Happy Sad Confused - Kevin Bacon

Episode Date: August 3, 2015

The supremely talented Kevin Bacon joins Josh to talk about his memories of working at the All State Cafe in New York, his new thriller Cop Car, early on being in a play called Slab Boys with Sean Penn & Val Kilmer, JFK, X-Men, and much more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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or go to explorevolvo.com. Don't miss Swiped, a new movie inspired by the provocative real-life story of the visionary founder of online dating platform Bumble. Played by Lily James, Swiped introduces recent college grad Whitney Wolfe as she uses grit and ingenuity to break into the male-dominated tech industry to become the youngest female self-made billionaire. An official selection of the Toronto International Film Festival, the Hulu original film Swiped, is now streaming only on Disney Plus. Hey guys, welcome to another edition of Happy Sank Infused. I am Josh Horowitz, your fearless leader in this endeavor, this podcast that will change. That's not going to change your life. Who am I kidding?

Joining me today's special guest, Joel. Hello. Hi. Thanks for having. We won't reveal your last name because we don't get more stalkers. Joel, what do you, what do you do, what have you, done with me? What's your, what's your role in my life in this podcast? Uh, my role is I have worked with you for five years. Why did, why did you close your eyes as you said that? Like you were like

sad. There was a lot of memories flooding back. I was trying to figure out which ones to actually broadcast. Uh, no, but we've done, uh, your, your video component of this, the MTV after hours for the past five years. And wow, that is, that is, that applause is crazy. Um, so we, I, I, I, you and I both write and produce it. And then the world loves it and consumes it and is changed in the process. My life has just gone on an upward trajectory. And most importantly, Joel lent his office to me today to record this week's podcast, which was with a fantastic actor by the name of Kevin Bacon.

Who doesn't love Kevin Bacon? Everybody is. Who doesn't love Bacon and who doesn't love Kevin's? And when you put them together, I don't know why they would be listening to this podcast if they didn't like either of those things. If you don't like it, move on, go, wasn't the nerdist. Yeah. It's surprising how much you're smiling as you're saying this.

I, you know, because I just see, I imagine you, what's my interaction with you is either anger or like, Anouet, just a vacant stare. But you, you really enjoying this. I'm just trying to give the listener at home a good visual of the recording process. I'm dancing little jig in my seat. I am shocked. But, yes, so I just recorded literally moments ago, we finished with Kevin Bacon. in Joel's exciting office in Midtown, and Kevin was great.

He's promoting a film called Cop Car, which is a small film. It came out of Sundance. We talk about it a bit in this. It's kind of like in that, I mentioned in the podcast, it kind of reminded me of the early at Cohn Brothers, like Blood Simple, like a really nice tight thriller with some humorous elements, and it's a mystery kind of a thing. And it's worth your time, and it's a small film. You can catch them in VOD in some theaters.

I would definitely recommend it. Kevin, of course, delivers, as he always does. And it was really cool to talk to him. I haven't, it's weird, actually. I have not, we've never done for after hours, for instance, even though he's in New Yorker and he's always working. And I've never really done, like, much with him. So it was cool. He's like, got an insane resume.

What's the, okay, what's the first film you think of when you think of Kevin Bacon, Joel? Uh, cop car? God. Is that? You really don't watch movies, do you? Why are you on to you? I don't know. I've gotten buys the far, but.

You know what? I've never, this is kind of shock. Yeah. You and maybe listeners. I've never seen footloose. I was going to say footloose, but... You don't want to be a cliche of a bunch. No.

But I've never seen it. Here's what you do. Yeah. Go out and watch foot loose. Oh, thanks. Wow. You're like a doctor. Wait, are you talking about the, uh...

The Miles Teller one? Yeah. I don't know which one you're referring to. Neither one. Okay. I've never, I've never seen that. Sorry, Miles. Do yourself two favors.

I should just do a double feature right after this. Um, no, but it was cool. We talked a lot about his, like, his early start theater. Um, we talk a bit about JFK. And a lot of random stuff, X-Men, which I know you're into because you're a big old nerd like me. That's true. You might be even nerdier than me. This is also true.

How many hours a day do you spend playing Marvel Avengers Alliance? For those I don't know, Marvel's Avengers Alliance is a Facebook game where you can recruit Marvel characters on your team. I don't know, give or take, if you add it all up, you know, 30 to an hour. 30 minutes to an hour. Minutes to an hour. I'm going to double or triple that because that's just a lie. Okay, sometimes it helps. Who's the key leader on your team?

Who's performing most right now? There's no leader. It's just that you have to, you know, um, there's no, well, you're a shield agent and you're, you know, you're recruiting other heroes onto your team. Are you, so, what are you, are you touching yourself when you're playing this game? What are you doing? No, I mean, it's mostly, it's pretty passive. I'm not, I'm just mostly watching an interaction.

No, I mean, my heart and soul are being touched Through nostalgia It's great to see these characters come to life What else to remind you guys about? I mentioned last week, I'll mention it again Mission Impossible is now out in theaters Had a lot of fun both seeing this movie I've seen it twice, it's really good

Some fun interviews with Tom Cruise that I did I've shared with you, Joel They were kind of fun, right? Did you watch them? You didn't watch them that I said you I don't watch movies Oh God, you don't watch interviews I don't know why I am here.

Anyway, go to MTV's YouTube page. There's some fun content with Tom Cruise and Mission Impossible. Simon Pegg did a fun thing on Star Wars. Yeah, I had him rank the top six, all six, all six, Star Wars movies from bottom to top. I think you can assume where the prequels fit into that. So that was fun. And yeah, we're heading towards the end of summer.

Fantastic Four coming up soon, about to see that one, hopeful. I'm hopeful. I'm hoping for the best. We're eternal optimists over here, Happy, sad, confused. It's true. Yeah, I'm always reading for Marvel films, so I hope it does better than... Because it could impact your important life.

There's a personal investment in this movie. All right, enough about your sad gaming ways. Hey, you brought it up. I did. I did. Thanks for the office. Thanks for your continued hard work, Joel. Oh, well, thank you.

That was very sincere. And thank you guys for listening. I hope you enjoy this week's episode with the supremely talented Mr. Kevin bacon. That's bacon sizzling. Get it? I have to go. Sorry.

It's good to see you and thank you so much for coming by today because I really love this movie. Copcar. I missed it at Sundance, but I've caught up to it recently. It's a good one, man. Thank you. And I think the most important place to start in my copious research about you. So I grew up in the city. I feel like our.

paths might have crossed when I was a child when I was attending when I was going to the all state cafe and you were waiting tables there as a kid you were there I was there I grew up on west 70th oh so with your parents and yes I'm sure I'm sure our paths did cross what are your memories of working there uh it was it was my home my family my haven I I I registered in the summer of 76 at the Circle in the Square summer workshop and was able to audition for their winter two-year program, got into that. And I was, when I moved to New York, I was only 17, so that summer I turned 18. And I met a guy who's still my best friend, and he would, we walk up from 50th Street up

Broadway. And I knew that he lived in Harlem, but every time we get to 72nd Street, he'd hang a left. And I was thinking, where are you going? And one day he said, hey, come on down and you know, I'll buy a beer. Walked into the Allstate. And it was just a tiny little bar restaurant but it immediately became like my clubhouse almost you know and I was able to get a job there and made men all my friends were from the Allstate and it was there's no it's not a coincidence that the television show Cheers was created by James Burroughs who was who had had hung out at the Allstate yeah and a lot of the vibe of that show. show was very much like it you know everybody um from kind of all walks of life would meet at this

place and uh there's a sort of a brother and sisterhood there do you still have i mean you obviously you live a different lifestyle now but like do you have a hangout now do you have a place that you could no that's home no i don't and they all state closed about it's like five or six years yeah five or six years ago yeah and and we literally had a reunion of people who had hung out out there in the 70s, some of which had been hanging out when they closed in five or six years. So, uh, so, uh, and, you know, that's how important it was, not just to me, but to everybody. So where was, so where was the career then? This was a pretty soon after you had moved to New York at 17, you're saying? Yeah. Yeah. And so had you done like animal house at

that point? I got animal house amazingly, um, when I was at Circle in the Square in my second year of circle in the square and so that was my second year in new york i was 19 and um they sent a casting director over to the school actually to look for uh people to be frat boys and the school kind of submitted me so i didn't have an agent um i just went and met with john landis and there there weren't that many lines but i read whatever lines were there and then i kind of made some faces for him right and he liked the faces and then And they called me up and said, you know, you've got the job. Landis, I mean, I've interviewed him a couple times in like the recent years, you know,

like him before the kind of the heyday of like when he was, you know, everything he touched was amazing. But he's a big personality. He was like, was he someone, because that's like a formative experience. So were you like, okay, this is how directors are? Or when did you realize this guy is insane in a, hopefully a good way? Yeah. I realized it pretty quickly. I mean, my audition, he was like, well, you make that smart me.

face. I love that lot when he does. It's smar me. And I didn't really know what smarmy meant. So it was kind of like an animonopoeia to me. You know, I just made a face that I kind of thought was smarmy. And the first day that I walked on the set, they flew me out to Oregon, which is where we shot the movie. And they cut my hair and they put me in the clothes. And then I didn't work and I didn't work for a week. I went and sat in the hotel room because the shit, this shot got delayed or whatever yeah and then the first day i walked back on that set i think if i remember correctly it was this big scene of a parade and there were floats and it was kind of the um you know the the the climax of the movie sure and a lot of extras probably hundreds of extras

uh um a couple of different cameras crane shots and john just like you know a screaming because things were like falling apart are not going that well and it blew my mind i was like first off i was immediately in love with the excitement and the energy and the energy of making films and and was i found his energy you know really completely you know infectious and um obviously he loves um making movies and and had a tremendous like um uh jewel you know i mean sometimes you know his head would explode, but it was always with the kind of underlying feeling of joy. Right. I'm sure you've met some on the other side where they explode.

And maybe the underlying feeling isn't necessarily joy. Right. Just self-hatred. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So over, when was the Rood Awakening afterwards where both that, okay, this is not how it's done and also it's not going to be so easy starting off a career with what immediately becomes kind of a classic for people? Yeah. Well, I thought, you know, I mean, I thought, well, now I'm coming back to New York. I'm a movie star. I quit school because I figured I didn't really need that, didn't need them anymore. You know, I was, I was beyond that. I was a professional actor. But I turned around and went, well, I don't actually have an agent now. And I have to

start living. And so I went to do Animal House and came back and got my job back at the Allstate. So when the movie came out, I was actually still working at the Allstate, had to ask for the night off for for for the premiere and that was kind of a horrible experience because I I realized that um you know nobody knew who I was from the movie and that this was not a career changer or a career uh establishing kind of thing you know it you know it you know it was for I don't know Tim Matheson or Bruce McGill or whatever you know but but for me I was just kind of on the periphery of it um so you know I I I I Good, good when those types of things happened, when you, always good to be reminded

not to believe your own legend. And so I rolled up my sleeves, you know, kept waiting tables and started to look for an agent. So I'm curious, like, you know, we know you primarily from your work from the last, you know, foot loose and on, right? And it seems like you've worked very consistently throughout those years. I'm wondering like when the last time you felt worry about. about your career about 30 seconds ago when you walked in this office what have I done yeah yeah when

I do where am I in this dark room up with a shady dude no I I do I mean look it's such a cliche but it's just true you know when you are a freelance performer if you if a job ends it's always feels like it's your last. It always feels like the great myth of your weakness is about to be exposed. It's the emperor's new clothes. It's, you know, you remember your bad reviews. You have the dreams of, of, you know, being unprepared, standing naked in front of the audience and you can't find your clothes. You know, I mean, it's like, um, I don't think I'll ever get rid of those, those worries and you know and I guess there's a part of me that knows I'll probably at this point be able to make some kind of a living but you know I've seen a lot of roadkill um yeah and I've

seen a lot of people come and go and even in my own life there's been you know I guess most people wouldn't look at my career and necessarily unless they were really super analytical say well there's been ups and downs but for me it's been like a just a constant, constant rollercoaster of ups and downs. And as you well know, you're, it's,

it's very much out of your hands. It's public perception. It's industry perception. It's, what have you done lately? That's been successful. Oh, yeah.

Let's put him five more of those. Absolutely. All those things are true. And you've talked a lot about, you know, post footloose, which again is like one of those markers. You're like,

okay, I'm all set. I got it. I'm a leading man. I get to do this now. And for whatever reason, and while there were some film, between then and JFK, which I guess is the, if you're going analytically, like the next kind of

marking point, there were some successes. There wasn't like, it wasn't necessarily those six or seven years you probably wanted at that time, right? Yeah, well, I think there were films that I thought were pretty good, but they weren't necessarily successes. You know, there's, there's, there's the, there's successful in terms of box office and then they're successful in terms of like, I think it turned out well or better than I thought. You have, what, you like the big picture in there, you have tremors in there. Okay, so two box office disasters both both of them both of them i think are good films films that i'm proud to have been in and you know i think that they they although i haven't seen the big picture for many many years

but i did recently watch tremors and i really thought it held up but you know um it especially at that time it wasn't so much to say well what do you worry about this is a cult vhs classic you know that's not what i wanted to you know actually i you know sort of coincidentally this movie cop car it's the first time that i am i'm going out and promoting a movie that essentially will hopefully find its audience on vod and that's what we're hoping for that's what we're trying for you're not settling you're this is the goal settling yeah so i really had to just kind of adjust my head and my my thinking you know which i've tried to do you know try not to stay stuck in the 70s in terms of my perception of the business or whatever but but yeah there were some there were

films that I liked and again I was able to you know kind of cobble enough work together but I was also feeling a lot of financial um pressure uh you know just in terms of like continue a lifestyle adding two children to the mix um you know there were things going on that that it didn't feel like the career was on a path that I wanted it to be and I mean I think the truth is is that we're always a little hungry for something else you know there's there's a lot of stuff that I wish that I could still accomplish and I'm really still kind of looking down the road I'd like to think that you know the best work is in front of me as opposed to behind me it's funny and yet you never like about those concerns in that time and then the opportunities for that for whatever reason

that weren't coming down you never chose to move to L.A. you never went down that road and I relate to that because I'm born in Bred New Yorker that I've never left never got a driver's license even wow Yeah. That's impressive. Well, that's one way to look at it from a child in a 39-year-old body. Why was that? Why did you never, was it a lifestyle was just too important than the kids were in the mix and all that? And it was just...

Yeah, so, I mean, I wrote a song called City of Fear. And it was really my own terror, my own lack of courage to face this city that I just didn't quite. understand and I think also I was reluctant to embrace and accept that I was part of this industry in a strange kind of way you know what I mean these are all things that I've come to later on I also had a very very very glorified idea about what being a New York actor was and being a New York actor a la you know Dustin and Merrill and all the people who were doing all the stage stuff

you know what I mean it was like that that that was those were my heroes and you know the I also combined with that my wife is a lifetime New Yorker she she didn't really want to go and we wanted to bring our children up here now shockingly, we are now, we have completely embraced L.A., and it happened only in the last probably two or three years. We are really truly bicostal now, and we're lucky enough to be

able to do that. And since we have an empty nest, you know, we really can move them back. We're not tied to the children being in school anywhere. So I've really discovered it in a way, and I really, really like it now. I still love New York, of course. but I feel really grateful that I have a place. So we finally broke down and bought a small place in California. And I can't tell you how great it is to get off the plane and know that I'm not going to a hotel. And that's all I've been living in, you know,

and you land and you check your wall to make sure that you have, you know, bills small enough to tip the guy and you're walking through the lobby. and it's just I mean I'm just so over hotels you know and it's funny I'm curious did you find a difficult raising kids in the city because people always look at me like I'm an anomaly that because I did I grew up on the upper west side it's great place to raise kids it's amazing amazing I mean I I I I grew up in Philly so I you know being growing up in an urban setting I wouldn't have traded my my childhood as for another place ever I mean I it had challenges for sure but but in terms of like who I am it was so formative and so important to me and I think that if you talk to my kids

they would say absolutely and I had this sort of a brief moment of thinking that what I wanted was to live a hermit like lifestyle in the country yeah and and when I met my wife that's what that's what we were doing and I had been spending a lot of time up there before I met her just alone with a dog, you know, straight through February and March and, you know, I mean, like it was a very kind of romanticized sort of idea. And then I would go off and do my work and that would be another life. But, but this is the thing that I wanted for my life. And she tried it for about, I guess, a year or two. No, I had to be a little bit longer because my son was already in starting to get into school, like preschool or kindergarten or something.

And she finally came to me and said, look, I love you, but I can't do this anymore. I can't, I just, I can't, this is just, I got to, like, shop and have lunch with some friends. And I was panicked and sort of horrified. It's probably the biggest fight we ever had in our marriage. Partly because I thought to myself, I got to go back now to New York and try to buy an apartment that's going to fit four of us in and I was

just starting to feel like I had kind of leveled out financially right so it was it was terrifying but it was the best thing that we ever did and the and she was absolutely right and the kids

they just loved growing up in New York and it was it was such a safe place I mean if nothing else you know you're saying you don't have a driver's license, you know, when you hit that 16 year old thing and you're sitting there, you know, at home, hoping that they're not going to be out, you know, drinking and driving. I mean, thank God for Uber now because it's like, you know, a lot of times

I think parents, if they can afford it, don't really have that kind of same pressure that they used to. But just that in itself is sort of a terrifying moment. Absolutely. And do they go to museums every day? No, but it's not really kind of about that, you know. It's about, it's about, it's about just the way that this city feeds your senses. You know, sometimes on a, on a really hot, loud, noisy, smelly day, we call it the constant assault of the senses. But, but on the flip side of that, I think you get a lot of creative energy from I do. Yeah, I mean, life is colliding with you, whether you want it to or not in all aspects of life. I mean, I was a kid and, like, it was a nice school. It was an Upper West Side Public School. But I was like one of like five white kids in my school.

And I didn't know any, that didn't mean that didn't mean anything to me. Sure. And that was the best thing about it, that it didn't mean anything. Sure. That was just there. Yeah. Hey, guys, time for a special message from our friends at Mott and Bo, one of Happy Sad Confused sponsors today. I don't know about you guys, but I like to wear jeans.

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but the deal just got better, friends. simply go to montenbow.com slash happy and automatically get 20% off your purchase. That's montenboe.com slash happy for 20% off automatically applied at checkout. Go ahead, try them. One thing, I mean, you mentioned kind of like evoking that kind of like that paradigm, that Merrill Street, that Alpachino, that theater lifestyle. I mean, you've done a lot of theater. And one thing in reading about you that I wasn't aware of is very, very,

early on you were in a play, and I just have to ask this because this confluence of people shocks me and amazes me that you were to play with Val Kilmer and Sean Penn. Yeah, and Jackie Earl Haley. Amazing. And Brian Ben Ben, Ben, who's a also fantastic actor. Yeah. Yeah, it was a play that I had done down at the Actors Theater of Louisville, and they decided to get it produced in New York. I was the only one that moved from the Actors Theater up to the New York production was a separate kind of company and separate producers, et cetera. And it was a play called Slab Boys that was written by a Scottish playwright named John Byrne, who was both a playwright and also an artist and fantastic at both, I might add. And it was about his days in Glasgow as a

a tough kind of brawling wise ass they were influenced really heavily by that sort of greaser style you know we used a lot of grease in our hair and had you know dAs our hair combed into dAs and these big crazy shoes and tight pants and you know it was like a whole style that he had and he worked in a in a paint factory where they would grind and mix pigment for paint and they worked on a slab and they'd have these palette knives and and and it was uh i thought it was a fantastic play yeah i don't think that it was you know it's one of those things where you know either the new york times gets it or they didn't you know and i don't i can't remember it but i think maybe it was sort of like a so-so i actually read it oh you did and you got a nice

little notice in it oh okay called you out but it was a very it was a very a much better play i think than the way it was embraced. It was actually kind of almost like a drawing room comedy in its own way, kind of a farce. Well, what do you remember about, I mean, you've worked with Sean since, obviously, Mystic River. Val, I'm obsessed with those have been. I mean, he was like, what, the youngest guy out of Juilliard.

So he was like that wonderkin, like, from the start. I think Val was right out of Juilliard when we did Slab Boys. Yeah. I feel like maybe he hadn't been out for very long. Did it seem like he was raw and, and ready to take on the world or did it feel like were you competitive at that time if you're like at that age where like naturally guys that age are I think competitive anyway no matter what your

profession is or not really um I'm trying to think about that yeah I I don't I don't remember feeling competitive with with Val no um or or with Sean yeah we I think we were all kind of you know it was fairly early for all of us. I think Sean maybe had one or two movies in the can. I think maybe I had, I can't remember what I had done at that point. I don't have the timeline right, but I probably had done some stuff.

I'd probably done diner maybe. I'm not sure. Oh, no, actually, you know what? Now that I think about it, I think, yeah, this is right. I believe that I had my footloose audition while I was doing slab boys or sometime around that time.

I believe that that's, I believe that's what happened. I remember just having a blast to doing it, you know. It was just, it was just fun, you know. So being on the other side of things now, I mean, I mean, you're obviously acting in this one, and I know you're on the mustache publicity tour where that's the first question out of everybody's mouth because it's an important thing about your character. Yeah. Well, it's a great look, undeniable, so.

But is it fun to, you're an executive producer on this? Right. you know it's a it's a filmmaker that um no one frankly like has really heard of before this and suddenly he's directing a giant marble movie yeah so that's pretty awesome awesome um does it feel like do you have like more of a interest is this interest you more even you've produced a little bit in the past but like how did this happen in particular that you were on board in this capacity and is that something you're trying to do more of um i i like to do it I'm always thinking about things.

You know, it's funny is that I've produced a lot of things that haven't actually come to fruition, you know. A lot of television series that have been in development. And, and also films that just, you know, haven't really seen the light of day. There's, you know,

there's different forms of producing. As you know, that's probably one of the most overused kind of terms of credit and everybody kind of wants it. In the case of Copcar, The script came to me, and I read this beautiful, sort of poetic kind of unusual story, you know. And I knew that it was a very, very low budget situation, but it read more, didn't read like a little, you know, Sundancey indie art house kind of movie, you know. It really was not like, you know, a disease of the month kind of film.

It feels like a bigger sort of story, you know, a crowd-pleasing kind of thriller. And... Remind me almost of like a blood simple back in the day of like that kind of Cohn brothers. Well, yeah, John is definitely influenced by the Cohn brothers and by the early Amblin films and by Stephen King. You know, those are sort of his mentors in a way, you know. And I said, I really like this. It reads great. And, you know, people wonder, like, how does it read since there's so little being said in it?

But they had a, they had a beautiful way of making you visualize the movie, which is not always the case. A lot of times, you know, you pick up a script and you go, well, I get the story and I can see the dialogue. Yeah. You know, we're going to need to change a dialogue a little here. We'll change it there. You know, maybe whatever this moment should happen later. And, you know, you have this, but you don't always kind of picture the whole thing. You don't always sort of say, okay, I get it, you know.

And after, you know, an hour and 15 minutes, I was done and felt like I'd seen the movie, including having seen the character. I knew what I knew that if I did this, that this is who the guy would be. So that also doesn't always happen. Sometimes you have to find it and find it and find it, but I knew it. Then I went and looked at John's first movie that had not come out and still hasn't come out in the States. And I could see that he was a shooter and that he had a really good sense of actors and also a good sense of where to put the camera.

And I don't know how to explain this other than to say sometimes you look at scenes and you think to yourself, well, there's a million ways they could have cut this scene. Right. Sometimes you look at a scene and you say, that's the only way this scene could be cut and the director knew it when he went in. And that's the kind of director that John is. So I said, listen, this is between season two and season three of the following. Let's do this.

Let's get this done. Let's get this made. You know, they gave me a producing credit. I'm curious. I mean, have you, because you've worked with all manner of directors, like the ones that have the longest resume in the business and first time directors, I'm sure, at various points. Have you been able to manage and figure out how to separate the bullshit from the reality?

Because it's one thing for someone to be good in a room and to talk to you about a script that's pretty good and say I have this vision and they talk a good game and I'm sure like any actor you probably then got it on set and being like oh god this it's got a girl she they don't have the goods and that's got to be the worst situation ever is your sense of people better is that something that you've is there a way to mitigate against that after having done this a while yeah I don't know if there is and I don't know if I'm necessary I think I've gotten better I mean I think you can't hang around for this long and not learn nothing but I but you know I I I I I I I it's it's it's tough it's tough um and even if you get on set and the process is really great

and it feels really good it doesn't necessarily mean that the movie's going to be good and you can have a time when you just go oh my god this guy doesn't know what the fuck he's doing and then all of a sudden the movie is kind of cool you know it's uh i don't it's always a crapshoot man i mean i think that you know when you look at you look at the choices that you make obviously you're trying to put as many of the pieces of the puzzle together and put them in and make it make a situation where it's going to be as good as it possibly could be between the character the director the cast you know the location the budget the cinematographer costume music or whatever those things are but even if they're all there it could still not work yeah i want to mention a couple

of films that resonated with me over the years one um and i'm not alone in this and it was an important one for your career i think i was like 15 or 60 team when I walked out of JFK and my brain had you walked out you didn't watch the whole movie no I watched the whole movie many times Kevin it literally melted my brain like it was just like and I became obsessed with Oliver Stone and perhaps the best flight I've ever had was I had the fortune of sitting next to Oliver a couple years ago oh that's a good one a flight to L.A and as I'm sure you can attest that was quite a five-hour conversation with an amazingly insane but a talented man I'll tell you funny Oliver on a plane

story he we're getting on a plane and we're not actually he's on the other side of the cabin and I'm sitting there and I didn't bring anything to read and so I pick up

the in-flight magazine and he comes over I can curse on this yeah he's like what the fuck what the fuck you're reading that piece of shit for it why do you read shit why do you read the fucking New York Times you can't give him out of anything

Yeah. He's like, why don't you read the fucking New York Times? What the hell is wrong with you? I just didn't, I'm Oliver. I didn't bring anything. I said, you've got the time. It was a Sunday. He said, you got the Sunday Times. Just give me a section when you're done with it. I'll read the New York Times, okay? So I fall asleep and I wake up and there's the entire paper right at my feet. He's taken it and put it there. I pick up the paper. I open it and I swear to God, folded inside is us people, the national. inquirer like the fucking globe or whatever I mean just like it was amazing bring in a lot of information to create that mind so I so I think it was a obviously it was a little tongue and cheek but I don't know it doesn't actually surprise me because we watched and without listening to the dialogue together we were watching New Year's Eve the Gary Marshall film together okay and to hear his commentary over a Gary Marshall film uh I mean that's priceless yeah yeah so you you weren't asking him for his opinion he was just commenting exactly I mean you can't You can't shut that man up for, I mean, he's a genius.

So that was like, what shocked me was that was just a few days of shooting for you. That was literally like four days that frankly changed the course of your career. Four days that changed the course of my career. You said it. Yep. Yep. Because, you know, I could feel when it came out, you know, people just were like, that's surprising. And, you know, it's funny because my wife was very defensive at that point.

She's like, you know, fuck them. What do you mean? It's surprising. I'm not surprised. Well, why? What's someone is surprised? that you're you know how to act right um but you know you have to keep in mind that the things things like slab boys you know uh and this other stage work that i'd done and you know some other kind

of weird offbeat indies that i'd done they're not nobody saw them you know like a very almost a sliver of people saw them so this was a movie that had a lot of big sort of exposure and and um and yeah so then i i it was also good for me just to realize that I had sort of lost track of why I wanted to act. And this was a really fun opportunity to just go wide, as I like to say. Yeah. In recent years, you know, you made an impression that's great villain in X-Men first class, which I loved. Is that something that, again, is that changing sensibilities?

Is it just the opportunity was there where you never had that kind of opportunity before? Should that surprise me that you took that at the time? was it no no i mean it was a marvel movie i mean and uh look the studios are making what four movies apiece a year something like um and there are uh when it comes to that kind of a movie there's not that many gigs um you know you and they're less that are actually decent and they actually are you know you have matthew vaughan who's an actual good filmmaker yeah matthew's fantastic i i loved uh kickass and and um now i can yeah i can yeah Yeah. Oh, yeah, layer kick. I mean, I was, I was, I was thrilled to have to have that job. And, you know, he was, um, he was fun. It was an interesting sort of villain, you know. I mean, I, you know, you can, when it comes to big sort of blockbustery sort of movies, like, I'm going to get two choices. One is like the head of the army. You know, God damn it, what are you guys doing at that? That's not so interesting to me, you know, but the, but, but a billionaire, you know, mutant, yeah, speaking journalism.

and Russian and that's great do you find that it's tough to find roles that are willing to push you somewhere you haven't gone before like do you have to seek those out I mean because again we talked before about it's the cliche but it's true I mean getting regurgitated the same stuff that you've done before yeah how do you navigate that how do you find something that's remotely new or yeah I mean I think that um well you look for the cop cars in the world you know I mean I think I think that when I started out there was no question in my mind that what I wanted to do was play a bunch of different guys

that's why I did it that's what I that's why you know when I saw back to back the graduate and Midnight Cowboy I was like oh okay so that's what an actor is now I now I know now I know what I want to what I want to do not not do

Raso Rizzo every time you do the movie right you know what I mean so so so so it's hard that's a hard thing to convince Hollywood to let you do because they want you to do and I'll tell you why that is and I understand this because you know I've been on the

other side of the camera the film film is such an intimate medium you know when you look at those big ass close ups you know if something is false it's gonna it's gonna

really kind of read pretty quickly And if you're to trust that an actor is going to be able to step away from who they are when they're in this room sitting here talking and, you know, is a very tough leap of faith to take. It's not so much on the stage, you know, because on the stage there's some distance and you go and you audition and you pretend that you're, you know, whatever British or whatever it is, you know, then they're going to buy it. Sure. But in movies, much, much more difficult. So the fact that the stuff that I get sent to me either offered or to consider is all over the map. I mean, all over the map. I feel so grateful and so proud of having been able to, you know, build that kind of career

because that's the kind of career that I wanted. And is there a way to gear yourself to, because as many. amazing filmmakers, and this is true for any great actor that you've worked with, there are many dozen of the finest that you've never worked with. I mean, it just happens. Yeah. You know, I mean, whether it's a Coen Brothers or a P.T. Anderson or Lidiana, whatever you want to say.

Right. Do you go after them? Is like, who do you not want to leave this earth without having worked with? God, I'd really like to work with the Coen brothers. I mean, you, you know, you named it. Of course, I'd like to work with Scorsesey. you ever met with either or talked to either about anything or is it not just not happened yet you know i think i i well in my mind i they probably don't even remember i sort of blew it with the cohen brothers

a really long time ago when i was really young and really cocky i sort of went into a meeting and was just kind of an asshole i remember my agent going uh you fucked that up what would happen what were you doing uh i don't know i was like i don't really even remember whatever it was um word got back that they were they didn't dig it so all was forgiven Joel and Ethan please yeah I don't know it's got another chance hopefully it's all forgiven or maybe they just don't like me which is fine too I get I I you know or I mean I'd like my work I mean I would I would totally I totally accept that but I yeah I mean of course there's a lot of people that I would like to work with I would say that um it doesn't seem to come up all that often that I get to reach out to someone like them or Scorsese and sit down and have a meeting and just say, hey, please, you know, hire me, use me in something. Yeah. What does happen sometimes is that I'll see a film and I will reach out to, of a younger

filmmaker, you know what I mean? If somebody that's whose movie is a little bit off the radar, who's actually willing to meet with me. They could use some of your juice. You'd like get a little of their mojo. It works for everybody. Yeah, that, that, yeah, exactly. That, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that, that's actually turned into a, a, a gig or not, I, I, I'm, I don't think so, but, uh, maybe down the road it has, I don't know. Um, well, congratulations again on this one. I mean, as you said, this is, uh, it's not like, yeah, when you say Sundance, it's not cut from that stripe. It's more of just like, a really tight, smart, well-done genre film that, like, works, which is rare, sadly.

Yeah, thank you. And it's a great performance and a great piece of work, and I wish you all the best on it. Thanks, man. Thanks for stopping by. This summer. You center, you monster. world's greatest screenwriters. So it appears it is to be a chess match

after all. And Hollywood's brightest actors. How do you just stop believing in it all? We'll come together. Eventually, you will slip. In a cinematic explosion. I hope you trip and break your bloody stiff neck. The likes of which podcasting has never seen.

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