Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 206. M. Emmet Walsh

Episode Date: May 7, 2018

Legendary character actor M. Emmet Walsh ("Blade Runner," "Fletch," "The Jerk") joins Gilbert and Frank for a fascinating conversation about acing auditions, stealing scenes, disappearing into roles, reinventing characters and humanizing heavies and bad guys. Also, Laurence Oliver gets "the wish," Henry Fonda rallies the troops, Lauren Bacall reads the riot act and the Coen Brothers pay in cash. PLUS: The Stanton-Walsh rule! J. Carrol Naish! Loving Lee Grant! Deconstructing "Blood Simple"! And Emmet plays "tennis" with Paul Newman, Robert Redford and Harrison Ford!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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That's the sound of unaged whiskey transforming into Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey in Lynchburg, Tennessee. Around 1860, Nearest Green taught Jack Daniel how to filter whiskey through charcoal for a smoother taste, one drop at a time. This is one of many sounds in Tennessee with a story to tell.

To hear them in person, plan your trip at tnvacation.com. Tennessee sounds perfect. Hey, I'm Clint Howard, and you're listening to Gilbert Godfrey's amazing, colossal podcast. Right here, right now. Stay tuned. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried and this is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. Robert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast. I'm here once again with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and we're once again recording at Nutmeg with our engineer, Frank Furtarosa.

Our guest this week is someone who Frank and I have admired for many years, and we're thrilled for the opportunity to have him on the podcast. of the last half century with over 219 film and TV credits. Memorable television appearances include Bonanza, All in the Family, Ironside, The Waltons, The Bob Newhart Show, Amazing Stories, Unsub, co-starring former podcast guest Richard Kine, The X-Files, Ken Burns, The Civil War, Frasier, and Damages, just to name a few. He's also made his mark with unforgettable performances in dozens of movies, such as Little Big Man, Serpico, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, What's Up Doc, Slapshot Ordinary People Reds Straight Time Blade Runner

The Jerk Fletch Back to School Clean and Sober and of course as the double-crossing private eye Lauren Visser

in the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple, for which he was awarded the Independent Spirit Award for Best Actor. Over the course of a six-decade career, he shared the screen with, and often stolen scenes from, heavyweights such as Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Harrison Ford, Gene Hackman, and Paul Newman. And if you don't believe us? Just watch the films for yourself. His dependable and consistently impressive body of work led film critic Roger Ebert to coin the phrase the Stanton-Walsh Rule, meaning any movie featuring either Harry Dean Stanton or M. Emmett Walsh couldn't be all bad. Please welcome to the show an actor's actor and a man who says he never understood what the hell the original Blade Runner was all about. The legendary M. Emmett Walsh. I guess I'm supposed to say thank you.

I mean, it's an hour-long show, and you just took off 55 minutes. That's it. The intros are a little lengthy, haven't they? Yeah, they serve as an intro and an obituary. Holy gee. It made it sound like my career is over. Thank you. Well, it's a retrospective.

You've done a lot. Is profanity a lot on the show? Absolutely. We insist on it. Good, good. Now – Who else calls you two assholes assholes? Lots of people.

Okay, good. Fine. I want to be in the marching crowd. Now, can we hit on that Stanton-Walch rule? Again, you said you've broken that rule. No, well, who came up with it? Roger Ebert. Right, Ebert, Cisco and Ebert.

Yeah, there was a review later on, something I did, and he said I broke the rule. It wasn't, you know, It wasn't watchable. Wild Wild West. Was that the one? Wild Wild West? I don't know. It could have been. I have no idea but I met them both at different I talked to the guy in Chicago. The last one to die. I talked to

him in Chicago one time on a radio type of thing. Way way back. Ebert. But Cisco and Ebert. Well, they were very nice to me. And a lot of people, you know, do remember that Cisco-Ebert, you know, quote. So it's nice.

What the hell? Yeah, I think you said Stanton broke the rule. We dream a little dream. Well, I don't know that I don't know Harry Dean just died within the last year just died yeah big talent it's true the two of you in a movie

is a sign that you're in for a decent experience well the thing is Harry Dean I did something with him what in the hell was that one? We did a film together, huh?

Was it Straight Time? Oh, he's in Straight Time, yeah. Oh, right. Yeah, with Harry Dean. Yeah, well, Harry Dean was Harry Dean. You know, I basically don't want you to know Emmett Walsh. I want you to know a cop or a minister or a killer or the president of Princeton. And then when I say that, I get 374 letters from Princeton saying,

get our college off your fucking lips, will you? You prefer to disappear into the role than than somebody say there's yeah i don't yeah i'm not you know and you know i'm not saying that they had come to me at some early stage and offered me tons of money to play the same character for 30 years i wouldn't have done it but i have fun not being michael emmett walsh and uh when i joined my first union i couldn't there was a michael walsh like there could I joined my first union, I couldn't, there was a Michael Walsh. There could not be two, there could not be two Spencer Tracy's at one time.

They protect a person's name, the unions. So rather than becoming, you know, rather than becoming what, Gilbert or Frank, you know, I decided to go with my first initial and my middle name. That was supposed to be a laugh. These guys are dull. We're being roasted by M.M.

at Walsh. Five minutes into the show. I think Michael Keaton took the name Keaton because he was Michael Douglas. No, no, no. Oh, Michael Keaton, yeah. Yeah, it was well known.

So when I got my first union card, which I think was equity, a stage union in New York, and I knew I couldn't use a name. There had been a wonderful character actor back in the 30s and 40s, J. Carol Nash. Oh, sure, we know him. And I always liked the sound of it, J. Carol Nash. Oh, sure, we know. And I always liked the sound of it, you know, J. Carol Nash. And then I went with the M,

you know, rather than going with, you know, one of the clown's names here or something. But no one can say M. Emmett Walsh. It scans all right. You can read it. Like Harry Dean Stanton, you know, J. Carol Nash has a poetic sound to it. But you can't

say M. Emmett Walsh with it guts itself up. It looks okay on paper, but you can't say it out loud. But that's where it came from. And, you know, my mother's favorite brother was Emmettllivan so that's where

the middle name came so you took that and it's spelled e-m-m-b-t the irish way you know robert emmett a nathan hill of ireland who was hung by the english back in 1820 something his uh it was a surname he was a protestant but uh robert emmett spelled as one team and the irish who were uneducated and so forth to pay homage to this great person spelled his name wrong for the next 200 years. Oh, man. Well, tell us what you were, before we turn the mics on, Emmett, you were telling us the story of how you're from Vermont.

You came to New York against your mother's wishes. Are you telling me the mics aren't on now? They are now. Yeah. They were until Gilbert read his read his intro yeah but you were you were fascinating us you were telling us how your mother did not want you to come to new york and you took a chance i have a degree in marketing i have a degree in business and uh my mother you know lovely irish lady my uh olivier laurence olivier said his his mother had the wish

the way he got in the theater into acting was his mother had the wish and never did anything with it. My father had the wish, you know, if I picked it up from someone in the family. But my father never did it. You know, he was a machine gun in the First World War and all this other stuff. But I got the wish from my father. And then when I was finishing up in college, you know, the dean of students had me in, you know, Clarkson University. And I was Clarkson College up in Potsdam, New York.

St. Lawrence is right next to Clarkson up there in the north. My college is only 150 miles from where I grew up in Vermont. And the dean of students had me in when I was finally graduating. And I wasn't doing it for years. It was taking a little bit longer than that. And he said, okay, well, she said, you're going to graduate. We can't stop it. But we want you to know you're graduating with the lowest marks of anyone in seven years.

Wow. So that's the way Clarkson College put me out. And, of course, they had me back for the fifth year. And you gave me the Golden Knight Award. Right now that you made it, they'll take you back. i think i did not rub their asses in a new bastard now you you received one of like the worst insults i guess that any man can receive received when you did straight time with dustin hoffman uh and one part dustin hoffman handcuffs you oh yeah street i know where you're going here and he pulls your pants down so you're there with your naked ass out and you said at one point you turned around and you could see your dick and that caused like an argument

over whether it would be an r or x rating yeah and well uh then uh yeah so no one wants an x rating because you know you'll lose you've done You've done a terrible job of setting up this line. Okay, so you tell it. I'm telling you so you can do it. I feel like my career is over and I came here just to do what? Anyway, at that time, any frontal nudity in a film was an automatics X rated. Any frontal nudity. And Dustin overpowers me in the car.

I'm his parole officer taking him away to someplace. And he ends up handcuffing me to a freeway divider where my hands are up above my head. And then he pulls down my trousers. I am exposed on the freeway, and cars are going by with their honking their horns and so forth. And I'm tied there with my, you know, with my trousers

down. At one point in there I kind of swung towards where the camera was, which was across the freeway. And you, I exposed what I had before, just been my bare ass, you know, so you saw it from the other side. I expose what I had before. It's just been my bare ass.

So you saw it from the other side. At that time, any frontal nudity in a movie was an automatic X rating. And I was told that the committee that gives the rating to the films looked at it, saw the scene, saw me turn towards the camera, and said, that's not worth an X. To hell with it. Give him an R. He does tell it better. So your dick is not worth an X, Ray. Well, I've got three dead wives that died under mysterious circumstances that didn't complain that much, but I got sick of them.

I like another line you said, Emmett, about tell us what people would see if you were in a movie playing Jamie Lee Curtis's lover. I thought that was very, very funny and very telling. Oh, that's right. Jamie Lee. That's right. Jamie Lee. Yeah, I said if the movie opens up and I'm Jamie Lee Curtis' husband or lover or boyfriend or something, you know I'm dead in ten minutes.

And then she spends the next hour and a half looking for the killer. I love that. I don't stay there very long. Jamie Lee, she's a sweetheart. She is. So you came to's a sweetheart. She is. So you came to New York to do serious theater. You had an interest in doing Moliere and Shaw and those kind of things. You didn't say, I'm going to be a character actor.

Well, intellectually, I could understand Shaw and Shakespeare and Moliere. But I'd been deaf in my left ear since the time I was three years old. I had a mastoid operation when I was three. Now, 90 of the time they can clear that up with penicillin, but in 1938 there was no penicillin, really. And so they did an operation that more or less deafened me in my left ear. And I grew up in northern Vermont, and I did come down to New York, and I wanted to intellectually do Sean Shakespeare. But I said things like, Pfeffer.

And they said, what? Pfeffer. And they said, what are you saying? What did you want to go and do that for? Pfeffer. And they said, you want to do Shaw and Shakespeare? I said, well, they understand me at home. So that's where I started.

It was obvious I wasn't going to do Shaw and Shakespeare and Moliere. My speech was just simply too bad. You couldn't go back. Kids 14 were doing Shakespeare, and I couldn't speak English. So I had to figure out if I was going to do it, what I could do that no one else could do. And that's the hard point uh people go and try to become the next pacino or the next meryl streep or something they don't want that

they want something new something different they want you and actors have a hard time figuring that out so i had to figure out who i was and why what i could do no one else could do. And that's where I started, you know, fooling around and all that. I'm an old jock. I led it in four sports. I'm a par golfer. You know, and, you know, athletically I could do anything. And I just had fun.

People brought me in. Once they got on to me and figured me out, they'd say, well, this is terrible crap. Get Walsh and at least he makes it believable. Love that. And I got a lot of old jobs. I've done 118 feature films. It's amazing. There's a lot of stuff out there.

And I'm not ashamed of, you know, they're not all Hamlet, but I'm not ashamed of any of it. Some is quite interesting. Yeah, some that we read. And you have played, I think, what's been described as the nice villains. And it makes you even more scary that you're one of those villains with like the smile on the face and you know a good old boy attitude yeah well uh i don't know about the ninth villain but uh the uh i think he said i think he said nice villain yeah oh nice nice nice well that you

try to you try to you try to add humanity to these characters. I finally meet someone whose speech is worse than mine. Thank you. I'm so nice, Phil. This is like interviewing Bob Einstein. We're being ripped apart. No, it's, I don't know, where are we? You were talking about how you try to humanize bad guys. I don't know.

Where are we? You were talking about how you try to humanize bad guys. No. Like Blood Simple was a film I did for the Coen Brothers, the Coen Brothers' first movie, Blood Simple, where I played the private detector, the fumble type of guy. And if you're playing, I learned early on, if you're playing a villain, the villain goes home and he, you know, he flirts with his wife. He takes the kids out to the park. You know, he's the nicest guy in the world. He has a bad job on the weekends, you know, but he's not a villain. If you play a villain as a villain, it's not very interesting.

Early on in the theater, you learn if the character cries, the audience doesn't. So the most interesting thing about acting a bit is to avoid the tears and let the audience cry. And most actors want to cry, you know, type of thing. And that kind of kills it a little bit. I don't know if that means anything to you guys. That's interesting. I'm looking at you and I said, did either one of them get out of high school? Look at that.

You flatter us. We're much older than that, Emmett. So you went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts? Yeah, for two years after, you know, I went down in the art. Right. And I didn't know anything. I said I couldn't, you know,

and somehow I had the wish. Olivier said he got the wish for his mother. I got the wish for my father. And I'd done theater in high school and college and, you know, and so forth. You know, I enjoyed it out on stage. Being on stage was fun for me. I was never scared of it, afraid of it. And so I went to New York, but I didn't know anything.

I auditioned at a school called the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and they take more or less anybody for the first year. Then they weed it out and invite it back for the second year. I came very close to not even being invited back for the first year. Then they weed it out and invite it back for the second year. I came very close and I didn't even be invited back for the second year. Now both the schools on the West Coast and the East Coast have a third year

connected to it. But that's where I, you know, I would, in New York when I started, you could see any play you wanted to. You put on a jacket and a tie and you kind of hang around outside the theater at the first intermission. you could see any play you wanted to. You put on a jacket and a tie, and you kind of hang around outside the theater at the first intermission. And they come out to have a cigarette or something,

and you kind of walk in with them. And there's always an empty seat or something. And I watched the last two acts of Miracle Worker, or Raisin in the Sun, 10, 15, 20 times. But I'm watching actors do this stuff you know and and um eventually you know and eventually the people in the theater the the door people and they give you come on and sit down you know the whole thing i'd and um uh so but i i i was a empty disc picking up an impression you know i had I didn't have to unlearn something. If you're a football player and you go

to Notre Dame, they spend the first two years unlearning what you learned in high school so you could be a decent college football player. I didn't have to unlearn anything. I was spooking it all up. And then in time, I would go to a

play, and I was amazed by it all because i you know i'm i was a theater actor i was a movie actor a television actor and i'd watch and watch one then finally i started seeing performances and acting is beat to beat to beat with the character and i'd see an actor do something on a given beat and i said no that's not the way you should do that beat and then i you know i'd see another performance you know i'd start to pick on things where before i've been totally awed by it all and then then it became obvious that if i'm sitting in the chair in the audience why am i not up on that stage you know i said well how do i get my ass from here up to

there if i'm so bloody smart you you know, and that became marketing. You know, I had to learn how to, if I got a chance to go meet people on something, to walk in, there would be seven Emmett Walshes before me and six coming in after me. How could I win that job? Oh, that's fascinating. You know, and so I had to learn how to go in there, but that was the marketing background. You know, you walk, I talked to the kids about this. I'd walk in there and basically they give you a page or a scene and you're reading with somebody. And there's seven or eight people watching.

And you feel it. You know what's going on, you know. And there's an instinct type of thing. And if you thought it was not going well, you'd say, I worked this all out before. I'd say, hey, you know, what if this guy was, as opposed to he's red, what if he had a really bad stammering, he had trouble around people, what about that?

And they'd say, well, sure, sure. What do you mean? I take another one. I say, what if this guy was, you know, as opposed to, what if he's very hostile? You know, yeah, sure, I'll do that. Yeah, yeah, sure. Yeah. What don't you want me to do?

You know? Yeah, sure, I'll do that. And they'd say, well, yeah, well, we hadn't thought about that. You know, and I learned how to interview, how to audition. And also, there was only me. I mean, women found me totally repulsive. So it was only me in the bar type of thing. So these people, I might not get the job on that interview,

but they remembered me the next time I came in. Absolutely. And I learned, you know, how to handle, that's marketing. I learned how to sell the product. That's great. I was the product. How to separate yourself from the other eminent Walshes. Yeah, and, you know, you can sit there at a casting call and watch people come in,

and you can see people that they're thinking about the car payments or the kid needs more books for college or something. They're not there. You can see that. You read these stories about somebody got the job at a cold interview. And it's just that they learn how to handle it. I learned how to kind of handle it. And I had a good time. And there wasn't – it was me.

I could always work. What got the ball rolling for you, Emmett? You were in a couple of plays. Was the death of the well-loved boy, was that sort of the first legitimate role? I was going with a girl who worked for an advertising agency, McCann Erickson. They're still around. I don't know if they are or not. Yeah, they are.

And she got me a job doing an Esso commercial. Esso Gas. Esso Gasoline. Now it's Chevron. I don't know what the hell it is now, but it was Esso. And just on camera talking for 10 or 15 or 20 seconds doing an Esso commercial. but talking for, you know, 10 or 15 or 20 seconds, you know, doing an SL commercial. And the casting person on that gave a call to an agent she knew, Don Buchwald,

who's head of the Buchwald agency. He's still around, too. Oh, yeah. Oh, no, he's big time. Yeah, Howard Stern's agent. Yeah, Howard Stern's man. Right. And she got a hold of Buchwald, who was just getting getting into the aging business, and he got a hold of me. And, you know, as I say, I'm a loose cannon.

And I'd go for an interview, and he'd call and say, what did Walsh do? And they'd say, hey, look at what you can't do. You know, and he homed my interviewing process. Wow. You know, Don was involved. And I started to make money doing commercials. So then they'd call and say, we got a chance. There's a play they're doing off-Broadway.

You'd carry a spear. And I said, fuck you and your spears. I didn't carry a spear. And they only knew me as a spear carrier, you know. So they can't take an insult. They said, well, give give him this he'll fall on his face by then they were hiring a cannon to kill a car coach i was so ready that i there's no way and that's the way i started and i started doing you know i did the commercials then i started

doing the movies because the same casting people were doing commercials on television and uh the word got out. He looks good on camera. He's interesting. You know, the whole thing. The 80% of acting, or maybe 75% of acting, can be taught. The other 25% or 20% is the gift. You know, I had nothing to do with it. You know, that was a gift.

I did the study. I learned everything you could and then the gift got got me to the next stage that's interesting the things that audition the way he the way he handles an audition because gil gilbert's done some acting roles in his career and he absolutely hates auditioning well i'm looking at him i can understand but i'm saying emmet turned it to his advantage. Yeah. To separate himself from the people in the waiting room.

He found a way to. Well, the thing is, you've got to, you know, like, but this was my degree in college. Marketing. Estranged marketing. I came in handy. How do you sell the product? You know, how do you sell the product? But, you know, I have, my father saw my success.

You know, he came to New York. I was doing a Broadway play and so forth. And my mother got Parkinson's, and she was in a nursing home for the last 10 years of her life, just shrinking to nothing. My mother never saw any of it. But it was what I wanted to do. It's what I figured out how to do. And I knew how to deal with money. You know, you live at this line.

You know, if your things are going well, you still live at this line. And if things are going poorly, the money that you saved above the line goes down here. You know, but most actors end up, you know, they chase the money that you saved above the line goes down here, you know, but most actors end up, you know, they, they chase the money, you know, they're doing well,

then they do very well. Then they buy the two Cadillacs and the Mercedes in the house and the whole thing. And then when things don't go well, then they're in trouble. I always, because of the business background, you know,

learned how to handle the money I had and put it away. And normally at this stage of my life, I have enough money not to do interviews like this. Hilarious. That was the perfect payoff to that story, Emmett. Don't Go Away will be right back after a word from our sponsor. I'm going away. Stop it, you.

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So, let's go. So, the marketing and the business background really paid off. Yeah, in my case. Yeah, good for you. It paid off as far as being able to live financially and also to get parts. To sell himself, to know how to market as the product. And you said you, I think you have a quote, I get paid to do nothing.

No, the quote is I get paid to do what I do for nothing. And that means? You understand the difference? Yeah. Yeah. He loves it that much. All actors will do anything. They love acting.

You know? And I get paid a lot of money. Well, now I'm either, what am I, 97 or 103. I'm something. They... But I've had a good time. I've met interesting people. I've had a good time.

I've met interesting people, had a lot of fun with them. No one screws with me. If I walk on set or if I walk in front of the camera and you're doing a scene with me, you better damn well be good or I'll kill you. But if you're good and you see me coming in, you are going to make sure you don't lose to me. So you end up with a tennis match. I love that. You say something, the ball comes back.

I say something. And it goes back and back and back. And the audience is going whack, whack, whack, whack, whack. And that's what makes the great theater. That's what makes great acting. You really watch the tennis match going on. And no one screws around with me because they know I'm there to help the material. Of course.

I'm not there to make an Emmett Walsh, you know, type of thing. Get Walsh, move the story along, I've heard you say. Yeah, well, yeah. They're not, you know, as they say, they're not writing movies for me. They're writing movies, you know, watch me fall off a curb. Can we ask you about some of the early, and did you room with William Devane at one point, Emmett? Yeah, Devane came down from Albany.

Yeah, we all started at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, which, as I said, was a two-year school. And Bill Devane came down with another friend of his by the name of James Sloan, who was the voice of Lexus for years and years and years recently. But they came down together, and we ended up five in a little downstairs underneath the street apartment up on 75th Street in Amsterdam Avenue or something, you know. And, yeah, Devane and I, and we were all together. And Devane got a leg up earlier. You know, we went to school for two years and so forth.

Devane was kind of a male lead, you know, type of thing. I was a character person. I had to grow in, you know, into my stuff. And Devane studied and worked hard on the whole thing and he's done he's had a very good very nice career yeah no and you know like everybody knows he did john kennedy back there that's right still a hell of a good work but he's done some very good films he's he's always working and he's believable yeah no matter what it's in you know we that's what we learned did you work with Nichols and May back in those days too? I did a play, and that's curious.

Thank you. I did a play that Elaine May wrote and Mike Nichols directed up in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. It might have been called A Matter of Position, but I'm not sure what it was. But all good character people from New York, and we're up in Stockbridge, Mass. And that's where I met Elaine and Mike. Right. And, you know, I've dealt with Elaine afterwards.

You were in Mikey and Nikki. Mikey, yeah. And the other guy, the male, whoever we're talking about. Mike Nichols. Mike Nichols. Mike Nichols had me in a movie or two, too. Yeah, yeah. Well, the thing is, what happens with a casting situation or a director or something,

they say, look, there's 130,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild. 130,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild, 130,000 members. They'll say, look, I only want to see 10 people. Now, how do you get ahead of all those people to be one of the 10 that gets in to see somebody? And that's, you know, what the hell? Yeah. And so I auditioned well, and I met Mike well, and they would simply say, okay, we got Walsh for this.

That takes care of that problem. Now let's see who we can get for the girl. You know, a problem solved. You know, they didn't have to worry about spending two days casting this. Does that make any sense to you? Yeah. But I'm interested in those early days because you were in Midnight Cowboy with John Schlesinger, Alice's Restaurant with Arthur Penn. I mean, looking back.

Arthur Penn. Arthur Penn directed. I did a play. Arthur Penn did a play up in Sackbridge, and that's where he met me. Uh-huh. You know, maybe it might have been an Elaine May play. And then after that, when Arthur, you know, Arthur gave me, Arthur brought me up for, what was that?

Alice's Restaurant. Alice's Restaurant. Yeah. You know, I played Sergeant Group W or something. But Arthur Penn, there was a thank you for what I'd done in the play, you know, type of thing. But it goes back to what I said. If you're casting something and you've got 12 problems,

if they got me, they only had 11 problems. You know, and that was, you know, I would take care of whatever it was they needed, and they could go on with something. Look, I don't want you, I said before, to see a Michael Emmett Walsh. I want you to see the garbage collector. Right. You know, and they knew that I wasn't going to do anything other than the garbage collector for them. And it solved the problem.

We always, like on this show, both of us, always admired the character actors because. Yeah, we've had some good ones here. Bruce Dern and Steve Buscemi's been here. And it's like, because when you see a movie, you'll go, wow, you know, Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep were great. And you forget the great character actors, you know, because you'll go,

oh, that was a doctor in that scene or a cop. And you believe it's a doctor or a cop. You're not going, oh, that's a great performance. Well, that's what character acting is about. That's what you, you know, it's, look, we're talking about, I'm a stage actor. You know, I started out in the stage. I never thought in terms of movies and television. I just thought if I could ever make a living as an actor on stage, that would be wonderful.

And I did get to that. But I never saw that what happened when I was on film. I never had anything to do with that. That's a gift. I mean, the acting, I never had anything to do with that. That's the gift. I mean, the acting I said before is 75%. The gift is, is what, you know,

um, uh, Vanessa Redgrave had the, you know, she walked on film and you said, wow, you couldn't watch anything else. You know,

you know, there, you know, there, there are other actors like that, you know, the USMV. Wow.

They just burn it. You know, you just, they just burn the film. And, um, so, uh, I was given, you know, I was given the gift of, you know, Wow. They just burn it. They just burn the film. And so I was given the gift of I can walk on stage and people would watch me. I could walk on film and people watch me. Those are the gifts.

You don't always get it in both cases. But come on, that's luck. That's luck. And also, you know, I might have just stayed home and ran a bar, you know, type of thing. Yeah. I'm glad you didn't. And you had, I remember I'd heard this quote once before, and I forget the exact quote. Olivier said something about the angels. Okay, before you ruin that quote. Okay, before you ruin that quote.

Olivier said, there are nights in the theater when the gods seem to come and sit on your shoulders. That's great. But on the nights when the gods don't come, the audience does. Oh, that's profound. So they're there either way. Whether you have it or not, they're there. The guy next to you, I don't understand that at all. He's fascinated.

But that's the Olivier's quote. It is true. I mean, yes, yes, you open the play, and opening night, you're dynamic. You know, the great line in the theater is watch the second night. That's when it goes right in the toilet. You know, you're so high for the opening, the second night just goes, you know, and I did something with Henry Fonda one time, and one of Fonda's things,

like he did Mr. Roberts for a year or more or something on Broadway. And you're going out there eight times a week. Basically, you don't do anything from noon on. Your energy is all getting ready for that curtain to go up at eight o'clock at night. If you're going to do anything, you do it afterwards, all theater bars.

You drink and you eat after the show. You don't go in there with a full stomach. on the nights when Fonda didn't know anybody out in the audience, because if somebody comes back after a show and you say,

Tony, Tony, why didn't you tell me you were out there? Because you knew you would have done it different if you had known Tony was out there. Fonda would go when he knew nobody. And, you know, he played for over a year at those plays. He would look through the peephole in the curtain, and he'd say, see that woman in the fifth row, two seats in, with the pink hat? He said, that's the one.

And he'd do the performance for her like it was his mother. So he wouldn't be gray, so he wouldn't be sloppy. And she never knew, but it prevented him from slipping. He'd come off the stage, he said, come on

fellas, that was a damn 83. No, we were 87 last night. Come on, let's get it back up there. He wouldn't grade them. He wouldn't. Wow. But that was the great stage actors. What a pro.

Well, now you ask someone to do a play, they won't do it more than 10 weeks or something. You know, they get bored. You know, the whole thing before that was theater. You couldn't get bored. You know, Life with Father, you know, ran for five, six, seven, eight years, all the way through the Second World War. You know, Harold Lindsay, Harold Lindsay and his wife. But whatever we're talking about.

These people put their time in. Well, so we're talking about. These people put their time in. So we're talking about money. Let's talk about Blood Simple. Because did you have the brothers pay you in cash when you took the gig? They're trying to get the IRS on me. I don't know nothing about that. Hello to Mike, by the way, whoever this is playing to. When I was doing Silkwood with Meryl Streep in Dallas,

and I got a call from my agent at the time, and I had heard that they had turned a couple things down that were being offered to me or something, and I never heard about it. And I got totally pissed. I said, I want to read everything. I want to see everything. You don't turn anything down without me seeing it. So I'm down there and I get this script from these two brothers down in Austin, Texas.

Joe and Ethan Cohen. And they came out of Minnesota. Joe was a theater major at NYU. Ethan was a Princeton graduate, philosophy or something. So I get this script, and it's blood simple. And it all takes place at night. It's very hard to shoot at night. It's hard to get any depth.

You know, it's tough, tough to do. And I slink around with his suit, his Panama suit and his hat and the whole thing. And it was interesting. I said, look, I can take this character and it's like a Sydney Green Street. And I can work it out and then 20 years time when i'm old enough you know i can do it in a real movie you know so i have a lot of faith yeah yeah yeah i'd flush it out because nothing would come of this thing and uh i uh told the agents i said go see what they got and the agent came back and said they'll give you they'll give you

they'll give you 1% of the profits I said I have a degree in business administration from college 1% of zero is zero I mean what the fuck are we talking about and the agent comes back the next day and said they'll give you

2% of the gross. I said, you went from profits to gross in one day? I said, it's still going to be nothing. No one's ever going to see the fucking film. But I own part of the film. I get checks on it all the time. I love that. From Blood Simple.

And so I went down. I met the Coen brothers down there in Austin. And they had this little film they'd made up and so forth. And I'm up there doing Silkwood with Merrill. And I'd go down to Austin for a week or two. And they had it right down to the very nth degree. They had been working on it for two years. They raised their they raised their

three or four hundred thousand dollars and they had the whole thing and i went down and and uh uh the first time i'm there i think i was getting five hundred dollars a day in expense money you know so they gave me they gave me a check and i don't know who you guys are i don't want your check so they came back and gave me five $100 bills. So I put them in my pocket. Then week after week after week. Finally, I got a wad going out, and I know everybody's looking at my pocket, and I'm going to get mugged.

I put them in the ice cube tray. I didn't know what to do. You're hiding money. I had created my own monster. I was paranoid. But I did their thing, and Joe would – they kind of looked through the camera together. Joe was the director. But Ethan, they're just talk, talk, talk together.

And Joe would say – he'd say, well, I want you to go over there. And I said, well, what if I look this way? And they said, no, we can't afford that. And then I'd say something, and then I'd say, well, what if I do? He said, one of the great lines where Joe said, just humor me, Emmett. Will you please just humor me? And that became one of them. And at one point in there when I was up working at Silkwood,

he gave me a call and said, do you smoke? I said, no, I'm not a smoker. He said, can you blow a smoke ring? And I said, I'm not a smoker. And he said, would you work? And we want you, Danny Hydea, you know, is a guy, you know, the whole thing in the bar, a bar owner. And he said, so I tried to, you know, and they wanted me to blow smoke rings.

And I have the cigar. I'm trying to do it. And all I did was get sick. And I called back and I said, I can't, you know, that's not working. He said, don't worry. We've got a machine. We got the whole thing solved. So I go down and I'm talking to Danny and Danny's there.

And I want to piss him off. And I blow a smoke ring right at his face, right going across him, you know? And, you know, really pissing the character, really pissing Danny off. And they got this billows right beside my ear. But the smoke rings keep breaking. They don't stay together long enough.

And, you know, because it's important within the frame of what they wanted to do. And find a little costume, a little makeup girl. They just hired her. She was her first job. And she said, give me that goddamn cigar. She said, I used to smoke silkwood with my four brothers

out behind a barn. And she took the cigar and pow! She blasted it. You know, one after the other. Boom, boom. I mean, beautiful. And you've got to inhale the whole thing to get it right. She blasted him out, and boom, boom, boom. We got the whole scene.

And I'm saying, well, this is what low-budget movies are all about. And I went out about two hours later. We were in a roadhouse outside of Dallas. There's Austin, I guess. And there she is sitting on the steps, just puking her guts out. She'd given her life for this fucking movie. I love that. Something to tell her grandkids.

I ran into her within the last five or ten. She's still in the business. She's a prop lady. And she stayed in all the way. But I think, did I answer the question? Yeah. And then some. Good for me.

Now, a question I wanted to ask you, being a stage actor, doing the same dialogue night after night, do you find yourself going into autopilot? And what do you do about that? Well, I'd mentioned before about Henry Fonda. Yeah. You know, like if you know somebody who's out in the audience, you really, you know, you don't want to do a bad one. Yeah.

Every audience plays differently. Why does somebody go out and fish on the Gulf or on Lake Champlain or something? You know, there's something about fishing. It's not that you catch a bass and a bass. You know, they play you differently fishing. It's not that you catch a bass and a bass. You know, they play you differently. Each audience plays you differently.

They miss this laugh. Why is that? What do we do? Then you try to make sure you don't miss the next one. You can sense the audience. You're playing them. And that becomes the life of it. There's also the pride of the business. You don't want an audience to hate you.

You want an audience that loves you. And you've got to do the play. And if they're not responding in the right places, you try to find out why and get them back in the other places. Does that make any sense to you? Oh, yes. You don't look that smart. He's not. Well, he's a stand-up Emmett you know he does he does stand up three three or four nights a week so you must have a similar experience where why didn't the audience laugh at the joke they laughed at last night

oh my god yeah yeah yeah why is that audience different it's like sometimes a joke that kills in the first show in the second, they're staring at you. Mysterious. So your question had nothing to do with me. It had something to do with me. By the way, the scene, picking up the hat little business in Blood Simple, I know you've been asked this.

That was your invention? That was your little bit of business? I'm not sure. At one time, I might have said it was, but I'm not sure. The Coen brothers are so fucking smart. I mean, no one does a first movie and have it like Blood Simple. I mean, you know, there are hundreds of movies made by people that you never hear about. You know, never a word.

Absolutely. people that you never hear about you know never never a word absolutely and uh um the i viscer my character had an image of himself obviously hat was part of it but he just went through the whole pounding the wall getting his hands you know uh uh knife in the hand the whole the whole thing and pounding the wall to get the knife out and the whole thing. And during all that, my hat had fallen off. You know, this, you know, whatever the white thing was, you know, the Western hat that I had on. Yeah. And then he gets his hand back.

He turns around. And, you know, he's totally wiped. You know, he turns around and he's looking towards the door where he thinks whoever is involved, you know, he's going wiped. He turns around, and he's looking towards the door where he thinks whoever is involved, he's going to come get them. And then he looks down and goes out of frame, comes back up and puts the hat on. It's a great moment. Now, yeah, and I, with hindsight,

I like to think I might have thought of that because it was part of the character but the Coen brothers might have thought of it too I'm not sure you know it's a great performance yeah well it's a good performance you know I won an award for it

it was the first spirit award the independent spirit award you know Meryl Streep got who am I talking about It was the first Spirit Award, the Independent Spirit Award. You know, Meryl Streep got it for Crypt of Bountiful. She got the first female award, and I got the first female award. Oh, out of Africa. No, no. Is she in Crypt of Bountiful?

Doesn't matter. No, I didn't say out of. I said Crypt of Bountiful. Who in hell was in that? Geraldine Page. Yeah. Well, Geraldine got it for that performance, and I got it for Blood Simple. That were the first two acting awards for the Spirit Awards.

You know, after that, now they got about 17 different categories. But also, the producer was there. We had a little function when they gave out the first spirit awards, you know, that's some little restaurant in Hollywood. And, uh, the producer was there and he was going to go up and get the award for,

you know, best film. And, uh, he panicked the last minute. He said, Emmett, Emmett,

Emmett, you do it, you do it. So I went up, you know, and they're giving us award for the, for, for the best,

uh, independent feature film. And I said, um II just opened on 1,900 screens around the country. At no time during the run of Blood Simple were there 10 prints. Wow. And that's what a low- there are 10 prints. Wow. And that's what a low-budget film was. Right. Isn't that wild?

Stick your finger up the wrong person's ass. You know, a friend of mine, a while back, broke his hand and put it in a cast. The very next day he falls, protects his bad hand, and he breaks his good one. So he breaks that too, you know. So now he's got two busted slippers. So I said to him, I said, Creighton, I hope your wife really loves you. Because for the next five weeks, you can't even wear your own goddamn hat. That's a test, ain't it? Test of true love. I got a job for you.

That's the test, ain't it? Test the true love. I got a job for you. Well, if it's right and it's legal, I'll do it. They, you know, it became its own life. Sure, but it's more than made its money back. Oh, yeah. Oh, no.

It's made money for me. You know, and of course, the Coen brothers, every time the Coen brothers do a new movie, they mention Bud Simpels. So it's kept my career going. And you showed up in the next one, too, in a wonderful little cameo in Raising Arizona. They weren't interested. I remember I took them to the Players Club in New York I belonged to at the time. And I took them to lunch down there. And I said, look it, I'll do it anything and that was Raising Arizona yeah your moment is great I said

I'll do I'll do anything and they didn't they said okay well let them do this so I went to Phoenix or something they did uh every time Nicolas Cage gets out of jail he's in the same right it's great Bill Parker talk about finding this guy's head on the freeway it's fantastic now you you worked with someone whose name has popped up on this show a bunch of times herschel bernardi oh you're an arnie do you have any memory any memory of doing that show he was a blacklisted actor yeah well i've worked with other black actors too. I'm trying to think who. But it'll come later.

I knew him. We did the show. You know, he had the series and so forth. You did a fair amount of TV in those days too. I was doing TV before I was doing movies. Yeah, your Jimmy Stewart show. You did the Don Rickles show. You know, the – yeah, as my reputation for doing these non-sequential parts and little things became known that it helped the thing along,

you know, my reputation grew, and they kept getting me to do other things, other things, other things to help along. But I know, you know, I did this show with them. I don't remember that. Who did Detective Story? Got an Oscar for it. Oh, Lee Grant. Lee Grant.

Lee Grant was blacklisted. Yeah, we had her on this show. Yeah, Lee Grant was, you know, wonderful. Yeah. She had her on this show. Yeah, Lee Grant was wonderful. She's in her 90s now. Yes, she lives a few blocks from here. Yeah, she's a sweetheart. She is. We're doing a play in Stockbridge, Mass.

Lee Grant was playing. It was a new play, and they're doing a workshop of it. She played with Bill Devane. Bill Devane and Lee Grant, and I come in. It's set in the country or something, you know, typically. And it was a workshop, and we were there for a two-week rehearsal or something.

And there was a little nightclub in, I don't know, away from Stockbridge. I can't think of anything I can tell. But you'd go down to the music. You'd go down the stairs to get into it, the whole thing. And we're, you know, getting smashed like we always did. And we're leaving there. We're leaving there.

And Lee Grant, Devane's going up, and Lee Grant's behind him. And I'm right behind Lee Grant. And I'm right there. And there's her rear facing right at me and a tight little ass and the whole thing. And I just kind of reached up and squeezed it. And as I squeezed it, I said, uh-oh, I'm in big trouble. And she stopped, and she looked down at me, and she said, thank you.

Great story. Oh, I know what to do. Oh, we have to ask Lee about that. I just saw her a couple of weeks ago, Emmett. I just had the pleasure of having dinner with her a couple of weeks ago. She's great. Tell her, yeah, because I watched her do a session at the Actors Studio four or five years ago. I'll say hi for you.

I think she's 93 years now. She is. You were in Airport 77 with her, by the way. Yeah, that's right. And she said things to me there, too. She said, don't do this or don't do that. You know, giving advice to a young actor. And we've been friends for a long time.

She's lovely. Of those people that you played the tennis match with on screen, the Pacinos and the Redfords and the Beatys and the Paul Newmans, was there somebody that you particularly enjoyed going back and forth with more than others? You worked with Hoffman more than a couple of times. Yeah. Paul Newman in couple of times. Yeah. I don't really do.

Paul Newman in Slapshot. Yeah. I think I did another movie with Paul. Maybe Twilight? Yeah, Twilight Zone or something. Not Twilight. Twilight. Was it Twilight?

Yeah. Yeah. And Paul, you know, and look, I was there, and I'm working with these big people, you know, and I'm just Emma Walsh, you know. And I was there, and they knew I was helping, and I appreciated helping. And none of them ever came at me. I mean, anybody that did, there were only two or three that ever tried. What does that mean? They tried to best you in the scene?

Oh, yeah, they thought they could take it. I see. They're in the unmarked part of the cemetery now. But in answer to your question, no, they were all just wonderful, and I was there to help. And it was a tennis match. We hit the ball back and forth in the audience, and it worked. And that's why I was brought in.

But they were good people. I didn't have – Who did I mention to you about the guy that changed all the dialogue, the television actor. What was his name? I can't think of it. The star of Beretta. Huh? The star of Beretta.

Robert Blake? Yeah, Robert Blake. Robert Blake, he did Beretta, you know. And I was brought in to do a Beretta type thing at one time. And it was a lot of dialogue. So learning dialogue has nothing to do with acting. It's a mechanical stunt. You get it out of the way.

Then the acting happens. So if I remember around actors who haven't learned it, they don't even know the first step of acting type of thing. So I had a whole bunch of dialogue. I come in to do this Beretta with Robert Blake, and he comes in to my dressing room where I went to his, and we read the scene over. He said, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Because I'm ready to hammer it, you know, going to kill it. And a few minutes later, his assistant comes to me and says, here, Bobby wants to change this and this and this and this and you know he'd take he'd take a sentence out of a paragraph you know or you're you know like suddenly suddenly you you you know bobby blake didn't learn it he was just trying to get through the job but he wasn't going to let some actor come in and make him look bad he was going to make sure they looked bad also. Wow. Wow.

You get me on that one? Yeah. And I learned that one, that you can't win. They'll switch it around. That's fascinating. I know it. I'm fascinated. Emmett, I got a couple of questions from listeners if you'll if you'll indulge me we will return to gilbert gottfried's amazing colossal podcast after this

these are these are a couple of questions from guests there's a guy named robert martin a listener wants to know do you have any memories of filming a movie with jason Robards called Raise the Titanic. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I've known, I knew Jason for a long time. I knew him in New York. As a matter of fact, you know, he was doing Little Big Man, I think it was, or something. I don't know what it was. He was doing a Broadway play, and I used to,

they taught us in New York, you know, hang out where the actors hang out, go where the actors go. Like I was in the Broadway softball league, I was in the Broadway bowling league. Oh. You know, they get used to seeing you. You really are a jock. Yeah, you know, I am a jock. You know,

I'm a little power golfer. And then you'd go to the bar afterwards after the show and you'd drink with them and I knew Jason for a long time. And I do a lot of bar room poetry. The robbery service and Casey and the, you know, the whole thing.

I learned it all as a kid. And Jason and I would drink at one time and he said, hey, hey, I got the kids' last fight on a cassette. That was a famous poem about two guys that grew up together, went a different way, then they suddenly end up fighting together, and neither one wants to hurt the other guy.

But the whole thing was called The Kid's Last Fight. It's a great little poem. So Jason and I go up to his apartment in the Dakota, around 70, 70.. Oh yeah, sure. And he was married to Lauren Bacall then, you know. And we go in there and we're drunk as fiddlers, bitches. And he's over there trying to put the needle

trying to put the needle on the and Lauren Bacall comes out with a broom and she starts beating the shit out of me. You drunken bum! So I went back a long time with Jason. I love that.

But we did, what was the film? Raise the Titanic. Raise the Titanic. Yeah. Well, Jason and I are flying over to Greece, you know, from L.A., I guess. Mm-hmm. And we're in first class, of course. We're flying all night or something. And Jason's sitting with me, I guess, in a seat. And I think his wife

is with the two kids in the seat in front of us or something. And Jason said, you know what I'm proud of? I said, no. He said, see those two kids? I said, yeah. He said, they never saw me drunk. They never saw me drunk.

Wow. And that's what Jason was proud of. Wow. And he didn't recognize. Once he stopped, he stopped. But he crashed himself up on a freeway, wrapped his face all of. Wow. And he didn't recognize me. Once he stopped, he stopped. But he crashed himself up on the freeway, wrapped his face all up.

Yeah. Took him over a year and a half before he went back to work. But he was very proud of that. Wow. But Jason was a good guy.

That's quite a story. But I knew him on both sides. You know, I didn't run the drunk side and what the hell. I heard you say

that Clean and Sober was material that that you were attracted to because you you you came from you knew drinking well i'm a i'm an old drunk you know i was a periodic my father was an alcoholic he was u.s customs officer on the border and uh and uh um i you know i grew up with aa you know around it you know that my father never clicked with my father until he finally buried everybody then there was nothing to do but go talk about it

and it became one of the legendary speakers in AA back in Vermont yeah but that's basically what happens with alcoholics but but my

the whole family was the irish on both sides you know that's their performers you know that type of thing and i came out of that and your question initially started this was what oh i was just saying i was just saying how and it's a great performance in clean and sober how how you were attracted to the material you know because i was a drunk yeah you know i had a i had a real i had a few and the basic the surprise of the whole thing on clean and sober it opens with a monologue that just camera on me you're doing the whole doing the whole thing and uh and my my background i was never a but i was was a drunk. And my father was AA.

My whole idea was not to make them look bad, you know, type of thing. And then when I saw the movie, I realized it made me look like an asshole as opposed to someone that really believed in what he was up to with the AA thing. Interesting. As I recall, there's some in there. But I'm very much, you know, if you don't know how to drink, what the hell? In Clean and Sober, there's a scene where you're in a diner and you have a bowl of chocolate ice cream, a chocolate cake, and a chocolate ice cream, a chocolate cake, and a chocolate ice cream shake.

Yeah. Okay, I'll tell you what that's all about. With my background in alcoholic anonymous, what they try to do is substitute one addiction for the other addiction. So if you were a drunk, you know, you'd try to get him in the macrame or you'd try to get him spending his time, you know. And I was a drunk talking to Michael Keaton. You know, I got him over there.

We're in this diner. And I said, tell me your story. And Michael's going on and on. You know, he's filling in with his own lies and everything. going on and on and you know he's filling it with his own lies and everything and i was i was the uh i was the alcoholic interviewing him you know doing the whole thing and uh i had substituted food or or uh sugar or ice cream or something for my addiction right and that's that's what they do and i just kept it going I remember the whole cast the whole crew went crazy

because we shot for a day and I did nothing but eat ice cream you know and got obviously in time incredibly sick but I wanted to show that that's what the alcoholic person was

you want to see me on this a little bit? Oh, yeah. What am I doing? What am I doing? You don't like it? He said none of this has been recorded. It just changed my mind. So basically what I was trying to do is while I'm listening to Michael

and he's going through all the lies that alcoholics would, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Then he says the one thing that I, that I jump on, you know, which was, uh, you know, the girl had died in his bed, you know, the whole thing, you know, what it was. Right. But, uh, but I wanted the, I wanted the, I wanted the reformed alcoholic to show. And of course I've had alcoholics come to me and say that we really

nailed it. That's what it was all about. That type of thing. It wasn't an actor. It was, you know, that's what an A does. Is there a moment, Emmett, when you're rapping for the day, is there a moment where you

say, I know I nailed that? That it just, it felt right? Or is there a moment where you say i i know i nailed that i i that it just it felt right or is there always a degree of uncertainty until you until you see the finished product i can look at my work and um you know from 30 40 years ago and say yeah he he he did that pretty good you know type of thing uh um uh i didn't phone it in i didn't phone it in. I didn't phone it in. I worked hard on everything I did, you know, type of thing. But I have people who are not my biggest fans. You know, there are people at companies that are not,

they didn't like that or they didn't like this or they didn't like that. Yeah. Yeah. You know, and, you know, the ones that I let live, you know. Did you have a disagreement with Ridley Scott when you were making Blade Runner, something about him making you smoke? You threatened to hang him by his balls? Do I have this right?

You guys can take good stories and really ruin them. Okay, I fucked that one up. Yeah, Yeah. Really. On Blade Runner, Harrison and Ridley. We're in a room and I'm showing film of the Blade Runners. They've gotten out or something. And Harrison is there.

The replicants. The replicants. And showing film of the replicants. And Ridley says at some point, would I smoke? You know. So I start smoking. And we go on and we're shooting and shooting and shooting. And I get

incredibly sick, and it's a lot, it really shoots a lot. He shot a lot of film. And I'm getting sicker and sicker. And Alan Ladd Jr. was one of the producers on it. And I wasn't aware of it. You know, and there are people who come in behind the camera and watch for a while.

You know. Sure. No one watches a movie very long being shot if they're a civilian. It's so boring. You know. And Alan Ladd came in and the whole thing. And at some point Ridley did something. And I said, you know, I got sick or something. And I said, you ought to be fucking hung from the ceiling by the balls and twits slowly from left to right you know and um ridley says i i feel that way a lot anyway

and alan ladd jr had me pulled off my next movie wow he uh he uh whatever it was i'd been hired for it's something with michael michael keaton's first movie or something, one of his early films. And he had me pulled off it. But – and then Ridley, we had to change dialogue on how many replicants there were. We kept changing and changing and changing. I'd come back in three months and come back and, you know – and at one point, one of the producers on – Oh, Bud Yorkin. Bud Yorkin. Bud Yorkin is in there. And I'm redoing a couple lines.

You know, not on camera, redoing the lines. And we do a number of replicants and that kind of shit. And I said, Bud, I said, I'm going to be back. And Bud says, you're not coming back. That's it. I said, no, there's going to be a change. I said, no. And this is, you know, we're an hour and a half, you know,

a year and a half into the movie. You know, not even getting close. Ridley's, you know. And I said, and we ended up betting $10, you know. And a couple months later, I get a call from Ridley Scott saying, what the fuck did you say to Bud Yorkin? He said, I need you to the fucking film film and he won't let me have you. He said, what the fuck's going on?

It was at $10. It was at $10. So I came in and did it and there was an envelope with a $10 bill in it. But that was the number of replicants in the whole thing. But Ridley's a good guy. Made some great films. you know he lost his brother

that's all sad yes that's that's that's tragic you know i want one more question i have here just from a listener i know you're shocked that we have anybody listening to the show emmet but ray gustini has a question about the jerk he says the dot the uh dot the phrase die milk face has long been a part of his daily parlance. Those things that you're yelling at Steve Martin's character when you're the crazy sniper and the jerk, what was scripted and what was improvised by you? How much of that stuff? We're shooting in a shooting gallery underneath the house.

Right. That's where I'm practicing. That's where all that dialogue is. Right. That's where I'm practicing. Right. That's where all that dialogue is. Right. You know, that type of thing. The, what was, what, it was, who was it? Carl Reiner. Carl Reiner.

Who wrote it? Did Carl, Carl wrote it? I think it was Carl and, yeah, and Carl Gottlieb. Yeah. They, you know, they, great freedom with Carl. You know, like, you know, like, you know, you'd, like you think of how to do it, then you think of how to maybe do it and da-da and do-do, you know, that type of thing all around. And how the dialogue came up or something. You know, if he gave it to me or else I kept – you know, like, you know, the stupid profanities and all.

But – You say – die milk face. I wouldn't – you know, I won profanities and all. Mm-hmm. You say, die milk face. I won't take it away from Carl. I might be saying all his dialogue. I might have added a couple of mine. Yeah. You know? Dead sinners, say your prayers, half-breed.

Hey, Harry! Look at this! What's the matter with these cans? Die, milface! These cans are defective! They're springing leaks! Come over here and look at that! Listen, you better run for cover or you're gonna spring a leak! Huh? We don't have defective cans, we have a defective punchline there!

He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans! Die, gas pumper! I gotta get away from the cans! Die, gas popper! I gotta get away from those cans! You're very funny. I mean, I want to say, too, that at some point you talk about having a gift. But, you know, in scenes like, in movies like Fletch and The Jerk, you seem to have, in Raising Arizona, certainly, you seem to have a natural way with comedy. Well, I'm not a comedic actor.

You know, I'm an actor. I'm an Irishman. So they're all, you know, God damn, if they look in the mirror and you're an Irishman, you've got to laugh. But, no, I, you know, I had the gift. I have the gift. And I got lucky. But there are a lot of people that never get lucky, you know. But I've had a grand time.

It's a great body of work, Emmett. You know, like who's the guy now doing the one about the costumer, the movie that's out now, up for an Academy Award? You know who I'm talking about. Which costumer? He's a dresser. Come on. But he said it's his last movie.

He'll never do another movie. Oh, Daniel Day-Lewis. Yeah, he's, you know, he's burned out. He's done some great work. He's quit several times. Yeah, he's playing a lot of different people. But, you know, shit, I don't know how old he is. He's probably 60, 65.

But he's had it. I've never had it. You know, it's always fun. You know, it's always, let me go out and see what I can get away with. I love that. But, again, he's playing major roles. I'm just walking in for two or three days. This is a quote from you.

You said, when I get to 100 movies, I guess I die. But now 108 and counting, you're still here. It's 118. 118, and you're still working. Still working. And I look at your IMDb page today, and I see you've got four or five films in production and things in pre-production. No, I don't think they're in production. What's the one that's coming out that I got to, it's opening a film festival.

Yeah, give us a plug. A Change in the Air. Okay. Olympia Dukakis plays my wife. Oh. I don't know if she says who plays her husband, but I'm using her. I saw that indie you were in with Christopher Plummer

from a couple of years ago, too. It was excellent. That was, yeah, that was interesting. Very good. Man in the Chair. What was it? Man in the Chair. You were the retired screenwriter

living in the nursing home. I did a scene with the guy that Natalie Wood... Oh, Robert Wagner's in it. They're picking on him. Yeah. Yeah, it's a good film. Yeah, no, The Man in the Chair was interesting. Yeah. You know, type of thing. Very good. Oh Robert Wagner's in it Yeah They're picking on him Yeah Yeah it's a good film Yeah no the

The man in the chair was interesting Yeah You know type of thing Very good Chris was interesting Nice man To work with Christopher Plummer But he grew up in Montreal

That's only 60 miles from me That's right He's a Canadian Yeah Well Yeah Yes he is He

The Yeah Okay you guys had it You got anything else for this man Before we let him go And get on with his life is. He, yeah. Okay, you guys had it? You got anything else for this man before we let him go and get on with his life? How much editing

do you have to do to do this? I mean, we've been here for seven hours. A little bit. We're about done. I also,

I just wanted to say, I heard you. Do you cut after this? Do you cut it down someplace? Yeah, we'll cut it down. We'll trim it down a little bit. Not much, because people want to hear from you, Emmett? Do you cut it down someplace? Yeah, we'll cut it down. We'll trim it down a little bit.

Not much, because people want to hear from you, Emmett. Can you send me a cassette of this? We're going to send you the link, and I'm going to send... And I also want to say that Emmett is the only guest that ever sent gifts before he was a guest on the show. He sent me a trading card from Wild Wild West. He sent me a $2 bill. Not sure what he was trying to tell me with that one. You want to ask this man anything else?

No, I guess I'll... Okay, I'll... He's going to rap. If you let me know where you're performing when I'm in New York, I won't go into that area. Have you ever seen his act? No, I don't want to. I dare say I think you'd enjoy it.

All right. I have a quote here from you, Emmett. You said for a guy from a small town, you didn't do badly. I was senior class president in high school. Ten girls and three boys. I mean, I'd come from the big time. You did pretty well. And thanks for doing this.

I know it was a schlep, and thanks to Mike Gargano for making it happen. Well, thank Mike, because he just became my enemy. So Gilbert's going to wrap up. Well, I'm Gilbert Gottfried, and this has been Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. with my co-host, Frank Santopadre, and we have been talking to one of the kings of the great character actors, M. Emmett Walsh. Emmett, keep going. Never retire.

All right. Fine and dandy. Thank you. with audio production by Frank Furtarosa. Web and social media is handled by Mike McPadden, Greg Pair, and John Bradley-Seals. Special audio contributions by John Beach. Special thanks to Paul Rayburn, John Murray, John Fodiatis, and Nutmeg Creative. Especially Sam Giovanko and Daniel Farrell for their assistance. you