Fitzdog Radio - Tim Robbins Part 1 - Episode 1054

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Oscar winning actor/ director/ producer Tim Robbins comes in for a 2 part interview! We played on an ice hockey team back in NYC and he is now my neighbor here in LA. He is thoughtful, smart and not hard on the eyes. Part 2 coming soon! Follow Tim Robbins on Instagram @TimRobbinsHere 

Hey now, welcome to FitzDog Radio. It's Monday. Show comes out on Tuesday. Mondays are hard. Here's the key. Don't jerk off on Mondays. It will throw a wrench in the whole day. Stay strong. Stay focused. I'm not saying don't have sex. But the shame. Oh, the Irish shame. Never do it.

I didn't today. I made it through. It's 3.37 p.m. I can see the finish line. Had a slow weekend. People say, what did you do this weekend? Nothing. I did nothing. I literally just watched some sports.

I watched the Knicks get knocked out. Watched some golf. I know I did. I went out and bought a sink. Oh, God. What happened to my life? What happened to staying out all night and doing blow and having sex with multiple people? It's gone. Gone. Now I just chill. Bought a sink, bought a microwave. I don't know. I don't know what else I did. Did yoga on the beach on Sunday

morning. That's always nice. Just me, the yogi, about nine other people, and then 27 homeless people meandering around, checking in on us. One time, one of them stole the uggs of one of the fellow, are they yogis? No, is the yogi the teacher? I don't know. And thus the teacher has become the student. So, yeah, so we went to Home Depot to get the sink. Here's the thing. No, there's no longer workers.

There used to be a lot of, how do you say this? Migrant workers? Is that the wrong thing? I don't know. I can't, I don't know what to say. Foreigners? The people outside of Home Depot, undocumented people? I don't know that they're undocumented.

They're non-English speakers? Now that sounds racist. Brown people. Oh no. Can you say brown people? I don't know. They're not out there anymore. Home Depot, if you're looking for a guy to come back and hoe your garden or haul away some trash or, I don't know, build a deck. Those guys are gone. I think we are short of immigrants. We need some more. Have we been shipping them out of state? I know Greg Abbott is. I know DeSantis is, but is our governor, I don't even know who our governor, who is our governor? Gavin Newsom? Yeah, that guy. I know I'm supposed to hate him, but I don't know. I don't really pay attention. So anyway, saw the fall guy this weekend. That was pretty good. Enjoy. Good summer

romp. Got out of there and we got a bunch of free passes because the movie was on the fritz so uh we ended up with like a dozen free passes and then so me and the wife went to see the challenger or challengers i forget what it's called but uh pretty good that zendaya she's pretty something good actress uh beautiful the two actors were wonderful good movie uh what else i don't have a lot to talk about i got a big guest today let's go and then we came home we watched repo man with my son and my daughter and they absolutely loved it if you haven't seen repo man in 20 years it's such a cool like i guess it was 90s maybe it was 80s yeah no it was 80s it was an 80s movie shot for like a million dollars and

it had emilio esteve estefan emilio estevez no estefan is gloria emilio estevez who's charlie sheen's, is in it with a what's that cool dude's name. Bunch of cool old actors. Totally dug it. And I just love it when I find an old movie that my kids will dig. It's just shot like one camera locked off for an entire scene. Just shot super cheap and fun. A lot of laughs. And maybe he's a repo man. He repossesses cars. And it made me think of the time back in Boston when Rogan and I were coming up.

He asked me to come with him. And we drove down to a repo lot where they repossessed cars. And Joe had me wait in his car and he jumped the, or did I drive? I guess I drove him down because they took his car. Yeah. I drove him down to the lot and then he jumped the fence. And he went into the car that they had repossessed because he had put in a

custom radio, a stereo system. And he was like, fuck that they had repossessed because he had put in a custom radio, a stereo system. And he was like, fuck that. That's my radio. So he went in to the car and he ripped the radio out and then he jumped over the fence again and then we took off. And that's the way that guy has always lived. He kind of did his own shit, and he lived beyond his means. Now he doesn't. I don't think he could live beyond his means now,

but he had like a fancy sports car, and I don't know if he defaulted on the payments or it was a lease or whatever. They repossessed it. Anyway, if you like the podcast, not that don base it on the last uh six minutes because that's not my best podcasting but if you indeed enjoy it go to uh apple podcasts leave a rating leave a comment that helps a lot go to youtube leave a comment on youtube fitz dog i think it's just called greg fitzsimmons on youtube and uh send me an email if you're a fancy to reach out to me, FitzDogRadio at gmail.com.

I get back to everybody. Got some great guests coming up, Paul Verzi, Rachel Feinstein, Harlan Williams, Andy Richter, all coming up in the next month. So get on board. Got some tour dates coming up. Mamaroneck, New York at the Emmeline Theater. Just check. There's some tickets left.

May 31st. Escondido, California Grand Comedy Club, June 7th and 8th. And then Pittsburgh at the WDVE Festival, June 21st. And then the 22nd, I'll be in Buffalo with Bert Kreischer doing some big show um anyway my guess let's get to him he is an Oscar winner he was in Shawshank Redemption which has the highest ratings of any film on Rotten Tomatoes Jacob's Ladder which was an amazing film see that uh but

Mystic River he won the Academy Award and the Golden Globe Award for. He got another Golden Globe for The Player, which is great. He was in Top Gun. He was the star of Bull Durham, where he was adorable. Green Lantern, directed Bob Roberts, was nominated for Best Director for Dead Man Walking, Cradle Will Rock, Arlington Road, Hudsucker Proxy. He was in High Fidelity. He's in a new series now called Silo on Apple TV. This guy's the best. I've known him for, I don't know if he knows me,

but I've known him. We played on a hockey team together back in New York in like 93 through six. You know, we had masks on. Maybe he didn't remember me. I was not a big guy. And he lives in my neighborhood. He lives a block from me. So here he is.

He's on the show. I was so thrilled to get him. What an honor. Super smart dude. Political's on the show. I was so thrilled to get him. What an honor. Super smart dude. Political. A little intimidating. I was intimidated when he came in, and he put me at ease within three minutes. I felt totally comfortable talking to this guy. Just what a body of work and what a life. He started the Actors Gang, which is this incredible theater company when he was back in college. And he's been doing it all these years.

Started in 1981. So 40 years. All right, here it is. Here's my talk. We're going to do two parts because the interview went so long that there's two parts. This is part one of my interview

with Tim Robbins. Here we are. I'm sitting across from Tim Robbins. He's an Academy Award winner. He is the founder of the Actors Gang, which is a theater company that's been in Culver City for 40 years. Forty? Well, we've been in Culver City 20, but we've been together for 42 years. We used to have a place over in Hollywood. Yeah. Kicked out of Hollywood, right? Yeah, they wanted to jack the rent up by 300 percent and uh we couldn't do it yeah found this beautiful spot and you got a nice spot yeah i was there

saturday night we'll talk about that in a minute uh but we're also neighbors you live right around the corner from me and you've been there for what about 10 years yeah about 11 years now 10 or 11 years i've been in your house yeah because it used to be julia roberts house and my wife was julia's assistant so uh when julia moved in we started going over and seeing her and uh and then she sold the house to you that's right yeah beautiful it's a it's a it's a great neighborhood. I really like it. It's real quiet and unassuming and unpretentious.

Yeah. I like it. And the neighbors are really friendly. Yeah. I don't know if you got, have you gotten to know people on your street? Yeah. I know a lot of people on your street. It's great.

And then also we go way back to New York. We played on an ice hockey team in the Police and Firemen's League. Yes. At the Chelsea Piers. That's right. Where we won the league. We won the league. That was awesome. Yes, yes.

It was, I remember those games. Yeah. They were intense. Yep. Yeah. The really intense ones. Cops don't mess around. No, the cops don't, especially remember the FBI team?

Oh, my God, yeah. Had FBI in their jerseys, and these guys, it was a non-checking league, and you didn't go into the corners with those guys. That's right. Oh, all's fair in love and war yeah i remember i got into a fight once and i was yelling at the ref and you were on the bench and you said it was your fault and i was like yeah probably um i used to have to keep my head up of course because uh because i used to play open hockey at Chelsea Piers every lunch. Right.

Or almost every lunch. And there would occasionally be a guy that would come in and recognize me and want to tell his friends that he laid me out. Right, right. And so I just had to keep my eyes in the back of my head so that if I saw that coming, I'd just put the elbow up like, Right. And so I just had to keep my eyes in the back of my head. So that, you know, if I saw that coming, I'd just put the elbow up like, oh, I'm sorry. Right, right. Yeah, you had a lot of reach out there.

I remember that. We played on the same defense a lot. And then those pickup games, I remember Mike Richter's sister used to skate with us. Right? I can't remember her name, but she was good. I think she played college hockey. Yeah. She used to come out.

Yep. We played against the Olympic team at one point. The Chelsea Piers Bums and played against women's Olympic team. No kidding. Yeah. Wow. That's pretty cool. A tremendous group of women that, you know, they could play they can play yeah they can play and it's just gotten better i feel like the level of women's college hockey since i was

in college has gone through the roof they're so good now yeah it's good to see yeah um and uh yeah because you were you were friends with rector I remember you were pretty close with him, right? I was, yes. Yeah. And a bunch of those guys. I hadn't known anyone on the team, and we were having that run in 1994. And I've been a Ranger fan all my life. Yeah. And, you know, I think my first game was in 1969, right after.

No shit. Yeah, right after. Phil Esposito? 1969 right after yeah right after phil esposito well before esposito's uh ratel and joe bear and hatfield and brad park and eddie jacobin and uh and so um i've been following it and i was super excited and i went to a couple playoff games and i was doing a film at the time and uh i rented a satellite to you know to get to see the game on the set and i was doing a film at the time and I rented a satellite to you know to see the game on the set and I was like full-on obsessed with the Rangers and it's getting around to game six and

Susan Sarandon who was you know mother children, and I was with her for many years, she was doing a film in Vancouver, and we were playing the Canucks, and so I said, well, I got to go out and get tickets, and, you know, so I went to game six out in Vancouver because the Rangers could have won the Stanley Cup there. They lost. We got, you know, berated. We wore our full Ranger blue.

Oh, you did? Oh, yeah. Wow.ated. We wore our full range of blue. Oh, you did. Oh, yeah. Wow. And after the game, the city of Vancouver celebrated as if they'd won the Stanley Cup, kept us up all night. You know, it's just like yelling and screaming in the streets. Got on a plane back and was so lucky to sit right behind Gary Bettman who is the chairman I guess the whatever the head of the NHL and he got me tickets for game seven nice so I went with my friend Frank my college roommate

and we saw him win the cup and Frank and i were obsessed with drinking with from the cup right so we yeah we had heard that was going to be the cup was going to be at the tribeca grill and so we went down there we hung out there for a little bit realized it's not coming here got in it got in a cab and said to the cab driver, take us to the cup. And he thought he knew where it was. And we drove around the Upper West Side for maybe an hour. Yeah. Couldn't find anything.

Just dropping into bars. No, just driving around to see if there was a place where people were conglomerated. Right. And it didn't work out. So we got out of the cab, got in another cab, said take us to to the cup. He knew exactly where it was on the Upper East Side. And we got out and was one of those times where I was like, please let me get recognized. Please let me get recognized. And a cop recognized me and let me through the police stanchions. police stanchions. Nice.

I got up to the door of the place, and there's two bouncers there, and one of them looks at us and says, you know, we have our ranger gear on. Yeah. He says, you can't come in here with that. Because it was a fancy place. Oh, okay. Hockey players dress up after games. They dress, yeah.

It was like they were running a classy party. They wouldn't want a bunch of goons in there, right? And then the other bouncer goes oh no i recognize that guy i saw him on television game six he was wearing his ranger blue in vancouver let him in you earned your way in that's awesome that's so about a half hour later messier walks in with the cup and i got to drink from the cup that night. That's so great. Met a lot of my childhood heroes, a lot of the ex-Rangers that had been on teams that I had loved as a kid.

Barry Beck, the Maloney brothers. They were there. And interestingly, they wouldn't drink from the cup. Really? Yeah, because we didn't win it. It's a thing with us. We can't drink from it if we haven't won it. Really? Yeah. We didn't win it. Oh. It's a thing with us. We can't drink from it if we haven't won it.

Yeah. Wow. But I was like, I can drink from it. Yeah. Who's your favorite ranger of all time? Besides Mike Richter,

in case he's listening. Well, Messier certainly brought the cup. I keep saying Richter. I meant Messier. Yeah. Yeah. But, you know, I also have my, you know, favorites like Joey Kosar, you know, who is like a working class player, fighter.

Yeah. Showed me his hands once and didn't have any knuckles anymore. Yeah. So many fights. Wow. I like the grinders, you know, the guys that, you know, get in the corners and make stuff happen. This team we have now is tremendous. I don't know if you've been watching them.

Yeah, they're up 3-1 right now, I think. Yeah. Well, they lost last night, so. Yeah. It's 3-2 now. Oh, shit. Yeah, and they're going back to carolina so got my fingers crossed yeah we got to get these southern teams out of the uh stand that's what my sons say florida last

year against north carolina what my sons are like if there's no ice in the state it shouldn't have a hockey yeah right right um so uh this interview was put together by your long-time assistant and producer allison hebel who is uh very i'm godfather to her two daughters and she basically was there when i met my wife and And so she introduced us. She introduced us. And then I, did she introduce us? No, no, no. But I said to her, I said, I'm going to marry your friend.

This is in the first week that I met Erin. I don't know if you remember Erin, Erin Covell, but she was in the office. And three years later, I was at the Friars Club in New York in the Milton Berle room, of course, the most romantic spot in Friars Club and I asked her to marry me and then that night we went to the st. Regis Hotel you're been in the King Cole room at the Regis Hotel no it's great it's got this huge oil painting on the back

wall of a king and he's one of the fanciest hotels in New York but it's got this famous oil painting and the king is on the throne and then you've got the two knights next to him and they're both going because the king farted that's the joke right and so we meet there every year for christmas and i said to allison i said do you remember three years ago when i told you what did i tell you and she's like what i go that i was going to marry aaron she's like oh I don't remember that and I was like that this was supposed to be a big moment right you know supposed to remember stuff like that yeah so um anyway so she hooked this up and then she hooked me up with some

tickets to go see uh Topsy Turvy which is your new play at the Actors Gang in Culver City. And I've seen several works there. Boba? Ubu. Ubu. I saw Ubu. That kind of blew my mind. That was amazing. But this one is just, it's funny. It says a lot.

The characters are, the actors bring them to life. The actors really shine in this. It's amazing. I've got a great group of actors. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're an actual theater company. So the people that you're seeing on stage, some of them have been there for 15, 20 years.

Right. So it's great when we go into rehearsal that you're seeing on stage some of them have been there for you know 15 20 years right um so it's great when we go into rehearsal because we all have a common vocabulary and uh so we get farther faster right right it's your sister in the she was in the production yeah and was that your brother doing the music yeah that's amazing that must feel so good. It is great. Yeah. It is great. And I wrote that part for my sister. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's, it's, you know, they're super talented. And I've been working with both of them for a long, long time. Right, right. That's very cool. And so years ago, I know you did a bunch of music and you were gonna you did you put out an album yeah did you was your brother involved in that no he wasn't he wasn't involved okay but you wrote the songs for this yes piece yes and you said i watched the q

a after the uh production and uh somebody asked you about writing the songs, and you said that you were in London. I think you were stuck in London for the quarantine for a while. I was over in London a lot over the last four years. Yeah. Two different jobs. And you just smoked a joint and wrote two of the songs in the room that night. Three of the songs.

Yeah. I had the lyrics. I just didn't have the tunes yet yeah so i i yeah it was a it was a very productive night that's amazing and i you know what i do is i i put the phone like this so that it can see the chords right and i and i record and i you know i was like didn't think much of it and then listened to it. And a couple of days later I said, Oh, I think, I think this is, I think it's good. Yeah. That's good. Really? I mean, the songs had, there was a lot of breadth. There was a lot of different types of songs and, uh, and the, um,

the ending was just great. I mean, by the end it all, it all kind of came together and, uh, it had a, it had a very strong message. strong message you your plays what do you call them because they're musicals i wouldn't call it a music i play i call it a play with music yeah because it you know there's one particular tune that wants to be a show tune which we've been resisting the whole time yeah just slow it down slow it down right right right don't don't don't know yeah um because it's not what this story calls for this calls for more like a uh music that is um more based in a uh a different tradition than a great chorus yeah yeah. But not a musical theater tradition. So it needs to come from somewhere else.

But you have a fascination with putting the Greek gods in your plays. Because that other one, Ubu? Ubu. Ubu. That was about the gods as well, wasn't it? Not really. It was about this big fat guy that takes over Poland. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But there there was all there is a soup.

There is a scene where the supernatural, the gods come. Yeah. But that's in the play. OK. Yeah. So the play was written. It definitely has. It has a statement. And what I like about your plays is that I go in and it's an experience. It challenges, it asks questions, it says things that aren't said. I mean, it's political satire and it really goes pretty strong. And this one, the message is very much about the effect that isolation during the pandemic had on the human spirit.

Yes. And behavior and our behavior. Right. Yeah. Right. And, um, it's something that, you know, I was struggling with, you know, and on both sides of, um, at first, you know, complete, uh, isolation compliance. as as it went on and on and on I started having more questions about it mm-hmm and you know it's it was a difficult time for all of us I believe it I believe a deeply traumatic time. Absolutely. And I've been fortunate enough to find my way to a therapist in the past few years. And, you know, trauma is something you have to expose light to. You have to illuminate trauma or it will be there forever. And, um, I guess this is an

attempt to kind of shine some light on what kind of behavior happened because of fear. Right. Uh, and how that wasn't our better nature and that we should call it out and we should, we should question it. Um, I think it's really important at this stage that we find ways to be compassionate and forgive and i think that's the ultimate message of the play right the last god to visit them is chaos chaos says that they uh they absolutely love this time you know because it's so chaotic, so divided. Yeah. But that everyone can change that.

Right. It's just a matter of finding a way forward. And the way forward is to forgive. And Bacchus loved it, too, because everybody was drinking so much during the pandemic. Bacchus loved the pandemic. Yeah. There would have been a greater time for wine. Yeah, that guy, that actor was great.

He was perfect. But Cupid, frustrated because he would shoot his arrow and no one was with anyone, so it wasn't really working. It was just creating a bunch of narcissists that were looking in mirrors. Right, right. Yeah, you nailed some of that behavior of, you know how there was a quick cut kind of thing

where, I mean, there was monologues and there was little mini monologues and there was a quick cut part of how people were reacting alone. And this is so great. And the same character two minutes later is going, I'm so sad. And it kind of reminds me of,

because I know the actors gang is based on this philosophy that there's four emotions. There's happy, sad, angry. And afraid. And afraid. And I think it's cycled through those emotions throughout the play. Oh, yeah. And as we all did.

Yeah. Yeah, it was a challenging time. It was a challenging time to be a theater company. A lot of theater companies no longer exist that existed before the lockdown. And particularly in Los Angeles, we've been dealing with a lot of challenges in the past five years, six years. In the past five years, six years, our union, Actors' Equity, had a vote about whether the membership wanted to continue the 99-seat equity waiver rule, which has served this city for years and years and years. So if it's over 99 seats, then it's covered by equity? No, under 99.

Well, yeah. seats then it's covered by equity no under 99 it's uh well yeah so essentially you could do something in a in in a theater under 99 seats because it would assure that the producers wouldn't make any money which was trust me true right we we've lost money throughout the years at the actress gang but that's not the. The point is to get people on stage. And so Actors' Equity had this vote, and two-thirds of its membership said they wanted to keep it, and Actors' Equity canceled it. No kidding.

Yeah. And so that put a lot of pressure on small theaters. Yeah. And then on top of that, there was this bill called AB5, which was originally intended to help Uber and Lyft drivers. But Uber and Lyft lobbied their way out of AB5. This was giving benefits to independent contractors. And so what wound up happening was that small organizations wound up having to

live by a whole new set of rules. And so that drove a lot more theaters out of business. Oh, God. And so the lockdown was the final straw for a lot of people. We were able to survive because we've been around for a long time. We have funding, but we also have other programs that sustain our organization, educational programs. And we work in 14 prisons in the state of California. So I have a tremendous staff there,

and I saw what was happening with other theaters that had much larger budgets than ours. They were furloughing people, laying people off, and I decided that we as an organization had to take care of our people, so we laid no one off. We kept everyone on health insurance. People whose jobs were not really relevant during a lockdown,

like a box office manager or a technical director, we repurposed other jobs. Oh, that's amazing. We kept everyone on staff. Wow. And we started doing workshops online. But my staff also responded. My education staff and prison staff responded in a way that was truly remarkable.

Within two weeks, they were developing programs for online. That's amazing. And in the prisons, we developed these packets that we'd send to all the people we were already working with in prison with assignments and self-addressed stamped envelopes to send back. So we kept in communication with all the people that we couldn't go see. But we still had to stay closed for two years. We could have opened six months prior to when we opened, but the rules were that in order to open, you had to check people's vax cards at the door. Right. And there was something about that that I found objectionable.

A theater has to be an open forum. It has to be a place where anyone can go. Right. Once you start a litmus test at the door of a theater, you no longer are a theater. You're some kind of political organization. And I didn't feel that that was in the spirit of Dionysus or my idea of what theater was supposed to be

or any gathering place for that matter. Yeah. So... How did that go with, like I was curious because the play definitely has, uh, the, the voice of it is that it's, it's challenging whether or not these mandates for vaccines are, are right or just are, uh, it questions it. And how did, just based on your basic West Side actor mentality, how did that go over with your cast?

Were there people that had objections to this point of view? Or was there a discussion about it? Yeah, we talked about it. We had a couple people in the company that weren't vaccinated for various reasons and uh the tendency around that time was to get rid of those people right and you know i just sorry i i can't i can't do that yeah i can't do that i couldn't do that. Right. So we had open discussions about it, about why that should be respected. As a theater company, we're quite different than a lot of other theater companies

in that we have a very strong sense of ensemble and what makes a good ensemble is generosity to be on stage with someone and want them to be better yeah there's no star right yeah and and uh i just felt that that kind of um, if you let fear lead you to, uh, excluding people, um, look at the whole of that. Uh, and we'd already been talking about this with cancel culture, right? Right. Uh, you know, we'd have meetings before COVID, you know, where someone was talking about what someone said, you know, 10 years ago and how awful that is. Re-examining it through a new lens now. Right. And I, and I, the, my response to that was, listen, guys,

we walk into prisons and the only way we have success in prisons is if we don't walk in with judgment. We don't want to know what they've done. But I guarantee you they have done far worse things than calling someone a name. And far worse things than certain behavior that has gotten people canceled. Right. So how can you cancel on the outside and then walk in without judgment into a prison? Prison is the ultimate cancel culture. Yes. So how can you have an open heart and compassion and And an idea that what we're doing here is about now and not about what happened. Yeah. We should just illuminate.

You have a program where actors gang goes into prisons and they do workshops with the prisoners. And Allison was nice enough to send me a cut of it. And I watched it. And it's extremely moving. 45 seconds of laughter. What did I call it? No, you didn't call it. Oh yeah, 45 seconds of laughter.

That's what the film's called, yeah. Look, we're not here to promote your projects. And I think the final line up on the screen was, you shouldn't be judged by your worst act in life. That's a quote from Sister Helen Prejean who wrote Dead Man Walking. Right. And so you see in this, and I love that there's a fetishism of prisoners in this country with MSNBC's lockdown. Yes.

What this prisoner did and what they, what they're getting now because of it. And you watch it and you go, and it kind of puts them all in this pit that we're all looking down on him. It's kind of gross. And I think that this does the opposite. It takes away everything, but the humanity, it shows these guys strip away their apprehensions. They come into a room and it starts with a very physical exercises that frees them up, throwing a ball back and forth, say your name and express a movement.

And it's all just opening up and the trust. And then it builds on that. And you see this, these humans come out and one of the, one of the prisoners wives came in and she said, you remind me of the, you before you came into prison. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That was actually that guy's mom. Oh, is that who it was? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

You see, they're able to, here's what we do. We go in and we talk about those four emotions. And we're not uh you know psychotherapists so what we do is we introduce them to characters to play like from the stock characters from the commedia dell'arte super easy to understand the old rich man who wants to marry his daughter off to yeah a business associate the two lovers, the servants that are trying to help the two young lovers realize their true love. Right. It's a pretty basic story.

It's told in every culture. And so we introduce them to the characters, and through those characters they play emotion. And so they get in touch with emotions that they haven't been able to access in prison. Right. There's one emotion in prison. It's anger. You have your mask of anger on the yard to survive. You don't show fear.

You do not show sadness. And laughter is usually about mockery, not really about true joy. Right. And so they get to remind themselves that they're more than just anger that they start getting in touch with feelings and emotions they had before they did the things that wound them up there and it liberates them. But more importantly, it tears down these divisions that exist in prison between races. In prison, you stay with your own group. Yeah.

And you do not mix. But before we go into these prisons, we meet withers in uh who are basically gang leaders in the prisons what do you call them shot callers okay and uh we tell them what we're going to do and we say we would like your endorsement for this and usually get it and so what happens is you have people from rival gangs in the same room. People from different areas of the state that would normally be at war with each other are now sharing emotions. Yeah. And there's this one turning point I've noted in the process where we get them all to a funeral of one of the characters and all of them have to put a flower on the grave and say something under their breath to that person,

a goodbye. And it gets very deep and very sad and very emotional. And because all of them have been at those funerals or worse yet couldn't attend those funerals because they were incarcerated and they go through the process each put a pretend flower in the grave and say something under their breath and then the facilitator will say now look at each other and it's that point where everything melts away because they understand that we have a common grief. And it doesn't matter what race you are or what gang you're from, we share that now. Eye contact between two human beings in a state of sadness. Right, vulnerability.

So there's a bond that's created that goes deeper than some of those gang bonds that they've had. And I remember a couple of guys came up to me at one of the classes inside, said, you know, three weeks ago there was this fight on the yard, and we were told beforehand that it's going to go down tomorrow. So when that happens, the various groups face off against each other's whites blacks hispanics northern mexican southern that kind of whole tribal thing and these two guys said it's a black guy and a white guy we found each other during the fight and we rolled around in the dirt and pretended to fight.

No shit. Wow. And we acted. That's amazing. What a moment. Yeah. Jesus. It's such a powerful documentary.

What happened in terms of getting it out there? Well, we got invited to Venice Film Festival and New York Film Festival, two festivals that are super hard to get into. It played really well. And then COVID happened. Yeah. So it's kind of in this holding pattern right now.

I've been talking to a company about distributing it. right now. I've been talking to a company about distributing it. But the platforms weren't the first approach weren't interested. And I felt it probably had a lot to do with what

you were talking about before this kind of like what they want to put on television about criminals is more that MSNBC lockdown thing. Right. I think they serve a function for society of producing fear. Here's these bad, bad people in prison. Remember Scared Straight?

Yeah. remember scared straight yeah there was always the one kid that that would would talk back and be cool and he wouldn't give in and they would just go hot and there's three guys yelling it's like what are we doing here but that's the way we look at incarcerated people in this country we we want to just just lock them up and throw away the key. We don't want to think about rehabilitation. That's the whole problem California's in right now is that there are some measures passed, you know,

the voters voted for to reduce sentences for people that were convicted before they were 18, right? So former lifers were now eligible for parole. So we got a call from the prison system, so we need more programs

because we're going to release these people, but they couldn't possibly produce enough rehabilitation within the time between the vote and the time that those people were released. Right. So that's part of the problem we're dealing with people. They've been socialized into being a felon even if they were in there for fucking pot charge or something see this is something i learned when i was doing shawshank redemption in ohio mansfield ohio

we were working in a prison that no longer existed as a prison but that prison was rebuilt like not far from there like a quarter mile from there so we had all these prison guards from that system that were working as extras in the film oh really and so i got to talking with them and one of the things i asked them was if you could change anything about the criminal justice system, what would you do? And these are hardcore Republicans, salt of the earth, you know, dudes who were saying, legalize marijuana, number one. And if you don't have the will to do that, at least have a different prison for those people that are in for possession or or sale because what we're doing is we're sentencing these kids for possession for a year

and a half there's a year and a half waiting list for ged programs and job training programs so essentially what we're doing is we're putting these kids into crime school. That's what they said. It's called crime school. Yeah. Because it just makes them hardened criminals. These nonviolent criminals get put in with real badasses, and they have to fight to survive. And we create criminals.

And they probably join gangs just for safety. Just for safety. And then they stay in the gang when they get out. That's right. That's crazy. So, by the way, Shawshank Redemption, I should point out, has a certain distinction right now that my fine producers just showed me. Number one on Rotten Tomatoes of all time with four million votes.

Wow. Ahead of The Godfather. It's been that way on IMDB for for a long time that's amazing and is that what got you into this kind of awareness of of the prison system was that what sparked it for you or did you already have that and then you kind of had it already i uh was um you know it's one of those things when when something's illegal and you're doing it and you're not in jail for it, you better start thinking about the criminal justice system. I've smoked weed for a long time. I saw people being put in jail for that.

I couldn't get behind it. Before that, I grew up in New York City in Greenwich Village in the 70s, 60s and 70s. Father was a musician. Father was a musician. I was lucky that he was also someone that was pretty strict with his morality. But I had friends that I hung with that went to jail. And so I realized this there, but for the grace of God, go I, from an early age, I, you know, I was one mistake away from, from doing that, from having that kind of life. And so I had a lot of compassion

for people that got swept into that system. Yeah. And it starts with jail. It starts with, you know, you get some kind of misdemeanor and you go to Rikers and you can't get the bail money. Some of these people literally

can't come up with five grand to get out. And they sit in there for a year, a year and a half. And my sister-in-law, Molly Covell, God bless her, she worked for a group called the Bronx Defenders. And they were the ones that put out the, they did the stop and frisk. That was them. But they also have, they're trying to work on the on the legislature for getting rid of bonds for people that can't afford it it's just it's like what you said it's crime school you know by the time these people get out they are traumatized and that and that's the other thing i mean trauma is interesting because it lives with you forever but you know what I know about dealing with trauma is when you shine that light on it,

people realize it's an instant that you can let go of. And if you don't let go of it, it's with you all the time. And I did a thing called EMDR for a while, because I dealt with trauma as a kid. And you go back, and there's two sides of your brain. There's the linear side that keeps track of time, and then there's the other side, which is just a bucket with emotions in it, mostly bad. And they don't communicate. So this side with the bad shit in it thinks that it's ongoing. And when you do

EMDR, they connect it, like you ever see like watch the watch and it goes back and forth. That's literally connecting the two sides of your brain. And that's what EMDR was. And I found out they did that with a lot of prisoners. And they were finding that the percentages of prisoners that had childhood abuse was like 100 percent. And suddenly you look at these people and you go like, all right, they are not making bad choices out of nowhere. They are perpetuating a cycle that they were unfortunate enough to just be born into. Right. And they're carrying this trauma that has to be a ramification for it. And there are people that are traumatized that don't do those criminal acts.

Right, right. So I'm cautious about that because I don't think you can excuse violent behavior or criminal behavior. could understand it better right and we could we could um know the difference between a non-violent offender and a violent offender yeah and really draw a distinction between them in their sentencing um you know we've had incredibly unhealthy laws like the three strikes law where it doesn't matter what you do on that third strike, you're going to go in for a long, long time. I think we've been overreactive in dealing with our problems in the criminal. Well, just look at it used to be called correctional institutes. And so it goes to the heart of like, what is jail? What is prison? Is it corrective?

Like you're going to take people in and educate them and deal with their trauma? Is it to keep them away from the public for the public safety? Or is it just to scare people into not committing a crime? Like, what is your take on that? Problem is, it's not correctional. There isn't a strong enough emphasis on rehabilitation. I think that's changing in some places, and that's a good thing. But pretty much that mentality of lock them up and throw away the key

is the way that we've been dealing with people that have done criminal acts. And the problem with that is that they're not going to be in jail for the rest of their life. And eventually they're going to come out. So it becomes a public safety issue. Rehabilitation is essential for public safety because you can't keep them in jail for the rest of their life unless they've done certain crimes right so why not spend the resources uh for public safety to create an individual that is not as traumatized or or even more traumatized than when they first went into prison. Right.

So your program is in, did you say 15 different prisons? We're in 14 prisons. Yeah. Yeah. And so what kind of results are you, can you quantify how they're doing? We have incredible results. We have, there's usually around a 40 to 60% recidivism rate. We have a 10% recidivism rate wow through our program we also have an 89 reduction in 115s which are in prison infractions

so it makes the prison safer as well and the other thing is it it has the potential and has changed the culture in prisons the our programs have actually created more peace on it's broken down the lines a little bit yes because it's given them one less thing to fight about right and that's liberating for them they want that yeah do they face uh any kind of blowback from the from their fellow prisoners for having been in a program like this? Because they put on the comedy del art, they put on the full makeup, and some of these guys are in drag, basically. They've got on women's lips, they're playing female characters,

they have shawls on. And the cinematography is so fucking great because it captures this moment where, as they're most deeply entrenched in these characters, the camera does a very slow pan across the yard and some of the prisoners are looking in threateningly and you felt like they're in this cocoon in here where they feel safe but they got to go back out there again yeah um from what i understand there are some there. Well, there's definitely pressure.

Yeah. But they keep coming back. Some drop out because of the pressure. But those that stick it out, there's big results for it. Yeah. I mean, we have what we had one program up in Avenal prison. up in avenal prison we had i think 14 lifers have since paroled that have been through our program wow and uh we have hired uh i think 12 of them uh because they're they're the shit they they They really get it. Yeah. And by the way, you know, we just produced a play that they wrote and performed themselves. No kidding.

And it was transformative. I mean, this stuff works. Wow. The arts can heal. Absolutely. The arts can heal. Absolutely. They also heal in our public school system,

in our programs that we do in public schools. These kids are traumatized too. Right. I mean, particularly now. Right. What's just happened to them these past four years. Yeah. And so we have kids that are just like checked out. They're just like staring at the floor and not wanting to engage and and the first day i was like you know and eye contact is important for what we

do and by the end of it you see they've been able to deal with their trauma and are now sentient and looking in people's eyes and expressing emotions through these characters that they've been told all their life not to express. Think about it. Kids are told to be happy. That's it. It's always like, what are you sad about? Come on, don't be sad. That's out of proportion.

Or don't be scared or don't you get angry with me. But you can be happy. Yeah. That's what parents want. That's what teachers want, right? Yeah. And so they're constantly told to suppress these emotions. And you get them in a room with other kids and you tell them, no, we don't want you to just be angry.

We want you to be furious because that's more entertaining. In a stage, you want to go to the extremes of emotions. Yeah. And then you see what happens when they start expressing extreme fear or extreme anger. Immediately, people respond with laughter. Right. Because that's where comedy lives, is right on the edge of danger. Yeah.

And to have that immediate feedback of laughter with something I did from expressing a real emotion that I have through this character, it feeds it. You start seeing, oh, they start to trust it more and they start to realize why it's cool. And then the parents tell us, oh my God, these kids, you know, thank you so much. Well, I had an acting teacher once that said, there's not, you don't get different spigots

for each emotion. There's one, you turn, turn it on, you turn it off. So if you get the anger to come out, it's like when you go to a funeral. I mean, are you Irish? Yeah. I mean, Irish funerals are, we walk around like this. I mean, talk about only being allowed to feel laughter. That's my whole childhood. And then you go to a funeral where you're allowed to cry. And I swear to God, I feel everything for the next four or five days.

I like come alive. And this is where we are told all of our lives to not express emotion right it's inappropriate or it's yeah uh you know man can't cry and you know do you feel like as an actor as a parent you were more in touch with that with raising your kids of feeling bringing the feelings to the surface yeah to some degree yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean certainly that um a child should have agency in in um shouldn't be made to do everything now certainly they got to clean up their room and they got to come to dinner right but you know i see some parents saying,

go kiss, give someone a kiss. They don't know that person. They're going up and kissing. I think that's a bad message to send. I don't know. And, you know, a child that, you know, learns how to have agency, I think that's part of the challenge of raising kids is that they understand that they don't have to do everything an adult says.

Yes. That being said, one of the gifts you can give your kid is manners and looking somebody in the eye and shaking their hand, showing respect. Yes. And when I see parents that don't give their kids that, I'm like, that's too much agency. You're doing them a disservice. Oh, I'm not talking about that. I'm not talking about – I'm talking about my body.

Right. Right. I don't have to go sit on someone's lap because an adult says I have to sit on their lap. Yeah. Right. Which might be difficult for some of the adults. They feel judged or something. But no, it's part of a larger issue here.

They've got a lot going on. Kids have a lot. And one of the things that we were told early on, which I think is a great message for parents, is that your kids are going to come home and take a giant shit. They've been in school all day being told, sit down, be quiet, learn, don't do this, don't do that. And it's so a counter to

everything that's going on in a child's mind and body. And they come home and they're going to yell at you and they're going to have tantrums and you just got to go, all right, there's your agency, let it out, let it out. And you can't be yet another person telling them how to behave. I read this book called How to Talk So Your Kids Will Listen and How to Listen So Your Kids Will Talk. I think that's on my shelf. One of the many books on my shelf I didn't read. Wow, did it change the game. Really?

Totally. Yeah. Because what it talks about is imagine being in middle school, right? imagine being in middle school right and the friend you've had since kindergarten is now excluding you from the clique and your world falls apart right and you go home and you say my world's falling apart essentially and your parents say well she's your best friend i'm sure she didn't mean it don't worry about it um you know when i was a kid and basically what you're saying is your feelings are illegitimate right yeah it doesn't and in their world there it's a catastrophe yeah

their world has fallen apart right or they come home from school and the teacher has you know they're complaining about their teacher and they're saying mrs so-and-so was being you know being so mean to me and you know giving all this extra homework and and you say well honey you got to do your homework and you know that that's your teacher that she you know she's the boss in school again coming to you with a catastrophe an emergency right and you're saying nope your emotions are not legit here right so what the book said was well first of all how many great teachers did you have in your life? Maybe three or four, if you're lucky. Yeah. The rest of them are just, you know, earning a paycheck and don't have the patience for you.

Right. Or trying to put you on Ritalin as they tried to put my kids on Ritalin, you know, my boys. So you have this full court press of pressure on this kid. My parents don't listen to me. Yeah. I have catastrophes in my life, and I go to try to explain that to my parents, and they tell me it's no big deal. Well, you do that for two, three years,

that's what makes the sullen teenager that's in their room that doesn't want to talk to you yeah because you haven't you haven't talked to them for four years you've been telling them that it's no big deal so why would they share with you anymore yeah they've shut off from you because you shut off from them and the book says why not just take their side be the one person that takes their side be their friend yeah they need an ally right now imagine if your wife came home and said my boss is being a dick he wanted me to work extra extra time he put some pressure on me i think it's weird sexually and you you said, honey, it's your boss. Yeah. It's your boss. Right. How would you react? You wouldn't feel like you had an ally. Right.

That's supposed to be your ally. And so it put it all. Stakes are so much higher when you're a kid. You know, your wife's got you. She's got her friends. She's got hobbies. When you're a kid. You know, your wife's got you. She's got her friends. She's got hobbies. When you're a kid and you get ousted from a friend group, that's everything. It's the end of the world. Yes. So instead of saying that's your best friend,

I'm sure she didn't mean it, you say, oh my goodness, that's your best friend. I don't know how I would deal with that. Then the kid can talk right and the kid says that make you feel that must feel you don't even say that you don't even say that you say how does it you say you say that feels that that must feel horrible yeah yes it does feel horrible yeah well i don't know what i would do i'll tell you what what I'm going to do. I'm going to tell her it hurt my feelings. I think that's a good idea.

Kids just solve the problem by themselves. Empower the child by listening, but not trying to solve their problem. Not trying to put it into perspective. When I was a kid, I got this happened to me and this happened. They don't give a fuck. Or tell them what to do. If you tell them what to do,

then it's the same thing. You're negating their process. They know on some level that they need to figure this out. They need to figure it out. Yeah, right. Or worse yet, I'm going to call her mother and I'm going to... Then you're that kid at school on Monday. Oh my God, then you're dead.

Oh my God, Then you're dead. Oh my God. Alice's mother called.