Happy Sad Confused - Adrien Brody

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

Adrien Brody may repeat history this year with his second Academy Award win. In this 2021 conversation Josh and Adrien discussed the acclaimed actors beginnings in New York, the disappointment of being cut out of THE THIN RED LINE, the triumph of THE PIANIST, and what might have been to play the Joker for Christopher Nolan. SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS! Quince -- Go to Quince.com/happysadco for 365 day returns and free shipping! UPCOMING LIVE EVENTS 1/20 -- Adam Scott in NYC -- ⁠⁠⁠⁠Tickets here⁠⁠⁠⁠ 1/23 -- Michelle Yeoh In NYC -- ⁠Tickets here Check out the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Happy Sad Confused patreon here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! We've got discount codes to live events, merch, early access, exclusive episodes, video versions of the podcast, and more! To watch episodes of Happy Sad Confused, subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Josh's youtube channel here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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See the Tim's app for details at participating in restaurants in Canada for a limited time. Wait, was that the group chat? Ah, sent a text to the group that definitely wasn't for everyone. You're good. Enjoy some goldfish cheddar crackers. Goldfish have short memories. Be like goldfish. After the pianist, I didn't get a job for a year.

After the Academy Award, I didn't work for a year. Was the next thing you did the village? Yes. Prepare your ears, humans. Happy, sad, confused. begins now. Hey guys, it's Josh Arowitz here with another edition of Happy Say I Confused, but this time we have a very special flashback episode of the podcast, an episode probably very few of

you have ever heard, let alone seen, no one's seen this actually, because this was before we were putting video up on the podcast. Adrian Brody is the guest on Happy Say I Confused today, and you're about to watch a fantastic chat, honestly. I went back and listened to this, and I was so please. This is a career conversation with Adrian that we recorded in August of 2021, and it covers everything from his beginnings in New York, the influence of his parents, being cut out of the thin red line, starring and winning an Oscar in the pianist, his love of genre, King Kong, the Village, and even a brush with nearly playing the Joker. I don't know if you knew that. Most people don't. He met with Christopher Nolan, talks about it a bit in this conversation for

the Dark Night. Yeah. So this is a great chat with one of our finest actors, and he's having a huge moment right now because he's starring in The Brutalist, which if you have not seen, seek it out. Fantastic piece of work. One of the best of 2024, earning all the accolades. It's going to get a slew of attention at the Oscars, including perhaps Adrian's second win for Best Actor, potentially him or our buddy Timothy Chalmi. Can't go wrong either way. but wanted to resurface this great chat because, as I said, not many people have ever seen it. Remember to review, comment below.

Remember to hit that subscribe button, spread the good word of the podcast and the YouTube channel. And thanks, as always, for checking this out, guys. This is a special one. Let me take you back. 2021, me and Adrian Brody. Enjoy. So talk to me, first of all, where in the world am I finding you today? what's going on the way i'm working out here

is this the uh the wakers project which are the many exciting adrian brodie products is this it's really exciting what a cast and some great pedigree behind it uh mcade adam mackay did the podcast recently and that guy is just so so whipsmart anything he puts his game on yeah um and all of our show matt max warrenstein and it's wonderful talented uh creative people on on board and um yes and a wonderful cast and amazing history to delve into the craziest thing for me each day is realizing how the 80s which theoretically shouldn't feel so it is a long time i know like but it feels like the 60s like fashion shifts and we've come so far and so far from that era. It's fascinating. So that alone is just, yeah, it's trippy to realize that like your

childhood era is now like science fiction in today's terms. And how foreign it must be for young people today because it's foreign for me already. And, you know, the concept of, I mean, just even the old days of, you know, lugging around a Thomas guide out in L.A. when I first got out here. get a page and pull over to a pay phone and call my agent, you know, couldn't wait to get a page. And before the page, you're literally waiting by the phone, waiting for your answering, calling in and checking your messages. Yep. Or the answering service or all of it. Someone called. Yeah. Now I don't even have voicemail. I know. Yeah. So the modern audience basically watching your Lakers show is going to feel

basically like watching tapal weight. It's the same thing. It's not that different. Well, you lead me to a subject that I wanted to lead off with because you're a born and bred New Yorker like myself. I still live here in the city and I always love to talk to unicorns like myself that came out of New York and are semi well-adjusted and love this city and love how it defined them. Do you, when you look back at your childhood in New York, do you romanticize those times? Do you look back at them and think they were tough or rough or when you think back to your childhood in New York, what do you think of? I appreciate them. I don't always romanticize them because parts of it were rough and difficult. But they were beautiful. And I do see the beauty in that and the gift of encountering so many

walks of life, as I'm sure you do too. Even if I wasn't an actor, My sense of community and just awareness of how diverse we all are comes from this sea of humanity that we grew up in and taking me train. I always attribute, you know, I went to Performing Arts High School and I was very lucky to be accepted and to the drama department. and, you know, I was already acting professionally. We can delve into that if we want, but I fell into a love of acting, not necessarily acting as a career decision or any sense of what could come or would come.

And really, before you know, it's kind of saved me from having to go to my local zone school, which would have been disastrous for many reasons. It was very high dropout level. It was very violent at the time and quite dangerous. And it was very close to home. And it would have tracked me into something very different. And even just out of necessity to survive,

which I even felt commuting going to taking four trains to go to performing arts in the city. But, you know, that journey into, to go to drama school, I felt was way more informative. I mean, I appreciate all the technique learned, and it was very valuable. But just absorbing all the characters that I've encountered in my lifetime that, you know, resurfacing in works like the pianist, you know, And there are nuances of human behavior that you just couldn't really learn by just studying. You could learn details, but you're there. And you're always a fly on the wall of so much, so much, so many lives and different things going on and chaos.

And I do love that. I do, I do romanticize that. It's kind of like, it's kind of like looking back and seeing New York as like, taxi driver was like I remember my mom's old shitty Chevy Nova 70 Nova which I would like love to have right now but you know just a drum brakes and sliding in the snow and really heavy snowy winters and you know the I remember the flakes of snow coming up on the windshield as as like just flowing like it was beautiful imagery. Like, it doesn't snow like that anymore. You know, our whole environment's changed,

but just yellow old taxi cabs and all those things. It was kind of romantic. Forty-second street was really 42nd Street. It wasn't a tourist trap. And it was dangerous. But it was exciting. When you're young and when you're a teenager, like that just is like a siren call. Like I couldn't not want to go to a more dangerous area. It would just be like, let's go there. It's a great idea. Yeah, the amusement park was in your backyard, yeah. All that completely resonates with me.

Yes, I always say like, yes, just colliding with culture and diversity as a kid in New York is just, was just like the most invaluable education that I, that I was given. Talk to me a little bit about your family. I mean, your mom, a very well-regarded photographer, your dad, a professor. Did they have, did they instill in you a strong sense, a love of the, the arts, a lot of film and theater. Was that part of your upbringing? Yeah. My father really loves film and he watches a lot of movies and loves a lot of older films as well, which were very interesting for me to to watch with him as a boy. I didn't really

realize it, but it was an education there as well. But actually, my dad used to love martial arts films too and we'd go down at canal street in chinatown and he'd take me to the movie theater on Saturday and we drive in and uh you know we had an old Carmen Gia and drive in and go see these movies right um one day someone was shooting someone shot a gun off in the theater or whatever I think it was really up but I mean it was so it was so wild um but then And, you know, I was steeped in these old run-run-run-shaw films and martial arts movies, which were, you know, I didn't know would have some real place. And then I ended up doing a movie with Jackie Chan years later.

Right. And doing martial arts sequence, fight sequence with Jackie Chan, which was so amazing. Couldn't write a better script. And training with the Jackie Chan stunt team. It was such a dream come true, right? Because as a boy, you know, all my teenage years, I was just actually reminiscing with a friend last night about I used to go up to the park in my neighborhood.

Nobody really had anything really to do. And we'd just hang out and get into trouble. Play fight and, like, do these, like, martial arts moves on each other and practice on each other. So it's just so funny. But, yeah, so there was. a lot of quite a diverse love of film yeah and you know we'd also go see films at the angelica and when you could go see really interesting foreign films and independent movies that

would play in theaters yeah and and my mother this has just such an enormous uh influence on me in all of my creative pursuits and has really been a divining rod to at least the quest for purity. She's a much pure artist than I am. I don't think you can be that pure in most professions, but you know there's there is a need to compromise in in making film because well they're not they're hardly making film right i mean right how often does that perfect project come along yes saying you're not a photographer and having a vision and you're not just given an assignment and being allowed to interpret something in your way and bring that home and hopefully they accept it and give you another job right it's it's it's your you're you're given material and you have

to choose them unless you're gifted enough and fortunate enough to be able to write your own material and get that made which very few people are you're really interpreting someone else's words and then your work is then interpreted by a director and guided by the production and then edited and it's such a complex thing so it's really vastly different but But I have tried very hard to at least be motivated by what actually inspires me or a journey that I think is meaningful or storytelling approach that I think is valuable to others, including myself. And she's given me all of that. And aside from having had an assignment for the Village Voice to photograph the American Academy from arts when I was a boy and saw that there were young people behaving like I was, misbehaving,

and, um, just, you know, I think it's, it's a, that's such a huge gift. Yeah. And I always look back at it, of finding, acting, or acting, you know, finding me prior to adolescence. Because when, when a boy or a girl hits puberty already there's a ship right and we start becoming we start doubting ourselves which we're changing this a metamorphosis right there's a purity to like 12 and under it's all pure it was it was diverge it was 12 and 14 you're not a man yet but you're different and things are going on and it's more complicated. Yeah. And, and then you've got a whole, you're, you've kind of mastered boyhood

at 12. And now you're a teenager and you have no clue of what that is. And you see, you know, a 17 year old or an 18 year old, you think, wow, they're a man and you really want to emulate them and, and, but you're not there. You're not there yet. And I think, and then you have, if you're lucky enough to find something like getting proper acting education, you're getting all this information and all this judgment from your teacher. Yeah. And that also can be amazing, be positive experience, but that can also inhibit a young person. And I feel so blessed that I just caught a sense of. the freedom of my child, of the care-freeness more that is needed, even as an adult to be an actor.

And of course, there's a lot of precise work that has to go in it, but you do need this childlike imagination. You do need to stay open in some way or manage to open whatever those channels are up to be vulnerable and exposed and present in sometimes very compromising situations or difficult ones. And I feel like that retaining that is the technique that I have valued most of that early start. And also, my mother is just such a beautiful artist and photographer. And not only was I, her subject on so much that I got very comfortable having a camera present and was not encouraged to do anything. Wasn't my father telling me, now smile. You know, you want a good photo

here you know you need to smile it's like my mom just shot me climbing doing pull-ups on a on a stoplight you know yeah yeah yeah she stripped you in the artifice early on you could tell me do a pull-up or stop doing a pull-up she just caught me doing my thing and so i'm grateful for all of that and that i romanticize about Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race.

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It's funny to think about because, like, you know, I was going back through your filmography, looking at some old interviews. And, you know, when people think back to the pianist, when you won the Oscar, I think for a lot of people had a sense, like, this guy came out of nowhere. this was his first thing, but like, as you just alluded to, you've been working for a while. And not only you've been working, like, you've been directed by, like, Spike and Barry Levinson and Terrence Mowl. Like, you've been, like, accumulating a really significant body of work, whether the general public knew it or not. Where were you at when penis happened? You'd been through that trial by fire, which must have been crazy, the whole thin red line experience,

which must have fucked up your head a little bit. Were you in a happy, good place? Like, Were you like feeling like ready for your coming out party or were you beaten down by like opportunities that had kind of quite panned out in the way you wanted them today? Oh, I had several years to come to terms with the line. I mean, and I had been acting for 17 years. So that was probably the greatest loss creatively that I have had and hopefully will remain that. Um, but um, with the years, are you able to look back at that experience with any greater Yes, I already at that point in, in, in, uh, grasping the responsibilities I had

in the pianist. And I was still a young man. I was 27 when I shot that. Right. And, um, Much of life became apparent to me and much of what I had taken for granted in my life become apparent to me in the making of that film and the process of preparing for it and shooting in, which was a six-month movie. The pianist was a six-month movie. Malik's film was a six-month film as well. I joked with Roman actually when we made the movie. I said, well, you can't cut me out out of this one. What are you going to call it, the piano? But the loss of not being in a movie that is a dream project,

and you're already touted and kind of publicly put out there as the author's persona, et cetera, and having spent time with James John. Jones as widow and, you know, there was such a level of commitment and involvement. I, the gist of what an actor's journey is really is to connect with the journey of the character. And in this case, a novelist who really was writing about, himself. That was the, Fife was his point of view. And what James Jones was coping with was a feeling of inadequacy and guilt as a soldier of coming, coming home, and all the complexity of

the psychological scarring of war and repercussions of war. And, and what I kept thinking about was how I can't really share what that felt like to come back and have six months of doing something kind of eviscerated and no clue of all of that, really. And I thought on some level, this is how soldiers must feel coming back, giving their all and fighting and being put through hell, really hell. and being afraid and feeling insecure about their fears and watching other soldiers be more brave. And then coming back, like a deer hunter, like coming back to waiting for the parade that never comes. Yeah, I mean, I was so young anyway. I just was so excited to get great work and work with a genius director.

and be surrounded by the most amazing actors and, you know, and then I had all of those experiences. I had them, we shot him. I had that life. I was with Sean Pan there and I, and he treated me wonderfully. And I, you know, was there with Woody Harrelson and, you know, I was in Guadalcanal, and I was doing the work.

And I did a eight days or so boot camp and got put through the ringer because the, our, our, the captain of our squad really made an example of me because there's a bit in the movie, I guess, but I was the lead at that point. So they kicked me out of my group, which were all the young guys that were in the core group of the film. And they put me in with the Australian extras. and then made me feel what it was like to be taken away. And there was a kind of parallel element that happened in the novel. And all of these were wonderful. It was such a wonderful gift, a life experience. And I feel like anything that happens in your life,

the beauty of being an actor, is that there's value to all the sadness that you have, to any sense of loss, to any sense of joy, but to give value to unpleasant experiences is a beautiful thing, to really give value, because your responsibility is to now step into the shoes of another person and honor that person and to act it without some innate understanding of it is bullshit. Then you're, then you're acting. And it's the wrong you can't. Some people can, but I, it feels so dishonest that, uh, it,

It's the antithesis of the process. It's the antithesis of what I want to show up and do. I don't want to make it through something by faking some connection, acting. It's fine. You're showing you that I'm in pain. I want to understand what that pain is and the muscles of that pain and the complexity of that pain. And allow the intimacy of a camera to capture that moment. go there, conjure it, and try and get rid of it to some extent. That's the real magic trick.

But I could not have done the pianist or connect as well to certain things I don't think without a certain degree of loss. Yeah. Understanding of that. And so I value it and I value you all of the things that come and go in life and loving and losing and winning and losing. And, you know, I think the beauty of being an actor is you continue, if you can stay the course, you continue to get better because life informs. Yeah, it's giving you all the material. Yeah.

Yeah. And the more character building things that happen that don't break you, make you much more interesting as a person. And if you can now channel that into a work to share intimately with the world, which we all need, which is what we need. We don't need, I mean, sure, we can enjoy a more, a lighter, entertaining experience of, you know, killing some time and being entertained. But if we can be entertained and also feel a connection and feel more connected, even to an interpretation of a character that, makes us think about either our lives or our neighbor's lives or our parents' lives or what

they've been through. That's a gift. And that's what I yearn for in everything that I do. Well, it's a great trait that you were able to kind of figure that out, at least to some degree even early on back then. I mean, because then on the flip side, I was watching like, I might have even been working there at the time. You were on the Charlie Rose show when you were on the pianist and to see you there is to see like it's a kind of a joy it's a really joyful thing to watch because it's to see an actor as tarley said and he was a shitty guy but a good interviewer and i know from working for him but you met the moment you met you know the actor met the material and it was just to see a guy uh at that relatively young age kind of like just finally kind of welcome to the club

did you feel that did you feel like your peers or your elder peers the people that you had admired kind of like gave you validation in the wake of the penis. And what did that mean to you at the time? Oh, absolutely. It was, it still almost moves me to tears because, you know, I'm, and I think this is something that I inherently learned from my mother and her experiences of, you know, my mom fled Hungary during the revolution in 56 and left everything behind as a very young girl and left her friends behind. She was only told 24 hours before she was leaving and fled on the back

of a truck shooting flares and she was a refugee and she went through Vienna and then she was a foreigner there and made fun of her for being a foreigner and ended up in New Jersey and put herself through art school and became this wonderful, soulful person. And all of her perspective, I think, and if you look at her imagery, there's such a connection to the fragility of life. And there's a degree of sadness within that. There's a, there's a consciousness of that. And I have that. I'm saddened by. how much sadness there is in the world. And then there I was with this triumph of a lifetime of working,

which was, you know, I, you know, shy 10 years of my entire existence on this earth. I had been working professionally. And I was being given all this. appreciation and but it was it was coupled with an understanding of the horror of the world tied to this very weighty yes it was very weighty thing and it was a huge responsibility in making that film to honor all the loss how does how does a young man do that and and a personal loss for the filmmaker and the man who I portrayed in the memoirs and the each individual and all of that just on so many levels and and then there I was being showered in in appreciation and

and um it it was a very strange time you know um I I don't know if I ever anticipated that level of acknowledgement for my work. Of course, I couldn't. And I think every actor says, oh, yeah, I'd love to win an Academy Award. You know, be appreciated. But you don't understand what that is and what kind of a triumph it is, especially if you're young, I think. And to have so many of my peers even know my name.

I mean, Jack Nicholson didn't really know my name before we were up and, you know, before I was really going over to his house to discuss what do we do about it? Because we just embarked on a, it was, you know, that's a whole other tangent. But, you know, like Jack, I saw me. me one night and he was like, hey, brofee. I was like, yeah. You can call me whatever you like, Jack. You know what you like, boss.

But it was such, it was such a crazy shift. And really beautiful. And again, to share that with my parents who gave me the space to pursue a dream. which is very hard to do, you know, we don't come from, you know, come from really modest surroundings and, you know, they're both educated. They would have, you know, but they just understood me and allowed me to find my way and it was the beginning of really feeling like I was on track. And prior to that, I never knew if I'd get another job.

I mean, it was really, I was a working actor and done a lot of work and worked with wonderful people and had wonderful education in film. But I never knew. And actually, after the pianist, I didn't get a job for a year. After the Academy Award, I didn't work for a year. Was the next thing you did the village? Yes. Which also, can I just say, because I next kind of wanted to segue into what I would call,

quote, your genre work, which like the village fits in there, Chapelweight fits into their. I'm a big fan of all these things, Splice. I'm a big fan of King Kong, Predators we've talked about, I remember years ago. And clearly based on some of your early experiences, you talked about watching Shaw brothers, you know, martial arts films as a kid, I take it you were a genre film fan. yes um do you approach things do you think about genre when you're doing something applying it to chapel weight for instance or for any of these like does the genre trappings affect a performance

do you know like i'm in this type of movie so i need to act in this style that's a really great question uh that's a great question um i guess on certain days certain days you you feel you can't escape that you're in the genre. Right. You look to your left, you're right, you're like, I'm in front of,

Josh, whether you want it or not, it is affecting you're acting. Yeah. It is, you know, you are having some really fake looking blood oozing out of something,

or you know, it is a bit arched the moment that you, you, that you have to swim through. But, I have a sense of humor with it and I think some people have a hard time differentiating you know it's a it's like I don't I have to become a painting right a part of a painting and each one of these journeys is a different style

I don't want, and even, and I do paint, and even as a painter, I have styles that I gravitate to that I love, but I'm constantly experimenting, and I'm constantly trying new things. And I think even in the art world, when you see an artist, you want to go, ah, that is a Picasso, that is a Monet. Right. That is a Basquea. but a basquia just did some really cool collage and you were like, that's a basquea and be like, well, that's not a basquia. And there was no little cool sketching or oil stick work

and nothing that you recognize as a bastia. You got to allow the person to paint it. And you may not love that painting, but it is a it is a creative journey right it is to share but it is also for me to go on and I love to experiment with the work and I feel like that is part of the joy of being an actor of not only finding diverse roles and becoming people that are very different from you and your set of experiences but to you know work with the you know can loach should work with dario argento you know and i think both of those are meaningful

to me and both entirely different processes and i i i love it i love that and but i don't know if that translates um it may be you because you you you see you see so much and you're you have an understanding of the process and people's work and but I think I don't know if I confused I feel like I've confused a lot of people with my choices they why would you do that and I I do love the I'd love to experiment with the work And I like to take some risk with it and just go there and see what happens. Sometimes it's not great what happens, but sometimes it is really great, fun. Without the risk.

I grew up on going to see Nightmare on Elm Street and movies in the theater. Bank more oncores when you switch to a Scotia Bank banking package. Learn more at scotubank.com slash banking packages. Conditions apply. Scotia Bank, you're richer than you think. Hey, Michael. Hey, Tom. Well, big news to share it, right?

Yes, huge, monumental, earth-shaking. Heartbeat sound effect, big. Mink is back. That's right. brief snack nap we're coming back we're picking snacks we're eating snacks we're raiding snacks like the snackologist we were born to be mates is back mike and tom eat snacks wherever you get your podcasts unless you get them from a snack machine in which case call us call us on a somewhat trivial note but but it's important because i'm i'm a nerd at heart and i grew up with a stuff

And even many years ago, I remember talking about this with you. One of the few things you haven't been in is a big comic book movie. And it's just part and parcel of the conversation of pop culture in the last 10 years, especially, as it's dominated everything. You told me once you had at least some conversation with Chris Nolan about Joker, do you recall? Do I remember that? I'm just curious, like, how far you, did you have a take? Like, did you have, like, an interpretation you were ready to? Oh, no, I wasn't close.

i mean i don't i you know it was a it was a role that i felt very suited to do i mean i think he did such a remarkable job yeah in that movie and and um it was indelible and such beautiful work and um you know but any actor any actor who has a degree of edge and would like to delve into a dark character like that, especially with a filmmaker like Christopher Nolan, who brought such a profound vision. And nobody was doing that at the time. There was nothing like that. So it was the difference of, are you going to do a big studio movie and play a comic book hero or

villain whatever you're suited for if you're lucky but it's really broad and broad and not necessarily the the way that would feel fulfilling right this just checked all the boxes this was everything yes and when Christopher Nolan's work and and what he gave actors in that was such a revelation that that it was you know mind blowing to see and so of course at that point you know that would that would have been such a dream role you know and I'm sure it was does it does it feel like unfinished business at all again it's weird to like paint it with a broad brush because you just you just described it well it's like it's really not about a comic book genre it's about like the opportunity to work with like a specific like I said if if

If I was presented with an opportunity to play an interesting character with a filmmaker that elevated me and gave me space to do something vastly different in that world, it sounds amazing. You have this wonderful machine. If you're talking about a Marvel movie, you have Disney and Marvel and all these, you know, giants that know all the technique and tools and stand behind these movies. And, you know, they've done something that I think is enormous. Yeah.

It's enormous. And people love them. And so who wouldn't want to be a part of something that is beloved and, you know, but it would, it would take. a tone that I related to. It wouldn't be just to, you know. Yeah. This time is already flying by.

So there are at least two other subjects I want to hit before I release you back into your life, sir. We barely talk to Chapel Wade, but this subject actually kind of relates a little bit into it, which is I asked you for a comfort movie. I've been asking everybody for comfort movies in the last year. You mentioned the man of the hour at the center of this. This is a great one. It is a bizarrely comforting movie, even for me. even if it's one of the darkest, creepiest movies ever.

I thought you'd appreciate it. Oh, it's the best. So re-watchable, always. He gets sucked in. Tell us your comfort movie, Adriene, and why you chose it. Well, I thought it was such an interesting question because I do know people who resort to a comfort movie. And it's a complex thing for an actor to have a comfort movie.

It's a complex thing because it's my work. And I, I, I, I, there are, there's so many things that go on for me to watch a movie. It's rarely comforting. It's a lot of work. And I, um, and I, um, and, but I, there are a few that I, there are a few that I, resort to, but I mentioned that the Shining, for me, is a comfort film. And for many reasons, one is that, you know, you can appreciate that movie if you know if you know it well in the background too,

there is a vastness scope and visually, it's just stunning. Kubrick's work is just incredible. You know, the source material, Stephen King's work is gripping and tormented, and then the acting is impeccable across the board. and, you know, know a bit about it. I know, you know, I have done a little research on, and I know some of the suffering that's gone on to make it

and to witness that such a privilege and to see an actor like Jack in his prime and the subtlety and the broadness of his work. It's just meaningful. It's just so meaningful to me. And I think you're right, by the way. I played on the projector, and it's just, you know, the scope of it is just powerful.

Well, it envelopes you, right? It is, you know, the cliche of world building. That's what Kubrick does in each of his works. He just, like, draws you into this just meticulously crafted, absorbing sensory overload, the music, from the opening images of the car winding through the road to the topiary at the end, you were just like, you are at the overlook,

stuck in there with this family. And it's just, I mean, I always say, I love the feeling of, like, just being in short hands of a filmmaker. And, like, in a much more bizarre way, I would say, like, Wes Anderson shares this, right? Your buddy, Wes creates a world that is just meticulous. and you are in the strongest possible vision and you're not going to be let down.

And that's what Kubrick every time does. And to this one, it's such great effect and such haunting. And I can't think of a movie that has more dread hanging over it. So I think it's an unusual pick, but I, it's a great pick. I could put on just about any Wes Anderson movie, and that would be a comfort film easily. And, you know, put on Royal Tannenbaum's. and that can be on. You can leave that on quite often.

And it's a wonderful film. I just don't throw movies on again and again for the sake of it. I just partially because I don't have time to sit down and be comforted. I have a lot to do. I have a lot of burning inside of me that I want to accomplish, so it's hard for me to sit still. But I like, there are a few films. You know, Godfather, too, is another one that if I'm on a flight or somewhere that I am,

you know, I've gotten through some of my catch-up work, my emails and my, you know, reading some scripts that I've forgotten. Like, I'll sit down and allow myself to watch and again. And, you know, that's comforting. Yeah. It's just comforting. Great selections, man. I wish we had more time.

Hopefully, let's do this again. because thankfully, and if you look at the IMDB, look, you've worked so consistently throughout your career. But right now, you have just a host of projects coming up that I could not be more excited for. We alluded to the Wakers project. You've joined the show that every actor is dying to join in succession. We'll see you on that one soon. I'm fascinated, excited by this Sam Rockwell, Sertia Ronan, murder mistreating. It's all happening in the best possible way, man. And just to say it, because I know we didn't really give maybe enough love, but I do want to say chapawait on epics is an exceptional piece of work. It's based on Stephen King's material

and it really does create that very holistic world, this feeling of dread. And again, you deliver, as always, a fantastic central performance. And this has really been a fantastic chat, man. It's been long overdue. And I really do appreciate the time as always. Yeah, I appreciate you. And, you know, keep up doing the great things that you're doing and, you know, and stay positive and focused on it. And I love your sensibilities, so I'm happy to talk any time. And yes, I'll briefly just send you up with that, you know, Chappellate was just such a pleasure for me.

You know, it was very challenging work, but it was such a, first of all, a gift to delve into the work of Stephen King. And I think the Filardi brothers did a wonderful interpretation and of that source material of Jerusalem's lot. And that was a real, he was a real man that character, right? And I feel like it's very different from other roles that I've been given an opportunity to play.

And I just liked his fortitude and pragmatic approach to things and his measured behavior in an attempt to not get, swept away emotionally from from all these things because he had a lot stressing him emotionally and yeah from the get-go he's dealing with the loss yeah and i thought it was really interesting it's very different from the man i mean i i aspire to have certain traits like that but i found it really um like a meditation almost to play that guy because he was so uh just like driven And tenacious, I would have been long gone. I would have gone out of that house quickly.

You and me both. Actually, I've been stuck in my house with plenty of ghosts for a long time. But yeah, I don't know. But I really enjoyed playing Charles Boone. And I hope people see it. It'd be really great. Now people should check it out. We did an entire long conversation without even mentioning worms coming out of your nose.

This might be the first chapel wait conversation. doesn't hit that. But see, come for the acting and stay for the worm coming out of the nose. Adrienne, man, again, it's been a pleasure, and I hope to talk to you soon. All right. You will. All right. Thanks, buddy. And so ends another edition of Happy, Sad, Confused. Remember to review, rate, and subscribe to this show on iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm a big podcast person. I'm Daisy Ridley, and I definitely wasn't pressure to do this by Josh. American history is full of infamous tales that continue to captivate audiences,

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