Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast - 85. Bruce Dern

Episode Date: January 11, 2016

Gilbert and Frank dial up one of their favorite actors, screen legend and two-time Oscar nominee Bruce Dern, for a refreshingly candid conversation about acting, risk taking, the definition of genius and the value of teamwork. Also, Bette Davis bashes Joan Crawford, Alfred Hitchcock "punks" Karen Black, Jack Nicholson coins a phrase and Bruce attends the "University of Corman." PLUS: Paging Dr. Death! The wisdom of Elia Kazan! The brilliance of Douglas Trumbull! Bruce "kills" the Duke! And "The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant"! If you need a personal loan, anywhere between $1000 to $35000, Avant can help – without ever stepping foot in a bank branch. Avant will give you a $50 Amazon.com gift card after you make your first payment on-time. For this offer, and to check your rate risk-free, go to http://AvantOffer.com and enter promo code GILBERT. That’s http://AvantOffer.com promo code GILBERT. With moderate gore, a hint of romance, and many dynamic female characters, AFTER SHE'S GONE is a sure bet. AFTER SHE’S GONE by #1 New York Times Bestselling author Lisa Jackson is now available everywhere books are sold and at http://KensingtonBooks.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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promotion. Other restrictions apply. See website for details. Hi, I'm Gilbert Gottfried, and this is Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast. I'm here with my co-host Frank Santopadre. Our guest this week is one of the most prolific, versatile, and admired actors of the last half century, appearing in over 80 films, including They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, The King of Marvin Gardens, Family Plot, Black Sunday, Smile, Coming Home, Nebraska, and the newly released Hateful Eight, just to name a few. Along the way, he's worked with everyone from Jack Nicholson to Betty Davis to John Wayne to Paul Newman and with such legendary directors as Ilya Kazan, Sidney Pollack, Francis Ford Coppola and our former podcast guest Roger Corman.

Please welcome our only guest to have known both Alfred Hitchcock and Eleanor Roosevelt. Let's welcome one of our favorite actors, Bruce Dern. Thank you, sir. I much appreciate the intro. I'm glad you slipped Hitchcock in there along the way. And Mr. Kazan wouldn't hurt. But I am glad to be on it. I came in and I did your show the other, I don't know what it was, a couple weeks ago.

Oh, yeah. Well, I was a guest on that show. Oh, I thought it was your show. Yeah. Well, the minute. He would have been nicer to you. When I saw you there, i had so many questions to ask well fire away okay uh i well two of them that you told me on this show uh well one we had on

the actor uh billy mummy who was a child star and worked with hitchcock right and he hated hitchcock and you had a story about hitchcock giving this actress a tiny part in one of his movies right well he probably billy hitch probably didn't like billy mummy because he's not very tall. And Hitch was actually six foot one, but he never stood straight. He stood like he was on a slant board. So everything went backward. But on this, while we were doing Family Plot, we were going to do a scene at the Bullocks Wilshire Department Store here on Wilshire Boulevard,

which is a Frank Lloyd Wright built department store. And so it has all that great architecture. And we were going in to shoot there in a scene with myself and a bra salesman, and who is a lady. And I just go in and I have to ask the lady if she knows what I need a bra for somebody. And I don't quite know what the size is. And so I'm taking my hands, typical Hitchcock, and putting them almost on her breast to saying, well, not quite this big, but maybe a little, a little less. I don't know. Your right one seems to be a little bigger than the left one. The lady who's married the afternoon and said, tomorrow you're doing a scene in Bullocks Wilshire with Mr. Dern and you need a saleswoman.

And he said, yes. And what has that got to do with you, madam? And she said, well, I have a friend, Mary, who needs to work. Now, she's saying this to Alfred Hitchcock, who needs to work one day a year to keep her SAG insurance up. Yes. And I thought she'd be perfect with her role. She could play it.

And I'm asking you to do this out of the question and leave my office now. And don't call me Hitch anymore. My name is Hitchcock, with the emphasis on cock. So she left. And the next day we went to work, and I'm sitting next to Hitch in the morning about 8.15, and up comes the actress that was suggested by the executive's wife. And I'm kind of askance at that. I don't know what's going on.

And he said, well, welcome to you, Martha. I wonder if you understand this shot. It'll be a close up of you and over Bruce's shoulder and we'll come in. So it'll be your close up and the master from this direction of your scene. Yes, Mr. Thank you so much for having us. Quite all right, Martha. It's quite all right. You're saying, yes, Mr. Hershka, thank you so much for having us. Quite all right, Martha. It's quite all right. So we come and we do the scene.

It's six lines. It takes about 25 seconds. And he cuts the camera. All right, that's fine. He gets up out of his chair, which is not easy because the girth of his waist sticks out. He's in the little director's chair, sticks out underneath the arms of the chair, so when he gets up, the chair comes with him. And he doesn't even look at me.

He just said, a hand, please, Bruce. So I grabbed the legs of the chair, and he walked out of the chair. But the chair was parallel to the ground at that point. And he goes over to the camera. He opens the matte box of the camera, reaches in, pulls out the film, tears it, reaches the other hand, pulls that end of the film out and tears it in half goes about six feet and there's a baby junior light there and he holds the film up to that uh that little baby junior light and he goes oh my god i won't do his imitation now because it sucks but he says oh oh my, Martha, you're not photogenic.

And she comes over like starting to sob and everybody's looking around. And he said, look, Martha, your image doesn't appear on the film. She was gone in about 20 seconds sobbing. They had to bring the nurse or whoever it is on the set over. She walked off. She was let off the stage, and I sat down. Hitch came over, and he sat down. And I said, what was that?

He said, that dear boy was never fuck with Hitch. That's great. Five minutes later, Kathleen Nesbitt, who is a dame from England, was sitting in the scene doing the scene. So that gives you an idea of how quickly he reacted. Another day, the first day,

Karen Blackshot, she came in and she asked to go in a room and open and close seven covered doors. That's all. Are you ready, Karen? Yes, Mr. Hershey. Thank you for having me. I'm a little nervous, so forth and so on. And she was one of the stars of the movie, along with me and Barbara Harris.

And so she says, he says, are you ready, Karen? Yes. Action. So Karen goes in and opens and closes the seven cupboard doors and walks out. And Hitch says, cut. Thank you very much, Karen. Now, boys, we're over here. And he was getting up because we were going to move the set.

Karen Black didn't move. She said, Mr. Hitchcock, Mr. Hitchcock. You know, it's my first day. I'm very nervous and everything and probably a little intimidated. I'd like another. Why? Well, because I just feel I could do it better. All right, Karen.

Are you ready? Yes. Go. And so she went and she redid what she'd just done. And she said, thank you karen and started he said all right we're over here boys and karen stands there and she said raises her hand like she's in the fifth grade and said but mr hitchcock you never turned on the camera. And he said, that's right, Karen. She said, why? Because I have the one I want.

Now we got nothing. Oh, geez. Nothing. I just got static. I can now. Did we fix the problem? Welcome back to the Helen Keller show Oh we gotta keep that in Bruce you're a patient man

We appreciate it Oh thank you Bruce for sticking with us These guys were both shitting in their pants Don't kid yourself. Oh, gosh. Now, there was another story. Wait a minute. We didn't finish the Karen Black story.

Yeah, finished up the Karen Black. I thought I finished it. I didn't know it was so boring. You guys nodded off on me. We were hanging on every word, and then we lost you. Well, anyway, at the end of it, the second time she did it again, he said go, and she did it again. And then he said, thank you, Karen. And he moved the whole crew and everybody to the next shot. And she stood there and raised her hand.

But Mr. Hitchcock. Yes, Karen. You never turn the camera on. And he said, that's correct. And she said, why was that? Because I have the one I want. Oh, wow. I like that.

Which was take one. And you starred in one of my favorite films. And that is Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte. Oh, my God. I didn't star in it. They cut my fucking head and my hand off. Carried it around in a box to terrify Betty Davis the whole movie. And that was my first Hollywood movie.

I did a movie for Mr. Kazan in Tennessee called Wild River that starred Lee Remick, Montgomery Clift, and Jovan Fleet. And the interesting thing about Jovan Fleet, she played a 94-year-old woman in the movie. And the interesting thing about Jovan Fleet, she played a 94-year-old woman in the movie. And when she was 31, she played Jimmy Dean's mother in East of Eden. Oh, wow. So that's how good an actress she was. Versatile.

Oh, wow. Did you ever see East of Eden? Oh, yeah. Sure, sure, sure. She was the old prostitute, the old whore of the block. Now, Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte was kind of a follow-up to whatever happened to Baby Jane. Robert Aldrich, right? Yeah.

Right, right. And it was supposed to be Betty Davis and Joan Crawford. This is true. Yeah. And Baby Jane, the two hated each other. Right. Right. And so tell us what happened. Well, I came to work my first day. I don't know. I guess I'd been working a day or so.

And I walked on the set and I heard screaming from a room back in the back somewhere on the stage. heard screaming from a room back in the back somewhere on the stage uh and a woman saying uh really i'm on the air so i can't say things right oh you can say it this is the gilbert she said you tell that she said you tell that bitch that i'm not coming out there until she respects me as some kind of an actress and not just some fucking whore, which she seems to think that I am on the set is a woman sitting with a Chesterfield down to the nub. And that was Miss Davis. And she smoked five packs of Chesterfield's every day. And so it was right down to the numb. And she said, you tell the woman in the back who is a screaming Mimi right now that I'm here to work with her any time she wants to present herself to us at the time she's supposed to be here instead of having Sav put all over the sores

on her back that she has because she's been on it for 40 years to have a career in the first place. Incredible. And the lady fled. And the next day, we were all sent home. The next day, we came back to the set. Wow. And Betty was in her chair. I was in my little chair next to hers

and there was a lady in Miss Crawford's chair and suddenly Miss Crawford comes onto the stage and she says, goes right up to Bob Aldrich, says, oh Bob, I'm so sorry the way I behaved yesterday. I'll be more professional. I'll just have to put up with what I have to put up with with that, didn't even call her her with that and uh so I just run a comb through my hair you don't have to wait for me at all I put my makeup on the car and as she's saying that she turns over and starts to walk

toward where Miss Davis and I and this other lady are. And she sees the lady in her chair and she says, Why, Livvy. Olivia de Havilland. Why, Livvy, what are you doing here? And Betty Davis looks straight ahead, never looked at her, her cigarette, like I said,

right down to the nub. Why, Livvy, what are you doing here? She's playing your role, cunt. I mean, the woman quit. So they're not going to 20th century Fox. And I'm not going to wait around for her. So they cast Olivia de Havilland who is still with us,

incidentally. And, uh, yes. And, uh, I said to Ms. Davis,

I said, you know, um, that was, uh, that was very cool. You called it like you saw it. And I said, I love the way Mr. Havlin handled that. She said, you don't know anything about Mr. Havlin, Bruce. She's made of stone.

I said, what do you mean? When she was 17 years old, 19 years old, she was starring for Mr. Hitchcock in a movie. And her mother brought her sister to the set. The sister was 17. And Hitchcock at lunchtime started talking to the sister who was very blonde. And Olivia was the star of the movie and became very enamored of her. And after they finished that movie, he put the sister under contract for five years and never used Olivia again. And the sister was Joan Fontaine. Joan Fontaine. Sure. Wow. The sister had the career. And so did Mr. Haviland have the career.

But that was what baby Jane was based on. Oh, wow. That is good stuff. And, of course, they had that long feud, Bruce, too. They never spoke. Right. When Miss Fontaine died, they never spoke. Right, right, right.

And you're also famous as the man who shot John Wayne. That's true. I love when you said he—go ahead, Bruce. Well, he died twice. He also died of cancer, I might say. It was a movie. You know, and everywhere I go, even today when we were in Telluride on the Hateful Eight, I would go into a place at nighttime and I'd get some big, you know, some big Paul Bunyan kind of guy from Telluride.

He's been up logging all day long. And he would come in and he would say, oh, you killed my buddy. Really? He's still saying it to this day. He had one lung and smoked four packs of Luckies every day, plus cigars, and washed it down with Wild Turkey 101. It wasn't just me. But, you know, one thing, Gilbert, that we got that was really cool is that when my generation came to Hollywood in 1960, 61, we still had a chance to work with the legends. And today we are not legends for Christ's sake. I mean, Clint's probably the closest thing we have to a legend because he

looks good on a horse. And so did Burt Reynolds. But other than that, you can't be a legend today. Everybody knows what you do after school. You know, three o'clock, the bell rings, you go and you do your track practice or everything. And then you got a mile, You know, three o'clock, the bell rings, you go and you do your track practice or everything. And then you got a mile, you know, an hour and a half of nothing else to do. Well, in those days, we got away with nothing else to do. And so did the Hollywood legends at that time. But now everybody knows what you do. They see in the line at Pink's Hot Dogs.

Don't shit me. I mean, they're... And I like beverly pink she's very very cool but uh your theory that i i uh i liked about it was every one of those people that i worked with and one miss davis was one mr hailland was one, Wayne was one, Robert Mitchum was one, and so forth and so on down the line. And I thought that they all encouraged us, certainly me and Jack will tell you the same thing, and I'm sure Dustin would too, to push the envelope, to push it every single day in every way we could. Because I think they felt we had kind of a fresh approach to acting, which was much less about the words and more about the behavior. And they were never taught about the behavior. And neither were we, really. But we were taught about it.

When I began at the actor's studio the first six months there, Mr. Strasberg and Mr. Kazan would not allow me to do a scene in which I had dialogue. Because they wanted me just to work on what I saw in front of me, what honestly was happening, what I was feeling, and not have the obligation then to put it out in dialogue. So my instrument, if you will, and what a boring topic that is, including the package instrument, boring even more, but I would say that it gave me a chance to develop starting in my own heart and and putting everything out there as honestly and really as I could.

And then when I got to the dialogue about, I don't know, a few months after that, they said, what are you still doing here? And I said, what do you mean? You guys didn't tell me I could be anywhere else. They said, well, go to Hollywood. Everyone else went. And so I said, well, thank you very much. And then Gadge grabs me by the lapel and he says, I was under contract to him. I'm not going to the airport with you tomorrow. But when you get out there for about 40 years, But when you get out there for about 40 years, all you're going to be asked to do is play the fifth cowboy from the right. And I'm giving you an assignment, sir. You'll be the most goddamn interesting fifth cowboy from the right anybody ever saw. Just keep what you're doing and doing and someone will finally recognize it. But it won't till you're in your mid-60s oh thanks gaj thanks i'm 25 years old give me a fucking break oh god

and uh so that was uh that was the beginning of uh when i came out out here and um i was lucky i mean you know i knew when i went to uh philadelphia i went to college there and i quit college after i didn't make the olympic team as a runner in 1956 i was an 800 meter runner and uh i wasn't quite that good but you never know you get in a race and all of a sudden somebody trips and falls and you're sixth instead of ninth and you get to go to the semi final and then the final and progresses that way well brucey from winnetka didn't get there so uh i quit college and started going to the movies a lot and i was very affected and touched by what i saw going on on the screen and And I said, you know what? I'd like to learn to do that.

So I had quit college. I went to a little dramatic school there in Philadelphia. And after a little while, I realized you had to do three things. You had to go to New York. You had to try and work for Mr. Kazan. And you had to try and become a member of the actor's studio. And I was lucky enough that that all happened to me in about a 60-day period of time. And that was really terrific

for me to start that way. And then when I came out here, it wasn't quite as easy. I got a part, my agent, whose name was Ronnie Leaf, who was married to Lou Wasserman's daughter, Lynn Wasserman. And Mr. Wasserman owned and ran Universal Pictures. And so he was the giant, if you will, in 1960 in Hollywood. um so he said you know he called me up and he said go down to Western Costume which was then uh on Melrose by Paramount Pictures there and uh go in because you got the part of Billy the Kid in this episode of Jesse James it was a TV series that starred an actor named Christopher Jones, who was married to Susan Strasberg at the time. And so I went down, and this guy, Austin Felius, who'd been there for ages, he was just this wonderful, wonderful black professorial kind of guy that wore tweeds and patches on his jacket and everything. He says, you go ahead, Mr. Dern, you pick out what you want. And I'll come back in about 15 minutes. So I went back and I picked out the nastiest,

all black bad guy outfit I could ever find. And he came back after about 12 minutes and he said, Mr. Dern, what are you doing? I said, well, I'm picking out my costume. I want to look at least as bad as Jack Palance and Shane. So that's what I'm doing. He said, Mr. Dern, you're not playing Billy the Kid. You're playing Billy the Clerk. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Ten years after the publication of her number one New York Times best-selling thriller, Fatal Burn, suspense author Lisa Jackson returns to her most popular characters ever with After She's Gone,

the long-awaited third book in the West Coast series. After She's Gone is Gone Girl meets whatever happened to Baby Jane ever happen to baby Jane as the strained bond between two sisters leads to a harrowing nightmare of madness, hatred, and jealousy. Booklist has praised After She's gone saying Jackson generates near constant suspense, weaving together plot turns, directing a large cast of characters, and playing up movie star egos and showbiz gossip to give the novel a vintage Hollywood feel. With moderate gore, a hint of romance, and many dynamic female characters, After She's Gone is a sure bet. After she's gone, my number one New York Times bestselling author, Lisa Jackson, is now available everywhere books are sold and at kensingtonbs.com. Now, you worked a lot with a former guest of ours, and that's Roger Corman.

Ah, yes. Yes, sir. We were Jack Nicholson, Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Susan Strasberg, myself, a kid named Adam Rourke, a bunch of us. None of us ever finished college, but we all got a chance to go to the University of Corman. And believe me, it was an education because you made in 10 days an hour and a half movie for scale with a box lunch. You never broke for lunch it was like the french do and uh you did it all for under 140 grand to make the whole movie so there were no rules we broke every rule you could do roger never had permit one time in the movie the trip which we

did right after the wild angels which was a biker movie the trip was an acid movie we pull up on this trip roger's in one car and uh i'm in another car and we see peter found on the street and roger says okay peter we have no permits we're not allowed to be here or anything so we're going to be in here with the camera i want you to come around the corner, run into the whiskey. This is at 8 o'clock at night. Run into the whiskey. And then Bruce, 30 seconds later, you run into the whiskey. And then each one of you count to 100. And after 100, Peter, you come out. And then Bruce, you come out.

I count to 10 after he comes out. Get in your car and go that way. We'll make the connections. Then we're out of here. And I'll meet you behind the City National Bank beyond Doheny there. So that was what we had to do. And when we went to do a movie called Drive, He Said, which Jack Nicholson directed. And I was in it with Karen Black and Robert Towne, the writer, and two young kids, Bill Tepper and Michael

Margata. And it was kind of a, oh, you'd call it a campus revolution movie in those days. And I was a basketball coach and we were on our way to win the national championship. And Tepper, my best player, had a roommate who was trying to beat the draft and prove to everybody at the we shot in the campus of the University of Oregon and he was trying to make everybody realize he was crazy so they couldn't draft him and so he'd do all nutty things and he was influencing my player who was one of the five best players in America and without his brain and his heart, you know, for 90 minutes on these particular nights, I couldn't have won anything. So we're doing a scene and in the scene, we have 10,000 extras in a gym at MacArthur Court in Oregon two days after Oregon had just broken UCLA's 88-game

winning streak by upsetting them. So the place was wild with basketball fever. And we had a sequence where we were going to shoot 10 basketball games between different teams to show the NCAA tournament. And I come in, eight o'clock, Jack and Mike Warren, who was on Hillside, what do you call it, Hill Street Blues, who had been the captain of the UCLA basketball team when Kareem was a freshman. He was the captain of the senior team, and Kareem beat them freshman, he was the captain of the senior team, and Kareem beat them by 30 in the freshman versus the varsity game. And so Mike Warren and Jack were on the floor playing two-on-two against a one-armed equipment manager and Stan Love,

who is the uncle of the Love that plays in the NBA now. And, you know, the Beach Boys, the brother, Stan Love was the one brother who wasn't a musician. Oh, Mike Love. And they were getting beat 20 to nothing, and we had 10,000 extras for one day only in the gym watching this nonsense. for one day only in the gym watching this nonsense. And Jack sits down to take a break, and he says, Derns, why you got such a long face this morning, for Christ's sake? What's the matter?

I says, Jack, there's 10,000 people here. Roger would tell you, you know, in our day, you can't do this. You got to shoot. They're not going to stay all day long just because you're on the floor. And he says, lighten up, Derns. Everything's going to be fine. Karen Black is sitting on a bench right behind him and passes him the end part of a joint or whatever you call it. And in one of those little clips that they had, what do they call them, roach clips or something like that. Roach clip, yeah.

And he takes it and he takes a puff on it and passes it to me. I said, no thanks. Oh, he says, that's right, Mr. Winnetka, the runner man. He's not going to condescend to be one of the people. So I said, well, I'm not going to do it. And I'm disgusted by it. He says, what's the matter? Aren't you having a nice time? I said, yeah, I am have a nice time. He hands the clip back to me, Yeah, I am having a nice time. He hands the clip back to me, takes my mouth, opens it up, tries to put the clip in it and says, why not have a nicer one?

Oh, that's great. Now, see, this surprises me. I mean, you were friends with Nicholson and Hopper. And so I always assumed watching you, especially in the crazy parts. Like Psych Out and The Trip. Yeah, and I always assumed, well, as Bruce Dern is like on every drug, he's drunk, he's on drugs, but you stayed away from all that stuff. Well, what happened was I, I, when I came here, I was, I became in the early sixties, an avid, uh, runner of not just marathons, but ultra marathons running for a long time. I had

a guy call me in 1964 and say to me on the telephone, a guy who I revered as a runner, who'd been an Olympian in the marathon in 1960 for America. He says, what are you doing this weekend? It was Labor Day weekend. I said, nothing. He says, why don't you come up here tomorrow and let's run? And I said, meaning what? Meaning, how would you like to do something no one has ever done?

Well, I'm a sap, so I was there the next morning, and after about an hour and 15 minutes of running, I said, so what are we doing, Bob, that hasn't been done before? He said, well, how would you like to run all day? I said, what do you mean? He he said let's run to your house in Malibu I said that's 68 miles he said I said let's run to your house in Malibu now so 10 hours later 14 hours later we get to Malibu and we had the girls in the car the wives you, you know, following us along. So they made sure we didn't get run over once it got dark. The next morning he gets up and I'm out of it. I mean, I'm zombie eyes. And he I'd never run that far in my life. I'd run thirty five. But that was the most miles that ever ran. He says, let's run back. Well, that day we only got to Oxnard and we quit at 41 miles. Six months later, Bob Carman, myself, and another guy left Santa Monica Pier and ran to Denver in 33 days, 35 miles a day.

Good Lord. To the Stapleton Airport. Wow. 35 miles a day good lord to the stapleton airport and uh the guy who was with us didn't make it past durango which means he had about i don't know 200 miles left and he just caved and he couldn't handle it anymore and uh his wife left him We all had wives with us. Each one of us had a motor home that had been given to us to go along on this. So his wife and the kids left him. He started being really out of it, and he just dropped out in Durango. A year later, well, within a week of that,

he was in Menninger's Institute in Kansas, where he still is. And that was 1968. And he's still there. And the first year he was there, he wrote a book. And the book was called How I Lost My Love and My life in the breakdown lane. Wow. All from that one incident. Yep.

Wow. I mean, it's, it's, you gotta be sick today. I was sick, man. You talk about it.

So what happened was all during that time, I became a really, uh, I wasn't one of the best ones, but I was certainly one of the grandfathers of the ultra long distance running in America. And the goal was to run from here to the Statue of Liberty, you know, where you get on the ship to go across the country, 3,109 miles. And a guy named Emerton had come from Australia and done it that spring in 64 days. He ran across the country in 64 days. So basically what you're trying to do is 45 miles a day.

And what you do is you get up and you run increments of hours. You run from 6 to 8.30. You get in the van. They give you a rubdown. They give you something to eat. 45 minutes later, you're back on the road again. You do another segment, another 11 miles. And you do six segments a day,

which total 44 miles. When we did it in Denver, we only needed to do 33 miles a day. But that's a sickness. So during all that time, I suddenly turned 30, and then I turned 40 in 1976, and I hadn't got into drugs at all. I mean, I do the movies. Everybody thought I was a stoner and everything else. I wasn't. I didn't drink. I've never had a cup of coffee. I don't drink tea.

Never a cigarette either, right? Never had a cigarette. Right. I've never had a cigarette. I've never drank an alcoholic beverage. And yet from 1990 till 1999, I lost a decade to Vicodin. Because at the end, when I finally stopped, I was up to 27 extra strength Vicodins a day. Oh, was this from running related injuries, Bruce?

No, no. It was from wanting to have a nice time. Oh, I see. Back to Jack. And I can tell you to this day, I stopped in 2000. I got a psychiatrist named Mace Bexson who was absolutely fabulous for me and uh after five years of being with him um i think once a week two hours a week um he uh gave me a diploma and he said you're done here wow i could have never put you in rehab i kept fastidious records about what I ran, how much mileage, what the time was every single day.

He says, you keep such fastidious records. Here's what you're going to do. You're going to go home and tomorrow you're going to take 26 and a half Vicodin. Every day you'll take a half less and in 52 days you'll never take another one as long as you live. And that's exactly how we did it. And the first thing he said to me the first day was, he said, Bruce Dern, I went to Cornell, I went to Bronx Science, then I went to Cornell Medical. And I was the movie critic all through my four years of college and then into med school. And I reviewed all those movies you did. So I know who you are.

And I know all about your running. But let me tell you something. You can be broken. I never got over that as long as I lived. Wow. Well, you know, Bruce, since you brought up Drive, he said, can you tell our listeners what a Dernsey is? Well, yeah, that started on Drive, he said.

I mean, the first time it was named, I had to walk down a hall and it was no dialogue in the scene. And with my assistant coach and two cheerleaders from Ohio University come down the hall. We're at the NCAA tournament and they come down the hall. We're at the NCAA tournament. And they come down the hall in their little cheerleader outfits. And I just snapped my fingers down. They couldn't see it, but it was down by my side. I just snapped my fingers. You know, they were hot.

Come on. Right. So I snapped my fingers and he cut the camera. He said that was fabulous everybody was laughing or smiling and he said i'm branding that a dirnsy nicholson because this guy has been doing this long before he did this today wow and it's always fits the character it's never just self-proclamation of you know look at me I'm doing this or that. And there's a couple in Nebraska, and there's, I think, two or three in the Hateful Eight.

And Quentin knows when they're coming. I go and I say, let it go just a second longer, and I'll give you a Dernsey. And he would say please and the other guys would say you know like well not in front of me but would go up and they say how does he get to do that and we don't because you can't

write the shit that comes out of his mouth you can't anticipate it you don't know what it is but it's always correct and uh that's why i allow them to do it and uh so that was they're just little tiny things i mean in jango i'm in jango god and hateful eight uh i'm in a cabin and the kid comes over to me the goggins character and he says can i get you a cup of coffee, General? There's no dialogue written here.

And I say, that'd be nice. And he says, well, how about then a blanket? Well, that'd be even nicer. So that's a Dernsey. And just little things like that. And in Nebraska, we go upstairs. I don't know if you ever saw the movie, but we go up to our old house I was raised in. And as we're looking in the door, my wife, June Squibb, says,

this was Woody's room, and he shared it with his little brother, David. And David got tuberculosis and died, and Woody slept right next to him and he shared it with his little brother David and David got tuberculosis and died and Woody slept right next to him and never got it and Will Forte says do you remember that dad and there's no dialogue written there and so I said Alexander let let me do it one more time and let me give you a Dernsey. So he said, all right. And so Will says, do you remember that, Dad? And I say, I was there. Wow.

And that's a Dernsey. We'll go look for them now. And I've always looked for stuff like that because a lot of times, you know, I was not the focal point of movies for christ's sake i was always number three four five or six or 26 whatever it was and uh i looked for times when i was in a scene to find something extra that would uh embroider the depth of the character to his advantage. And I've done it all my life. I encourage my kid to do it from time to time. She's very good at it. The thing I'm proudest of of Laura is that

she came to me when she was nine years old and she says, I want to do what you do, dad. What's the drill? And I said, well, the drill is, first of all, you got to learn how to dance. And she said, mom has never i said mom let's not discuss mom now okay so let me just tell you uh it's not about dancing it's about understanding the greatest crippler of actors in this business is behind the camera intimidation. They pay a guy at four o'clock to start watching around, looking at his watch all day. They all want to get out and go to the Laker game or where the hell they're going. So you take it personally.

You think, oh, I'm fucking up. I'm slowing everything down. Forget all that. Stay in the area that you're in. When you're in a scene, set set. Don't go off and hide in your dressing room or Forget all that. Stay in the area that you're in. When you're in a scene, set set. Don't go off and hide in your dressing room or anything like that. If you're not in the scene and scoot. But if you're in the scene, stay there and stay there. Do all the offstage for all the other actors and everything else, because that's what you have to do. And she said okay what's the second thing take risks do roles that other people won't do and so like laura one of her early movies was mask she was blind and uh i just did a movie

actually now i finished last week in louisiana that was directed by eric stolz who was her boyfriend in mask oh yes because he played the kid that was all figured and everything. Right. Rocky. Yeah. Rocky Dennis. And this, just to the audience, Laura Dern, Jurassic Park. Oh, yeah.

Citizen Ruth. Wonderful. Wonderful films. Now, I also. And the mother, Diane Ladd, and Laura and myself, this is padding the darn name, are the only family in the history of the business to all have stars on Hollywood Boulevard. Other families, but never mother, father, child. I like it. And you were in a film that I know a lot of our listeners enjoy, and that was the incredible two-headed transplant.

Oh, God. Not only that. Not only was that disgusting, but there was a scene in that movie where Barry Kroger played the crazy doctor, but we invented a guy who had two heads. Well, at the same time we were shooting that, Ray Milland and Rosie Greer did a movie. At the same time, I forget the title of it, and theirs was much better than ours. But in the movie, the guy comes to me with a little scene change one day, and he says, now, in this scene, just to show how crazy you really are, I wonder if there's a baby that they just brought in in your laboratory who just died.

I wonder if you'd mind just eating a piece of the baby's stomach. I did not do it. I would not do it. I would not do it. And it was, and let's see, there was a girl in that movie or another one called Cycle Savages named Melody Patterson. Oh, yeah, she just passed. Yeah. Yeah. And she her mother was very famous because her mother was the secretary. Well, her mother was the treasurer of the state of California. Her name was Pat Priest was the girl I'm talking about.

Oh, Pat Priest. Oh, right. Marilyn in the months. Right. She's still with us. She's still with us. And she was her mother was Ivy Baker Priest, who signed every bill that was minted in California. So that was her little trivia. I love trivia about people, you know. So do we. That's why we do the show.

I'll give you one. I'll give you one. Oh, I asked you this. You already knew it. About Jason Patrick's grandfather? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jackie Gleason. Right. Yeah. And Winona Ryder's uncle? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jackie Gleason. Right. Yeah. And Winona Ryder's uncle? No. Oh, I should know this. Timothy Leary. Oh, that's right.

Oh, wow. That's right. Well, she's Winona Horowitz. That's right. Timothy Leary. But it's an achievement to be in a worse film than the Ray Moland. The name of the other one is The Thing with Two Heads. The Thing with Two Heads.

Yeah, right. The Thing with Two Heads. Yeah. And I had a similar thing when I did Black Sunday, which is the only movie I've done that I would never do again, simply because someone could do that. Someone, there's enough. That enough blowing up the Super Bowl. Yeah, you could take the blimp. It only goes up to 4000 feet. It can only go 60 knots. You could arm it.

If you could take it over and take it over a stadium and try and do something. And that's what the book was. And while I was doing the movie, Frankenheimer and Bob Rosen, who are the director and producer, would walk around me all day long and they'd say, they called me Dr. Death. And they said, well, Dr. Death is Dr. Death that. And one day they said, Dr. Death, we want you to meet the writer. And so Thomas Harris was the writer who had just finished being the night aid editor on the Waco Times or something like that. And Black Sunday was his first novel. And he said, I saw some of the dailies and you are taking it so far beyond what I ever imagined the character could be. Wow. But I'm currently writing another movie

where you will look like a brownie scout because I'm writing a movie called Silence of the Lambs. Oh, yes, Thomas Harris. Now, you were in a film that's a favorite of mine, and that was King of Marvin Gardens. Yeah, it was Jack and I and Ellen Burstyn right around the time we were getting close to being 40. Jack was now Jack Nicholson.

Ellen Burstyn was about to become Ellen Burstyn, but she had got the part from Marvin Gardens. She got the part in the exorcist as a mother and that really launched her as an entity and she had been a student of mine when I taught here in California for a while her name then was Ellen McRae and she was on a tv series uh about railroads with Rory Calhoun was the star of it. I forget what the name of it was. And she was always, always a very, very gifted actress. And my heart goes out.

I have a company now called Publicly Private that my business partner Wendy Guerrero and I run. And all the movies I'm interested in making are about women. And we have a film festival that we do with Gina Davis called the Bentonville Film Festival. And it's in Bentonville, Arkansas, because our sponsor is Walmart. And that's the headquarters of Walmart, Bentonville, Arkansas. And it's for women of diversity. In other words, it's not for actresses and stuff like that. The awards go to the writer and the director. And they're for people that never get a shot.

And it comes from I have a passion for people that finish second or third. And it came to me because once I saw a beauty parade with people that I knew that won it and didn't win it. And a guy took a picture of a girl standing on the side as the Queen's float went by with tears streaming down her face. And I was interested in what that story was, not the girl on the float, but the girl that didn't quite make it on the float. And so those are the stories that I'm interested in. Girls or whatever they are that don't quite get a break and got to do it themselves.

And that excites me and interests me. And so that's what I'm trying to do as a producer of movies and stuff, not roles for myself, just for other folks. Good for you. I'm not a big one like, you know, in my generation, there are two guys that really stood up and put their money where their mouth was. One was Clint and everything he did up for Carmel. And the other was Redford with what he did in Sundance. They dreamed something. They spent their own coin and they made it happen. And that's marvelous. I'm not a guy like that. I'm too. I'm a gambler. What do you want from me? You know, now, but it's sad. I have to ask just like that. I'm a gambler. What do you want from me?

You know? But it's admirable, Bruce. I have to ask just for me. I mean, I bet SC tonight minus three. I have to ask just for me, my own selfish thing. Can you do your Jack Nicholson imitation doing some of that opening speech of Marvin Gardens? Well, he's he's at a microphone. He's like you had a guy in New York. I don't know if he's still there named Barry Gray.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. He was a monologue guy on the radio at night. I remember him. Sure. And Jack was doing like what he did. And he was doing a monologue about our grandfather.

And we were brothers. And I was in Atlantic City and Jack was in Philadelphia. And so the movie starts just in a dark room with a microphone and a mouth in front of it. You're not quite sure where he is or what's going on. And he says, well, way back when, my brother and I realized we can never eat fucking fish. Great impression. And we watched our grandfather

eat something that they called river chicken, which was absolute horse shit because it was fish. And he choked on a bone out of the river chicken and we never ate fish again. So he's probably, since I've been here in the business almost 60 years now, I would say that of my generation, which is now done 57 or 58 years, Jack is as good as it gets as an actor. He's a great teammate. He is tremendously generous as an actor with you. He encourages you.

He takes encouragement from you. I called Alexander up. I mean, when Alexander gave me the part in Nebraska, I called Jack up because Jack had done about Schmidt for him. Yeah, yeah, it's great. And I said, what am I going to get from Alexander Payne? And he said, what am I going to get from Alexander Payne? And he said, well, Derrenzer, what you're going to get is the best teammates you ever had in your career.

And then once a week, you're going to get a little bit of a fucking diva. I said, how does he do that? He changes clothes twice a day on the set. The Gilbert Gottfried's Amazing Colossal Podcast Producer of the Month is Paul Lawrence. Thank you, Paul. Be just like Paul and get rewarded for supporting our podcast. Head over to patreon.com slash Gilbert Gottfried.

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You know, I was thrilled to be nominated for the Best Actor for Nebraska. But every year, there's a bunch of people. You know, I've always looked at... I thought the best performing actor consistently that i've seen in my career was george c scott because he brought it every time he worked and it was pretty honest and great choice to the point and specific and real. And I felt that the problem with the Oscars is that once it became a television event and there was money to be had, it became not what it was meant to be. I've always thought the best thing to do would be nominate five people, shut it down, have a dinner, have all five in every

category come, let each one get up between the chicken and peas, get their award and sit down. And that's kind of what it was when it began at the Hollywood Roosevelt. You know, it was kind of much more informal and everything. But then it became a show. And I'm not putting it down. I absolutely agree with it. I mean, I wondered, I think like Cheryl Boone Isaacs, who runs it now, is doing a fabulous job. They've always done a fabulous job. But it just seems to me nobody can be the best, better than anybody else in one year in anything when it's an art. And to pass judgment on it like that is very, very tough because it's not, you know, once you're nominated, there's only about, I mean, to get nominated only 600 as actors, there's only 600 actors in the Academy.

So they're the ones that are nominating you. and then it's open to everybody once everybody's nominated but i just think that you know i came to hollywood and it's what i've said about quentin tarantino in the hateful eight i came to hollywood to get better and quentin tarantino gave me a chance, as did Alexander, to get better on their watch. And I keep improving. If there's one thing that Quentin has in spades over everybody else is his reverence for what went before. And if there's one thing I miss and the people that are following behind now, a generation, I always looked at generations, you know, four years of high school, that's your generation. But I guess it's 10 years that the people say, the wags. in dealing with that that there isn't a real sense of what went before anymore and uh we've been doing this what 205 years i mean 105 years and there's a lot of growth and it's not that i'm here to pass a baton or anything like that. I ran fucking relays for 18 years.

I don't need to run another relay on a set. But the best teamwork, the one thing I missed in my life is playing in a team sport. Because all I had was a relay as a team. And movies are the biggest team sport I've ever been around. Because you are only as good as the people in the scene with you and behind the camera with you and everything else. And Quentin, like Alexander, they put all-star crews together, not just trying and casting together. They do it with crews. And Quentin has about seven Hall of Famers as department heads on his movie.

I mean, just look at Bob Richardson's work in The Hateful Eight as a cameraman. I mean, come on. You know, that's not Peanuts movie. So the collaboration appeals to you, Bruce, the teamwork. That's it. And you said, this is what sticks with me, is how you say you want to get better as an actor. Because younger actors than you seem to develop a bag of tricks. And some fall into self-parody.

But you keep working to get to improve. Well, that's my job. And that's what I do. It's not an art if you don't try and keep improving yourself. I mean, because I'm a gambler and because I'm a sports freak that way, and so therefore know a lot about a lot of sports, it's the collaborative teams that win. And in movies, when you look at movies, like I haven't seen a movie that Leonardo was in, but that had to be collaborative.

I mean, our movie was collaborative. Most movies I've ever been on are collaborative. Coming Home was a tremendous collaborative movie. a tremendous collaborative movie. All of Cimino's movies, such as The Deer Hunter and Heaven's Gate and the one in New York with Mickey Rourke about the Japanese gangs in New York. Oh, yeah, Year of the Dragon.

Yeah, Year of the Dragon. It's a good one. There are people like that. And Sidney Pollack's movies were like that. And Mark Rydell's movies were like that. And when I always say I've worked for six geniuses as directors, I always list, you know, not in order of importance, but just Mr. Kazan, Mr. Hitchcock, Doug Trumbull, who did Silent Running with me. And at 17 years old, won an Academy Award as a junior in high school in Huntington Beach, California.

Won the Academy Award for special effects because at 17, he did 2001. Yeah, that's good stuff, Doug Trumbull. Big talent. And then there's Francis Coppola, Alexander, and Quentin. And I leave out people. I got Rafelson not in. I got Ashby not in. And they're brilliant.

They were geniuses in their own way. But the reason these six guys and I wish I had a girl. I've only worked for three or four girl directors. Mary Herron was one. I was in a movie that I mean a

television show that she directed. I did a series called Big Love and she did one of the series and mary heron is the girl that uh uh directed the movie i shot andy warhol and in it was a girl named lily taylor who was also in this movie the haunting that i was in and lily taylor's brother was in my class at new treer so they're they're from glencoe they own the hardware store there so uh uh it's it's when you go back to see the people like this and the thing that's so wonderful about it is that i i can't remember except maybe once so i'm a liar once um i've never walked out of a movie because a hundred people go away somewhere and become a family and make that.

So they have hopefully I always said to Laura, she said, how will I know if I've if I've done well in a movie when I know I can't see it for a year? see it for a year, you know, after I finished. I said, you go home, you look yourself in the mirror and you say, did I leave a piece of myself on that set? And if you can answer that, yes, then you've done what you came to do. And that's when the whole crew does this. I think Bob Altman had crews like that. I never got a chance to work for him. But it's the collaborations. It's the excitement. I mean, we didn't know what to expect when we went to Telluride for December, January, February, and March. I just saw a lot of skiers all around everywhere going up the mountain.

But we were 2,000 feet above them. We go to work. It was 5 below zero in the morning and the hot the warmest it ever got in that cabin was 22 and then and then we come back here and the prick refrigerators stage here in hollywood to 25 degrees and why you see it in the film you see our breath you see how cold it is, you see what we're going through. And it's filmmaking, you know, it's just, it's a wonderful place to be. I don't know how to do anything else. I've always been interested in human behavior, particularly why we behave like

we do, particularly in times of stress. And that's what's always fascinated me. If you had to explain acting in one or two sentences, what would it be? Very simply, the name of my movie company, the ability to be publicly private. In other words, you start with your heart, you let us see into your heart and show it to the audience. Not show it to us, just start with your heart.

Anybody who can do that, I can take almost anybody that's wanting to be an actor, and I can say the following to them. First of all, I wrote a book seven years ago called Things I've Said But Probably Shouldn't Have. I know the feeling. John Wiley and some put the book out. They did one other biography, and that was Dan Rathers. And they did mine. I didn't change any names.

I'm not an asshole. I didn't put anybody in jail, but I didn't change any names. I told about my first day in the business up until 2007 when I wrote the book. And in it, one of the things I say is one thing nobody ever teaches actors in these acting classes and stuff or at college, you can't learn how to act in college incidentally, but if you want to go do it to get a background, go do it. But they never teach you what to do on the interview. You go in a room, the first thing you learn is like jack and harry dean and stanton and i would all go on interviews together and that's not a bad triangle of actors and uh harry

dean's wonderful always has been we love him yeah and he uh so we would go and the first thing you do is learn to read upside down because you're standing in front of one of these girls who you've been around a good deal because they're secretaries of the people that are casting and you learn to read upside down and see all the names on the chart and what time they're in well uh i'm in at 3 10 jack is in at 3 14 harry dean is in at 318. Well, you know, you got four minutes. That's it. So what you need to do is you've got to go in that room and you've got to give them something they've not seen that day or any other day. And you have it. Whoever you are has it. And that is you have yourself. You have what you had done up to 18 or 88, whatever age you are when you go in there and you got to show them a piece of yourself. So you have to be honest when they

say to me, well, why don't you read for us? Read a little of this scene. I said, I don't read well. It's not acting to me. It's for the writer, and the writer isn't here. And since he's not here, I don't want to read. Well, then we have nothing for you. Well, that's fine. Someday someone will find something for me, because maybe I got a little game, and maybe you don't, asshole.

So they get an idea. I went in, I went in with Jack and, and, uh, Harry and I forget, oh, Adam Rourke, who was another wonderful friend of ours and who Quentin is very devoted to. And, uh, we went in, each one was four minutes apart and I was the first one in there. And it was Lynn Stallmaster, who was one of the biggest casting directors in the history of Hollywood. And he was the guy who really helped my generation a lot from the early 60s through the 90s. And I went in and the prick was on the telephone. I grabbed the telephone out of his hand. I slammed it down in the cradle. And I said,

I got three and a half minutes left of my life. And if you're on the phone with a piece of ass, I can get you another one in 20 seconds. It'll be better than whatever you were talking to. So, and he pointed his finger at the door. He said, you are the most unprofessional person I've ever seen. And take that ragtag bunch that's outside. I don't know. You look like some hay group from some farm in Western Iowa. You know, I don't know what you're up to, but you can all get out of here. You know, with that attitude, you're never going to you never, ever are going to make it. And I got to the door and they heard him because he was yelling at me and they all kind of stood up and we went to the outer door and Jack started to open it. And he said, I'm going to tell you guys something right now.

And if you ever tell anybody ever that I'm the one that told you this, I'm going to have your SAG cards destroyed and you will never be allowed to appear on film in your life. They're doing a gun smoke this week with three of the most asshole brothers anybody's ever had. Have your agents go and call them up. And that's how we got really started that day. And whenever I see Lynn or anything, I just put my finger to my lips, like I never said it was you or anything like that. So the other thing that people look forward to, that when audiences see movies they never realize, how did we get there?

How did the grips get there? Mr. Hitchcock, one day we were doing a scene in Family Plot. And it was a scene where I had to walk into a city recorder's office to file out some papers. And it was the shot where Mr. Hitchcock is a shadow of himself on the other side of the window. That's his moment in the movie that he always puts in. other side of the window. That's his moment in the movie that he always puts in. So when I went through the door, there was a camera following me up on the 40, 48 feet up in the air. The camera was on my face. And the drill for the guy was only to show half my face and light and not the other half. And so Hitch said, you know what I mean to the cameraman, Lenny South. He says, what I mean is half of Bruce's face is this color. The other half is Sammy Davis.

So I said, oh, nice Hitch. Way to go. So I go in the door and we do the shot. The shot is over. Hitchcock cuts the camera. He cups his hands from his chair and shouts as loud as he can. Ernie. Ernie is way up in the rafters on the light on me. Are you right-handed or left-handed? He said, well, Mr. Hitchcock, actually, I'm right-handed.

He said, I thought so. I wonder in this take, when we do it a second time, if you might use your left hand to turn the flap on Bruce so you don't cover his face quite as quickly. Wow. At the end of that day, he got up. He said, I would like to say something to the crew, if I might, at the end of our first day.

So the first assistant said, yes, ladies and gentlemen. Hitchcock interrupted him. He said, ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank you all for quite a fantastic first day. I really appreciate it. I know about half of you, but the other half I don't know.

And they all applauded like he thanked them and went off to the Laker game or, you know, wherever they were headed. And he said, personally, he walked around the set. He shook the hand individually of 72 crew members and called every one by their first name. That's impressive. Wow.

That's also genius. You know what I mean? Yes, that's a genius. And he had a Jarvik 7 heart in his chest because he was the sixth recipient of the Jarvik hearts. I didn't know that. Yeah. He had to call on the telephone once a month to UCLA. He said, come watch this, Bruce. He says it's Hitch's heart on the air.

So we go over and he takes a little box he has and he puts a cup over his heart. He takes a little box he has and he puts a cup over his heart and he puts the other cup over the telephone. And they measure the beats that the heart is doing with the machine over the phone so he doesn't have to come in all the time. And they said, you're fine. We'll talk to you next month. Wow. Never knew that. I have to tell you, when I met you at the radio station, it was a thrill meeting you. Thank you.

And I was so excited by the fact that you told me that not only did you know who I was, but you were a fan of mine. Well, how the hell could anybody forget you, for Christ's sake? You won't get a better tribute in your career than have Bruce Durant. And I said the thing that I remember the most about you is your courage. You were courageous, and you were were courageous and you were innovative and you were unique. And I know there was not instant popularity for any of us

and you didn't get any more instant popularity than anybody else did. But you got an appreciation from anyone that ever watched you or heard you because you dared to risk. You pushed the envelope every single time I ever saw you or heard you because you dared to risk you pushed the envelope every single time i ever saw you and i had not seen that and i did a tv show with buddy hackett and i thought he was

pretty quick another unique guy was frank zappa he was really uh i got to know moon because she grew up as a friend of Laura's when they were young. And Frank Zappa could push the envelope. Another guy who never gets any credit for it is the guy that sits next to Jack at the Laker games, Lou Adler. I mean, people forget this is a kid from Roosevelt Garfield High School area, East L.A. and the Jewish families after the Second World War moved out of East L.A. and moved to West L.A. and and on on beyond that. And Lou was one of them. Well, his friend was Herb Alpert and they started A&M Records. got into the record business then big time and signed uh two guys jan and dean who were his first two singers and one of the kids fell off a train making a movie i mean yeah i think making a

commercial or an album cover or something and was never quite the same then he signed, uh, Carol King and, uh, the, uh, Oh, he worked with the mamas and the papas, everybody. Well, yeah. Well, Michelle and all of them. But the other one was, uh, uh, Joni Mitchell and they were both, they were both Canadians. So he, it's like, and he's married to, uh, uh, Paige Hanna, who's Daryl Hanna's sister. And I used to sit at the Laker games all the time. And Jack and Lou and I made a very feeble one-afternoon conversation. In 1970, the Detroit Pistons were for sale for $6 million.

Wow. Affordable. We thought about it. and i lived in malibu colony my next door neighbor was richard block who two years earlier had been awarded the phoenix suns as the head of the franchise and his partners were pat boone and andy williams and that's how the suns came and dick block said you know i have more fun being with those guys than anybody I'm ever with. They come around over there to Dern's house, but there's no way I'm letting them in my league. So that was the end of that.

Bruce, we'll let you run, but I got to say, I saw an interview doing a little research and saw an interview with you and Tavis Smiley. You were talking aboutaska and all the praise and the plaudits you received for the for the movie and you made such a touching analogy and it was a sports analogy you said uh after after all these years that you'd hope people would look at it look at your work in the film and say maybe uh maybe this bruce dern can play. Well, when I got my star, I said the same thing, and I've said it at the end of my book. I said, after whatever I've done to date and hope to continue to do,

because I haven't stopped learning, I haven't stopped putting a cap on anything, no one's putting a governor on me to make me go one speed. I've always felt that the one thing I wanted more than anything else is just have the folks feel I could play. And that's it. As simple as that. I don't want to be number one. I don't need to be number one. I just to be I like to play and I like to go to the playoffs.

I think you have. I think you've proven it. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And tell the marathon runner, where's the marathon runner today? Who's that? The blonde headed guy that sat to my right and a session in the studio. The guy that came up and said he runs marathons oh different show we

don't have a different show yeah now i'm gonna wrap no but he was there that day yeah yeah i'm i'm gonna know him i'm gonna wrap up the show but after i wrap it up i want you to do one more thing for me he's making you work bruce yes i am I am. Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried. I'm here with my co-host, Frank Santopadre. This is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing, colossal podcast, and we've had the pleasure of talking to Bruce Stern. Now, can you, as me, say, hi, I'm Gilbert Gottfried, and we'd like to thank legendary actor Bruce Stern. Well, hi, I'm Gilbert Gottfried. I'm sure you're familiar with my voice because it's everywhere. And I would like to say that we're going to have a guest today named Bruce Dern

not Stern and I hope we all have a good time and that's it for Gilbert Gottfried that's a guy who obviously never had to run 400 meters in his life he would never walk 200 meters thank you so much, guys.

It's a delight. And any time you'd like to have me back, I appreciate it more than you'll ever know. We'd love to have you come on. And we'll talk about. We'll have you back tomorrow and the next day. We'll talk about smile and silent running and all the things we didn't get to. And we don't care what you say. We don't care.

There was one other thing I just thought of for a second. Oh, you were speaking about. Have I got 30 seconds? Yeah, sure. OK, the wonderful thing on this little movie I did for Eric Stoltz down in Louisiana, which is called Class Rank. And Kristen Chenoweth is in it with me. And, you know, what she can do and what she is. And the wonderful thing about it is that these people now crop up.

And Eric, for example, is just knows all about what went before. And it's a it's an absolute delight. And the thing that was nice is when you would go on sets and the set I i had it the most on was they shoot horses don't they because at the piano every day on the set playing his own songs throughout the movie for 60 days was johnny green so when you hear us dancing to mr sendman sing me a song that's johnny green wrote that and he's there playing the piano throughout the movie. And it's a wonderful movie. It's a great look at marathon dancing, and I'll leave you with the trivia.

The trivia is... Oh, we love that movie. The longest day, the longest time anybody ever danced without stopping was 72 days by a guy named Frank Lankowski in Atlantic City in 1935. Frank Lankowski went and changed his name to Frankie Lane and sang Ghost Riders in the Sky. Oh, my God.

Oh, Mule Train. Wow. There will be a test Tuesday. Okay, we'll have you back and do trivia next time, Bruce. And I have to say, I have to add one more thing that goes back to something you said earlier, and I have to say, fuck you, Bruce Stern. You are a legendary actor.

Well, thank you, Gilbert. I appreciate that a great deal. But I just, you know, for the folks to feel I can play. Legendary, I don't know. Legendary to me means, you know, the Headless Horseman. He's legendary. You can play all right. Thank you, Bruce.

Thank you, Bruce Stern Thank you, Bruce Stern. Bye, guys. Bye. Bye.