You know what it is? Maybe I can be kind to a homeless guy. We had a homeless guy come up to

us. We were at dinner last night. I went to the Formosa Cafe with Laura Keitlinger and my friend Nick and Jason. And, you know, a homeless guy came to our table and somebody gave him some money. There you go. We did a little something. We were kind to each other. Laura picked up the check. That was nice. I don't know. What else is there in life? I kiss my wife for six seconds on the lips every day because it was a TikTok video that said it releases oxytocin and it makes you happier. So we kiss for six. That's all you can do in life. I bought my kids some sneakers the other day and he gave me a big hug. That's all. Well, what are you really doing day to day? And he gave me a big hug.

That's all. What are you really doing day to day? I'm taking cold plunges. I'm training for this 5K race that Bert and Tom are putting on. So I've been training. And then I go do a cold plunge every day at my friend Matt Malloy's house. And it's amazing how small my penis gets when I get out. I mean, it is, there is no flesh left in the shaft. There is, there, it just disappeared. It just contracts like a slinky. And there is just the crown sitting

on the balls. It looks like a, looks like a bald guy with hairy shoulders. There's no, uh, and, and yet I look, I got girth. I've been blessed. I don't know if it runs in the family, but, uh, people, people, women, when they see me aroused are aroused. Let's just say that. But when I get in that cold plunge, it's embarrassing. And my, and Matt's wife saw me, I was changing and she walked in. It was just like the Seinfeld episode with George. She came in and saw me and she went, oh, and she left. And I just didn't know what to say. Why does it matter? Why does penis size matter so much? Again, not an issue with me. But why do I have to say not an issue with me? Why is it

important for me to let you know that I have a decent size? I mean, are you going to have sex with me? Do you have a large enough penis where you need a large enough vagina that you need a big penis to fill it up? Because really that's what women are saying when they say they like a big cock. They're saying that they're a little wide. Speaking of which, my wife just walked in. Hey, baby. I was talking about my penis size. What do you mean no?

She said yes. You should be saying yes right now. My penis size. Anyway, so we're at the Formosa Cafe, which is this kind of cool restaurant, old school restaurant in Hollywood. And to get there from Venice is like, it's a fucking journey. You got to feed the,

feed the horses. It's a long way. And so we get there and we get this shitty table and we start talking. And the topic of Tom O'Neill comes up. We're talking about his book Chaos. And it turns out Laura's husband is a huge fan. He's read the book. He's obsessed with it. We're talking about Tom's life. I talk about how I've known him since Mulberry Street in Little Italy in New York when we were neighbors. And we're talking about his teeth. And I mean, we're having this long, in-depth conversation about Tom.

And I look over to the table, two tables away from us, and it's Tom O'Neill. Are you shitting me? It was so fucking weird. And so we called him over and he came over to the table and we talked to him for a little bit. But that's the kind of shit that really makes you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ

as your savior. And if you can't accept him into your life, then you, my friend, are not going to, you're going to die and go to hell. You're going to, your flesh is going to burn over and over again because my Lord Jesus Christ is a loving God. And if you don't believe in him, you will have pitchforks stuck up your ass until screaming is like smiling to you. You won't. Anyway. Um, that's it. That's it. We had a couple nice pieces of mail. Somebody, Mickey Jr. said, as driverless cars go, I just heard something about someone being pulled over for sleeping in a driverless car. I believe you're expected to take over if the car screws up. So a DUI would probably fall under the same kind of thing.

Hell, I'd love to be able to go out and have a few drinks, drive my car home. But I don't think we're at that point yet. Okay. Great feedback from the Neil Brennan episode. If you missed that one, go back and check it out. People loved it. Me and Neil have a lot in common and we always have a good vibe. Really nice talk.

He did bring up at some point that he was better looking than me and there was an onslaught of emails reassuring me that I was, this was from Felicia Baker Carr. Just listen to the latest pod. You are absolutely more attractive than Neil Brennan. And then there was one from Sam Johnson, maybe? And he said, I think Neil is great, but let's be honest here. The dude is not an attractive man.

You are much better looking. No contest. And then he hasn't overheard. He's at a great sushi restaurant by his job and he frequently lunches at, it's loud during lunch. And the other day I was eating my meal. There was an unplanned silence for just a moment. And I heard a girl say, quote, they make a lot of Taylor Swift cat collars.

Nothing before that, nothing after that. The roar of people immediately resumed. I think everyone else in the restaurant heard her say that too. Well, I mean, Taylor Swift, I just saw a clip of her talking Japanese. Talking Japanese? How about I talk English, speaking Japanese? What else?

There's a couple other overheards. We'll get to those next time because I want to get to this interview. Carpinteria, this weekend, May 3rd at the Alcazar Theater. That's up by Santa Barbara. Mamaroneck, New York, the Emmeline Theater, May 31st. Come out, tell your friends, bring a crowd. This is kind of a hometown show. It's a few towns over from where I grew up.

My family will be there. I need to sell this out. Let's pack it. Escondido, the Grand Comedy Club, June 7th and 8th. Pittsburgh, PA, the WDVE Festival, June 21st. T tickets for all dates at fitzdog.com all right so my guest as i mentioned has won an academy award he was nominated for the insider from munich the curious case of benjamin buttons a star is born dune um and then he he Ali. He did extremely loud and incredibly close and killers of the flower moon. I mean, Jesus, this guy's a power and he's still writing his ass off. I mean, uh, I, I got to know him through, I take walks with Judd Apatow and sometimes we stop at his house at the end of the walk. He lives along the way and way and um just the sweetest guy and so humble and such a decent human being uh this was a pleasure i hope you enjoy my talk with the great

eric roth all right my guest today and i'm sitting in his uh his lovely uh would be sunny living room if he had the blinds open eric roth are you a secretive person that's an interesting question i think part of me is yeah yeah i think part we could that's it gets a little personal i think i i do like to have certain secrets i i've tried to learn to be more open about things that i feel and everything else so yeah that's a great question am i secretive i do i don't know if it's a dark side but I do like kind of underbelly stuff and I used to I used to love to I don't do much of it anymore I used to love to go out in the middle of night and just drive and yeah the big like the you know this is like real dangerous I used to drive to

like Tower Records oh really I'm saying you know whatever I'd go to clubs but I'd go to clubs of this music I'd hang with kind of street danazans. Yeah, I was always a guy who pushed the envelope a little bit, getting maybe where I shouldn't belong. Well, I guess that's your job. I mean, you have to seek out the nerve endings. You have to try to find out where things. That's a great expression.

But I think that part of that would be, before we talk about my secrets, maybe the journalist in me a little bit. What, so, but if your secret. I think that part of that would be, before we talk about my secrets, maybe the journalist in me a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I like to sort of, I like to,

you know, if you say God is in the details, you got to go find the details, you know. Right. Right. Yeah. I think.

But being secretive means that you open yourself up probably more in your writing i mean is it sort of like you save the i don't think i'm i don't think i'm i i think that's true that i probably keep things that i for my writing but that i'm not doing that intentionally right i know it's not me saying i think i'll just you know i think it's like then you get into sort of the intimacies of relationships about where are you hiding and all that stuff, you know. Right. I think it's about, probably about insecurity. I mean, I always talk about how my mother really didn't give love very easily.

And like, so I think that's part of it, you know. I don't know where that fits in. It's like more Freudian maybe, but. Right. know where that fits in it's like more freudian maybe but uh right um you know it's like i always talk i talked about this before about why it's oh i'm now 79 last week i turned 79 congratulations oh yeah wonderful but anyway why why do i still need validation yeah like why do i still want to get oscar nominations and this stuff and that has i mean it's so simple it's like i want to call my mom and say see i had a good report card you know interesting yeah i think that i think and i seen i won't mention names maybe but there's three or four other people

that are really well known and famous you know directors and things that they're complete award whores well there's certain movies that are real Oscar bait, you know, like that Maestro this year was just trying so hard to give these, you know, offbeat characters. And it's distracting. You can feel it when they're trying that hard. I mean, I don't want to be rough on anybody else's movie. Oh, I will.

No, you can. Yeah. No, I'm pretty close with Bradley Cooper, so I have my feelings about some of the stuff. But I think sometimes, I'll say this, that I admire him because I think he sometimes punches above his weight. Oh, he's amazing. I love him. yeah we had such

a interesting relationship on stars born which was fraught half the time fraught half the time pretty incredibly creative um but we we I fight with everybody and we fought like fucking cats and dogs man I would run out of this I'd leave the what's working i said i can't take it i get in my car i get in my car and he'd come running and say are we kindergartners i said yeah but in the middle of the night we would literally write scenes and texts and they were wonderful wow so yeah he's a he's a really interesting guy yeah he is yeah yeah i'll tell you i'll tell you a story out of school so uh this woman here my doctor wife um we she has no no particular interest or doesn't need to be beholden to any entertainment rules you know i'm saying yeah rules of the road do you want me to get no no i love this dog um anyhow uh so I'd written Stars.

Warren Bradley invited us. Anne, I'm going to tell your story. Honey, okay, but then I have to tell the same story because you tell it very differently from me. Cubism, is that what we have in this house? We have different interpretations of reality. Yeah. No, it's not.

Anyway, get out. We're being filmed. No, but then you've got to tell the right story about how you threw me under the bus. It wasn't my fault because I told you what I was going to say. You cannot tell the story wrong. Okay. You have to cut this part out.

He won't. He's going to leave a while. I think that's a traveling violation there. Yeah, exactly. Anyhow, so Bradley invited me to the set, right? Yeah. And I said, great, thank you. And I had seen some dailies and stuff.

Somebody sent me. I guess he did. Anyhow, Ann and I were driving to go. I said, Ann, you want to come? She said, sure. So we were driving together, and she said, well, what do you think? What do you think? How's it going?

And I said, I don't know. I got some reservations about some stuff, right? And we get there, and Bradley comes out and, you know, meets Anne. He knows Anne, I guess, at that point. But anyhow, and he says, so he says to Anne, how's Eric thinks it's going? And Anne said, he's not that happy with it. And Bradley turns red, man. So you got a first-time director working his fucking ass off.

Yeah. You know that you don't want to get in anybody's creative wheelhouse. She didn't care because it's not her world. She's busy saving lives. And anyway, he said, get out of here. To her? No, both of us. Get out of here. No way.

So she felt I threw her under the bus but you know by not saying well that's what i told her on the car ride over yeah yeah anyhow so we went to the car and then he came over and said let's let's figure this out then he showed us all this footage he had shot and it's just great anyway but anyway i was like he got so high oh that's great we started talking before we uh before we taped about you want me to put no i love to put it on? No, I love this dog. It's good for the shot, don't you think? I guess. That you're working with my...

As an Irish Catholic, my family's always been obsessed with the Kennedy family, and I know you're working on some kind of a docu-series about that. No, not docu. I'm doing... We hope, we'll see. They may not want to do it. Netflix, it's... The idea is to do it netflix it's uh

the idea is to do the crown the american oh okay no this is not a docu i mean it so going back to joe the bootlegger well yeah we don't have i don't have i i only do that in passing because there's really not there's not much evidence that he was a bootlegger and i like it was an importer right yeah i like to be yeah i like to be a little more accurate than that if i can but i mentioned it but it's not and i'm trying not to be scurrilous with the thing i just i'm just wrote the pilot and i'm rewriting it now and uh i think it's pretty great that's amazing i have a showrunner so we'll see what happens with it but it's like the catholicism spectacular it is because the thing is, my mom is devoutly Catholic and she walks the walk. She's a Kennedy Democrat.

She has volunteered. She worked in a women's prison for 15 years as a volunteer. You know, she was at my school teaching kids English as a second language. And she, to this day, she's 83 and she still takes sandwiches down to the homeless people on wednesdays and well she believes it yeah there's a there's a work ethic to catholicism well i think it's great i mean in other words if if i was could choose i guess i could i'm i'm jewish but i'd probably choose catholicism if you want to believe yeah because it's got everything you got father here on earth you've got you know all the mystery and the holy spirit that's we were in we were in a catholic

church in england um like was from the ninth century or something beautiful old stone thing in a town called saint albans we were i was making a movie there last year and um and i looking at all the gorgeous you know artifacts and everything there and and then we were leaving i said damn what if it's all true with all us wise asses skeptics and everybody else said you know of course not believable you died here comes whatever you can believe in jesus now do whatever you. But what if all this mystery and bells and whistles was actually all absolutely true? All right. Well, you're somebody who's experimented with hallucinogenics.

Too many. Well, my mother, as Catholics do, they take it hook, line, and sinker. It is not metaphor. I mean, the Protestants, it's metaphor. But the Catholicsolics there's the transfiguration that wine that you were drinking in that church is jesus christ blood right and the and the ascension you know the physical transportation up into that like that's all as we approach easter right and since we killed them well that was good friday last friday i know

that's right that's right and uh but but but i mean it's it's like living game of thrones it's like really you know and and so for her it's a great sense of um an afterlife that she's due and also she believes she told me recently that she believes that everybody goes to purgatory because that's the that's the way it works you got to spend a little bit of time in between before you go up or down interesting and so she really knows and i mean i i obviously i admire people who believe even you could i mean you can get into a whole debate about whether it's ignorant or whether it's fear but if they believe and they're good people like your mother who actually practiced what she preached yeah that's a different world i mean when people hide behind it's a danger you know

well i think what's different and i married a jewish woman is that the jew the jewish faith is a dialogue and it doesn't have hard answers the way catholicism does no hell we don't have a father really right it's like it's like yeah think Jews are hard-pressed to talk about what comes next, you know? Right. I think there is this sort of Jewish fear of oblivion, you know? Yeah. Yeah, which is interesting. Once again, Anne has a friend who has like three PhDs and an MD and everything.

She's as scientific as anybody on earth. We were having dinner with her, and she was talking about her father having more recently passed away, and she said, but I'll see him again. I said, really? She said, yeah, I'm a Catholic, and I really believe that there's heaven. And I said, really, with your science background? She said, it gives me comfort, and I believe it. It was great. In other words, Ann kind I said, really, with your science background? She said, it gives me comfort and I believe it.

Yeah. It was great. You know, in other words, Anne kind of went, really? Yeah. This woman is so scientific. Yeah. You know, it's there's been especially with the my brother went to Fordham, which was Jesuit.

Sure. And I used to go down. Lombardi. Yeah, that's right. was Jesuit and I used to go down Lombardi yeah that's right and uh you know the Jesuits are they're very into science and merging science and and Catholicism uh so what so what's your experience with the Kennedys who have you met uh who have I what who have you met from the family oh well I I've known um I've for many years I know Maria very well okay I mean but I'm staying away from everybody because I think they,

I don't know if they trust me or not with it. Yeah. And they're not going to like it probably. I mean, just on face value, even though I think it's pretty heady stuff and pretty great stuff. A lot of like, I think some subtleties. I mean, I try not to hit, as I say, the scurrilous things too hard, you know. So they're aware of it.

I know Kathleen very well, Bobby's oldest daughter. We were quite close. She unfortunately, tragically, lost her daughter and grandson. Oh, right. And I know Rory really well. Oh, okay. And I know Maria. And I used to know Max fairly well. And I know Maria. And I used to know Max fairly well. I knew that some

of the Kennedy boys, because like my one of my sons went to Crossroads and some of their kids went there, that kind of thing. Yeah, but yeah, they're, they're interesting. But this, the history of this is pretty spectacular stuff. Immigrant story. Really? Yeah, I guess we're all immigrants, except for the natives, you you know right um and we took their voice away um and um the mother's it's fascinating as a catholic i mean i i do a thing i don't know if they'll end up leaving it but i i just have a moment in the very beginning toward the beginning of the piece where I have a woman in widow's weeds in a small church, and it's Rose.

You'll figure out it's Rose, but an older woman. Yeah. And she goes into confessional, and she says, Forgive me, Father, I've sinned. And she said, What did you do?

He said, I've had some conflict with my faith. And she says, What over or whatever? And she says, what over or whatever? And she says, I suffered. And then we tell the story. Wow. Yeah, because she did suffer, boy.

And you don't know what tragedy at that moment in the show is she about to unburden herself with. I don't know if it's Bobby, John john joe jr i mean you just don't know anyway but i think that sort of hangs over we'll see they may take it out you know but yeah so are they involved in any way or you just oh the kennedy's no no no no no okay well i'm using a book by a wonderful historian named frederick logev, who's a historian, a Harvard historian. It was given to me by Peter Chernin and his company. And it's been a long, a little long journey.

Anyway. Are you reading other books about the Kennedys? Yeah, I read everything. There's one that I, especially because I've got everyone, there's one by Nigel Hamilton called A Reckless Youth. That's really, it really captures. I think I, yeah, well, my episode, which I'm only writing the first one.

I'll write another one. Oh, okay. But anyway, then I have a showrunner who will write, you know. But mine, this is him when Bob, John's a chote. We start when he's 17. Yeah, this book covers that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's incredible how and not only were they physically pushed by the family but intellectually they were really you know it's incredible how sharp they were and how driven and how that stayed with them and that oh yeah they're big big readers and yeah the mother rose was pretty smart very very um she She probably gave up everything for the family, obviously. But she had other dreams. At one point, she wanted to go to Wellesley, but her father put her in a convent. That's right.

Do you believe the CIA was involved in the Kennedy assassination? I don't know what to believe anymore. I used to... I know too much about CIA yeah we don't call it the cia you don't say the god that's what they tell you yeah called cia right right i did a movie called the good shepherd like ukraine it's not the ukraine that's right theirs was because you don't say the god there's only one right well count till pro do you know much about that cointelpro yeah i did we did a lot of that in the movie ali that i wrote oh right right yeah but i also know a lot about um

uh i don't know if you remember the movie good shepherd i do that bob deniro directed no i didn't see you didn't oh it's really really oh yeah it's wonderful you Oh, yeah, it's wonderful. You should watch it. Okay. It's heady stuff. It was a Romana Clef of James Angleton. James Jesus Angleton was his full name. He ran the CIA for quite a while and knew all the secrets and kept secrets in his safe and invented many. And so I know too much. I also did Munich, so I know about right again mosad and all that so i know those worlds um it's a longer answer than when you asked me a question about whether

i don't know whether cia did um i i used to believe that oswald did it alone after there was there was like a white paper they did on CBS. I'm talking like in 19, I don't know, not long after, maybe a year after John was killed. And they looked at every angle that I could figure out. And I also read a book by Vincent Bugliosi, which covered everything. Yeah. You mean not held to skelter? No, no, no, no.

This was called maybe Kennedy assassination, something like that. It's literally 1 thousand pages okay he covers everything every conspiracy every person even the stuff about you know the the uh coincidences about lincoln being the his you know his assistant named johnson coming being his vice president all that stuff yeah even all that stuff but um his conclusion was after all that and was that he that one guy did it and and i i sort of believe that i mean i even with the bullet stuff you know of ricocheting and coming you know and all that and yeah bulliosi though i will say just to interrupt uh when i was way younger i did go see more than once, I think, at least once, Jim Garrison.

Okay. Talk at Beverly Hills at somebody's house. Wow. So it was interesting. And I know Rob Reiner now has done a really great podcast about it. Oh, is that right? Yeah. And that brings up a lot of big questions.

And so I can't say. I mean, I probably would get into the mob theory of Marcello in New Orleans. Probably would get into the mob theory of Marcello in New Orleans. The thing that kind of gets you is how Oswald was able to go to Mexico City and all that stuff. So I don't know. Yeah, it sounds like he had some connection to CIA before it happened. Yeah, exactly. There was definitely some.

And there was kind of a parallel thing that happened in Chicago. Do you know about this story? I don't think where they found somebody like like Oswald, who was like a kind of a dropout military guy who was susceptible. He had no family, no friends. He was a loner. Found the same guy in Chicago. Got him a job in similar to the books. Suppository.

Suppository. Up your ass with your book depository and so he was on the route of a parade that Kennedy was supposed to be taking and it was I can't remember the name of the book but I'll look it up after well I mean

you have to research the people who did the books and whether these things are true or i heard it on joe rogan yeah oh well okay maybe it's true i don't know i mean i i the only question i always had was for all this if there's some big conspiracy and there's like 300 people involved yeah how do you keep that that's true i mean that was the only thing i i don't know well they did it with the moon landing yeah that's it's the fakest thing ever. Fakest thing ever. And the election results were no good.

That was a fake. Biden and his whole thing. 60 million people believe that the election was won by Trump. I mean, how do you begin? You can't. How do you scratch at that? You can't. I mean, I actually like what Larry Davis said last night.

I can't quote him, but he said, the man's sick. The man's a moron. I mean, I actually like what Larry Davis said last night. I can't quote him, but he said, the man's sick, the man's a moron. I mean, he went on and on. He said the right thing. Yeah. I mean, it's just so scary. I mean, it's like... And it's amazing when you're researching the words

that came out of John F. Kennedy's mouth and Bobby Kennedy's mouth. When you compare the eloquence and the thought... Oh, I agree. Even though I have some... I mean, since I lived through the era i have some big problems with kennedy yeah i thought i thought he was really risky with nuclear war right with cuba yeah that if that russian submarine captain didn't say no yeah would have been that have been maybe it for everybody right um and then the bay of

pigs was ridiculous uh-huh you know so and and in vietnam yeah so not a saint here no not at all and it all happened pretty fast i mean it's not like he was in a two-term president oh that's right that's an action-packed uh anyway yeah yeah so i'm just scratching the surface with my my little pilot episode, you know. Yeah. Hopefully, it's a great subject, great family that has, I mean, it starts like being tentacles, the number of people and lives that are affected

and everything else. Right. So I met you, I've met you several times through the great Judd Apatow. Amazing man. We go for these monster walks sometimes in the neighborhood and it sometimes finishes out by stopping by to say hi to you.

This is a quote from Judd Apatow about you that I wanted to read. Eric is on fire right now creatively. He's a funny and wise, it's almost comedic how strong his work is. When you're young, you have this madness of wanting to establish yourself and make your name. Eric never lost that. He's always in the same emotional space about it.

He's hungry like he just broke through, even though he did many decades ago. He didn't have to say that. All writers are tortured, but all of the writers I know, Eric seems to be in the least amount of pain. Is that fair? Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably overly praising me in some way. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think, I don't have pain about writing particularly. I mean, I've never really had writer's block.

I mean, it's just weird, right? I've said this too many times, but when I get in trouble, I change the weather. Yeah. So I make it raining out or something. And then all of a sudden I look at a different point, but interesting. Um, yeah, I have my obviously angst moments and I don't know when it came to me. I do try to uh alleviate any anxiety so i won't let producers like say how are we doing when's it coming in no go fuck yourself you'll get it i'm professional especially when it's like an agent producer yeah or that or even even if it's a smart producer but that just brings anxiety because you're saying oh my god i'm late for a deadline or something you know no but um i i've never i've just i've always

enjoyed it um and i've i have one little trick that i've also said i've talked about that when i'm done for the day i'll finish with a scene that i've almost had written so i don't have the anxiety of where am i going next interesting and i also the thing i was going to say was i think it's a good lesson in life. And I've tried to do this. I'm not sure how successful I've been, but that, because sometimes tragedies come in and you can't control, obviously, the chaos of life. But I try not to catastrophize my work so that I don't,

if you can, don't look at the whole, don't look at the gestalt. I mean, that's fine creatively, but you then can panic because the script maybe you don't think is working and you're not really dealing with the theme. So I go down to the micro level and fix a scene and then fix the next scene. And then eventually you fix the whole thing, hopefully, where you at least feel some satisfaction of what you've done. And at what point do you feel like you want to show it to people?

Do you have to finish a full draft? Or do you show outlines to people? Oh, no, I never show. No, I don't do outlines. You don't do outlines? No, not a big outliner. Really? No, I always know the beginning scene, the end,

maybe two or three scenes in the beginning, and then it's kind of a void to me. But I do a lot of adaptations, so I'm provided with a lot of information, you know, and I do, I do voluminous research. Do you, uh, how true do you have to feel? You stay to this, the, the bones of the source work? Not, it's not, it depends on the source. And probably in the most cases, you know, the, the,

the trope is a bad books make great movies and bad plays make better movies. Interesting. Yeah. So I think part of that is because you then can be adventurous and original and all that, you know. So some books I've stayed, I mean, I think where the audience might get upset because they know the book, like Dune. Yeah. I think we had to stay on track with dune to a certain extent i couldn't wander too far right um even though i think we wandered in certain

areas are pretty interesting i think but um uh on the other hand like f scott fitzgerald benjamin button is his idea it's not mine about someone aging backwards otherwise it was not a very good and i'm not comparing myself to f costco it's not one of his best books no it wasn't a book it was a it was a article he wrote for collier's magazine like i'm guessing 1920 that he needed some money right right and the story's stupid yeah quite honestly it's just he didn't he threw it off you know well yeah i think it's like that with uh step wrote a few short stories, and one of them turned into Stand By Me. Oh, yeah, no, I know. There was the other one.

Maybe, I don't know. I forget. There was another one. Yeah, this was just such a great idea. Yeah. The interesting thing is it's kind of amusing. So I wrote a really good speech in the movie. It's like about life and about, you know, Brad does it great in it, Brad Pitt.

It's about him supposedly writing a letter to his daughter about life and this and that. And he's traveling the world. And anyway, it's really a good speech. And people attribute online to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Oh, is that right? It's kind of funny, yeah. That's funny. He didn't write it, though. Well, that's kind of one of your trademarks, isn't it?

Like good, strong monologues? I try, yeah, I try. Because that's what gets an actor an Oscar. It's that speech. It's that one that really hits. Well, I think it's also the characterization. Right. I try, I think if I have a strength, I think my characters are pretty

human. And I learned a long time ago you have to differentiate everybody different voices um i always tell the same story about um i rewrote a movie called you're the dragon for michael cimino and uh and he had uh he'd given mickey rorca who was the star of it um a wallet that had all the characters, like even a fortune from a fortune cookie and like a picture of a daughter and his draft card, whatever it was. Yeah.

I'm sure Mickey Rourke never looked at it, but he put it in his back pocket. It was in there. And the point was that each of your characters, you have to know their psychology, what they sound like, what their humor level is, what, you know, psychologically,

where they're damaged, everything. So everybody's different. You can't have the same voice. Do you base voices on people what you know psychologically where they're damaged everything so everybody's different you can't have the same voice do you base voices on people that you know or they do or they're just abstractions i don't know i think what i'm that's a that's a really good question i think that's where you might i don't know i'm doing a little love story now that's set in the future and um i think i'm putting some of my own things, my own feelings about, like, eternity and stuff within this character. And the character is kind of, it's from a short story. And the character is not that formed in the short story.

It's more the setup is in the future, like 50, 60 years from now, that two people are interested. They want to get married, and they want to meet on Earth to do it. There's some space travel, not huge, but he's coming from place X, and she's coming from another place, and they start getting delayed. He's delayed, and then she's delayed. If you delay in space, all of a sudden eight months is going to pass. She's getting delayed. He's delayed and then she's delayed. And if you delay in space,

all of a sudden eight months is going to pass. She's getting older while she's trying to get to Earth. So it's called I'm Waiting for You. And it's pretty profound, I think, if I get it right. I like it. I could fuck it up. It's sleepless in Seattle in the cosmos. It's a little bit.

It's quite beautiful. I think it's a little bit it's not it's not really it's it's more uh it's it's quite beautiful yeah but i i think it's more like a ghost story because they're never together even though i found ways to put them together wow in an odd way yeah interesting anyway trippy yeah but so that kind of thing i i bring it up and much for how great is that i get to write that and i've always felt that way you know and i also i think part of it once i found success and look i don't know if i'd even be talking to you if i didn't get lucky with forrest gump right i had some other movies made before them maybe four or five but six maybe whatever yeah but nothing really of any consequence let's put it that way in your career no before forrest gump i said yeah from Forrest

Gump on home run yeah but before that I had a number of movies made but nothing was there ever one that went so poorly box office wise that you were like this is it for me no I never I think after the success of Forrest Gump I remember remember, and this sort of summarizes that, when I was going up to get my Oscar, I said to myself, they can't take this away from me. So I always had that confidence. Oh, the next job I had was, I did a movie called The Horse Whisperer with Robert Redford. Oh, sure, yeah. And basically, he looked at me and said, what have you done for me lately?

Yeah, right. So it was like, okay, back to square one in that sense. But I felt like, you know, I kind of know what I'm doing now. I feel like I'm confident. And as I say this, you know, you only get to get as far as you're lucky once in a lifetime. So most people don't get that, right? Yeah, yeah. And what's interesting is you, do you always do adaptations it seems like

that i don't i don't uh i do mostly i think why is that i don't i i think in its own way it's original writing you know i don't know maybe uh i don't even know the answer i mean i could tell you the originals i've written the good shepherd was one, a movie where you want to talk about something that failed. It was called Lucky You, which a wonderful director, unfortunately had Alzheimer's when he was doing that. We didn't know this. Curtis Hanson, great director. But just a little love story set in Las Vegas, but I'll tell you the story. So when Forrest Gump came out, Zemeckis and Hanks and I went around to look at the theaters, how it was doing and get iffy. And we went into the forecourt of the Village Theater in Westwood,

which was the biggest theater probably in the world at that point. You know, the really famous theater. And the lobby, the forecourt, I mean, outside with the ticket booth was all dark. And I figured, oh, shit, nobody came. And we went and looked at the box office and said all the show times were sold out. In the first weekend? First night. First night.

And we went in. That's when they used to open movies on a Friday. We went inside and it was packed with UCLA kids, probably college kids, sitting all over the floor and just rolling and laughing and crying. It was like a home run. So it was like your producer's moment. Yeah, whatever. I wasn't a producer, but yeah.

No, but the movie, The Producers. Oh, The Producers. Oh, yeah. Oh, I get you. Okay. I'm zero mustache. Yeah, right. Anyhow, so fade out, fade in.

I had this little movie called Lucky You, which was with Eric Bana, set in Las Vegas, a love story. Drew Barrymore, I wanted to do some kind of, I thought it was pretty good, about a poker player and he hooks up with this girl who wants to be a dancer, this and that. I thought it was a lovely script. And they made it. It came out. I went to the same theater went to the forecourt it was kind of dark bought our tickets my wife and i at the time named deborah and we walked in the theater and there's four people that was the end of that

so you get the vote yeah but i think the work was pretty good. I mean, and I'm sorry it didn't work, you know. Yeah. Maybe, I don't know. There's probably a number of reasons. I like how you described that you came up with a premise for a movie, a vision for a movie, and then you felt lucky, almost giddy to be able to write it. Oh, yeah.

No, and the thing was. Yeah. So first of all, I gamble on the horses. I know a lot about gambling. Well, you wrote on Lucky. Did you create Lucky? Luck.

Luck, I mean, Luck on HBO. I love that series. Yeah, I love David. David's one of my idols, and I work with him on Deadwood, everything. Yeah, he's like Shakespeare television. Yeah. Terrible at it in all ways. Well, didn't he lose all his money gambling? Every dollar. Yeah. Every dollar. deadwood everything yeah yeah he's like shakespeare television yeah terrible addict and always well

didn't he lose all his money every dollar yeah every dollar based 99 on horses wow i saw him lose a million dollars one day in a race yeah this was not healthy so but um so anyway that world interested me you know we were talking before about sort of these subcultures and yeah that world i like and uh uh and so i thought this would be great to do kind of vegas under belly of vegas you know and and i remember there was a kind of a slightly fancy movie called the only game in town which was with warm and i know movies backwards and forwards not as much as marty scorsese but i but I'm a second rate. And the only game in town was about a professional gambler. It's the same like Breakfast at Tiffany's.

In any other era, they call her a whore. So does that mean you had to go live that life in Vegas? Did you immerse yourself in that? I actually had lived it to some extent. I mean, I gambled probably more I should have but not not where I wrecked families or anything right um no I actually did that Telly Savalas wanted to play Nick the Greek who was a famous odds maker yeah and so he asked me to write it and so i went and lived in vegas on the weekends you know for like i don't know i'd say at the sands hotel i knew every little trick of the trade that it was like more i probably knew as much at least the movie casino you know i knew all the guys who

were in the gunsels and and i knew they had like at the sands at the time i'm probably off but they had eight women that were the prostitutes, basically. And they had, you know, two Asian women, three black women, five, whatever. And I knew them all. They were ahead of the curve on diversity. Yeah, they had it all worked out. And so that way, it didn't, unfortunately, the movie, I don't know what happened.

The movie never got made. Telly Savalas as Nick the Greek. How does that not get made? I don't know. That's perfect. I wonder if, I'd have to look. Maybe he passed away i don't remember yeah i can't remember the i even remember the guy i think whose name bernie something was a producer anyway so i did duke vegas that way and yeah we anyway um so the only game in town had this great scene in it where he was he was always plagued sort of

never could quite make it warren baity yeah and war and elizabeth taylor played a hooker basically even though they called her something else like an escort or some horseshit like i say breakfast at tiffany's what was she yeah so um uh the end of the movie was he has he you see him go to a crap table and he he's very superstitious and this old woman always seemed to show up when he was at a crap table it was like his kiss of death you know and so anyway you get to the end of the movie there's he's sitting out on the curb outside of a hotel and like water's running down the gutter and she comes and sits by him right and he just looks desolate right and they're just sitting there and you get it's over i guess you know and he takes out a hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and makes it into a little boat and

flows it down the river and then another one and another one it's like a great i love it it's like such a movie moment you know and that's the end of the movie that's the end of that movie yeah and so as i remember maybe i'm wrong but i'm close yeah yeah yeah and uh it was like i always kept that with me you know it's like certain things inhabit me about movies that i then try to give at least a sense of that you know i love to write i haven't written it. I think I've had the opportunity. Something as glorious as James Dean

when the oil strikes. In Giant? In Giant, yeah. I thought Giant was the greatest movie ever made until I saw it again, and then you said, well, it's not so good. It's a little slow.

Now it's more than slow. It's so headline woke and all that with the Yellow Rose of Texas. And the guy would call this, you know, Hispanic daughter or whatever. She would daughter-in-law or whatever, you know, name. And it's like. That's right. And the movie. But still, James Dean's pretty great when he pushes over the wine racks.

I mean, these kind of, I like these kind of big bravura kind of scenes, you know. Right. It's really old movie making. Yeah, right. You can't quite do that much anymore. Yeah, you described the downfall of movies these days as a combination of streaming, superheroes, and is it the studio system?

What was the other thing you said? I don't know. I don't even know I said that. Yeah, you said it in an interview. Oh, I did. I mean, streaming mean streaming i take responsibility for to a certain extent because um house of cards yeah house of cards and i never envisioned what was going to happen fincher did right i mean not streaming being bad in any way but that i i wanted to sell it to um hbo because i liked the water cooler.

And it was like the Sopranos kind of thing. You know, you had the kind of water cooler conversation. And David said, no, no, we've got to go with this new company, Netflix, because new streaming. And because the eyeballs are there and people are going to come. Yeah. And I said, come on, really? I said, I understand there's eyeballs there, but I think we're five years away i was wrong yeah that was one of the first that was the first show the second

show they had they had another one is that right yeah the first show they had was with um the guy steven's you know the guy from uh bruce springsteen's a little steven right they did it was set in norway and i think it was like he was a detective or something. I don't remember. That was it. It was a small little show. It might have been good. And then we were next. Now, somebody else would have showed up,

and they'd have done some show that hit, and they would have ended up with, because the eyeballs were there to see it, so everybody just binge-watched that. Well, what was amazing is it really, it was one of the first shows that really was, it was a serial, not just within the season, but over the course of the whole series.

Yeah. Yeah. We, and we, I gotta say we were smart enough to envision that. I mean, within the context of that show, were you working backwards from something?

Uh, in a way, I, I mean, um, I wanted, I wanted to, I worked backwards from something uh in a way i i mean um i wanted i wanted i worked backwards from i remember thinking that because i i'd gotten robin right to do it and david got uh kevin spacey okay for good or ill you know but they were the right people um and actually what happened was um

our emmanuel uh was at that point trying to kind of sign me, you know, or he was interested. I don't know. I'd say he wasn't, but he was. But I had been with the same agent for like 30 years. And I said, Ari, I'm too old for this, you know. And he said, well, what if I send you a great piece of material? And I said, I'm always interested in that. So he sent me House of Cards, the English show.

And I said is it is great material i said i know this quite well because michael mann and i want we're going to do with al pacino because it's just richard the third it's like watch me fuck these guys and i'm going to go in the room now and fuck them and then you see what happens that's all it was that's why the risk of satib where he talks to the audience you know right he says you know i'm gonna do whatever and so uh but i said this is great and i think you're right this is a great piece of material he had really good instinct and i said let me let me see a fincher and he might have talked to fincher right but i said let me

see a fincher's interest we're like real close david and i thought it'd be something he'd really love and he did and that that was the end of it so did you move over to ari emmanuel after that no no i didn't i i don't know maybe i should have i don't know i'm very happy i'm cia i'm a sort of a caa guy you know yeah yeah well um so i asked i texted uh uh judd i said what if you were going to interview you i said what questions would you ask okay so here's a couple questions am i circumcised are you circumcised and this is on camera it's fine and is there trauma from it do you think there's trauma from circumcision i don't know is there trauma from birth that's probably true i know

for the mother there is yeah i don't i don know. Is that where you're hurtled into the light? And then never mind. Yeah. Right. You're swimming in the wind. What's traumatizing is if you're a good Jew, you're supposed to hold. And you're there when the mohel is there. And you want to be godfather.

You're supposed to hold the baby's penis. Really? Yeah. That could be traumatizing oh yeah yeah your first meeting with your godchild um he said ask him about the source of creativity how does he connect to it oh that's great i mean what a great question i think i think i like to think i have something in my inner being that I want to express. So I hope to express it well.

Sometimes it's not so well. I think that probably most, in quote, artists, writers, musicians, have this thing that's inside them that they need to share in some way. And I think part of it is probably ego, too. You feel like, look how great i am you know but in terms of what's inside of you how how much of that is pain and how much of that is as i said i'm not i'm not a pain guy yeah that i have pain in other areas well you had your mom didn't give you yeah but i guess but that's that's when you start intellectualizing it right and then then i can i can get attuned to that but um i don't i don't feel that way when i'm working

yeah i mean i think i feel that way more in my relationships you know right i've had a couple wives and now my third wife and you know so that i haven't been the best husband to be quite honest yeah so i think that's where that plays out, whatever is sort of the more painful side of me trying to figure out who I am, why people love me, whatever that is. I don't feel that way when I'm writing, particularly. I feel like this is great. No, I know.

I think I could lie and say I'm an ex-addict and doing all this stuff,, it's not, no, I know. I think, you know, I could lie and say I'm, you know, an ex-addict and doing all this stuff, but it's not that. I don't have that to work out that way. I have other, plenty of addictions, but that's not my pain. And it's not, and I just love that I can write. And once you, I think you could probably ask all sorts of other artists that are successful. So if you sat, like I'm very close with neil young

if you asked him he at some point i'm i'm sure he has whatever pains he has but that he feels i know he feels he's good at it yeah and he also gets obviously this reflected glory you know you get back what you give out right so that i don't i don't know how much he had to worry about it you'd have to ask him i can't speak for him obviously yeah how when you get really successful i don't know where do you go with your life so then it's about your relationships and the people you love are gone they don't love you or they you know people are broken or need to be fit whatever it is but i think the work is what you take refuge in and also it gives you such courage if you feel good about it. And you kid yourself a lot about this is really great

and then sometimes it's not so great. So do you feel like you transitioned into having more balance in your life at a certain point after a certain amount of success? You were able to kind of step back from the work a little bit? No, I think the success was not good. I think the success made me feel a little bit no i think no i think the success was uh not good okay i think the success made me feel um a little out of control you know that i felt like i was like somebody really special right right and that's that's settled into something more and then as i had the luck

of doing really great material where i was able to then realize them being really good one I think great some great movies some very good that I always felt that's great and so now I don't need the other in a way I'm right the adulation but the um but the thing I told you that validation thing it will always stick with me you know you like that Oscar I don't it's not that I like it it's like it meant something to me yeah you know just it meant some some form of success for my to show my parents and so yeah right interesting yeah all right here's jed's other question i don't know if i asked you answer the other one i think you did yeah the source your creativity is i think was a combination of being something inside that

you want to express and then also uh you enjoy the, you know, the acceptance. I think part of it's also like I'm a frustrated novelist. I've never written a novel I wish I had. And, you know, screenwriting is like a bastardized form. It's a craft. I mean, it's not an art form. That's interesting. It's like, yeah, it's like you don't have to fill

a page even you can use dots and dashes so you're not you're not a novelist you don't have to do giant prose yeah sometimes I write too much prose because I'm trying to be a novelist but right you know and you're not a playwright because you're not just limited to dialogue and so so I said this amalgam of bastardization, and you could be good at it, though, you know, but it's also unrealized unless you can get the movie made because there's nobody who's really going to critique screenplays that way. It's not an art form, that way. If you write a novel, and I like that you said that you didn't,

as if you can't now, who's the protagonist in your novel if you write it? I know. I think this is, first of all, I haven't come up with something I've been burning to write about. Then you say, well, should I just do something genre-like? I think I could probably write a detective or something. But it just hasn't.

The reason I brought it up is because when you... I love great writing. I mean, and there's so many great writers that just are transcendent, you know, and that... I think when they hit on that sweet spot of saying something that's really true, and in metaphor particularly, that that's something that's close to God, I think, in a way. You know, that's something that only poets get to do.

Right. And some do it very easily and some can't yeah and so when i feel i've hit on something just that i get to say or a moment a scene or something that to me is as close as i'm going to get to being immortal you know in a way right and so so i i love that where uh i guess where my ego comes in is that i love the legacy of some of these things not that they're all great movies or anything else but there are moments you know yeah where you you feel like i've really i've really done it you know it's really pretty great that it's it's there you know yeah and i guess with the novel you don't have the interference of a director coming in it's it's that's been a strength my one of my strengths is is that i've had really good marriages with directors even though they've been fraught some

of them yeah but we've and and really why i think as many as much as any of the material i've done that the um my my relationships with directors and the directors themselves made my career yeah in other words because once i, because once the material's good and then you get a director, you've got 85% of it. That's where people struggle. They want to get a director, then they can get an actor, or vice versa. I think almost in all my cases, it was always directors first.

And there were really good directors. From Kurosawa I work with. It's ridiculous. And Marty, of course and david and um so with the director you're getting a package you're getting the talent as well but you're also getting somebody who in you know for high percentage and particularly the people i was working with in the era where they could get the certain kind of money you know that they were going to get a yes to do the project. So you got a movie made. Now we could debate creatively whether it worked or didn't work,

if you got fired or anything else. But I mean, and I've somehow, I've stayed, I think oddly, Stars Born was very important to me in an interesting way, is that, I forget the movie I had made before that, but it was a few years that I didn't get anything done. Yeah. And, but it also made me feel vital for younger people. Right.

In other words, that they, they, they, they went to and they enjoyed it. It spoke to them in some way, you know, and, and the way we did it. And, and then all of a sudden I got to blossom again because they offered me all these things you know so then i got to work with other directors like and that was bradley's first go around but didn't he bill an oomph and then i had been a number of years wanting to work with marty and now marty again and all this and we had because we had tried a few times before so um it was this all of a sudden i mean people weren't thinking oh he's 70 something years old you know he's too old but they just thought of me as a good writer you know well you are an

inspiration to everybody who thinks that you're going to age out of this business and if you just do good work and you continue to not be afraid to create that there's always going to be you know i think if you do you do need to stay somehow at least emotionally contemporary so that those things have to speak to because i i can't speak to what young people like or don't like in other words they have some of them don't even know who the beatles are you know what i'm saying but but there are human emotions i think that can carry the day day where if you have a love story that people are aching

that they don't care in other words how old you are if you could have one of your scripts directed by anybody in history what director would you want to go back wow that's some question

I thought of that on the ride over here wow because you've worked with probably of the living directors i've worked with everybody yeah almost every right right there's some i have i mean wow that's a that's a question i have to ask james gray that answer because I'll see what he said. Who? I mean, I think you'd have to pick out people. It's just about certain movies, you know. The genre. I mean, I even work with Coppola, you know.

The movie didn't get made because, unfortunately, his son died. But I'm trying to think who I think. I don't know if I had the sense of humor for Preston Sturgis, but that was sort of great stuff. Yeah. Boy, I love Fellini. And Amacord is probably one of my favorite movies. And then if I could have done something for Stanley Kubrick,

I'd have been a happy guy. Wow, yeah. But now you're talking, you know, I don't know. But I think it was probably too sentimental for him. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Even though we talked, this Good Shepherd, he was interested in the history of the CIA in a sense. Yeah. Boy, that's a really great question.

It's a good question, right? Yeah, no, I think it's a problematic question only because if you said to me, what's your favorite movie or what's the greatest movie, you can't name one. I mean, it's Apples and Oranges's apples and oranges right after a while um wow i mean because there's just been so many who are so uh good at what they do yeah and it's also as you said being contemporary means that those people in their day were doing something that was specific to that time and they were challenging the norms of that time. That's exactly right, and they were pushing the envelope, all that.

You wonder, though, we were talking about this the other day, about people who lose it, though, when they get to a certain age. Billy Wilder was really pretty bad at the end of his career. Richard Brooks was terrible. I mean, you wonder when do people lose touch and sort of get tone deaf yeah you know and then it becomes um it becomes uh it's the difference between to me and i don't know i don't know the music but i was just watching this paul simon documentary last night and it's pretty great alex gibney's very talented man uh yeah we're good friends and

some of us are so beautiful and then when his work is good paul simon is ridiculous yeah i mean american tune is probably as good as it gets ever oh and the the one he made in south africa amazing graceland graceland is incredible but i think and i don't know so this isn't fair because i haven't heard this new album yet the seven psalms. But at least when they showed him creating it, it seemed that some of the metaphor was gone. But I don't know, so it's not fair. So I don't know the man. Well, Billy Joel didn't write for 20 years,

and then he just put out a new album and it's really good yeah i've got to get that and i also i thought the song was spectacular but i thought there was a i think people who were when you when you write what is the what is in front of you it's it's it's not as it's not as inspiring in other words you have to try to find a way to you know it's subtext that's what great right great writing great music is all about i mean when you look at the lyrics to some of neil young songs they don't make completely logical sense right in other words it's not a doesn't follow b necessarily but even the metaphor gives you the sense of what it's about you know what he's dealing with you know right right yeah no

that's interesting um all right before i let you go because i really value your time and this means a lot to me i'm enjoying this okay good what time do you have i have to go to like a medical appointment okay yeah well let me just hit a couple other things i want to talk about i have to leave here at two so okay um so Yeah, we got time. The. I have to think about this director one. This is really something. I think I'd probably say to you, it depends on the material.

If it's a Western John Ford. Yeah. I mean, but then I would not kick Sergio Leone out of bed. That's right. You know what I'm saying? So you get into that. Yeah. Then you start into that. Yeah. Then you start going, what moments like John 4 are ridiculous? Film noir.

I actually knew him. Oh, you did? I never worked for him. That's amazing. I was editing a movie that we made, a documentary, which was pretty good, about the Poor People's March on Washington 1968-69. His daughter was an editor in the next room. I don't want to be smirch here.

Anyhow, and also Hal Aspey was in the next room, and Hal became one of my best friends in life. Really? Anyway, and also I'll tell you, this is an incredible one of those moments. And Roman Polanski was in the other room editing Rosemary's Baby. And he came in, he said, I knew him pretty well.

And he said, come with me. And he took me into the moviola, which was the old way of editing. And he showed me the scene when the baby was born. Then he went like that. He stopped it. He said, get out. But Barbara Ford, John's daughter, liked the racetrack. And I liked the racetrack.

We used to go to Hollywood Park at night they used to have the harness races really talk about degenerate anyhow yeah

but I'd go pick her up she was older than me probably by 15 years or something maybe 10 years and and she would take you want to meet the old man

up to the bedroom in Beverly Hills there and he was there with the patch and so all the time I would see him then oh that's pretty cool when I picked her up and the first in Beverly Hills there and he was there with the patch and so all the time I would see him then oh that's pretty cool up and the first time I ever saw him he was laying in bed and he squinted at me and said are you wearing checkered pants step into the close-up and I walked and I was a check pants bell bottoms you know like that corny shit you wore to my house down there. That's great. This is in your hallucinogenic days.

Yeah. And anyway, I remember we started talking about movies, politics, this and that. It was just a great moment for me. And I said, well, you made one of the great political movies, The Informer. He said, that's not political. He said, that's just about a man who believed in whatever he said yeah but uh but he said no my movies aren't political you know um but uh yeah that's pretty interesting it's like dylan bob dylan he always said his songs weren't political yeah maybe they aren't maybe in his own way he's just telling you what he thinks should be you know

there was another question from judd he said have him compare jerry garcia jim morrison and johnny cash i don't know why he left bob dylan out of that well i don't know bobby dylan okay i knew the other ones okay that's why you compare those three i think they're incomparable in the sense that i don't think you can jim was a uh he was a um hand. Jim was a, he was a would-be poet. One would question his poetry sometimes. Let's put it that way. He was incredibly charismatic and good looking and very self-destructive. I guess I would say all three are probably self-destructive. Johnny Cash was, he was a pretty good drinker, you know, and he was a rough guy. Jerry was a heart of gold. And yet, the responsibility of having to, people, 300,000 people wanting him to give them some answer and meaning to life was really tough on him.

Right. Yeah. It seems like he really, I mean, when he got addicted to heroin, it seemed like he was just hiding. He just couldn't take, I mean, That just wasn't who he was.

Yeah. You know, that he, I mean, he loved those people, you know, honored them, respected them,

I guess, but he just felt, I don't know what I have to offer you except for the music. I think at a certain point, I saw a documentary about him. And he was kind of disappointed that the Deadheads had taken on this lifestyle. Like, he really wanted to be more about the music. He didn't want to create this culture.

That's why I say he was from a different era, too. I mean, he was before all this, you know, from the 50s, I guess, almost, you know. Early 60s. Yeah, interesting. I mean, everybody's great in the sense that even the most destructive people in that sense, but artists anyway. I think musicians are the best. I mean, if I had to say I wish I could have been a musician, I have no talents.

Yeah, I think everybody you have to also but you have to also realize you you're saying you want to be a successful musician yes you know it'd be nice if i could play the piano or just play the guitar that'd be lovely just a personal thing but we're talking about people who are geniuses what they do but musicians i'm doing a huge general. I think they're the ones I've met, and I've met so many and been friends with so many. They get to carry their art with them. They can just sit down. And I found them to be the most nonjudgmental people I've ever met. They don't care what color you are or anything else.

They just want the music, everything. Right. But they're oddball and destructive, and they do the road trips, and they're going to not make it and everything else right right it's a hard life yeah and uh yeah i think that uh the grateful dead is like uh it's a band that i think didn't necessarily well no that's not true they when they came out with touch of gray that was staying current yeah that's right that's a great call yeah they they they had certain waves where they you know they went away and then they

came back shakedown street was sort of like yeah yeah said where we can be part of the 80s there's i mean look there there's something that somehow their music if you like them inhabits your soul you know yeah but there's a lot of people like that you know they're just a different part of your soul yeah yeah when's the last time you saw the dead or the dead in company no i'm actually quite good friends and work doing we did a script from uh john mayer my son wrote it from a mayor's song oh wow that's his client i never i haven't gone in years yeah um not again i love i love the music still, you know. It's a special brand of something, you know. No, I haven't been a long time.

I haven't gone to a music concert in a long time. Oh, really? I miss it, yeah. Huh. I should go. Who would you see if you could see now? Somebody. I don't know.

I mean, I don't know. I'd have to find who's the people to see i don't know i don't i listen to everything i can listen to um i don't know i i like this group uh i like this group war on drugs but they may be passe now okay i love the killers oh yeah i like that it was great um the national i used to like but i'm saying i think now those people that's that that people have gone on to other groups now well there's some you know this i was never into the national i used to like but i'm saying i think now those people that's that the people have gone on to other groups now well there's some you know this i was never into country music i grew up in new york and it just wasn't a part of the fabric of you know but there's some country

people out there now if you like johnny cash uh jason isbell is pretty amazing he was in killers of flower moon oh that's right that's right. That's right. I forgot about that. But Johnny Cash, I think I liked more his personal song, like Hurt. Yeah. Like Rich, friendly with Rick Rubin.

So that's amazing. The Beast in me is unbelievable. Yeah. So when, that's the stuff that inhabits me, you know, it's like, those are very painful.

I was, for a time pretty close friends of garth brooks oh really yeah he called me to he had a movie company and he called me to write a movie we never figured out what to do but he then um i don't know by coincidence or design he knew i lived in the colony anyway he knew I lived in the colony anyway. He rented a house in the colony one summer. We hung out a lot. I thought he was good. Nice man. Have you seen Jason Isbell perform?

Yeah, I have actually. It's pretty amazing, isn't it? Yeah, he's great. Yeah. Oh, there's, yeah, music is pretty, I mean, I guess, I was thinking about this the other day. We were watching a movie called The Impossible. Remember that movie? The director and I had had some problems,

and then we ironed them out. Anyhow, I told Ann, she hadn't seen it, I said, we should watch this movie. We had a friend over. The movie was very emotional. We started crying. It was just moving to us. When we were done, I said, where do you get that experience where you could cry like that yeah where really

you're engaged that way and where it means something to you you know and where it touches you about all sorts of things and and literature can but it's private you know yeah and then music i guess is the only other thing but But movies or even television, I guess, great television can do it. But it's an amazing thing when you can do that with people. Laugh and cry, oh my God. Right, right. Get to touch something. Yeah.

Well, I think that's the thing that's so timeless about Forrest Gump is that it hits all those emotions. Like a few weeks ago, we have a place in Montana, and I just couldn't sleep. I never do sleep. But I have a thing where I can watch television on my iPad, like a DirecTV or something. And I saw Forrest Gump was on, so I just turned it on.

And it was like probably a third of the movie, maybe a little less, maybe a fifth of the movie was left. And I don't know if I started getting emotional because of the movie or because of my life since and before and all that. I started crying like a baby for the whole rest of the movie. Really? Yeah, but also I was like,

I was also taken with, but I felt out of body because I don't remember even actually doing it. But I felt so taken with the wonderful surprises of the movie. Yeah. The silly cartoonish quality that Bob Zemeckis brings to it. It was wonderful. You know, a guy jumping in the mud and says happy face. But at every moment there was a surprise or something come human.

Is he, is he, you know, when Forrest Gump does that and it's such a ridiculous idea, the whole thing, you know, about this guy, but somehow we made it magic,

you know, and I don't even know what the alchemy is. Well, it seems like Tom Hanks was so grounded in the character that it allowed you to play. Yeah. You, I mean, I never,

I said, really, you know, it's You, I mean, I never, I said, really, you know, it's like, I'm, I'm not a big farce guy, but yeah, but he,

he played it completely as if this person existed, you know? Yeah. And, um, yeah, yeah. And,

and then it had such great, it had just great, I mean, it was, it didn't get very good reviews, you know? Oh, is that right?

Not really. It was, they, everybody felt it was too right wing. Oh, that that right? Not really. Everybody felt it was too right-wing. Oh, that's right. But what they misunderstood was two things. One is Bob is an equal opportunity stick-in-the-eye guy. He doesn't care if you're a fucking liberal or a right-wing.

Right. And that's all changed now with Donald Trump. So we're not talking right-wing anymore. We're just talking fascist now. And that's all changed now with Donald Trump. So we're not talking right wing anymore. We're just talking fascist now. And the other thing was that, which Quentin Tarantino said to me, correct me if I'm wrong, is this the most ironic mainstream movie?

And he's probably right. I think it's pretty ironic. The whole irony about the guy got shot, the president was shot and the thing. And we have a lot of ironic things. Yeah, right. So that worked. I have a new movie coming this year called Here, that I

did with Zemeckis. Oh, wow. Yeah, it'll be out in Thanksgiving time. Oh, nice. Now it's not far as gone, but I think it's pretty great. Has it been shot? Oh, it's all done. Yeah, we've been previewing it to get some audience reactions and it's all been pretty good and uh it was tom hanks and robin wright and sort of like the gang back together in that way oh that's amazing yeah it's very very touching thing about uh from a graphic novel uh oddball

about a room in a house over 100 years and who lived there and uh and then we we wrote a particular tale about tom hanks father we invented and then tom hanks life and uh in the end it's about everything in other words and it's pretty extraordinary i think i think when it works was this based on a book? Graphic novel. Oh, a graphic novel. Called Here. Oh, okay. Wow.

And it even has kind of panels in the movie, which are pretty beautiful. Oh, really? I love Bob. I mean, Bob and I just like to work together. He's just such a nice man. Doesn't induce any anxiety and say, go for it, you know? And how many of these sets are you a presence on when you make movies we went on that one yeah because bob and i wrote it and bob kind of wanted me there just to

because i don't know he liked my company um marty didn't doesn't like people coming to the set so that way i didn't go yeah i wish i wish i would have but i would have just been a tourist yeah fincher when we did manank, and Mank I produced, he let me produce because I did some work and didn't want to tamper with his father's credit. So we stayed with that.

And I was there every day. I loved it. Yeah. We just argued every day. You did. Oh, David and I just did cats and dogs. It sounds like your best work comes out when there's a little bit of...

Tension. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think you can go only so far though because if they if a director feels disrespected you're done yeah i don't care i knew that with i didn't disrespect him but i knew with robert redford for instance we did the horse whisperer at one point he was going to look in the mirror and not want to see me there right and he did that's what happened yeah but i've left i've had like with denis villeneuve on dune i you know i just said you know what this is what i can give you you know if it's something missing you're gonna have to fill in that blank you know and now and dune too were you not a part of that no i they asked me to be i wasn't um i i honestly

it's it's more complicated i had i told them which was, I was being a little bit nasty, but I said I have other worlds to conquer. Yeah. But I'm not a fanboy of Dune. I mean, in other words, it's not my lifeblood. The books, I liked other science fiction more. Right. But I engaged in what I thought was sort of the spiritual quality of Dune,

where the guy's ability to look into the future and all that. But it's too much for me. It's not, I mean... Well, it sounds like, I think I heard you describe that character in Dune, and it makes me think back to Jerry Garcia of the reluctant leader. Yeah, well, that's built into the book and then he's half human half whatever right and a jesuit and but he doesn't want to carry this burden yeah but i i can't make that comparison no i don't know i tried to lead you to that one

but i don't know maybe i don't know how i had to think back i don't know, maybe. I don't know. I have to think back. I don't know how he felt about Dune. But it's, yeah, I mean, Dune's a world unto itself. And I think you have to, I couldn't embrace it the way probably I wish I could have, you know. Yeah. And so I try to give it some quality that I can bring, but not, I think you need, hey, Ann. Oh, here he comes. Okay, he'll just come in.

Good, I'm glad you came in. Hi, Eric. Hi. Hello. Hi. Good. Where are you going, Missy? So I think Dune is mixed for me. I mean, in other words, I love Denis Villeneuve.

He's a nice and wonderful and visionary guy, as you'll ever know. Yeah. Yeah, and so, but he really loves those books. Yeah. And he loves what it's about, that world building and all. So it's hard after, if you don't feel, the guy they brought in named John Spates, who's a good writer, he loves it too. It's he he didn't do this was almost carried the book around a Bible case right he tells that way about it right I think you have

you have to invest that to be really good yeah that's how that passion for what were the what was the sci-fi that you were into what are the sci-fi but a little more more so a little bit him no more like the foundation and stuff i mean um and then arthur clark i loved yeah because i mean he was able to try to predict the future right you know and he was prescient half the time maybe right or a third of the time yeah yeah all right my last question to you is, there are two types of people in the world. Go. Oh, wow.

Okay, there are pursuers and distancers. That's what I'll say. Interesting. And that's just from a relationship thing that I remember my wife Debra said. Yeah. And she's right. And it's really rough when you get two pursuers who are together or two distancers.

Yeah. Pursuer and a distancer are pretty good. It's rougher. I say that, you know. Otherwise, that's just relationships. I don't know. That's a bigger question too. I don't know.

Wow. Which are you? I'm a pursuer. You're a pursuer. What are you? I am I think there's gradations you're not

yeah I feel like because I have a little bipolar I can go in either direction on any given day and I think my my wife is a she is a distancer

that's what Anne is yeah yeah yeah so that works I say when you get two pursuers fireworks

yeah but this is like almost like it's like talking about like doing this astral astrology or something you know i'm not sure this is what i i have to really think about you've asked me two really nut-breaking questions about the director and this one is tough i mean I'd probably give you a more philosophical answer you know about I don't know the answer to all that you know in other words what makes people tick mmm I try yeah I don't know the answer to that one but there's a really good book that's about astrology that I like it's not a very good book really really, but it's a great idea. It's called Exalted. And that's the perfect astrological sign.

It's called Exalted. Oh, is that right? Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Yeah, it's like everything lines up if you believe it. I don't have to believe in that, but, you know,

it all lines up. Well, it's nice to believe in something. I mean, I don't, and I feel lost, and I question everything. You believe in a lot of things. I don't believe that and i feel lost and i question everything and you believe in a lot of things i don't believe that number one i know you believe in comedy yeah so you believe in uh people looking at things that skew right you know right i don't know you well enough to know what else you believe in but i believe in marriage 25 years okay well that's pretty good

yeah yeah family you have children yeah i have two kids or, that's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Family. You have children? Yeah. I have two kids. Well, that's probably all that matters. The children. Right. I think. That's my church.

That's my church. I have a lot of them and a lot of grandchildren. Yeah. So, and I've made enough mistakes with all. Yeah. But I mean, what interesting person didn't have their parents make mistakes that you know i know well that's from no that's also it's like nobody gave you a manual on this thing you just i had kids and uh how old was the mother 16 17 yeah same age just hippie times but um uh what did i know yeah i don't think i but i don't think that means

anything i mean somebody at 35 might not know you don't know what it is to be a parent all this kid shows up and you've got to give them some life lesson and direction and all that and you're probably really worried about money at that age yeah that's right i was like i never i i honestly didn't think i was going to be a filmmaker i didn't know i didn't i honestly i cared but i was like i was more interested i would i drive cabs and everything else i mean i said i gotta put food on the table yeah you know because usually when you think of going into writing it's like you need to indulge a certain period of your life where you have no distractions to get into it i also never that was another thing like you know never fear i used to i used to work on a coffee table and

the kids would be running around. The door would ring. But I liked it. It was part of the fabric of everything. Wow, that's amazing. Great questions. Good. Thank you. Nice to hear.

Well, listen, again, thank you for your time. Wait, you can answer me. Oh. Which was the most famous person you've talked to? And what was the best podcast you've done do you think or maybe you don't know the answer to either i would say carl reiner is probably my uh my yeah that was somebody who meant a lot to me as a kid growing up my father got me immersed in 2000 year old man and the dick van dyke show and like i so you know and just somebody who has balanced family and creativity his whole life and friendship

friendship means a lot to me i have very dear friends and i'm the same i see how he is with friends and so i had him on and he was he was 89 years old and he was so sharp he was talking about stories from the war and did you know that know that he went overseas and he was about to go in with his platoon into combat. And the night before they were leaving, the USO tour came through, a bunch of performers. And he had some sketch experience. And somebody was sick and they pulled him in. And one of the guys in the troop knew him

from back in New York, pulled him in. He jumps in guys in the troop knew him from back in New York. Pulled him in. He jumps in. He kills. They say, we need you. You're hired. Wow. He avoided going.

Yeah. Norman Lear flew like 60 missions. Is that right? Yeah. It's like a tail gun. Wow. You don't come back from this. Yeah.

The odds go up every time. Right. It's so interesting you say that this is happening a lot this is a little more far afield but lately i've had all these things which you have to say is just coincidence but they're just odd i don't know what they mean even yeah so like bill hater was over here about um like a week or two ago uh-huh and uh about like a week or two ago. And a couple weeks previously, I had had a dream,

or maybe I woke up, and I was thinking about a movie I'd rewritten called The Laughing Policeman. This was like in the 70s. And it was an obscure book that got made. It was by pretty great Swedish mystery writers. They had like eight or nine books. But they were both long gone and the books were long gone. But I said, I wonder whatever happened to the,

I wonder if I, I think it would be a great idea to maybe make it contemporary. So I called an agent who finds out book rights and she went to find out the rights. And so literally the next day hater was here and we're talking he's very literate guy very smart nasty and everything else yeah and but he says have you ever read the laughing policeman no kidding this is weird man really a lot of all the books wow all the words so as I had this, it was something else.

I have a photograph upstairs of one of the moon landings where the guys had that rover. Yeah. Yeah, so I had woken up, same kind of thing. I woke up in the night and I had a kind of dream or I was thinking about that exact image. And I went on the NASA website and I bought the photograph. Uh-huh. And the next morning I woke up and the astronaut had died that night. No kidding.

That's spooky stuff. I don't necessarily believe in that. Dude, I haven't. So what you're saying today, this morning I woke up and I was just, in the middle of the night I was just, I was not sleeping as I said. I don't know if I sleep that much. There was a photograph of ted williams kind of looking back and there's yogi bear and it said on the photograph ted williams

flew like 90 missions oh that's right right wait and yogi bearer was at omaha beach and these two there's something about a sense of respect between them yeah in other words i bought it yeah you know so it's like that's amazing yeah i had a dream um i was in a river that was feeding into the ocean and i was floating and a giant wave came and it picked me up and i was flying through the air and i came crashing down and i woke up punching the bed and screaming and i woke my wife and this doesn't happen to me get up i have a cup of coffee i open up my phone and that tsunami that had hit in thailand had happened oh my god literally the same hour i had the dream what is that well someone has to explain this this happened

uh i was talking about i hadn't talked about paula weinstein in probably three years last week i was talking about what was paula up to i haven't seen her in so long she died no kidding like this week like two three days no kidding i don't know what this is all about i mean it's not it's not as if i wouldn't blame yourself no i'm not blaming no no no i will tell you uh it's a it's a you'll get the comedy of it she was married to a man named mark rosenberg who i thought who i was very close with a lot of drugs together and stuff. He was kind of a hippie. He ran Warner Brothers at one point. So I was telling Ann that he had died, and Ann said to me, well, how long ago did he die?

I said, I don't know, 10, 15 years ago, 35 years ago. Anyhow, Mark had scheduled a conference call with me for the next morning and the afternoon we scheduled for the next morning. And they called me that morning and said, I'm afraid Mr. Rosenberg died. Yeah. I said, oh boy. And so the joke was around town, don't schedule a call with Eric Roth. So Mark would even appreciate the humor in that.

So we will end with that. I hope I don't die after this podcast. No, I hope not. All right. Well, thank you so much. I love this.