Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Dustin Hoffman: Emerge from the Wallpaper

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

Dustin Hoffman (The Graduate, Kramer vs. Kramer, Rain Man, As They Made Us) stops by the studio in person to open up about his childhood, his time working as an attendant in a psychiatric facility, and going to acting school with fellow legendary actors Gene Hackman and Robert Duvall. He and Mayim discuss the power of music, the science of acting, and the psychological awareness that comes with Dustin’s performances. Dustin explains why he is so observant and in touch with his emotions and his thoughts about death and spirituality, and Mayim breaks down hypervigilance. Dustin reveals what it was like to be directed by Mayim in her new film, As They Made Us. Trailer for As They Made Us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU-b6NoDkiU&t=0s BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I think it's the first time I ever cried in therapy. And I said, it's the only time I feel I'm in my own skin when I'm playing someone else. I know who I am when I'm playing someone else. And I've never forgotten that. I can't help it. It was comfortable. Hi, I'm Miami Amiolic and welcome to my breakdown. This is the place where we break things down so you don't have to.

It's my and be all this breakdown She's going to break it down for you Because you know she knows a thing or two And now she's going to break down You couldn't break today's episode down If you tried very hard Because we're going to talk to Dustin Hoffman It's very exciting

It's so exciting that I put on a blazer But first let's say hello to my favorite exciting person Jonathan Cohen Hello, hello everyone What's going on? This is You're going to get to meet a work friend of mine.

This is, yeah, just an average acquaintance. This is a legend. I told you about Dustin Hoffman the whole time we were filming, and you didn't get to meet him while we were filming, but you did get to meet him at one of our screenings, or our screening here in Los Angeles. And his assistant Aaron is a super fan. And so... I got to meet Aaron, too.

You got to meet Aaron. And... Just hypothetically, if someone doesn't know who Dustin Hoffman is. Okay. Dustin Hoffman, he caught the world's attention in the graduate. He was the young guy in the graduate. If you don't know that, look it up. He's a two-time Academy Award winner, a seven-time nominee,

and his arrival in Hollywood is said to have helped usher in a new revitalized approach to filmmaking. He was nominated for six Academy Awards after the graduate for things such as Midnight Cowboy, Lenny, Tutsi. Unreal. Ahead of its time, Tutsi, that he also produced through Punch Productions. which is his production company, also Wag the Dog, a really fantastic movie. He won the Oscar in 1979 for Kramer v. Kramer, which was a movie focusing on divorce in particular and the complexity of divorce, again ahead of its time. And in 1988 for Rain Man, which a lot of people know him from.

In 1997, he received the Golden Globes esteemed Cessleby-Demill Award. And as his bio says, he can currently be seen starring opposite Candice Bergen in Myambiolix feature as they made us. He's also wildly funny. These are very serious acting credits, and yet he then goes on and does the fuckers, which is... He's a, right, sorry, yes. He also does have a very, very hilarious streak. He's very well known for his theater work, Death of a Salesman.

That's actually something my mother always talks about. I mean, he's too many credits, literally too many credits to even name. What I will also say is this is a person who likes to just like talk and schmooze. He's a very Hollywood person who's also not a very Hollywood person. The first time I met him, he cried when talking about my script. He had no idea who I was. He thought I was like some like young hot director. Nope, first time.

But he's a very, very emotional person and a person full of knowledge about not just film, but psychology. And he's really such a perfect guest for us to have. It's such an honor to welcome Dustin Hoffman. Break it down. I don't even know how to start this episode. We have our second guest in person. And it is a very, very special person.

It is someone who I recently had the pleasure of working with very intimately for the movie that we made together as they made us. And Mr. Dustin Hoffman is here, Jonathan. Thank you. You have a quite long career. And your career started before there were podcast. Before there was social media, before kind of the machine of the industry operated in these ways. Podcasts is not something that you typically do. First one.

There's an interview with, who was it? Alec Baldwin has an interview that appeared on his podcast but was done in person at what it sounds like an event. Got it. Correct. But that doesn't count. This is his first podcast. Does not count. Right.

He snuck it into a podcast, but it wasn't a podcast interview. We get to say we had the first podcast experience. Your lovely assistant Aaron, who I also got to know as we made the movie, is our superfan. So we're also very appreciative to Aaron for all the good things she might have told you about our podcast. I didn't ask questions. I should have. Well, when we had Matthew McConaughey on, the first thing I said to him was, do you have any idea who I am? To which he very honestly said, no, and I don't really know why I'm here.

So we feel like you're at least one step beyond that And that you and I got to work together But Jonathan and I focus mainly on kind of all kinds of wellness, mental health Kind of where people come from, how they get to where they are And we talk, yes, to a lot of prominent people But we also talk to doctors and therapists and all sorts of people. So we have no particular agenda, But we are kind of very curious to hear from you

A little bit about what small Dustin Hoffman was like. You know, I think especially Smaller. Smaller, Dustin, often. You know, I think people think of you as they should, as this kind of, you know, I mean, you know all the things people say about you. You're a living legend. You're a two-time Oscar winner. You've been in many films that have been extremely pivotal and significant in American cinematic history. There's no way to overstate that. And also, you're a person who's lived your life largely in the public eye, but there was a time.

when you were little Dustin Hoffman. So you're from L.A., is that right? Yes. Tell us about you before we think that we knew who you were. The first thing that occurred to me when you said a little, what did you say, little Dustin or Dusty Hoffman? Yes. Well, my first memory, one of my first memories, negative memories, is being in grade school and this kid who didn't like me for some reason,

as he was coming in to sit down, he was sitting in front of me, and as he passed me, he grabbed me by the hair and just pulled it as hard as he could and said, little dusty. And I've never forgotten that. So I was little at the, you know, originally. I would like to say, which is not a question you asked, I want to thank you first for putting me in your movie because it's a lovely piece of work. And I meant it when I said it to you. I have talked to quite a number of people, friends, family that have seen it, and they all say the same thing. There's someone, at least one person in there that reminds them of. So I guess sometimes, not sometimes, I guess when you tell the truth, it resonates.

Anyway, thank you. Thank you. And the other thing I remember is that I was born in 1937, meaning I'm 84 and three quarters. I like to say this because when you're little, you always want to say I'm seven and a half. So why not do that as you're aging too? Because 85 is somewhat of an event, I guess. Anyway, I note this because 1937, I think, is only eight years after the Academy Awards were invented and even sound, I think. Wow.

So, sorry. Oh, sometimes if I'm crying, it's not being. because I'm moving myself. I have big allergies, and we've had a lot of... It's spring. Yeah, and we've had a lot of... It's like all the Jews are allergic to spring. All the Jews have the same kind of allergy.

That's the thing. It's true. I never heard of a Gentile saying I have hay fever. Having said that, my father, I was born in 1937. I have an older brother, and he just celebrated his 91st birthday, and he's quite active. And I like to think that I'll follow in his footsteps. He's got all those marbles and he walks and he defies death as I do.

So death is always the enemy. And I guess, which is I guess one of the reasons we want to leave a mark since we can't avoid it completely. Either with kids or and or with work. My father was from a very lower class, and I only learned this recently, not to go back too far. My son-in-law's mother's friend is Gates, Professor Gates. And he was at the house when we went to visit one day, and he asked me if I wanted to be on a show I didn't even know about the roots, your roots or something. Finding your roots? Finding your roots.

And I said, okay. and not knowing that three or four months would go by when they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars. They could have found out you're a Gentile and you don't have a fever. That's right. And after about three or four months, they gave me an itinerary, if that's the word, which told me stuff I never knew. My father never mentioned his parents or his grandparents as my brother and I were growing up. Never mentioned it. And I found out why he was about 12 years old when his father, against the wishes of other family, he had two sisters, went back to Russia to find his father.

He went back there and was executed by a firing squad. And this I found out from the roots thing. And his own father, less than a month earlier, had been executed by a firing squad. the Bolsheviks, who I think were the precursors of the KGB. And he, I guess, was either so angry because he was told by, he remembers that people said to his father, now is not the right time, but he still went, so maybe he felt that his father betrayed him, or he became the head of the household. At any rate, he blocked it out.

So came to Chicago or moved to Chicago, I think from Boston, and from Chicago moved to Los Angeles in the early 30s with my mother and her mother. And her mother, we called her Danny Celia Gold. She was from Yash, Romania. And my father's people were from Ukraine. And so that's only I knew that one interesting thing about it is that. a sister of my father actually sued the Soviet, can you believe this? She had been in a concentration camp, which I think was the first, and they called them, what was the original name for a concentration camp?

Labor. Well, they called them labor camps. Labor camps, yeah. but which wasn't and she lost a shoulder of amputated or part of it and an arm and somehow got out. She remained someone who's now important in my heart because she somehow found her way out of Russia to Argentina, which then had a, you knew this. Well, yeah. How did you know? No, a lot of Jews went to Argentina and that's great.

kind of the basis of a lot of that Eastern European community there. It was one of the places you could escape to when the U.S. wasn't taking people and, you know, it was also hard to get into Israel. And then came to Chicago and then sued the Soviet Union for, you know, taking away her family and for monies. She didn't win. She never had an answer. But it was actually, and I saw it in the Chicago Tribune at the time around the turn of the state. My Ambialx Breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine, drink more water.

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Head to superpower.com. Use the code break at checkout for $20 off your membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask how you heard about them. Make sure to mention Miami-Mialics Breakdown to help support the show. My brother is almost, or is almost seven years older. So when I was born, I felt like I had three parents. You know what that feels like. Yeah, that's actually the number of years that they say a child will perceive a sibling as another parent.

because by the time you kind of have conscious perception and awareness, that child is 11 or 12, and then it feels like an adult. And it did. So I felt somehow that I wasn't a part of the family in the same way. My father also had a difficult time of it as a kid from what I just said. And he somehow, alongside with that, was very compulsive person. person and the house had to be absolutely spick and span. So my mother would say many times when I'm like six or seven, Daddy's coming home soon.

You better clean up your room. And if he saw you barefoot, it was your fault. And if you got sick, it was because you were barefoot, et cetera. So I didn't enjoy my childhood. And I think I lived it in absentia because in the present was painful as I look back on it because I didn't think of it when I started studying. acting, somehow I think that had something to do with it. I did have an outlet because I was called the, if not the bad kid, the problem kid in school, because I was always saying, whispering to the

kid next to me because they always had the big clock there. And, you know, before it goes there, it goes there a little bit. So I said, when you see it going there, everybody cough, pass it on. And they would do this and immediately the teacher would say, Hoffman, go to the vice-distance. This was my expression, I guess, of individuality. Were your parents artistic? What did they do for a living? My father, actually, I found out, my brother showed me, when he came to L.A., he helped build the Royal Seco-Seco Freeway.

So he was a ditch digger originally. Somehow he worked and he climbed over the wall, literally, I think, and got a job at Columbia films. There was some, and I think, I've seen photos of my mother and my father before they were 30, and they're already at the beach in Santa Monica. And I think they had a perception that they would move not to Los Angeles from Chicago, but to Hollywood. And they would become Hollywood.

And that was their aspiration. And in those days, everyone went to the movies, whatever, three, four times a week. And somehow he got a job at Columbia, pictures being in the prop department. and then the head of the prop department because of his obsessiveness. And I was told by someone who had worked there, your dad wanted to be a director. But in those days, you didn't even become an assistant unless you were part of a family. It was passed on. So I'm sure that embittered him.

And at some point, I think he was fired because he was always telling people what they were doing wrong and how they could improve it. And from prop department, he went into the furniture business. Wow. And my mother was a housewife, I guess, and her mother, Celia, lived with us. How old were you when your dad started to, went from ditch digger to... Well, he came here in 33. I do have a memory living on Flory Street.

We were kind of lower middle class. and near Olympic Boulevard I raised here and looking at books that were filled with photos of films that he somehow had of the period. So I think he started working before I was born, if not soon after I was born. But by the time I was old enough to have any perception, I guess, of, you know, what do you do, Daddy?

He was no longer, he was now trying to sell wholesale furniture to the retailer. Wow. And you were musical. You're an accomplished pianist. And you are too, I think. Well, not as accomplished. But when did you start playing music? Did your brother also play music? He briefly had trumpet lessons, but he was smart enough to, at a, I'm told at a recital when he was like 13, he, I think, half purposefully fell into the pit. And that ended his career. I was told to practice the piano when I was. I was, I think, five years old.

And my father was always aspiring to be, if not middle class, upper middle class. And we were always moving around and then he would go broke and we moved back down to lower middle class. But having a piano, and I'm sure he couldn't afford it, they got for me. And I remember having to practice without being asked if I wanted to. And I think at the time, I think the perception was that. Jewish people didn't want a new Cadillac. They wanted to see their kid at Carnegie Hall.

I don't know if you heard that. Yeah, no, I get it. And so was there a point at which you did enjoy that? And it became a part of your life, I mean, before you kind of got into acting, correct? Well, I had a teacher. And I know now, you maybe can tell also when people play the piano, if they're kind of self-taught, if they've had lessons, they don't play, they play kind of like that. That's right.

But you're gently holding an orange. Exactly. Exactly. You're taught to do that and you can strike much better. So I had a good teacher. I remember his name. You're not old enough for mine, but when you get older, you start to lose short-term memory, but you gain long-term memory. How do I remember Eli Miller, who was my first teacher? And he was, I think, a Russian Jew or something. And he was always criticizing me because whatever I was playing, he would always say, not bit the foot. Not bit the foot. because I was always... Yes.

And somehow I begged him. I remember this. Please teach me boogie-woogie. That's what it was. I don't even... They don't use that word anymore. I learned boogie-wogie on the piano as a kid, of course. Do you know Flight of the Bumblebee?

No, I never learned it. But I did play boogie-wogie and loved it. I remember in junior high school, I would get booed because I was always asked to perform there. There was a few of us out of the junior at junior high. and I always played the same thing, Bumble Boogie. And they'd say, and now Dusty Howard will play in the class. Boom, bumble it would be the tenth time they heard it, because that's all I could play.

I play a mean old McDonald, just saying. You do play Old McDonald. A mean old McDonald. I've had about five piano lessons so far. He's doing very well. Oh, you just started. I'm trying to teach him. My teacher is very busy, though.

It's hard to get a lesson. Moving on. Moving on. What were you like in how? high school. I'm always interested in when people become the people that we think of them as. You know, like, I like to think when I was three, I was like this. But I'm told that like around, around 10 or 11, I kind of became more of who, you know, but I'm always curious when that happens for people. Like, what were you like in high school? Were you still kind of a

jokester? Can I ask you what happened first? What happened to you when you were 10 or 11? I don't know. Oh, you don't know. It's something that. I don't, I mean, this just became You see your first play or something? No. Well, I didn't start, you know, professionally acting, as it were, until I was 11. But my voice changed when I was about 10 years old. I used to have a normal girl's voice. And I was, you know, soprano.

I sang in, you know, synagogue choir. And when I was 10, something happened, my voice kind of dropped. And I was the smallest kid in class. I was like shorter by a head than every other kid. It was a sort, you know, everybody was always asking, are you premature? What's wrong with you? You know, and then I started singing, you know, tenor in the choir.

I don't know. I think I must have had some, you know, large cosmic awareness of my mortality. I started crying on my birthday from the time I was 10 years old. I did not want to get older. I didn't want to die. You have so much in common. When you say this, I remember at the age of 10 that they lined up all the kids at my junior high. They went to every class and lined us up and then picked the kids.

the smallest one. And then the smallest one from each class, we all joined together. And I was, if not the smallest, I was by then told that the smallest is going to be put into the play for that season. And I remember bending a little bit because I wanted to be the smallest. And I got the job. And I was Tiny Tim. And I had one line, which was, God bless us.

That's right. Every one of us. God bless you. You did it? No. Just everybody knows that line. God bless us all, everyone, which is a strange line. And the ninth grader who I wanted to impress and said to me,

I dare you when you go out there to say, God bless us everyone, God damn it. I did it. You did? Suspended. Wow. And somehow after that, I was never in a school play. I never wanted to be in a school play. I never thought about being an actor.

When I graduated L.A. high school, I barely, they had to sweep me out. I had no concentration. I was, maybe that is, I don't know if that's similar to a lot of actors, but you're out the window when they're talking. You're just somewhere else. You're daydreaming, which is now we hear a kind of invaluable asset to have daydreaming. It's the beginning of invention, I guess. So I remember that I was told I should go to college because if I didn't go to college, they would draft me. My brother was in Korea, and I was afraid of, I don't know if it was Vietnam or whatever war. So I said, okay, I was not accepted in UCLA or essay, so Santa Monica City College took everybody and anybody. So I enrolled there. And thank goodness they do. Yes. And before the year was up, I was failing so bad I would have to repeat going to the first year again. And at that point, I saw on the board there was something about the Pasadena Playhouse, a so-called college of acting. And I thought, nobody flunks acting. You know, someone told me, you know, it's like Jim. You know, you don't flunk acting. The worst you do is get a C-minus. And I talked my parents into allowing me to go to the Pasadena Playhouse. And I didn't like anybody in the classes.

They all wore in those days. They were all Gentiles. At least I thought they were wearing holsters. And they would draw in the hallway because it was gun smoke. You know, and that was the show they wanted to get on. So I would go up on the roof because I heard that Brando used conga drums and he was a hero. And I got a hold of somehow bongo drums and I played on the roof. Who do I see up there nearby, true story, on a conga drum is someone by the name of Gene Hackman.

He had got there on a GI Bill when he was like 17. They kicked him out after three months. He was such a good actor. He didn't look like he was acting. So they thought he had no talent. Literally kicked out. And I somehow stayed for the two years. He says, when you come to New York, call me up.

I called him up. I slept on his kitchen floor. And he introduced me to his friend, Bob Duvelle. All three of us hung out together, could not get work, did other jobs, Duval worked in post office from 12 o'clock to late in the morning, Hackman, because he was the big guy, moved furniture, up six-floor walk-ups, right?

I think it was called the Greenwich Village Moving Company. And if anyone were to say at any point, the three of us are going to become famous, we would have been. What did you do? What was your day job? Oh, my God, everything you could imagine of. I think I was having trouble getting my first job,

and I saw someone on the street who I had known at the pasty in the playhouse. He was now in New York. I said, I can't get a job. I did type a lot because when you're kicked out of class in high school, you're sent to typing class. I could do like that any words a minute, plus the piano helped. But this friend, I got temporary work a dollar and a half an hour. But my friend said, why don't you try getting the job I got? I said, what's that?

He says, I was an attendant at the mental hospital, psychiatric institute, of New York, which is right off the Hudson River, like 160A Street. I said, I don't have it. He says, you don't need anything. He says, just go in there, make sure you wear a white shirt and have white shoes, and they'll interview you for 15, 20 minutes, and you're on. What were you attending? I was called an attendant, and I was given a key, given the job, go to 7 North.

There was 7 North, and then there was a little lobby in 7 South. 7 North was for men. And I was scared to death and I took the key. I had all my white shirt and white pants I had to get. Turn the key. I opened the door. And there stands, a man who I will never forget, Freddie Myers. And he was an ex-policeman.

And he always stood and rocked back and forth. And he always said the same thing. He says, hello, Sonny boy. My wife is a real Dutch cleanser constantly. And he was, I think he had prefrontal. lobotomy and I became an attendant for two years and I would go home with my six roommates on 109th Street and I would imitate different patients. There was a woman on that came into Seven North, which was the men, and she was a doctor. And next to the psychiatric institute, or next to us,

was an actual hospital for people to study psychiatry. Our doctors were residents. In other words, kind of still training. Right. And she would come over every day to see her husband, Koppeloff. I'm going to start crying. You too. Mr. Koppeloff. He had had two or three strokes.

He was not an issue with mental illness. He had had strokes. He was really not supposed to be there. They usually just had patients that the doctor residents could learn from, interesting cases. He was allowed to be there because his wife worked next door. And I was his person for some reason. I was assigned to be his person. And he would, and I really did imitate these people.

I couldn't help it. But he would always go, like he was writing on a blackboard. He would go to his mouth for somebody. And I used to do that with him. I was at diva-da-da-da-da. He said, and we would talk this kind of jumbled language. And one day there was a piano there at the end. sit down to start playing piano.

And he's sitting there on the couch. This is going to get you. And there's sheet music in front of me, and it's easy enough for me to kind of just read the treble, at least. And it's, good night, Irene. And most of your people watching this probably don't remember that or know of it. And I start playing, good night, Irene, Irene, Good night, Irene.

Irene, good night, good night, hurry. I'll see you in my dreams or something. And I hear him back of me, he's doing it. And he's going, good night. Apparently, this is your profession. Music is a special place. For some reason. That's the first thing you have even when you're, before you're born, I guess.

And he starts singing it. And I see her coming in. And I get up. And I go running over to her. I'm so excited. And I said, Dr. Koppeloff, Dr. Koppelov. And she said, I said, he's talking. He's singing because he never did anything but do do do.

And she almost ran. She walked as swiftly as she could over there and sat down. And I started playing the piano. And he started going, good night, Irene, Irene, and finished. And she looked at him. And she started talking to him. She said, you can talk to me something like that. And she says, you can talk.

And he said, out of nowhere, it's going to sound like a Hollywood movie. I can't. Wow. I can't. And she was so upset. She had to leave. So this. Is that possible?

Yes, it's possible. And I think, you know, people ask me so much about how do you remember? words as an actor and how do you do this as an actor and what's it like to do this as an actor. And so much of what I think of as the foundation of my life as a performer is exactly what you're kind of describing is the observation of other people. And when I was in elementary school, I would do impressions of, you know, it was never particularly mean-spirited, but there were certain, you know, kids, teachers, teachers, voices. things and it was, I remember and I specifically remember I was waiting. I was part of the busing

system here in Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s. So I spent a lot of time of bus stops. They would bus kids in the 70s and 80s from poorer neighborhoods where I grew up to nicer schools to try and integrate. It was just a socioeconomic attempt to try and blend our city. So I spent a lot of my life waiting at bus stops with other kids to be put on buses and taken to fancy neighborhoods. And this is what we would do is to pass the time as I would do impressions. And I didn't think of it as, you know, an acting skill. I was just, I was raised in a hyper-vigilant home. We were always taught to look. We were always taught to pay this acute attention to everything. So for me, it just became kind of an extension. But I just, you know, I'm thinking, it's an

unbelievable story to think of you being in this kind of environment where you're also observing kind of the extremes of the human experience. And then simultaneously thinking of you going to audition. and, you know, all, just all that information that then gets stored in you. How did you start taking acting? You didn't take acting classes either? No, I was in school plays. And what I knew, and this is kind of something I was going to ask you about also. You know, I wasn't, I didn't feel particularly comfortable. I mean, I was a strange, I mean, I'm a strange adult. I was also a strange child. But what I knew is that I felt a comfort with auditioning and performing, not because, because I wanted applause. That actually was not, I didn't like that aspect of attention. What I liked

was making someone happy. It was usually the teacher, the director, and it was almost like no one else's opinion mattered. Like socially, it was more important to me for that teacher to say, you've got the part. You know, you're the one. Did your parents make you happy or was not, Generally speaking. No, but that's the question, I guess. You were looking for parents. Okay, so this is, it's interesting because I also, I don't know if I think

of it as happiness is such a, you know, it's such an amorphous term. It wasn't even so much that I needed attention. I mean, I feel like I got too much attention, you know, just growing up in my household because everything, and there was a lot of confusion, as you know.

I mean, I wrote this script and you you got to live certain aspects of it. But there was something about doing it right and getting that satisfaction that we've done it right. And that has, you know, kind of been a constant, you know, for me, even as I got older. I'm much less interested in applause and awards and those things. Like, it is, it's the work. It's doing it in that moment and being told, all right, we got it. We're moving on.

You know, there's something also about kind of hiding on a stage, you know, you get to take on an entirely different persona. And especially, I was curious about this for you, because you really do embody characters in a way that very few actors do convincingly. I'm curious about the getting it right, and this is obviously a gross oversimplification of what I'm about to suggest.

But in a volatile home where there's a hypervigilance and you're sort of often on guard of... I have to ask, I wanted to ask, Hypervigilant means... You never know who's going to come out of a room in what mood. Oh. Sometimes plates fly. So it's a negative.

Oh, well, it's... Usually. Yeah, I mean, in children, a hypervigilance state can come from an unpredictability, you know, even emotionally. And it also sounded like when your dad would require everything to be just so, there's a hypervigilance to keep aware of like, oh, that isn't just so. so I better get it, or there's going to be a response. You're scanning. You're always kind of scanning.

Two of the worst things that my brother and I could be told would be to wash the car. Yeah. Because after we washed the car, you would have done it right. That's right. Yeah. And believe it or not, he once or twice would ask us a week to go outside and take the hose and wash the dirt off the dirt. Yep. Because there's shiny dirt.

That's right. And there's dirty dirt. So that level of breeds hypervigilance is that like, okay, you're trying to constantly anticipate where is this going to go wrong because you know it's always going to go wrong. You're anticipating someone else's needs, which is what actors are essentially then paid to do. And so it breeds that. And so when you talk about the like goal of getting it right, if you're constantly anticipating what's going to go wrong and then you get the opportunity for someone to say it's right.

Satisfying. And you never get that in a home that has all that hypervigilance because everyone is so off kilter and you never know what's going to set someone off. then you're sort of getting that reward mechanism. It's the joke. The mother gives her son two ties, a blue one and a red one. And the next time she sees him, he wears the blue one. And she says, what's the matter?

You don't like the red one? That was our house. That was, yeah, that's a lot of people's house. So I'm curious if you had any sort of awareness or even looking back, like when you sort of became a person who lived in this sort of acting world, did it feel like seeking satisfaction? Did it feel like attention? Or did it just feel like this is where I am in life?

And I'm just going to do this. so I'm not in the hospital as an attendant. Two, or a patient. Two answers, I guess. One is that I started therapy. And the reason I did is when I moved to New York to study with Strasbourg, which was in 1958, a couple of people there whom I really respected were not only had study with Strasbourg, but they were in analysis.

And I never heard of such a thing. And this was like Freudian because you went every day. And I said, I can't afford that. No, if you get accepted through the Psychoanalytic Institute, you can pay a portion of what you make. So I wound up paying $3 or something a session five times a week. And I remember this is 1958 or it's 1959. The person say to me, they'll ask you questions. Make sure you don't say you're a homosexual because they will ask you that.

And I said, because they won't take you. I said, why not? Because they think it's a disease and they can't cure it. Wow. This is a vivid memory, 1958 or nine. So I started getting therapy. Wait, so can we just take a second here? So this was seen as an integral part of a rigorous training in performance

was to understand yourself and your motivations. and that of humanity? Yes, and it was through therapy. I remember going one day and saying to the therapist talking about characters, because you're really not playing a character, that's amorphous, so you're bringing it to be a part of yourself. And I remember saying, and then I just started to cry,

and I think it's the first time I ever cried in therapy. And I said, it's the only time I feel I'm in my own skin is when I'm playing someone else. I know who I am when I'm playing somewhere, someone else. And I've never forgotten that. I can't help it. It was comfortable. You use that word yourself. Is that true for every character?

Meaning, is it the character or is it the state that you go into when you're, being another character? I don't understand actors who say that they have to be in character. I think Daniel Day Lewis said it about Lincoln or something. For me, I don't understand that because once you find it, there is like a key, I think, and you find the key and suddenly, oh, in other words, when I was doing Rain Man, because Tom Cruise was always getting jobs, so we were put on hold and wound up having to do research for over two years before the internet. I went to UCLA and I observed patients there and I couldn't get a handle on it.

And the reason was, is because I didn't have an idea of how they thought. And I remember Brando said, again, he was our hero, once you can understand how that character thinks, you can play him, how he rationalizes. For instance, I once did a part of, in Strait Time, which I thought was one of the better things I did, where I played an ex-convict, and I studied with the guy who wrote it in San Quentin, Eddie Bunker, and I said, let me ask you, Eddie. I said, let's say you rob a bank. When you go in the bank and you hold up guns, you want to scare the people. That's the first thing you said you want to do. Yes, you want them all on the floor and not to move, because you don't want to hurt them. You want to get the money and get out.

So let's say someone fires a shot and inadvertently, and it goes, just making it up, goes through the window and hits a woman or hits a baby in a baby carriage that she's walking by with. I said, what do you do then? Because he did say, after you rob, you always want to watch the news. You want to see yourself on the news. And I said, let's say you see that on the news. Do you feel guilty? And I remember he gave me the key to the character. He says, no.

And I said, why not? He says, well, she's a mother. She should know you don't walk past the bank. You walk on the other side of the street. Wow. Once I heard that, then you knew how he would rationalize. He was not wrong. Rain Man, I could never figure out how that character, what he thought about.

I never could. And I know certain things. They didn't make eye contact. They were always in another place. if they were high functioning, which I was supposed to, you can tell of somethings. And by the way, in Rain Man, he knows that we had things fall on the floor. Toothpics. And he said, 33, 33.

And that actually happened. And someone told me that his client did that. It was coins. And he knew it exactly in thirds. And I said, so you mean he can think. So these high functioning ought, we obviously know this, they think like a company. No, faster than a computer. They don't have to, they just see it.

And I said, what do you mean? And he went to a blackboard because I was, and he said, you don't have to count that. You know, that's one. You don't have to count that. You know, it's two. Somewhere around seven or eight, you're guessing. He said, they can do it, let's say 150 times. And they see it the way you see two or three.

And we don't know why. So I am doing Rain Man and I had done so much research. and we start shooting. And after the first day, I said, because I don't rehearse the so-called character. I do all the work I can do. If I have to limp, I work on a limp, if I have a whatever. And I do all that work where I stand. Whatever you can do it to, you know, alternate, have alternative ways of yourself mentally and physically.

Then I just leave it alone until I show up. and something happens. And I don't like to plan it because you cut off other stuff. And it usually does. You're in a panic and that's part of the adrenaline, I guess. And here I couldn't do it. Nothing happened. And I kept trying and I went to see they had the rushes in those days.

And by the third day, I'm seeing stuff like, oh, Jesus, I look like I'm doing rats or Rizzo. Oh, God, I'm doing papillon. Oh, God, I'm doing all these variations. And I say, Barry, we're friends. I says, I'm quitting. I said, it's the first week you're going to be able to get someone else, please. I can't do it.

And I don't want to do bad work. And I just can't, it's the first time this has happened. And I remember going to the elevator and Barry came out. And he said a brilliant thing. He said, so when you're watching the rushes, you don't see that character anywhere. He says, I said, once in a great while I'll see one moment. He says, so let's go look at all the rushes. now and you tell me what that moment is.

First he said, what's the moment? I said, I don't know. I can see it, though. I said, there's the guy. There's the guy. It has to have happened to you. And it's moving talking to another artist. It is.

And so I saw it. And I said, there he is, there he is. And he said, so just do that. I said, I can't. I don't know when it happens. I'm not so. Oh, there is when I do it. I can see it.

And he said to me, I promise you one thing. Don't quit. He says, we'll keep going. And at the end of the movie, I will guarantee you that every scene that you're in, we will shoot over. I wasn't in every scene, but I was in. And he says, that's a promise. And he was a friend. So I took him up on it.

I said, okay. He just keep struggling. Cut. Tom and I is almost over. Tom and I are doing a car scene. and he's driving the car and I'm the passenger. And oh, by the way, one of the guys that I had met in the research of this had a brother who was autistic. And this brother was as handsome as Tom Cruise.

And it was also a football star in high school. And he could imitate his brother. And I thought, oh, my God, if he can imitate him, why can't I? And I would call him as I was trying to find, or maybe this was finally. after I thought I had a handle on it. I said, so what would your brother say if he wanted to drive the car? Would he say, let me drive?

I want to drive. He says, no. I said, what would he say? He would say, I'm an excellent driver. Those great lines were said by him, not by the writer. And there were many of them. So anyway, I'm sitting in the car

and Tom is driving. And Barry Levinson says, you know how they have the camera in the car and with your hand, you'd do the clapstick. And you could do with, it was 35 millimeter. You can do about four or five takes and then, you know, just, you know, just add live until we're out of film on that.

You know, just keep going. Just improvise. We said, okay, so we did our four takes and he's talking to it. He says, okay, I think I have what I want. He says, now why don't you and Tom just improvise? So we start driving and Tom starts asking me questions. And I can't answer because I don't know how he thinks. And I feel awful.

I thought, oh, fuck, I'm dead. And he asked me another. And I don't know. And I go back to Barry. I says, Barry, let me out of here. I can't do this part. I don't care if you think I have moments that are good. I can't do it.

And he said, come over, I want to show you something. I said, what? He has a playback. They have playbacks. Our show, we couldn't afford it. Next one, Dustin. Yes. And he says, I think you'll see something.

something. And apparently what I did without knowing it is he's showing a playback and he would ask me a question and I wouldn't, my brain wouldn't know how the character would answer. And I did something I wasn't aware of. And what I did was, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? And there he was. And I could, and that's why if I finished a take, I didn't have to stay in character. All I had to do is go to. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. because it's disconnected. I knew one thing, I knew what it was like. I said in my own life, I said, if you take a nap, it's different than when you wake up after eight hours sleep. You take a nap, you don't quite know where you are, and you can't quite ask what it feels like. To me, watching these people, they're in like different places at once. And you ask them, and I go, yeah, and they are, they're somewhere else. So I'm really, really.

Did I answer it? Yes. No, I mean, you know, every answer opens up all these great questions. I'm still really fascinated by this connection between kind of knowing yourself and true kind of performance, meaning knowing yourself on a psychological level as sort of a window into this kind of other part of yourself as a performer. I mean, we talk a lot here about the importance of therapy and encouraging people just to understand themselves for the sake of living, you know, and the importance of that.

But, you know, the most devoted actors that I often interact with are people who really do take it as if it's a scientific practice, you know. Meaning they are in therapy. Yeah. Or they approach it, you know, from a kind of therapeutic perspective, meaning the only way I can truly know this character is to know myself and all those ins and outs. It goes back to understanding how that character would think. If we don't understand how we think, how can we understand how anyone else think? Thanks. Yes. And so from that?

And having said that, I do think we rationalize most of our lives because it's too painful to admit our own truths. I'm curious about your emotional range. Obviously, that's a huge necessity for actors. But like, did you always have that? Did you have that as a kid? Did you have that when you were in the Pasadena Playhouse? Like, where did you get to be able to like just tap in?

Because the way you feel, even in the stories that you're telling you, like, it's right there for you. And it's something that even personally, like, I work at. Like, I don't have it. It's like my emotions are somewhere around that I need to, like, go find and connect to versus, you know, the cerebral understanding of what's happening. The ease with which you feel your emotions, the ease with which emotion wells up in you, both as a human person and also as an actor. Was that something that came from, let's say, working in therapy? You're very in touch with your emotions is the way we would describe it.

Lisa says it. tells me I'd cry at the drop of the hat. I mean, it's... Were you like that as a kid? Were you an emotional kid? I don't think so. I think I was in absentia. I think I was just in a wallpaper.

Which is how so many people are. And so to see someone who has access to this whole range of experience is so powerful. And so I'm like, where does one find that? Or how do you go from being in the wallpaper to having this connection? I mean, there is volatility in my family. My brother has it. My father has it. My brother was much more physically volatile than I was.

I was, even though he was five foot six broad varsity football, varsity baseball, he would get into fights. They had to pull him off of other guys because he would just, he, there was a killer that emerged. And I wasn't like this. I was always hiding, if I could, behind the bigger kid. I was afraid of physical contests. I was afraid of, I didn't know even how to make a fist. I am observant, I guess, in a sense, because I had to take boxing lessons for this unsuccessful series. I did call Luck, which a wonderful writer and friend David Milch wrote.

And I remember he thought I should take boxing. I said, I didn't even know how to make a fist. And I remember taking boxing lessons, and the guy came with the pads, and he was teaching me how to throw a punch and a jab. And I, first thing I realize is that to do that for three minutes is exhausting. You can't even hold your hands up barely just for a minute. They're in such shape. But I remember that after something happened during, I don't know, after five or six times, there was something that happened to me that was the only way I could describe it is, I was primitive.

I was the primitive part of myself. And it was like, and I suddenly understood there was no identity. As I think of myself, there was just, I could kill. It is in us. And I guess that's, you know, yes, I remember. One of the first things I remember, I remember thinking I had trouble with this when I started acting. And then I started saying, wait a minute, what could I? kill. What could I? And I said, a fucking mosquito. If you wake up in the night and you hear

that and you will not go back to bed until you smash it and hope that it's blood that's probably yours spreads all over the wall. I will. That is, and I say, well, that's all you need. That's literally, is to just tap into that part of yourself. I do think, and I, especially you notice that when you have grandkids, I guess, because I'm not so into, you. You know, you know, this movie, that movie, the next one when I was in my 30s with our first kids, I do think that you start to see that normal human behavior is, I understand what the Catholics mean when they say original sin because you are not born with a sense of benevolence or empathy. You aren't.

It is nothing to, someone said, you know, he said I was two years old and my brother was and he just fell off the table. You feel nothing. We are not quite the human we want to be, and it takes work. So those things are there. During the course of just living, I do like to sometimes, if it's a good group, I'll talk to actors, you know, and I remember saying, I said, the day I learned, you know, you don't have to think of some kind of sense memory to yell at somebody. You don't have to be angry.

Just think of, let's say that there's a window at the end of the hallway. Try to break that window with your voice. Nothing else. That's all you need. You don't need anything else. And that does suddenly alter you. It's so funny because when I talk to actors who sometimes ask about process and things, you know and they say like what do you how do you are you tapping into it experience that

happen you know like there's so many ways to do it but there's a sense of you just you have to be it and I think with those emotions like you're talking about I mean I'm Jonathan says I'm like a cartoon character you know I feel all the things and like the good things are very big and the bad things are very low and why why is that why am I like that or yes I mean I don't know I think there's human variability and for me I I'm constantly experiencing and in touch with like all the feelings. It's, it feels bumpy. It can be uncomfortable.

But the one place where it's not a problem is when I'm acting. Because you channel control it. Yeah, it's best utilized, you know. Well, it's fascinating because when you answer the question, where you go is accessing anger and rage. But what I think is the most interesting and powerful is the sensitivity and the whatever the qualifier is, is it sadness, is it pain that you experience and you're able to tap into when you're telling these stories and you feel so deeply? I do think, at least as far as I can remember, so I would guess it's before I started

studying acting when I was like 21 or something. I do look at people and I try to think what they were like when they were two or four or six and particularly people that took the wrong road and I say, when did that happen? And I do also try to think, what will they be like when they're old? We do this, don't we? We even try to see them and how will they be different? It is something that I just, why are you smiling? Well, she says all the time, you go out the way you come in, and I'm smiling.

Meaning what? What do you? Well, no, I, I mean, I talked about that with my father, you know, and obviously this is very close to you. And it's something that really only you and I, you know, got to share because I was directing you, you know, with the person that I was closest to. And, you know, my father, you know, he had a very slow, you know, degenerative condition. But you didn't tell me. No, it was multisystem atrophy was what it was called. And first he was diagnosed with Parkinson's, but then it turned out it wasn't.

And anyway, he, the, you know, I showed it very quickly in the movie, even though it's a very painful movie in terms of. seeing this progression of death and passing. In real life, my father lived for 29 days, only drinking water and without any food. You were there. I was there. And every day my mother was like, it's the day. And she would call me in the morning. This is the day. No, my, there are very specific things hospice told, I think it's his breathing, and she'd hold up the phone and, you know. But what people would say is he would want you to be happy. This isn't. I said, no, my father passed the way he lived. He was a big, big feeler. He drew everyone in the room into his experience. He was incredibly charismatic. Could have been an actor. That's he, yes. Yes. I mean, he was. You know,

the fact is he was acting at trying to fight a lot of demons, you know, his whole life. But that's what I said to Jonathan is like, that's exactly how he wanted my mother calling me every morning. Like, that is how our family structured the processing of emotion. You were all in it. You everyone felt everyone else's thing. The clinical term is enmeshment, you know? It's called what? In meshment.

And in the stettel, that's how it worked. You were in everyone's business. And that's, you know, kind of the thing. But I was smiling because I sometimes see Jonathan older. Not because he looks like his dad, and I've seen pictures of his dad, but. Have you, did you know his dad? I've never met his dad. Over Zoom.

Over Zoom. But there are times when I see Jonathan and I feel like I'm going to get to experience this person at a different phase of his existence. I've never had that with anyone in my life. So we're just going to keep podcasting and see what happens. I was saying like poker, you're all in. You're all in. That's her family.

That's right. What were you going to? Well, I smiled because I, from a very young age, I don't know, it was before I was 12 or 11, I would look at adults and I'd be like, oh, that adult is really just some version of that three-year-old that is somewhere and that whatever that three- or four-year-old experience that was imprinted on them hasn't gone anywhere. It's just them that they've aged and they've sort of morphed whatever it is that they experienced at that age through, you know, they've morphed it.

And now it's a 75-year-old who just happens to still have all those characteristics. One of the kind of themes, you know, just for me, and also in making this movie was that hurt people hurt. That's what happens. People who are hurt often hurt, exactly. And especially if there's not a lot of processing or support, and that's why it's so fascinating to me that you had, you know, you described, I mean, the first thing I asked you was like,

who was little Dusty Hoffman, you know, and you describe a very, very interesting kind of structure in your family. And I also think what an interesting blessing, at least that's how I see it, that you were able to find a career that allowed you to look so deeply within you. So lucky. Yeah. So lucky. I mean, I can't imagine that didn't help, you know, kind of transform some of that.

You got to know yourself also at a time in our culture when that was a very, it was a thing for the elite, you know, like everyday psychoanalysis. It was a very, it was a very Jewish New York, you know, kind of concept. So it's just, it's really fascinating. And there's a place, I think, that that many people witness. actors like you going, there's a seamless nature to kind of the performance. I mean, I think that there's a place where, I mean, I'm just speaking from directing Dustin, there's a place where...

By the way, if I can interrupt, you were so wonderful as a director. Everyone knew it was your... No, everyone, you're going to always cut these compliments out, I know. But everyone knew it was your first picture. Everyone knew you had written it. Yes. And everyone was so as I was astounded that you came to work with an idea of what the scene should be. You had worked with the DP.

And yet you were open to any ideas. And that's rare. Thank you. I won't cut it out because he won't let me. There comes a point when working with you where the script no longer mattered. And what that means is when someone can embody a character like that, which I believe, you did and you do, it allows for so much freedom, you know, in kind of the structure, because I'm not going to say that anything is okay that comes out of anyone's mouth,

but in this kind of situation, that's what I, that's what I experienced, you know, is that there came a point where what you did and why you did it felt completely organic. And that's, at that point, there's not, you know, people said, did he add lib and what was it like? And I said, that's the point of what the actor adds to it, is that when they know how the character thinks and feels, then everything emerges from that. You hope that lines up with your script.

But there has to be an openness to that. When you say organic, what that means, I guess, is you're not planning on doing something. It happens without you being aware of it. I remember the moment when you wanted me to smack my son and I was afraid to hit Simon

because I didn't want I guess I was thinking because I did hit and you said I think it should be harder I probably went like that Simon thought so too it wasn't just me No no I'm sure

he did say hit me It was also I think the first scene that we had done and so that's a very rough scene Yes and I was afraid to do it and I guess what came out of that is subconsciously is I'm not going to be able to do this right.

And some alternative came into my head, maybe this is what you're talking about, is that what's important in this scene is that he brutalizes his son and maybe even his daughter. And so things came out of me, which were not in the script as per se, where I say, oh, you want to hit me?

Come on, go hit me, you know? And I did a thing which you may have even written, which was the best moment for me in the scene, is that she started to follow him out and I pulled her over and say, sit on, we're going to eat dinner like nothing had happened. That's right.

And that was somehow a replacement. But you still had written it too. Yeah, and I think also another aspect of this film and in particular your character and my father of blessed memory, there's a lot of complexity to complicated people. My father was also an artist. He was a frustrated artist.

He was a writer and a filmmaker. And he was genuinely sweet with you. Genuinely, very, very sweet and loving, very, very connected. You know, I was his doppelganger. But also there are parts of us that are explosive, you know, and that are very complicated. And so that was also, it's very difficult for a lot of people. And, you know, I say as difficult as it is to watch, it's difficult to live that way, too. And many of us, you know, do.

It's that kind of, it's that loving volatility. Your dad was physical. Yeah, both, I mean, both my parents were the way a lot of people were. in that generation. You know, my grandparents fled Eastern Europe. They had very few kind of life skills or social skills and things were very, very different then. And, you know, we try and, I mean, this is also why I kind of wrote this film because our past is still part of our present, even if we feel like, oh, that was then and we've moved on from that. That sort of, you know, it lives with you. I did want to ask what it's like to be so immersed in your, your,

not just your career, but a career that is so psychologically complicated, and especially as you gained more and more success, and I would imagine you worked frequently. What was that like? I'm very curious. I didn't work as frequently as other friends. I generally was very careful and probably shouldn't have been as careful. If I could do it again, I'd be less careful. You know, you're a star of a certain kind of consequence, so you can say, okay, but who are the the other actors and what's the script and will they do any rewrites and who's the director and what's the budget. You try to get all those things or sometimes you just turn it down.

Why don't you just go with the director? Fuck everything else. And I said, shit. I would have worked with Felini. I would have worked with Inmore Bergman and I would have worked with a couple of others. What wasn't right, let's say? Okay, that's a good question. And Felini, apparently, from what I heard, and I think he admitted it, he didn't care what the actor said because he was going to dub it all.

Mastriani, who we used most of the time, didn't even dub his own voice half the time. That's right. Right? So he would, and he didn't care if the lips, they don't care in Italy, you know, if there's no, they really don't. And so I said to him, I said, Mr. Felini, because he was like a favorite of mine, had, seen all this one, but eight and a half. Before I was famous, it was my favorite movie. After I was famous, it was doubly my favorite movie. He knew something about fame, which I hadn't seen on the screen before. And I said, Mr. Felini, I'll give up my salary. And so you can shoot what they call

direct sound. And I'll pay for it myself so I don't have to go in there and dub. Please, Let me just do that. You can make up all, you can give me the words that morning. Just let me say them. And he said, no, I don't work that way. Wow. And Bergman, I'm so unhappy with myself about these things. I met Ingmar Bergman, and I was so afraid to meet him.

Felini, he goes, oh, he's going to grab you and hug you and kiss you on both cheeks. And I thought Bergman's going to be the opposite. He's going to be very elusive and cold. everything. I met him after he was kicked out or he left because he didn't pay this taxes or something and he actually bought an island for himself off the, off the, so he didn't. It's not eccentric at all. No, off the coast there. And by the way, he did something, which I may have mentioned to you, his cinematographer was always, was it Carlo de Palma or no, no, it was, what's, Nick Vist. He had the same cinematat, almost.

every time. And they would walk on the beach up and down for months and months and months and months and talk the movie. And by the time they were done, they had shot the movie in their minds and we don't get to do that. Anyway, I meet Bergman in a hotel room in New York. Certain memories are fixed. I'm in the hotel room with Ingmar Bergman. He is so warm. His wife is there. She's somewhat of a mother figure to him. at that point, I don't think it was his first wife, but I do remember her sitting there very, you know, very in tune with him because it was a very emotional time in his life. He came up to me, he embraced me, he hugged me like I thought, oh, my God, is he like Fellini?

We sit down on the couch and I said, may I ask you something? It wasn't the first words, but close after we started talking. I said, was it painful for you to be, in a sense, kicked out of your own country? I mean, you had made so many great films and he started to cry. And he couldn't stop and he got up and he walked out of the room to the bathroom in the hotel. And she said to me, I've never seen him do that before. And now right then and there I should have said, fuck everything I want to work with him, but I didn't. He came out and he was sitting on a bed and he asked me, you can come and he could come and he could

come in or whatever. And I came in, this is hard to admit. He says, please do this movie. I says, but it's about anti-Semitism. And I guess you did that because it was your experience, theoretically, of anti-Semitism. But I'm a Jew. Never was a very good Jew, but I am a Jew and I've always been self-conscious and it has nothing, it's not close enough to my experience so that I could know how to play this part. He said, literally said, please. He says, ask any actor that's good. This is Bergman.

Ask any actor that's worked with me. You can improvise. I let them do anything. Can you believe? And I didn't say yes. I was fearful. That's all I. What was that fear?

I had a friend who's no longer living, who really was, he and I thought of Tutsi at the beginning. His name was Murray Shiskel. And he became my father figure instead of my father. And when I moved to New York, I met him shortly after that somehow. And I was just 21, knew nothing. He would take me to museums.

He would say, who was that painter? Who was that painter? He would teach me how you could tell who the painter was by looking at it. He taught me what books to read. I had had no cultural education of any kind. and he really was a father figure. Because you were busy learning all that boogie-woogie. Yes.

And he said, unfortunately, he had a side to himself, which was very competitive, and he says, I don't think that film works. And I listen to him certainly more than I should. And it's not his fault, it's mine. I mean, I'm responsible for myself.

Is there a sense that everything, I mean, this is not just about you or your career in particular. But do you have a sense that things happen exactly how they're supposed to? Lisa does. When I don't get what I want or something happens, she says it wasn't supposed to happen. And then, well, an example couldn't be used.

I wouldn't be married to Lisa if my first marriage had worked. She's a brilliant wife, a brilliant mother, and, you know, extraordinary companion. And you have children and now great. grandchildren. What's important to state, because I do believe this with all my heart, is that we men are so far the inferior part. They are not only smarter than we are the women. They are so much braver and courageous is the word. When Lisa was having her first baby, Jake, and Jake was in the womb the way he is now, he's like a tap dancer. I mean, he doesn't miss a beat. The placenta came off the wall, and that's where he's getting his blood supply. And Lisa was bleeding internally, and so we didn't know she was hemorrhaging.

When we got to, she said, I got to lie down on my back. She couldn't stand. And I call up her OBGYN. Get in here right away. We go there, blah, blah, look a thing. Flap is off the wall. The guy said as he's going to. to finish his tuna sandwich.

He's got to flap off the hook. And I am there because, I mean, it's like a movie. We go next door to the hospital. I needed an anesthesiologist. I need an intern. They're yelling as they're racing her down. Later, we found out she had maybe 15, 20 minutes to live, as did Jake. So we get there.

The reason to tell the story is I am there. I'm so nervous. I think they give me something for my shoes. and I put it on my head. I didn't know what to do. But I'm there. And I'm there when they do the, before they do the C-section, they say, okay, now we're going to put you. Is there anything you want to say?

And she's so calm and collected. The first thing Lisa says is, I'm wearing contacts. Is that bad? Oh, my God. They forgot to ask because it can be. You can get in trouble. And then she says to me, just before she goes under, if it was a. between me and the baby, save the baby.

We don't say that. If it can do anything, save both of us. Can you say both of us? We don't want to bargain. But that's clear as, you know, and I've obviously never forgotten that. I did want to ask. I remember you said something towards the beginning

of our working together. We had a long talk. We had many talks. And one of the things that you talked about and you would kind of talk about it throughout filming. You know, and it's, it's a hard thing to talk about. It's a hard thing to think about. You talked about, you know, the differences that you can tell in your kind of cognitive ability as an actor, you know, in terms of the information you can hold, what you can remember. And, you know, in terms of lines not coming as easily as they

used to. And I remember we had this one scene. We had this one scene with the pasta, right, with the pasta prima vera. This kind of. five minute take. I just kind of left it open and you were having trouble remembering one of the, like, it was, I wrote these long speeches. You know, in my, in my, I take credit for the difficulty in some of these speeches. I wrote them all out. That's right. And I actually, I have where Aaron, your assistant Aaron had written, no fucking way in no fucking way, am I going to that fucking it's like one of my favorite lines in the movie. And I have it in her writing on a giant card. For some reason, it became my bookmark. But, cue me. Exactly. But there was

something in this long speech, it was something like six sentences long. And like you, you were getting caught on like the second or the third. And you kept restarting yourself. And you kept saying, I'm going to get it. Just give me a second. And you would start again. And you would get stuck in the same place. And you would say, oh, I know it. And what you ended up doing is probably something not conscious. But what you did is you added a little handle to the sentence that you were having trouble remembering. It was something like, let me tell you, or here's a thing. And what happened when you added that is the whole speech came rolling out. I have no memory. And it was, I have it on camera them. And what I remember is that there are so many things now that you are having to handle as a

performer that, you know, I'm 46 and I can already feel the differences. 66, 76, I'm old enough to be your grandfather. But, but. But. But. But. You know, I'm 406. And I'm old enough to of your grandfather. But I'm already, I already am starting to see, oh, my, my brain won't hold the same amount of information. It won't hold, you know, if the more lines I remember, the more I lose my phone and, you know, forget to tell. You're feeling it already. Yes. So I'm, I'm wondering, and I remember you said, you said, like, you want the words to come out faster. And also I was having you play, you know, younger. And so I wanted, you know, this kind of like speech and a kind of different speech, which I really, I'm so, so thrilled, and I hope you are as well with how it turned out.

But I wonder, you know, when you think back to, you know, to the Dustin of 25 and you think back to the Dustin of 35, you know, I wonder sort of what that's like to reflect because you're actively working. I mean, after our movie, right? You went right into, I think you have two other projects now. What is it, what's sort of that process for, you know, reconciling the differences in how you learn and perform now versus when you were, let's say, 25? Well, when I was in high school, this horrible student, I could not or didn't have the

discipline to focus. And so that's when I started writing out lines. This is the answer of that question. This is the answer that question. So I just would write, write, write, right, and that's what made me start doing it as an actor. And I actually did that from the very beginning. I didn't have to write them as many times as I do now. But that I did from the beginning. I have limitations physically. In fact, I had a massage yesterday, but by the way, it's the best masseur you'll ever, if you ever need one, the greatest masseur. He's an artist. I had a terrible massage yesterday. It's really funny you're saying this. Oh, you got to try. I had a horrible massage. You must. Okay, we'll talk about it later. Go ahead. Sorry.

Promise me. It's our treat. I promise you. So he, after he was over, he says, I finished lying on my stomach. He says, okay, that's it. So I had to turn over and bring myself up. He says, you don't know how many people have trouble doing that. That's a toughie. To turn over and buy yourself, bring yourself. I says, no, I got to, I'm going to do it.

I got to do it. I have dreams of being an actor. And I'm always young. I had one last night. And I'm young and I'm running around. And the actors, I'm working. with her at the same age. And it's not that I'm young again. It's just I'm young. So that's the feeling, I guess, I mean, you can't help it. But I do feel, I don't, I'm not afraid of death.

At least that's because you, since I started going with it, she says, you talked about it every day. You thought you were old when you turned 40, Lisa says to me. And my rationalization is, because you said to me, what am I going to do? I'm dead in your movie. It's going to be hard for you to be dying in the bed. And, you know, I think you said, you don't want to put me in the coffin. I didn't want you to have to be a corpse. And I didn't mind that. I said, oh, if you want to use someone else, fine, I get a day off. I said, oh, I can think, I don't have to work that day. But I had no qualms with that. And I don't. I feel the truth is, if God was selective and he had, He decided who got to live and not die, and I didn't make the cut.

I'd be pissed off at God. But since we, none of us make the cut, we all go. It's not the same thing. It is probably, as long as I can, well, remember certainly, the most profound fact about being alive. What the fuck is it? I don't understand. You mean, Tolstoy's never going to, we're never going to see him again. He's not going to write anything anymore.

He didn't even make it to 40. Balzac wrote everything before he was 35 or whatever. I mean, it's just, it's Van Gogh. I mean, it makes no sense to me. I don't understand it. Not only are they gone, but they're never going to be again. I have to tell you, Lisa was going to school at UCLA. And I used to go to lectures at UCLA.

waiting for Lisa to finish the class because they had daytime lectures and they had Isaac Boshivas singer. Very few people know who he is if they're not Jewish. He wrote all these great novels from Eastern Europe. That's all he wrote. But he was also sexy. And he wrote stuff that had sexual charges to it. And he liked to go out with the ladies. But he was giving a speech at UCLA and I went and sat in the back, kind of like Goodwill Hunting.

and I watched it as I would other things. And I remember after it was over, he had questions and answers. So after he finished with his thing, and you knew you're going to get it. Most of the audience seemed like they were Middle Asian Jews. And sure enough, do you believe in God? And he says, yes, I do. Do you believe that God is a benevolent God? Yes, I do.

Then how can you, you know, the whole whole. It's all of that. He says, well, and I've never forgotten it. He said, we don't know if this is the only universe. Now we're finding out it's not. He was ahead of his time. And so this is the God for this universe. But maybe there's other universes that have other gods.

And maybe, and he used this term, which we know on Broadway, I don't know why he used it, but he used it. You have the original cast, and then you have the bus and truck. He says, maybe we have the bus and truck God. We don't have the original. Other universes have it, and he's doing as best as he can. We just don't have the great God. Other universe has it.

And I never got the bus and truck God. You're orthodox. Well, I'm observant-ish. Observant-ish. Yes. And you can speak Hebrew. I do speak Hebrew. An abysal Yiddish.

And Abyssal Yiddish. There was a little Bissle Yiddish in my house because when they didn't want the kids to understand. But my father is an atheist and always was. Dad, what happens? Nothing. And he was angry. He was very angry about that. And my mother was kind of not anything because she had no real identity after being with my father for a few years.

And I was not bar mitzvahed. My brother was not bar mitzvah, we had no sense of what holidays were. We never celebrated them. We had to go somewhere else. Some friend was having this. I didn't know. So which one is this? Is this the one that takes an hour and a half because you have to taste these different things?

You know, I do feel that a loss in not being able to hook on to something. Oh, I remember. I lived in an anti-Semitic neighborhood in Los Angeles. They existed big time. They still exist, but it's more. Well, that's one positive thing Trump has done is he's brought to the surface, all the anti-Semitism and all the hatred. You thought it didn't exist.

There it is. He's brought it. He's made it popular. And I remember that in my neighborhood, especially on Flory Street, it was, I got called a kike a lot and a dirty Jew that lasted. Into my adulthood, after the graduate, even for years I was so tormented. Should I take that part? Everybody, or know I'm Jewish, that if someone asked me, what are you?

I got an immediate pain right in my gut, a real pain. And I would say, like, I'm dumb, American. No, no, no, but what religion? Like, I didn't know what they were talking. I'm American. and it's and it's just, I think, recently, you know, subsided. Well, you're also one of the most, most often mistaken for a New Yorker, West Coasters, besides me that I know.

Like when people hear that you're not, you know, like my parents are from the Bronx, my dad went to school with Al Pacino, like they had the same drama teacher. So when people would say, like, what's your father? My father's like Al Pacino, but like Jewish, not Italian. But there's a very kind of east coasty way about you. I've never been to New York. Well, it's like very, it's a very, you're very culturally identifiable as a very, very Jewish person. I think it's an important and confusing thing for people to realize that being Jewish, it's not simply do you believe in God or what God do you believe in or how do you practice.

You know, when you said you're a bad Jew, there's no such, I mean, in my mind, there is no such thing. There are more observant Jews, less observant Jews. We're all literally the same. But I remember in our movie, you have to say Nathan's wife's name, which is Karen. and you pronounce it Karen because you are truly a West Coaster. And I remember when I would listen to it, you know, I was raised with, you don't hear the accent. I mean, Jonathan's family is Toronto, but I hear Karen as the way we say it with a CA. And I remember when we were, and he says Karen.

And I said, wow, he really is a West Coaster. Anyway, just a small sign. Yes, what do you say roof or roof? Roof. Yeah, and back east they say roof. Right, there's roof and roof. We had all those things. You held your own though with a lot of, I mean, Candice came out with improvised Yiddish in our movie, which surprised all of us.

Yes. Candice had the biggest Yiddish vocabulary on the set. She did. Why is that? She said she grew up among mostly Jews. She was pulling Yiddish out of everywhere. Very impressive. Wow. Well, Dustin, the way you speak about, you know, about Balzac and about Tolstow, this is how many people feel about you as a performer. You know, it's an immense honor and pleasure for us to get to talk to you so intimately.

You know, we barely even touched on, you know, your career. I mean, the Rain Man stuff is fascinating, but, you know, there's so many things about the era of performance you come from. And also the – well, yeah, and also the era of psychological awareness that accompanied that level of performance. And I think it's so fitting, you know, again, Jonathan and, and I advocate for people knowing themselves better to have more meaningful relationships, more meaningful connections, you know, a spiritual understanding of our place here. And it's just, it's so, it's so incredible to get to speak to you. And also to have you share so openly about your journey. Such an honor to have you here. And thank you for being

our second in-person guest. Oh my gosh. What a difference, huh? It's very different. I mean, we literally started this podcast because it was COVID. And we built, this was Jonathan's creation, was to build this studio so that we had a space to start, you know, just trying to talk to people about mental health, both from our personal experience and my science experience, and Jonathan's also a healer. So it really started as us sitting in front of a camera and having people zoom in is very special and it allowed us to have these incredible guests, but there is nothing like human interaction and just patterns of speech and all those things. It really does make a difference. And we're both very old fashioned that way. So we're very,

Very glad to have you physically here. Should I stop talking? No, go ahead. This is what people don't understand. We may not see it again for all these different reasons. The economy, big screen films, is that that was an experience. You can include plays. We're all strangers, basically.

And we go in and we sit next to each other. And we are all laughing at the same moment, and we are all crying at the same moment. That's like Temple. It's like church. I mean, it is a sacred ground that is not a part of our experience anymore. Yes, absolutely. Even seeing the film that you two made on that screen together, I'd seen it multiple times on small screens with just a couple of people. And then we're in the room together and it's a totally different experience.

Yes, yes. There's laughs. There's a lot of laughs. Well, it's, you know, it's energy, right? Yes. It's a real thing energy, right? when you know other people are present, experiencing something with you.

It's different. It's very different. And they feel differently. So when it's over, you leave and you say, no, I don't think that's what happens. Right. I remember the gradual. What happens?

Oh, yeah. And I remember Mike Nichols writing afterwards that when it ends, you know, they run, make the thing in the bus, and then they are going away and it recedes. and the movie ends and people think, oh, they're going to wind up together. And he says, no, they're not. He says, they don't even know each other.

He says, they're going to break up very soon and never see each other again. I had to take off my blazer that interview was so good. I mean, this could have been a six-hour interview. I could spend the rest of my life with him and still not be done listening to his stories. It's unbelievable. I mean, it was really fun.

And I'm really glad you got to see the Dustin that I got to work with and that I got to direct. big fan of yours. Also, if you're only listening to this, when Dustin starts complimenting Miami, she literally tries to crawl underneath the table. I tried to hide behind the microphone. Such a big microphone. I hide behind it.

It was amazing. That was really, really incredible. And just cannot wait for people to hear this episode. So we hope that you've enjoyed it. Another great shout out to Aaron, Dustin's incredible assistant, who's a super fan of our show. I got to meet Aaron. Hi, Aaron. Yeah.

I mean, just really, really awesome. and hopefully telling Dustin all the good things about us that got him here. If you want to tell us your favorite part of this episode, you could do so at Bialik Breakdown on Instagram. And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's my and Bialyx Breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two.

One fiction. And now she's going to break.