Girl on Guy with Aisha Tyler - girl on guy 204: joe mantegna

Episode Date: November 18, 2015

join criminal minds joe mantegna and aisha as they mull over family, history, growth, transformation, going west, and going home. joe tells a bunch of killer stories. girl on guy loves a good story.

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Visit meandies.com slash Aisha for 20% off your first order and free shipping. Check that out. out. This is Girl on Guy. Hey, everybody, welcome to Girl on Guy 204. Welcome to the show. We are winding down the year. I know that that is alarming to you. It is alarming to me, but it is happening. There's nothing to be done about it. We are on the very slippery bottom part of the long, slow slide towards the termination of 2015. That's been a challenging fall to say the least for a variety of reasons. I'm not going to recount the news to you, but hopefully the show will give you a bit of respite from what I'm sure has been on a barrage of a very difficult bits of information coming

from the outside. And I'm happy to bring it to you. I'm exhausted. I just did a bunch of time at the dog, but a bunch of time in criminal minds, and I'm up late trying to get this done and out to you. It is a bit tardy this week, so I apologize for that, but, you know, doing what I can. And thank you you so much for all of your patience and support, your tweets, your emails, everything that you guys are sending my way. You guys are awesome. You are awesome. Let's kill the big. business and get to the good stuff this minute. This show is brought to you in part by Sock Fancy. And Black Friday is November 27th that is coming up barreling down on us like a bad out of hell. And that means it's time to get a jumpstart on your holiday shopping list. If you haven't started, I haven't

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Girl On Guy, at checkout for your discount. That is sockfancy.com. Enter girl on guy, all one word. get $10 off your first subscription support stock fancy because they support girl on guy check that out all right this episode of the show is with my good friend and co-worker joe mantegna and joe mantegna is an extraordinarily accomplished actor producer writer director he is an amazing guy you may know him from a million things of course you know him criminal minds but you may know him from lots of great films including The Godfather, Part 3, Three Amigos, up close and personal, forget Paris,

and television shows, including The Last Dawn, Starter Wife, Joan of Arcadia, The Simpsons. He played Fat Tony, has played Fat Tony as a recurring role for many, many seasons now. And he's an extraordinary guy. He's got a Tony for his portrayal of Richard Roma in the Mammett play, Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, which was also made into a very successful film. he's had a long and successful association with the playwright, David Mamet, who is a monster, a creative mind in his own right, and he's just a lovely guy, a great actor, and even more than that, an incredible person. He played Dean Martin for HBO, for HBO's film The Rat Pack. He's

just, he's a lovely all-around guy. And this was such a great conversation, so wide-ranging and personal, and I got super emotional, as you'll find out. I just loved it. I love talking with Joe. He's a blast to work with and a joy to know and you're going to get to know a little bit better when you listen to this conversation. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Grow on Guy 204 with the fantastic actor, Mr. Joe Mantegna, coming at you straight out of the Girl on Guy bunker 2.0 and right into your face. All right, well, this is happening. Joe Montenia, welcome to my show. Thank you. I'm very excited. I'm excited to be here. Oh gosh. Okay, I would try to hold it together. Um, I'm just a

I'm super excited to have you. Now, you know, occasionally I get somebody on the show as such, like, a varied and robust career that I really want to start right at the beginning. Because I feel like that's the only way we're going to get it right. Well, you know what happened to you, but I don't. So I just want to, I really want to start at the beginning with you because I feel like you're such a wonderful story. And you have, like, out of an old, you're not an old guy, but you have an old story. I'll tell you that right away. It's old.

You have like a classic American story, right? So your parents, you're a first generation American. Well, all my grandparents came from Italy. Okay. So my parents were born here. Oh, they were born here. Okay. My parents were, but just barely.

Right. My grandparents and my mother's side came from. What's funny is my mother's father actually, we don't have any really records of it because he jumped ship in the harbor. Really? Yeah, he swam to Ellis Island. Most people waited until the boat docked. But he left Italy under kind of nefarious circumstances.

As my uncle Willie explained. and he says, yeah, well, he got in his trouble with this girl over there, and then her family got a little excited, and so he left. Oh, wow. And so he didn't really have all his papers in order and stuff, so he jumped ship and swam ashore. I mean, it's, no, my family's very typical. But anyway, somehow he settled in Chicago with my grandmother.

And that's funny, they're both a very small town in Italy, but he met my grandmother in Chicago. Oh, okay. Because that was often happened. People would gravitate to these places that they'd heard in America, like that's where the people from our town went. Right, right. So even though they grew up in the same small village in Italy,

they didn't meet until they were in Chicago. So that's where my grandparents met. And that's where my mother and all her brothers and sisters were born. And my dad was similar in a sense that his parents came over. My grandfather came over from Sicily. Went to this little town in Oklahoma. Really? Because this town in Oklahoma was known for having these coal mines.

And so again, these same people from the same town in Sicily went to this small town in Oklahoma because they'd heard there was work there in the coal mines. So even to this day, 2015, you go to that town in Oklahoma and there's these little farms that are owned by these Sicilian families that go back to the turn of last century. Wow. And it's a similar kind of thing. And it was an arranged marriage, I found out, that my grandfather came over first. He had already been arranged to marry my grandmother who was only 15 back in Sicily. Wow. So he worked in the coal mines for four years to save enough money to buy a farm.

By now she was 19, old enough, they shipped her over. Wow. They got married. And so my dad and his brothers and sisters grew up on this little farm in Oklahoma. And that's incredible. And then when did he move to Chicago? Well, what happened is my grandfather, the farmer, because that was the whole thing. I've been to the town in Sicily where my grandparents are from.

It's a very tip-top of a mountain in the very center of Sicily, like dead center bullseye, always made me think like, what the hell did you do? You're living on this beautiful island. You're living on the very tip-top of this mountain in the center. You're like as far from the coast as you could possibly get. Maybe that was a defensible position there, right? To keep the other the bad guys out. But you couldn't, all you can grow there is old.

There's no, there's no soil. It's all rock. So I can understand what they all wanted to become farmers. Because it's like, hey, can I grow nothing here? So everybody, so he worked in the coal mines. My brother's into all this stuff. That's why I know all this stuff. He's into genealogy and all that.

So we have the bill of sale that my grandfather bought this 50-acre farm in like 1908 for $500, which was a lot of money. Yeah. But he saved like a hundred bucks a year or so to buy this farm, bought it. But what happened is he gets an appendicitis attack, ironically, since I had one, as you know about three weeks ago. Yeah. He had an appendicitis attack. But you've got to think this is like 1920 maybe. Yeah.

In the 20s, his appendix explodes. By the time the doctor comes on the horse buggy and all that, he's dead. Oh, my gosh. So my grandmother has all these kids, and my father was the oldest, and he was only like 15 or something. She says, well, we can't keep the farm up. We can't do this. But she held on to the farm, but she had relatives in Chicago. So they all moved to Chicago.

And that's how my father's side wound up. in Chicago and then my mother met my father. Now, what happened to the, she said she kept the farm. She kept the farm, we still have it. What happened? It just sits there. It's been sitting there for over 100 years, I guess. And no one works it, and no one.

There's a neighboring farm who are also Sicilians. As I said, a lot of these families all still stayed there. There was actually an article recently in an Oklahoma magazine talking about it. And then they found out about my history, and they called me, and they've interviewed. me and it should be coming out actually soon, the article, because I did this whole interview with photos and stuff, talking this very story. So the farm's still sitting. It's a 50-acre farm, but it's in the middle of, it's still, unfortunately, I wish my grandfather would have settled in Beverly Hills. It would have increased in value, right? As it is, the nearest thing to it

is, is a prison. There's a federal prison in McAllister, which is, that's like the, so most of the people who visit that area are people coming to visit their murderer son or, you know, Maybe like at night when you turn the lights out you might feel uncomfortable. I guess. So I mean, so I don't know how much the land value has really, I don't think it's rocketed up anywhere. But it's funny is we've always, and we all share in the ownership of it, all the surviving families.

And my dad had a surviving brother, two sisters, and we all have our own little deed because, and they had to do it that way because because it's such an oil and gas rich area, there's apparently a gas well that lies on the farm next day. or part of it goes under our land. So because of it, every like six months, I get a $23 check from Oklahoma gas and electric because I own this 1.000-000-0-0 point of the gas well.

Right. So it just sits there. And every once in a while I get these relatives of call and say, well, maybe we should just all collectively sell the farm and, you know, split up to $13,000. And I always hesitate. I say, we can't do it. It's grandpa's, it's the homestead.

You know, they said, but we're going to put it on your kids. That's their problem. They put it on me. I'm putting it on them. He said, this is grandpa. He worked in the coal mines for four or five years to get this farm. I'm not selling it.

Get the shit out of them too. I don't care. I'll hang a goddamn sign on it. It says, this is Martania. This is our own country. Maybe we'll come to country. I'll become a king or something. I don't know.

So anyway, we have this farm. It sits there and that's that. And so your grandmother moves your father and all of his siblings to Chicago. And that's where he meets your mom. He meets my mother. I think it was just one of these things my dad had a friend and that friend knew that side of the family, my mother.

And it was almost, the type of, it's almost like, dating back then, my mother being from what they would have said, Italy, being an Italian, my father being from, being Sicilian, which Italians think of as a whole other nation, as a whole other race, in fact. So it really is the closest thing you can get to an interracial marriage at the time. And my father would tell me stories about how when he started to date my mother, He'd come to the house and knock on the door, and my grandparents would, on my mother's side, would see him at the door knowing he was Sicilian and say,

she's another home, you know. They didn't quite... But, of course, as it turned out, my father won my grandfather, my maternal grandfather over, and they became actually the dearest, closest friends. That's lovely. But then my dad had a bad history, though. Unfortunately, he had two older brothers that I never got to know

because by growing up on a farm, this is kind of a weird story, but they all contracted tuberculosis, and they think it was from a cow or something. Oh, wow. Literally you could get it from livestock or something, whatever. So the three brothers, my dad and his two older brothers, all got tuberculosis in their 20s.

The two older brothers died. It contracted it as children and then it didn't develop it until they were older. Yeah. Okay. So the two older brothers died in their 20s. Oh, wow. My dad contracted right as World War II started like 1940, 41. Back then,

the only cure, they put you in a sanitarium. So they sent him to Mount McGregor, New York, and his tuberculosis sanitarium. Ironically, years later, I narrated a documentary about tuberculosis sanitariums, and they actually talked about that particular place that my dad was. And he was there for three and a half years.

Just sick. What they do is they cut him open, they took out one of his lungs, they took out part of the other lung, and took out all the ribs on the same, that one side, because that's what they did then. And then what they did is they put you in bed, and the reason all these sanitariums were often on mountain tops

is because all they thought is, well, fresh mountain air, that thin altitude seems to be beneficial. And they would cover you up. I have photos of it. They lay them in bed, and they put heavy blankets over them, and it's like freezing cold outside, and they push you out, and you spend all day out on the veranda of the hotel. Doing probably nothing of any, just lying there.

No, just lying there. had, my brother had already been born. I have a brother who's eight years older than I am. He was born in 1940. So my brother was only about six months old when my father contracted this and they sent him off. So my brother was raised by my mother and my grandparents and my uncles and stuff because my dad didn't even see my brother until he was almost five years old. Wow. So here's my dad in a hospital in New York. My mother's in Chicago. Maybe visited once or twice because it was a big deal. Too hard to travel that far. And my brother was raised by my grandparents, because then the war happened, and my mother's four brothers all went to

World War II. So it was funny, my brother who can't speak a lick of Italian now, spoke fluent Italian when he was a kid. Because all the uncles and everybody was around. Yeah, my grandmother basically raised them because my mother was working too. And so anyway, but my dad finally got released. Otherwise, I shouldn't have been born, because as it turned out, my dad was compromised this whole life because of this. He only had a part of one lung. And no ribs. No ribs. No ribs on that side. So when he took his shirt off, he looked, he kind of looked like Idaho or something. I mean, his body was like kind of caved in on one side. And that protects everything in there. But he smoked two, three packs a day. He drank. He was, we had to put,

when I was 15, we had to put him in a place for alcoholism. But he beat it. I mean, he didn't get over it. But all of this stemmed from the fact that he, he, he kind of felt cheated in his, I think, in his life, because the guy could, he walk up a set of stairs. He couldn't take a breath. And he worked for years. He worked as an insurance man for, for, for many years, but he was always, you know what I mean? It was difficult. I felt like hang it, right? Like, why bother, right?

Yeah, and he finally had to when he was about 40, the insurance company just said, look, you know, you're done. We'll put you on disability. You're fine. You can't do this anymore. And I think it hurt my dad in a sense that my mother was working at Sears Roebuck wrapping packages. That's what she did all for 25 years.

And my dad was basically became the stay-at-home dad acting, doing all the stuff back in the 50s. you would expect the mother to do. Which at that time was so unusual. Very unusual and tough for him to take. And I think that's what led to was drinking. And the smoking, he started on the farm. He said he used to smoke when he was a kid. I mean, that's what they did.

So he died fairly young. He was only 57 when he died. But when they looked at his medical records, which we had never really done, they found out when they let him out of the sanitarium that they put in the records, they said, we expect this guy to live maybe five or six more years, but why even tell him?

It's like, you know, maybe he'll go longer. Right. But they kind of put that in for other doctors to see, you know. And how old was he at that time when he was in his 20s? Yeah, he lived another 30 years. Yeah, he lived another 30 years. Like I said, I shouldn't have been born. He's a tough guy.

So, yeah, he was a tough guy. Yeah, he was a tough guy. Well, my mother's 100. My mother's just turned 100. That's incredible. So that, if nothing else, they've got pretty good chromosomes going. You Italians are tenacious. I don't know.

A lot of 100-year-old Italian people I think in the world. Yeah, exactly. God, that's an incredible. incredible story. And that's also a time when, you know, like you said, very few men stayed home. But also, I did this just struck me. There was nothing to do at home. I mean, even for housewives, a lot of housewives, I mean, you know, the infamous kind of like the pills of the 60s and 70s. I think a lot of people, when you were home all day, there was no television and no internet and no video games and no nothing, you know?

What I got to applaud him for is, you know, he never finished high school or anything, but he was an avid reader and he's a smart guy. And he would read things that I thought was weird. Like he would read Plutarch's Lives, or he'd read Shakespeare. He'd read all these works of Shakespeare. And I'd come home from school, in high school, my friends, and I'd see my dad laying on a couch, kind of resting and reading. I'd go, what should your dad read it?

And my dad look up and say, well, I'm reading Hamlet. And my friends look at me like, what the hell's wrong with your dad? And I'm saying, yeah, I don't know. You know, what the hell would he read that shit? This was way before I even had an inkling of being an actor. Right, right. But he was such a, I got to say, and I realized that from my relatives, they all went to, he was kind of like the concierie. He was the guy they always knew Joe will know.

Joe is the smart guy because he wasn't, he couldn't be very physical because of his condition, but he made up for it with his intellect. He's just, you know, it was kind of inherent intellect he had, which God bless him. And I don't think I really appreciate it until much later, because like I say, I was pretty young when he passed away. I was only like just starting out as a man myself. I was about 21, 22. And then in retrospect, I think, well, he, God bless him. He instilled a lot of me without even knowing it, without me even knowing it. I think also parenting styles were different back then.

I mean, I think none of us ever figure out who our parents are as people until we're adults. You know, we're just seeing them as a figure. Yeah. But then even back, I mean, I wonder, like, if that was maybe cultural or was it your family specifically, like some, you know, men back then didn't always interact in like really emotional ways. You kind of learned from your father by example. Yeah.

Well, there was, I mean, you know, you don't see a lot of Sicilians crying. I tell you that. There was not that kind of emotion going on. I mean, it was all like, yeah, and he never complained about it. That's what I mean. He took it out on himself.

I mean, he took it out with the booze and all. Right. That's what it was. But when he finally got out of the, you know, I think he was hospitalized for about three months, as I remember, when I was about 15, they put him on this drug where

if you drank, you got sick. Wow. You took a pill and if you took alcohol, it kind of make you throw up. But it worked for him because I don't think he tested that pretty much, if at all. Because I never remember him ever drinking again. But finally, just the lack of the smoking, I think, ultimately got him because that one piece, that part of one lung he had finally said, I'm out. You know, thanks, but I'm out.

It was a valiant effort, but I'm out. Yeah. Yeah. And so he kind of, you know, happened fairly quickly and that was that. your father read plays when you were growing up and he was well read but you were saying that you didn't have a sense of wanting to be an actor at all not at all not at all when did when did that happen you know it's funny when i think about it my first touch of theater would have been when i was eight years old i contracted rheumatic fever which was again it's kind of a weird thing that

happens is that something we vaccinate against now i don't even i don't know if you can vaccinate maybe you can but back then it was another one of those things like okay you got rheumatic fever And they put you in a sanitarium for that. Oh, you're a little kid. I was a little kid. I was eight years old, and I went to, it still exists. It's called the Larabita. Back then, it was just for rheumatic fever.

It's called the Larabita Sanitarium for Children. But it was, now it's a children's hospital on the south side of Chicago. And I remember, I went there, and for five months I was there. Because back then. Joe. Yeah. Because back then, what they do for rheumatic fever is for the first three months, because it can affect your heart. You can get murmurs and you can get heart disease from it or, or,

to attack your heart, to destroy your heart. Luckily, I dodged all those bullets. But for the first three months, you just lay in bed. You don't even get out of bed to pee. I mean, that's it. You're running the bed, and that's what you do, bed rest. And then the last two months, they gradually work you out of it, out of it. And then I, so I missed my whole, I think it was third grade, whatever that was,

fourth grade, fifth grade. I don't know what a grade it was, but I missed it. But they have school. You know, teacher comes into the class and into your room and stuff. But you must have been so frustrated But you know when you're eight years old You don't know any better And also because there's all these other kids around you

It's a children's hospital But what was weird is again in retrospect I remember thinking There was this one kid that was always in the bed next to me He always wear cowboy boots Because that was it He refused to not wear his cowboy boots And even when he's sleeping

I got to wear the boots And they let him do it But I remember one day he wasn't there You know And I said what happened to whatever his name was And I said oh well he you know He's he's But he had a pat him

passed away, you know, but they, and it would happen every once in a while. It wasn't rampant at all, but some kids, it took a turn, you know, and their heart gave out and whatever, and they would go. So all I could think of is, again, in retrospect, is what my parents must have gone through, knowing, especially with my dad thinking what he had gone through in his life, and now he's got his own kid who's in a sanitarium, different disease, same kind of thing, but five months compared to three and a half years was nothing. And kids, and the possibility, even the distinct possibility that they could have lost you, even though maybe It wasn't as dramatic as what we experienced.

But to get to why the show business end of it, I had to do follow-ups for a long time. In other words, I was eight years old, but I had to take what they called it sulfur drugs. I took sulfur drugs until I was 21 because that was the thing that at least back then that they thought this can help you keep it at bay. So I took these sulfa pills right up until I was 21 years old. And I would always have to go back for checkups every like six months and whatever it was. So I remember shortly after I'd been released in the hospital, they'd put on a place. They decided to put on a play and they said let's bring in some of the kids who have to come in anyway and we'll get them into play and I remember I had to play I had to play a fairy and they had to see these little green suits and we had to give us glitter Yeah, but we have to like run in where the kids were sleeping and I had to sprinkle glitter on the sleeping kids and the only reason I remember is I remember when I did that this first time I was in I think oh we gotta get to be an act in a play

I've sprinkled this this this uh litter on the kids and the one girl happened to be open her eyes when I did it. She's supposed to be dead asleep. She jumps up going, my eyes, my eyes! She's screaming, rubbing her eyes. I'm thinking, okay, I just blew that. Right. But that was my first experience in theater. Yeah. And so it was, since it was a bad one, I didn't really think, okay, I can cross this off the list. I'm not going to do this for a living. So I was probably about 10 years old then, something like that. Yeah. But now you jump cut. Okay, now I'm maybe like 16. And as I said, My brother was eight years older than I am.

So he was going on a date with his girlfriend, and he had sent him away for tickets, and he sent him in the envelope was three tickets instead of two. So he said, he said, it was his girlfriend. I want to take my kid brother, we got an extra ticket. She said, sure, I don't care. So I went. And I remember we saw the play,

and it was the play called Merry Mary. It was like sometime in the 60s, early 60s. And I remember I fell asleep there in a play. I was like, this sucks. It's very boring. I'm in the balcony, I'm taking a non. So again, my second experience with theater it was not that good.

So, okay, so again, I chalk this off to experience. Right. Now I'm a sophomore in high school. And, again, it's not on my radar in any way to be in show business. Except I used to sing Johnny Ray songs to my relatives when they'd come over, I'd say, you know, the little white cloud that cried. They always used to say, I used to do that. I was like a cheap date.

You just throw me a penny and I'll sing for you. But I get fascinated by the movie West Side Story. I think it was a sophomore junior in high school because it was my life. At this point in my life, I was living in Cicero, Illinois, which is, it is what it is. I mean, it was what it was. It wasn't a bad place that grew up at the time, but it had its, you know, Cicero has a reputee. It was, they had a whole racial thing going on with Martin Luther King marched through there and they had to call it National Guard. I mean, it was, and the only reason partly that we were there,

is because my dad had a sister who lived there and we couldn't afford to really live. I never lived in a house my entire life. We always had apartments. We finally had to get to a point where my aunt made it convenient for us to get an apartment in Cicero. But this is kind of life I was living.

I mean, not that we was like the jets and the sharks that there were gangs. But it was urban, very urban, very polarized, very, you know what I mean? And it was that lifestyle. So the movie fascinated me. So I remember I must have seen the movie movie 10 times because back then you could go to the movie theater and just stay in other words you watch

each each time you know long as you didn't leave nobody's throwing out like you saw this already they didn't care as long as you kept your seat right so I probably saw the movie 10 times I come to the high school that year whatever it was this is maybe a few months later and there's banners up in high school saying West Side Story tryouts and I'm going try it out for what I saw the movie 10 times are they making another movie I didn't know it was a play yeah I really literally was based on a play. Yeah. So I said, this is remarkable.

I thought Westside's story. I love this thing. I knew every song. And they really were saying, in the thing it said, we don't care. Because I'm thinking, well, I don't have any experience, but they said, we need everybody because the whole play is we need a lot of guys and a lot of girls. And especially one of people who were like from the athletic department. And I was on a baseball team.

So I was like, oh, well, maybe. So me and another guy in the baseball team, we talked to each other. He liked the movie too. We said, if you try out, I'll try it. I'll try it. I'll try it. So we both learned our song, and we said, okay, we'll go. We'll go.

We'll see what this is like. And I remember we could, we had to go with that. It was at night they had the auditions. And we went, first of all, I didn't even know the school had a theater. And I get there, and I think it was a junior at this time. Not to think about it. And we go up to the little theater.

I said, little theater. Who knew there was a little theater. So we go up there, and then we walk in, and I'll never forget it. I mean, there's a little stage, and the lights are low, and there's music playing, people, you know, tuning up the piano player for the auditions. And all these kids running around on black leotards and stuff.

These are the theater people. Yeah, real theater people. And I'm like, what, though? Stretching and doing verbal exercises. And I look at my friend Glenn, and he looks at me and we're like, what the fuck? Who are these people? What planet did we land on? And he looked at me and said, I'm out.

Oh, really? Oh, yeah, Glenn said, I'm out. You know, they freaked them out. He sees these people, leotards going, oh, Maria. people doing like tour jetees or whatever the hell of it is. And he goes, I'm out. And I'm thinking, okay, and he leaves. And then I'm thinking, what do I do?

But I've been practicing the song. I'd worn the record out of playing Maria. Maria. Right. I figure out what the hell I'm here. You know, I'm going to go for it. So I call my name. Joe Montagnan, please come up.

And I go up on the stage. And, you know, I can remember it like it's yesterday. The footlights are there on the stage. And a light's coming at me. It was just this little theater. He'll probably seats 100 people. Yeah. And I can't see in the darkness the teachers who are out there,

whoever the director of the drama department. And all writes, you know, ding, ding, ding, the piano hits the note. And I sing the song, you know, the most beautiful sound I ever heard, Maria. I finished the song. And I'm looking into blackness. And at the end of the song, I get this applause. And it was like a lightning bolt went through my chest.

Because no one had ever applauded anything I had ever done in my life because it was pretty mediocre, pretty much everything, even baseball. And so I tell you, Aisha, I knew in that heartbeat, I said, oh my God, I think this is what I want to do for the rest of my life. Wow. And it was just like an electric shock through my system. And they said, well, thank you. We're going to put the names up of who was cast tomorrow. It'll be on front of the little theater tomorrow morning when you come to school. And I remember I walked home. It was at night. I walked home to the apartment thinking, what the fuck just happened? I now wanted to do this thing more than anything I wanted to do in my life, and yet I'm thinking, a week ago, I didn't even know what existed.

And yet why do I, and it scared me. To need something. Yeah. And I remember going to sleep that night thinking, oh, man, is my name going to be on that list? And the next morning I couldn't tell anybody because I'm thinking, don't think I'm crazy. What? What? Especially my friends.

Like, what? You tried out for what? Right. So I walked to school the next day. I get to the school. I run upstairs. You know, look at the list. And I'm not on the list. And now I'm devastated. And now I'm thinking, oh, my God, now I'm devastated over something I didn't even know existed. And that really flipped me out. Yeah. And so I kind of swallowed it and thought, okay, well, what are you going to do? And I tried to put it out of my mind. I thought, okay, just wasn't meant to be. But then something happened about a week later, I think I just hear Scuttlebutter around the school saying, Oh, did you ever hear the kid in West Side Story turned his ankle? One of the cast members, so they've canceled rehearsal. And I was like, really? To myself, I'm saying this.

I run up to this drama department, and I didn't know who the guy was. I knew the head of the drama department who was there at my audition. I said, I heard somebody got hurt in your cast. I just thought maybe, you know, just take my shot. Thank God this man who exists today is in his 80s. His name is John Lechle. He was ran that department. He is that same guy that Tom Hanks talked about that changed his life in high school.

He looked at me. He says, I remember you. I remember your audition. He said, the reason I didn't cast you, you were too small, which I was. That's a whole other story because my parents, because my mother needed to go back to work, they changed my birth certificate. And I went back to school a year before I was supposed to. And they never even told me.

Because she just needed you out of the house so she could work. Yes, right. Okay. Yeah. So I went to school. So I should have been a sophomore, but yet I was a junior. So I was always, like the run, because I wasn't filled, you know, in a lot of ways. I was the youngest kid, last to drive, everything.

Yeah. And my mother, I didn't even know my real birthday until I was 16. That's a whole other story. My parents were so afraid since they had changed my birth certificate, they figured, well, let's not even tell him. Well, because he might give it away. I might get in trouble. But I thought maybe at 16, I could find out. And the only reason I found out because I needed my birth certificate to get a driver's license.

but that's a whole other story. But I literally celebrated my birthday on the wrong day for 16 years. Oh, my God. So now he tells me, he says, you were too small, I couldn't cast you, but he says, you got a lot of gumption, you got talent, we love the way you sang,

you just didn't fit in, because these kids are all seniors. And plus, it was a district-wide musical. They had kids from the junior college as well, because we had a junior college in the same building. And somebody's guys had mustachees. They were men, you know. So he says, but he says,

have you ever taken drama? I said, no, I've never even tried out for a play before. He says, I'm going to put you in my advanced drama class. I said, I've never taken any. He says, it doesn't matter. I give you a note. Which they did. They didn't give you a note. I go, okay, you're now in advance drama. And that's how it began. I went right into the advanced drama class at Morton East High School. This is like 1963. And to make a long story less long, that's how it started. And I haven't looked back from that moment. It was my, I had no plan B.

Now, there was a lot of things happened between that day and today. But it was always like, okay, that's where I'm going. Now, if I get there, I don't know, but I'm having a hell of a time with the ride. You know what I mean? Which I think is what it's all about. Now, it's so interesting because, you know, you come from, like just an American working class family. You had no sense that you were going to be an artist and actor. You are struck by this kind of combination of lightning bolts, right?

And I think nowadays, especially if you're a young person, you want to be an actor, maybe there's no magical solution, but there's a path that you could kind of figure out what the path was. But was that clear to you at that time, like how you were going to do all of this? No. I mean, I played it by year and it worked out. I mean, I had no reference points because there was no one in my family in show business. There was no, there was no nothing to even, like my daughter. My daughter is doing very well, you know, in this business.

But she grew up totally around it. The line I was used is if I was a plumber, why should I be surprised that my kids fixing pipes when they're little? Yeah, exactly. So being in the business, she's grown up around actors, writers, directors. It's not a mystery there. She's not afraid of any of it. So it was almost like she had that, in a way, it is a heads up. You still have to back it up.

You have to have the talent. But at least there's not that fear of the unknown. I had all fear of the unknown. But yet I didn't know it. Like I said, there was no plan B. I knew I wasn't going to be left fielder for the Cubs. I just didn't have the talent. So what do I do?

So you just kind of, you play it by ear. You just kind of, okay, this seems to lead to that. I remember when I finally graduated high school, and I had done very well now at that point in the two years I was in the drama department. I guess only because the other kids were doing it, I was looking at colleges, like looking at places to go. But there was no money to go anywhere.

Right. There just wasn't. Right. So I wound up staying in the junior, college, and I went two years to the junior college, which was fine because it was the same drama department. Like I said, it was a district kind of wide thing. So I was able to do the plays for two more years in the junior college.

Then luckily, in Chicago at that time, there was a school, which is not part of DePaul University, but at that time it was the Goodman School of Drama, which dates back to the, I think, to the 20s. Now I thought, well, wow, I don't have the money to leave town. I can't go away to college, but they were offering government loans for schools. And so I applied for like a $2,000 government loan to pay the tuition. And because I couldn't live, I still had to live at home because I didn't have the money to have an apartment or anything. And so I was able to get into the Goodman School of Drama, you know, because back then you didn't even have to audition.

You had to have a letter of recommendation from your drama department, which was, as I said, dear John Lekyll and the rest of that faculty provided that for me. And I went there for two years. And it was at, oh, no, it's a three-year program. And I took a loan each year, those two years. And in my third year, they offered me a scholarship. And I was still going to borrow the money anyway because now by at this point I wanted to, you know, I had a roommate.

I wanted to pay rent and get out of the house. But that's when I got cast in my first professional play, which was hair because they had auditions that summer before I started my third year. And just on a whim, I thought, well, I did musicals in high school in junior college. Let me try this out. And as it worked out,

3,000 of us auditioned for that play, and I got cast. Was that a touring company? Was that the local company? What it was is it wasn't the touring company, because what had happened is hair was such a phenomenon in New York, and it opened just a year before at 68. Then they opened up in Los Angeles at the Aquarius Theater, and they opened up in Chicago, a sit-down company, because that company wound up sitting there for a year and a half. Wow.

And then they had the fourth company in San Francisco. So there was actually four sit-down hair companies. Separate companies. Totally separate. New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and L.A. So this was the Chicago company, and we wound up doing it for a year and a half. Then when that year and a half was over, actually the woman who became my wife, who still is my wife, that's where we got together in that play.

And that play. Yeah, she played Jeannie, the pregnant one, and I was Berger, the crazy guy to swings on a rope. We were asked to do the national tour, and we did the national tour for a while. together that must have been lovely. Were you already together at that point? Yeah, we got together early on as the one we started. What was funny is that we knew each other from high school. Oh, wow.

Because she was in the drama department from the other school, Morton West, which is in Berwyn, Illinois. I was in Morton East Cicero, Illinois. And like I said, we did these district-wide musicals. And so we actually had been in place together. But it was always like, oh, yeah, you know, nice to see it. You know, she was in. She always said, she says, well, you were always the lead. I was always the chorus.

She got her revenge because when we got cast in hair She was one of the leads and I started in the course I had to work my way up to getting one of the lead roles But anyway we knew each other in high school But then that went away when we went our separate ways But then when we both got just Ironically we both got cast in hair And I attributed a lot to that that high school program

Because it was so they made us feel that Doing theater at the level we were doing it in high school Was no different than Broadway So that that way you know, we wouldn't be intimidated by it if we really got to that point. So when we ultimately did, they were absolutely right. It was like, hey, I can do this. Our auditorium at Martin East High School was bigger than most Broadway houses because it was one of those old, it's one of those buildings that they preserve because it was built like into 20s.

Right, right. That's kind of art deco auditoriums. Yeah. And it's like 2,500 people. I mean, it's massive. Yeah. So we got used to performing in a space like that. So doing Broadway was actually not.

like a step up really. It was like a parallel move in a way. So her and I wound up doing this play together. And it's exciting also because I think it's unusual to get your break, so to speak, in a town that isn't New York or Los Angeles. You know what I mean? That this was like a massive break and it was kind of not in the traditional location. What was lucky about Chicago, especially later on,

it's going into the 70s now, is that that's when the whole renaissance. of theater in Chicago was happening. That's when Jim, Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey wrote to play Greece. That was just being done as a midnight show after hours in this little bar on the north side of Chicago. We'd finish doing the performance of here and we'd all go down to see that at midnight because it was fun. You know, it was just a little quirky little play.

That's when David Mammoth started becoming, you know, a writer. That's when I was with a group called the Organic Theater Company by at that point where Dennis Franz was a member, Mischick Taylor was a member of myself. there was Steppenwolf was just starting with all of those people Joan Allen John Malcovich Gary Seneese Lori Metcalf the list goes on I mean and then then there was the Remains Company with Gary Cole and William Peterson

so I mean the the theater the health of local small theater in you know in Chicago during the 70s was just phenomenal and of course who always had Second City. Second City was there as well. Right, right. So it was there.

So even though we were just a road show for the big musicals, like things like for most, I mean, like I said, Hey, it was a sit-down musical, but for the most part, those big theaters downtown, they would get the road shows out of Broadway. But it was the small theaters. It was the off, what they call the off-loop theaters. That's where the action was.

Yeah. And ultimately, a lot of people came out of that, and that's why to this day, Chicago was such an incredibly vibrant theater town. Theater town, yeah. You, I'm, because I don't have your CV memorized, I'm going to ask you, but you, you got your first Tony nomination for. Well, it was my first and only, and then, and I also won it. And you won it, so it was all in one.

It was the whole deal. Yeah. That was for Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross, the original production. And was that the original production in New York? That was your Broadway, your, that was not my Broadway debut. Actually, in 1978, Studs Terkel. the writer, great Chicago writer, had written the play working, or the book

working, and they adapted it into a musical. And I had always thought musicals was going to be my ticket. Because I'd started in musicals. I did hair. Right after hair, I did Godspell. And Stephen Schwartz was the guy who wrote the music for Godspell. Well, Stephen Schwartz also was the director

and wrote much of the music for working. So he remembered me from that. And so when they were casting the Broadway play of working, I had been with the organic theater at this point, like five years, he offered me a role in that. And it was like, wow, okay, my Broadway show in a musical, wow. So I went and did that. Unfortunately, the show was not a big hit initially. I mean, it still exists. But I have two songs on the album. Oh, cool. I mean, it was a great experience.

Yeah. But that was my Broadway debut, that. But I was 1978. But it wasn't until 83. And I came back to Chicago after working and was doing, you know, local theater with the, uh, uh, just that and the other then actually moved out to California. Oh, okay. I already moved out to California, in fact. That's right. After Bleacher Bums, we did this play. I conceived this play called Bleacher Bums that actually went on and became fairly pretty, quite successful. Yeah, baseball play. You love your Cubs. But the Cub fans. You love your Cubs. Yeah, God bless them. It's the same thing here. We'll see and then what happens next year. But anyway, we got close. That should be a tattoo. That should be a. We got close. into that, you know.

But I had developed this relationship with David Mamet over the years. And that was, and you guys had met in Chicago. We met in Chicago. He was a struggling playwright. I was a struggling actor. But he had come and seen some of the plays I had done with this, especially with this group to Organic Theater. And I remember I ran in him once.

I think we were on the street wherever it was. And he said to me, my name is David Mamet. I'm a playwright someday. I've seen some of your stuff. We're going to have to do stuff together. I'm thinking, yeah, great. I'm thinking, who the hell is this guy? All right, buddy.

Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, as it turned out, we did do some things together in Chicago. You know, I saw his star starting to rise and thank God bless him. He would always kind of like call on me to do little things for him to do readings and this and that. And then when it got to the point where he had done this production of American Buffalo in New York with the original production. This was the one before El Pacino, even Robert Duval on Broadway.

That's when David really started and made a great impact now in New York at this point. He had done life in the theater. They'd on sexual perversity in Chicago. So he was getting to be known as this well-known playwright. They were now going to, his new play was this play called Glenn Gary, Glenn Ross. And the original producers thought, well, okay, this is, this is, this is my, this potential here is great. Let's get some big stars. So they actually, there's one role of Ricky Roma, which is an incredible role.

They offered it originally to Al Pacino. Thank God, Elle, turned it down. He was busy with other things. They next, I think, went to Robert DeNiro. I was told he was busy with other things as well. I don't have time to do a Broadway play. I'm a blah, blah, blah, blah. He turned it down.

God bless David Manit. This is early 80s. This is like, yeah, 1983. Okay, yeah. So then David Mamet tells the producers. He says, look, I'm not going to go down the list of every guy's name when's in a vowel in show business who has some kind of TVQ. Right, right, right. He says, the third pick is mine.

Yeah. And so they made the decision then it's not going to, we're not going to do it as a star vehicle. We're just going to get actors. Great, great actors. think who would maybe best for the roles. So that original company, none of us were names above the title, was Robert Proskey, myself, Lane Smith, Jimmy Tolkien, J.T. Walsh, guys who did later on did do some things, but nobody became superstars or anything. But yet, you know, we were certainly all nobody's at that point. But here we were doing this play, Gland, Gary Glenn Ross,

now on Broadway. And for me, it was like, if somebody who said, write the perfect scenario for yourself for like a year in your life as an actor. I don't think I could have written a better story. Because here I was, Joe, nobody. I was now living out here. I was in L.A. I was just doing, I was doing, I was doing, I was doing the last eight episodes of the show, Soap. Playing this character called Wan One.

And I thought like these. How you doing? I used to get cast always guys like that. One one, like the number one. Yeah, like number one. You never saw Juan two or one three. Eventually they brought them. And I was a sidekick to Gregory Sierra who played El Porco, who was this, like a Cuban

Revolutionary. It was kind of like a takeoff on Castro. Castro, yeah. And I was like a strange political, like a strangely political, very edgy show. And it was a great show. And that's how I got to be good. They were friends with Billy Crystal, Robert Mandan, and Richard Mulligan. I got in Catherine Hellman. Because I started out with just one line. And I just, and I think my

line was, El Puerto. And the writers liked the character, because I looked like this knucklehead with a beard and my hair sticking out and wearing his fatigues. So they kept writing me in. So I went up doing these last eight episodes of soap. And I was supposed to do the whole next season, but then the show got canceled. and there you go.

But anyway, so I'm out here, my wife and I are out here, we're living in a little tiny, one-bedroom apartment in Studio City, but it's fine. I still was content, because my feeling was I'm, I get a job, go on unemployment,

hang out at the beach, get another job, hang out, going unemployment, hang out at the beach. So maybe if you get three jobs a year, you can only survive. Yeah, yeah. You got the beach.

Yeah, you're an actor, you're working. You're in California. In December, you can go, it's sunny out. It's six feet of snow. Exactly. But I get that phone call from David Mammitt saying, you know, hey, Joe, I got this play. I think, you know, we're going to do it initially in Chicago, and I think we're maybe taking it to New York.

I'd like you to check it out. And he sends me this play, Glenn, Gary, Glenn Ross. Now, it's all about real estate. Yeah. Now, you've got to remember, I never lived in a house in my entire life. I always lived in apartments because my dad could never afford a house. So I knew nothing about real estate. So I read this play, and it's all about leads and stuff, all about real estate.

Closing. I didn't know what the fuck. I didn't know what the hell it was about. Yeah. But I liked the characters and all, but I couldn't understand. understand it. Well, who understands Mamet anyway? I mean, he's such an incredible writer, and, but I think we know him as Mamet now, and so our way in is easier than even back then. You knew him maybe a little bit better than the rest of us. Well, the advantage I had is,

first of all, we're 18 days apart in age. Yeah. We're both from Chicago. So, I mean, it was almost like he was speaking a language I knew of. Right, right. They didn't know it, but you knew of it. Yeah, the vernacular didn't throw me, but it was just what some of the words were, just literally, what the hell is a lead. Right. So I remember who called me the next day, I said, so what did you think of the play? And I lied.

I said, you know, Dave, I didn't read it yet. I'm going to get to it tonight. And I'm like calling up anybody who knows about real estate. What the hell is a lead? What is this? Because then then I started to, oh, because I didn't quite understand what I was trying to sell here. Right, right.

So I had nothing else going. And of course I said, well, sure, Dave, let's do it. Well, let's do the play. Yeah. And then we went to Chicago, did it in Chicago, just for like a little tryout. Got to New York. Did it in New York.

York within a month or so, I get nominated for a Tony Award. I win the Tony Award. The show wins the Pulitzer Prize. And it's like, as I was asked afterwards, I'd been an actor now professionally, this was since 1969 when I did hair, right? This is now 1984 by the time we're on Broadway. I remember they asked me and he says, well, look, you're in a Pulitzer Prize winning play. You won a Tony Award. How does it feel? I says, how does it feel? I feel like I won I won the lottery, but I bought a lot of tickets. I mean, 15 years worth of banging around. I didn't just wake up here.

No, I didn't just fall off the truck. So when that door creaked open, I ran through and shut it behind me. That was my goal anyway. Absolutely. And so I wound up doing that play. The advantage was everything was so perfect because sometimes you could something, not that awards mean anything.

It really, I mean, it's a nice confirmation, affirmation of what you do. Oh, great, they give you this award. But the best thing about it was I got to do that play for a whole year on Broadway after that. Toured for six months with Peter Falk all around the country, including a theater not far from here. The Henry Fonda Theater we did here in L.A.

So I was able to reap all the benefits of being in a Pulitzer Prize winning, personally a Tony Award winning role for a year and a half with every director, writer in the business seeing it. And my career went from Joe Nobody to Joe. He is somebody that we think we're kind of, the new guy on a block. Tony Award winner, Joe Mantegna, I think. Well, whatever. You still got to kind of back it up, but at least you make that definitive kind of leap from A to maybe not Z, but at least to like Q.

But you articulated it perfectly, and I think it's helpful for people who aren't actors to understand that, and I'm sure that there are people in our business for whom an award is not just affirmation, but like confirmation of what they already believed about themselves. Right, right. But I think what those do is, all they do is just afford you, hopefully, access to more and better work. That's all you care about is like, can I continue to do good work? I think I think about it, and I tell the story sometimes, people say, what was it like to want a Tony Award? People from a theater.

I said, you know what? The nomination is what got me, not the award. Because we had done the play. I didn't even know the Tony Awards when they were that year. I mean, I knew they existed because when I was an acting student, I'd watched show and think, oh, wouldn't it be cool to be that guy? Had to be, do that. So I remember we were at the apartment. We was literally

subletting a friend of ours apartment in New York. She was still there. We just helped pay to rent. So we slept on the floor, on a mattress in her extra room. Your friend, Cordis heard. So my wife and I were sleeping on a mattress in that room, and there was a the buzzer rang. And I swear to God,

I didn't realize that the Tony's was, you know, I was just excited enough that I'm working on Broadway and we had a hit show. There was a, it was a fifth floor walkup we were staying in the east side the doorbell rang and there was no buzzer you had to go down okay so i hear who is it they go uh from mr joe montania uh okay so then uh my wife says i'll go down i'll get it whoever it is so she goes down let the person in the person comes upstairs and i'm just waiting up the door because i mean i think i was literally in my pajamas or something and she was more dressed to go answer

the door i opened the door and she's got this look on her face like and this guy's standing there, a young man with a shopping bag. A little shopping bag was a little gold shopping bag. And on it was a seal, like a seal. And he says, are Joe Montania? I go, yeah, he goes, congratulations. The American Theater Wing, I get choked up thinking about it. This American Theater Wing's nominated you for a Tony Award. I only get emotional because it's like, I think back of all, I think back of my dad reading the, you know, Shakespeare, or think of just being a little kid sprinkling this fairy dust on her eyes. That was the moment.

So everything else was not as important. Yeah. I mean, here I was in my pajamas and wearing a little t-shirt, just sleep in my eyes. And he goes, you've been nominated for a Tony Award. Yeah. Which to an actor who only knew theater, I hadn't done any film or TV. Right. It was like the top of the ladder.

This was like I was in, you know, I was in Luntz world. I was in Olivier world. I was in that world. And he handed me this little shopping bag. And all it was a little scroll inside and you open it up and said, The American Theater Wing is proud to nominate you for a Tony War.

And I'm sure I thanked him. And my wife and I just stood in like two knuckleheads. But I swear to God, I mean, I did the play for, because then the actual award ceremonies maybe three, four weeks later. And but when they said my name, It was exciting, but it was almost like, it was after the fact. It was like, oh, yeah, how great is this to win it?

In a way, I think it's the way maybe Boston felt when they beat the Yankees, those four games straight. And then the World Series became an afterthought, oh, of course we're going to win the World Series because we beat. Right, we've already gotten it done. We've done this thing, which makes this thing inevitable. Right. Not that it was inevitable, but it was almost like that that became secondary. because that already made me feel like I belonged. Like in other words, okay, yeah, you're one of the guys.

You're part of the crowd. That's all I ever asked for. My feeling always was, I don't need to be the best actor in the world or consider the greatest this or that. I just want to play with the big boys and girls. I wanted to be in the game. The chips will fall where they're going to fall. Let the public decide where you fall in, you know, who you're, you know, people think, oh, I love you.

You're my favorite actor. I always like your stuff. God bless them. That's sweet. but that's all I wanted to do. I wanted to be as good as I could possibly be at the highest level I could possibly get to. Where that is, it doesn't matter.

But that's what that did for me, that moment. And so everything else was been gravy. That's a great story. You, I want to talk, I mean, I want to make sure we have enough time to talk a little bit about your life now, but I do want to say that that started what ended up being an ongoing

like periodic collaboration with David. You worked with him many times. Oh, yeah, many times. Yeah, we did well. We did the play, after that we did the play Speed the Plow on Broadway with Madonna and Ron Silver. God rest his soul. But that was a whole thing under itself, just working with Madonna. Right.

I mean, that's a phenomenon. That's a phenomenon. That's a different animal. Tell us a story about working with Madonna that you feel comfortable sharing with the world. Oh, God. There's quite a few, actually. I, you know, I learned to really actually like and respect her because what I found, we came in each other from different places because in a sense that I didn't quite know about her music.

It wasn't my thing. I knew she was a phenomenon, but I wasn't like, you know. You have vintage music to musical tastes, which I like about you. Yeah, yeah. It was recorded before the 50s. I'm usually, it's right in my... All suspects. It's right in my wheelhouse.

But anyway, we got a long. really well and I think and so it got to the point where sometimes she would call me at night after rehearsals and stuff because sometimes the director and Ron the other actor would be like they'd get into this really technical kind of stuff and I can see in her face was like a deer in the headlights it's like

ugh. Right. She goes Joe what the fun I said don't worry about it just forget it but don't forget all the bullshit they're telling you don't forget the terminology just do this this you're fine you're fine you're fine I'm right right but she was I'll tell you one sweet story about her that I think gives you a little insight there and I give her and she did it totally

not intending to to make this point but I think the point was made she was she was very responsible very organized like I said that's one thing about her you don't get to be the phenomenon she is it still is without you know whether you like her or not the point is the girl knows how to reinvent herself knows how to you know what I mean yeah she's disciplined she's disciplined she's She's maintained his popularity over decades now. So she must be doing something right in that respect. So she would always be perfectly on time for rehearsals. Well, we had this one rehearsal.

It was like a Tuesday or something before we opened. And she was like a half an hour late. And it was like unheard of her. And she hadn't heard from her. Finally she comes dashing in. I can see she's totally frazzled. She's freaked out. And she's pissed, you know.

I said Madonna and I was, you know, I hate, I don't like to be late. You know, I said, honey, I get it. I get it, relax. Because there's only three characters, me, her, and the other guy. Right. So she finally calms down. And she says, she goes, this is such bullshit. She says, I, she goes, it's my own fault.

She goes here. I mean, I get up early. I worked out for my workout guy at 6 a.m. I did my thing. My run in the park. I did the, did, did it. At 8 o'clock, I go to my therapist. So I know I could be here in time for rehearsal.

So I go there. I'm sitting outside my therapist's office waiting, waiting, waiting. He's not there. He's not there. He's not there. the door, he's not there, he's not there. Finally, I realize I'm going to be late unless I leave right now. Therapist comes walking on,

it's the thing. It says, Madonna, and she goes, yeah, where are you? He goes, Madonna, it's Tuesday. Tuesdays, you don't see me, you see your marriage counselor on Tuesdays. Oh, God. But the way she said it, she was just making the point of

how frazzled, you know, she had been about this, but it made me, What touched me was I thought, this poor girl, she's doing all these things to try to keep it together. There's the fact that she was seeing a marriage counselor because at the time she was married to Sean Penn. And she was just trying to obviously keep that, hold that together. I'm thinking what everything else she's got going in her life, she had had all these appointments. And so she had confused the therapist with the marriage counselor. And that endeared me to her without her even knowing it.

Because I mean, because she just said it like that like her. And then I thought to myself, wow, okay, it's not easy being you. Yeah, she didn't kind of get carried in by her, you know, her entourage. And she wouldn't. She didn't have an entourage. Like when matinee days, we go out between shows that go, you know, you want to go eat? Yeah, she's thrown up a bush, you get thrown into sunglasses. We both walk out of the theater and walk into a restaurant.

And it's that thing. If you don't go looking for it, you may not get it, which is fine. So many people look for it. They're like, oh, look, I don't want them to see me. Yeah, exactly. I'm here. That's me. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I want up doing

a movie with her later. We did, uh, body of evidence years later. Mm-hmm. So I actually, you know, we had a good relationship. I would like to think, if we, we ran each other street today, it would be very cordial. Yeah. Joe, Madonna, how are you, honey, you know? Yeah. To me, she was an Italian girl from Michigan. That's how, that's the way I thought of her. Exactly. You know, it's interesting because, you know, you've done so many things.

And one thing that struck me was how you're moving to, you know, you were doing films and, you know, you did Godfather III. And then you moved into television and it didn't parallel, but in, but maybe in some ways across. Like, you know, Mammett moved into TV. You moved into TV. I mean, I think coming from the theater world, I bet you there's a, time where you thought I'll never do television. But then you had done soap and so you know what it is? First of all, I take my cue a lot from the English actors I got to work. I mean, I had a luxury of twice work with Ben Kingsley and Bugsy and then search it for Bobby

Fisher. And I always felt a kind of a sympathetico thing with a lot of these British actors who because I'm not, I'm not into, and I'm not saying, I'm not putting it down. I mean like method and all these things or all these different things that exist. I just, I don't know. For me, it was just like, I don't know, whatever is. It's a combination. whatever it is that is me, and I just do it. But literally, when they say cut, I could walk away and it's okay. You know what I'm going to go back to be Joe, you know what I mean? So the thing about what I felt that, especially among the British actors,

they never had that kind of thing of like you were either a movie star or you're a TV star or you're a theater star. They did it all. They didn't make any of that differentiation. We're actors, we can just gravitate to one or the other. To me, it was always about the quality of the work. The roles you're playing. Over here we had more of that distinction of whether you're a movie star, so you can't do this, if you're a TV star, you're never going to get here. If you're a theater star, this is new.

You know, that never was on my radar. But what was on my radar was the lifestyle that it entailed. And so I was lucky enough that, yes, for almost 15 years, all I did was exclusively was theater. I know what that world is like. And right after that, I almost exclusively did motion pictures, everything from small independence to huge godfather, Woody Allen-type. Barry Levinson type movies. So many that I was like, there's so many.

I'll send everybody to learn about you. Like I said, I'm not the youngest guy in the building here. But I am on Medicare. So I know what that lifestyle is like. But the thing was, now I have children. I have two girls. You know, my wife and I were blessed with these two girls. My oldest daughter is 28 years old now.

She has autism. So it affects her in a way that while she's 28, She's also 10, you know, and that's just the way it is, and that's fine. I mean, everybody, you know, nobody gets a free ride. We all get the cards we're dealt in life and off you go, you know, which is fine. She's lovely. Yeah, I love a beautiful, wonderful girl. She doesn't have a vindictive, jealous kind of, she lacks all those kinds of emotions, which

she's just like pure of heart. And curious. Yeah, exactly. But so when they were kids, luckily I was, since my wife and I had kids a little bit later, my career was starting to take off, I had the ability that we went everywhere together. So when I would do movies in Europe, everybody went. I would do movies in Canada. Everybody went. I did a movie in Russia. We all went. And my agent knew that. He knew that. I said, look, if I have to take less money, it's fine. But you always tell them that when I have to go on a

location, it's not one plane ticket. It's four. Plus the nanny, because my daughter with autism needed a caretaker as well. So it's got to be five. I have to dwelling the whole five. Otherwise, I'm not going. And that became the, and of course, they get it. And if you're in a certain position, that'll happen. And so that was fine because my kids got to be, my wife and kids went everywhere with me. But then when they get to be a certain age, that changes.

They're getting older. Their lifestyles change. They're in school. You know, I don't mind taking them out of school when they're three years old. Oh, they're teenagers. They're friends. But yeah, now they got a life and all that. And change is difficult also for my oldest daughter in a sense.

You have to always explain exactly where we're going, how long we're going to be there. And then she'll accept it. But just radical change. She loves her routine. Yeah. So it got to a point in my career when I said to myself, I was doing a lot of motion pictures, but I'd get these tremendously wonderful offers to do some television, but I'd always say, you know what?

I'm kind of content doing what I'm doing here. You know, doing some great movies, doing some interesting roles, and traveling the world. Yeah. But then literally got to a point where I thought I was starting to travel little more by myself and a little less with everybody or they'd visit or I'd come back and it was becoming a handicap

and then I really literally had one of those you know what you call it an aha moment or whatever you go you would say what am I doing this for what do I do I want to just hold a record for doing the most motion pictures of any actor or traveling to the most spots

and then it started to look attractive to me if I could find a job where I can maybe still do what I like to do and yet go home every night, I'm kind of ready for that. I've been doing this a long time, and I'm ready for that. And luckily, I jumped into it. I got a couple, you know,

God bless Les Moonvest, who always kind of believed in me at CBS. Every year he'd always offer me a different pilot, and I always tell him no. And finally, I finally called him, said, you know what, Les, this is the year, let's do that. We did this one pilot I did with James Garner. We did a series of, around 13, it's called the First Monday,

about Supreme Court. It didn't go, but it didn't matter. It made me realize, you know what, I do like this. And my dear friend Dennis Franz, who was such a tremendous actor. Who you know from Chicago? No, we were both in the organic theater together for five, six years. One of my closest dearest friends in the world made such an impact on, I think three or four Emmys for Cipowitz on NYP. Oh, God, that show changed everything.

Yeah. And Dennis was a big, huge part of it. But Dennis always told me, says, Joe, someday I think you're going to wind up doing series television because I know you, you're going to gravitate toward that life of, like, our theater company. Yeah. Same people, who were to work every day, you know, the crew, hanging out. And it was absolutely right.

And I was telling them that. I said, Dennis, you're absolutely right. Once I found it, and I found it with criminal minds, ultimately.

Thought I had it with Joan of Arcadia. We ran a couple years. I loved doing it. I just didn't have legs beyond that. But here, I'm in year nine of criminal minds, and I still love it. I still love it.

I'm on your show, some people get, oh, what you're saying, it's because he's sitting across from Aisha. But, I mean, you came in,

what a, what a, that's what a, that's what's fun about this. This is like this cool. It's like somebody gives you a peppermint candy and you inhale out and it gives you that cool thing.

You came in like this cool, cool breeze that came into something that we did. It's the truth, honey. You fit right in. But that's been the joy of doing this. In the nine years we've gone through some changes, this, that and the other. Sometimes the crew changes. Sometimes things change. Sometimes things don't work out. Whatever. Everything.

Which is the nature of any workplace. But like right now, I wouldn't trade, places with anybody. I mean, I'm having a good time. You've come in and just brought so much to it and such a breath of fresh air and such just, and so the beat goes on. I mean, and I don't know how long this beat will continue. It doesn't matter. Right. I'm at that point where it's like, my lifestyle is kind of happening the way I like it. Right. In other words, I do go home at night. I get to see my family every day and yet I still get time off and if I want to go do some other project or something, it's fine. But I'm not aspiring to like, oh man, I got to win that Oscar or I got to do this or I got to

back to Broadway. If it happens, it happens. Right. I never had big plans. I never was one of those guys that said, well, I want to do this, this, this, this, and this. Yeah. It's kind of worked out that.

The phone will ring. And you have done this, this, this, this, this. They worked out that way. Yeah, but I never really sought it out specifically. In other words, like the day before I got the phone call offering me criminal minds, I didn't know I was going to get that phone call.

Right. So I didn't know that was going to change my life for the next nine years. Right. But it did. And even taking the job, you don't know how long it's going to go. Exactly.

Yeah, yeah. So that's the, to me, that's the fear of being an actor, but also the excitement of being an actor. Because the fear is like, will they ever get that call? Will there be anything else? Right. But yet, that's also the excitement of the unknown. It's like why I don't go to, I don't go to, I don't go to, I don't go to, I don't read horoscopes, I don't go to palm readers, any of that stuff, because my feeling is, I don't want to know what tomorrow is. No, no, no.

I mean, because what if it's, you know, oh, by the way, you're going to get, you know, broke your legs tomorrow. I mean, I don't need to know. Also, you end up shoehorning everything either into that prediction or away from it. and then you're not really just living your life. Yeah, what's the excitement of that? Let's just see what happens. Let's see what happens. It's such an interesting, and then we'll do self-inflicted wounds,

but it's such an interesting phenomenon, and I wonder, because you've done all these different kind of projects and on every kind of scale, you know what I mean? He's like, forever from the Levinsons and the godfathers and, you know, and then the Tonys, but then all this theater. But it's such a specific animal being on a hit network show that's also syndicated all over the world. It's just a very different experience. Absolutely.

I just wonder about what about that has struck you. You know, you come onto a show that's already a little bit of a moving train. You fit in beautifully, but then the show becomes a phenomenon. Has that been different than other parts of your life that were phenomenal, for lack of better language? Well, only in the sense that it's become, as you said, it becomes almost a worldwide phenomenon. So all of a sudden, here I've had a career to this span like over 40 years. But this one role has transcended all of it in the sense of that I can walk almost in any city, in any state of this country and most foreign countries. And they'll say, oh, man, it's the guy from criminal minds.

Right. Now, a lot of them might also say the pain on their age. Oh, man, I'm Joey Zaza, godfather, you know, blah, blah, blah, from Baby's Day Out or Fat Tony from this. I've been in The Simpsons for 23 years playing this one character. Right. So they'll have other points of reference, but all of a sudden you've done this one thing that has such major impact over such a wide area

that, you know, it currently defines you. But I'm fine with it. Right. You know, as I said, Peter Falk was such a dear close friend of mine. And he was such a tremendous actor, but Colombo defined him. I mean, that's the one. You mentioned his name and people will say Colombo. Oh, yeah.

And he was such a great actor, right? And even all the things he did after that, and you'd see him and you'd be like, I love him as an actor, but you couldn't help it associated with that role. But he was comfortable with it. And I learned from that because I also knew Carol O'Connor was a friend of mine, and I loved him. But yet Carol was not comfortable with the fact that people mainly identified him with being the guy from all in the family. Right, but he was in the heat of the night before that. Wasn't he the heat of the night? I'm sorry?

No, that was afterwards. That was after. Okay. He did a night. That led him to redefine himself somewhat, which he was so grateful for. But prior to that, he was so, it used to drive him nuts that people would confuse him with Archie Bunker. The actual guy, yeah. But yet I always thought it probably would have been, you know, in a way, healthier for him to just not fight it and just embrace it.

Say, yeah, that's the character I played, and that's fine. But he would get like nuts. Whereas Peter, when people come up to him and say, Lieutenant, Lieutenant, he would like, give me to look like, yeah, well, you know, they're not. me and it was great and so it made me realize that so when people come up to me now and I know that I see it in their face that they're such

I mean I'm sure you've had it already people come to you they'll start crying saying oh my God you don't know how much I love this show and to me that's great it's like I'm glad you do for whatever reason it doesn't I'm not going to question anything about that except that I'm glad that you do

and I'm glad it brings you that enjoyment and so why wouldn't I embrace how lucky am I Yeah. The last question I want to ask you about because you were talking about the tiny town on the top of the hill in Sicily that your family is from.

But you've gone back. You go back now, right? Yeah. Especially in my mother's side. I've got the Sicilian side, most of them, the town was so little that most of the relatives,

the Montanias, have all kind of gone to different spots because you can't really do anything in this little town. It's so small. It's a lot of gone on to other things. But my mother's side, the Novilli's,

which is in this town called Aquaviva della Fonte, Yes. Which is, and I'm my company for the last 30 years called Aqua Viva Productions, named after the town. I go back there frequently. Which is like the waters of life? Fountain of living water. Oh, okay.

Yeah. And I'm very close to my relatives there. They come here. We go there. My cousin owns a resort, what they call an agro terismo, which is a, they turn a farm. Ironically, they turn a farm into a resort. Not a fancy place. It's in southern Italy.

It's on the Adriatic side, across from Naples. It's not a huge tourist spot. I mean, some tourists. You ought to be adventurous to go there. But it's great. Those are my roots. I mean, the first time I went, like I said, I felt like Alex Haley, the Italian Alex Haley.

It's like, oh, my God, this is why, you know, this is my people. This is why I look like I look. Right, right. So it was, yeah, so that in a way has grounded me too, because when I go there, it's so great and they're so happy for me because the show's, besides all the other movies and stuff,

the show is very popular there. And so it's all good. Yeah. Oh, it's so exciting. Okay. Yeah. You said you had a self-inflicted wounds. story that you wanted to tell. Yeah, I've got probably

a million something. I was thinking I probably had one this morning, but one that comes to mind was, I'll take it to me through my first professional job, hair. Now you got to remember, this is 1969, so it's hair, it was the whole part of, you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll. Right, this is the revolution. We were in the heat of it, I mean, the

thick of it. Yeah. So I'm playing this character Burger at this point, which is one of the lead characters in the role, in the play. And, and, and, now there's scenes in the play where we're supposed to be smoking. pot on stage. You know, there's this, especially opens up second actors like, ooh, trippies, who, you know, but of course

it wasn't a real reifer, not to say that the cast members wouldn't partake at other times. But it wasn't real dope. But it was, we've been doing the play now, maybe nine months a year at this point. And a few of the cast members who didn't have that much to do, would occasionally before the show said, hey, man, I don't take a little toe, you know, it's going to be cool.

I mean, we're doing hair. Why not? I know the show well enough. So I And to this day, I really am not. I'm one of those people I don't have a, I don't smoke, I don't really drink. I just don't, because it doesn't, not that it's conscious, it just doesn't do it for me. I smoke cigars, occasional cigar, but alcohol never really did it for me.

Maybe because of my father, I kind of like subconsciously thought alcohol, cigarettes, it's not the way to go. Yeah. You know, so I just never been on my radar. But, you know, they're doing a little duby at that time in 1969. This might be cool. So I'm thinking before this performance, I'm going to, I'm going to do this. Because they all said how cool this is, how you're going to singing these songs, it can take on new meaning like, let the sunshine.

So I take a little, somebody says, yeah, I got to see. Somebody lights up a joint before the show, take a few. And it was some pretty, obviously some pretty good stuff. So now I got a real buzz on it. I'm thinking, okay, but I'm cool. I know. I've been doing this play. I'm just singing.

But now, Berger, at the first song I have to do, I'm singing this song called Donna. Once Upon a Looker for Donna was 16-year-old virgin. What I have to do is climb off into the audience. on their seat backs, climb up this cargo net up into a box on the side of the theater and there's a rope waiting there.

And I have to grab the microphone and the rope together. And it's go, I'm evolving, I'm evolving through the drugs. And as I see how old word drugs, I'm supposed to jump off this box and swing across the audience onto the stage.

And the rest of the cast members who were singing as well, grab me and pick me up. And it's like this great moment in the play. So now I got this buzz on. At that same night, Stan Shaw, the actor, I don't know if you know, Stan Shaw, I remember who Stan Shaw, was wonderful, wonderful black actor from Chicago. He was in that company as well.

He happens to mention to him. He goes, they used to all call me Giuseppe back then because Joe was in Italian. Giuseppe, Giuseppe! He goes, did you ever hear, this guy named Red Shepard used to do the play the Berger in L.A. at the time at the Quarries. He says, hey, man, Stan had been out here. We take vacations. You know, you're a lot of vacation. He'd come out, saw a hair here.

He says, Hey, Giuseppe, I saw Red Shepherd. When he does the swing on the rope, he does it with one hand like Tarzan, and he holds the mic like this. Like, you rope at one hand, mic with the other, right? Instead of both with two hands like this, the way I'd been doing it for a year. So, of course, I got this little buzz on. I'm thinking, well, shit, Red Shepherd does it one hand like Tarzan. I can do that. What the hell is that about?

You know, sounds like a good idea. So I'm singing a song. Now, you've got to imagine that I've been doing this a year and a half or whatever it was a year. Each time I swung over the audience, it was orchestrated. I mean, we rehearsed this. It was all well done. That the distance of me on the rope, holding the rope, swinging over the audience is such that my feet would come flying just over the patron's heads.

So they'd all go, ooh. Well, now I'm up here. I got this little buzz on. I'm not thinking. I'm thinking, this is going to be cool. I can do this. I'm in shape.

Look for down. I get up in a box. Go, down, I go. I grab a, I'm evolving. I'm evolving through the drugs. And I grab the rope with one arm. And I got the mic in the other arm. And I jump.

And, of course, the second I jump, I realize, oh, I made a big fucking mistake. Because now, instead of being about two, about a foot and a half higher up on the rope, which I normally am, I'm about a foot and a half lower because I'm totally stretched out like Tarzan. But the rope does not,

it's not an adjustable rope. It's like the rope is still what it's supposed to be. The rope don't know that Joe's trying something new. So I come flying off this box and I still remember looking down and seeing the whole audience partying like the Red Sea like, oh my God, he's going to kill us.

They're dashing out of their seats. I come flying across my feet are like, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing. I'm clipping guys. hair, women's hats, stuff's flying and shit. Oh my God. I hit the stage and all the rest of the castor,

they grabbed me. I came down from that high like that. It was like, yes, I'm fine. Everything is perfect. I'm just, I'm totally in control. Because I thought it was dead. I thought I was going to like smash into the chairs,

into the people. Yeah. And that was the last time, last time in my life, I ever got any sort of, you know, extracurricular kind of help. No, I think this is a job. This is a job that takes concentration,

obedience, preparedness, all these things, and not to be toyed with. So I learned an important lesson that day. And I was like, oh, I was like straight as an arrow. I mean, I was like, I was sober like a judge. I could have, you know. Oh, my God. That's a great story.

And did you, when you got up on stage and you look back to the audience where they like, they were like, ooh, wow. It was like, what the hell? Okay, it's hair. We heard this, we know there's a nude scene coming up, but we didn't know we're going to beat us up too, you know. Oh, that's great. That's a great story.

Joe, thank you so much for coming in my show. My pleasure. You know, you know why it's my pleasure too? Because I've often said this. It's too late for me to make new old friends. But every once in a while, I find one. and you become that. Oh, thank you.

You become a new old friend. It's like somebody that, my only regret is that I haven't known you for the last 50 years, but we'll make up for it now. We will. That means the world to me. Thank you. That's the truth.

Oh, thanks. That was Joe Mantegna. Wasn't that so great? So wonderful and just, God, I just loved it. I loved it. I loved hearing about all of his experiences. I lived hearing that Tony's story.

He's just a lovely, lovely dude. And it was such just, that was a really enjoyable. conversation. I hope you guys enjoyed it as much as I do. And there hasn't been an apolloja for a while. You know, there's the ongoing underlying apolloja, the subtextual apolloja of me being overworked and understaffed and not getting this out to you on time. But I've gotten so many lovely tweets and emails of support from you guys

that made me feel great. I'm just grinding this out as best I can under the circumstances with four series on the air, a film that I'm still in post on that I directed last year, courage and stone and development to launch in the spring and measly, meager, meager amounts of personal time with which to rest, exercise, and work on my friendships and personal relationships. So there you go.

I'm hanging by thread, but I'm doing my best to get this to you every week, and I'm really, really grateful for all of your support. You guys are the best, you know what to do? Come follow me, friend me online, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Tumblr, handles are Aisha Tyler, Courage and Stone, and girl on guy. Say hi at any or all of those handles on all of those platforms.

platforms and come right me a note come come come come visit the girl and guy website girl girl guy click on the envelope send me a letter ask me a question for the awesome listener question show which is coming to you very soon it's not too late now to ask a question never too early but it will be too late so if you've got a question for me about work about podcasting about art about comedy about whatever you want to know send it in to me now and I will answer that question on that show which is coming up in just a few weeks you guys are the greatest you are my army you are brilliant you are scintillating, you are devastating, you are lovely, and you are Legion. I'll talk to on the next one.

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